The King is Announced

This morning, we continue our study in the “Coming of the King” by looking the King who is announced to a virgin. To see that, let’s read Luke 1:26-38. From this text, see two points: The Unexpected King and the Unstoppable God.

First, from verses 26-33, see the Unexpected King. Last week we studied Isaiah 9:6-7, which prophesied of a son who would be extraordinary. Isaiah also prophesied, in Isaiah 7:14, that a virgin would conceive and bear a son. So, it was well understood that the birth of the Messiah would be exceptional. Yet, even though the people were well prepared for the exceptional, the birth of Christ was still unexpected. In our text, see three ways that the king was unexpected. First, his family was from an unexpected town. Verse 26 tells us that the angel Gabriel visits a virgin in the town of Nazareth. Nazareth was an insignificant place. It is so insignificant that it isn’t even found in the historical record (outside of the Bible) until after the year 1000. There have been archeological discoveries there, and from that, scholars estimate that the population of Nazareth was less than 500 people. So, it would have been very much like our little communities of Sandcut or Liberty. It’s no wonder Nathanael says of Nazareth in John 1:46, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” It was too small to have a Dollar General, so how could it be known for a King?

Second, the king was born to an unexpected teen. Verse 27 says that Gabriel appeared to a “virgin betrothed to a man… [her name] was Mary.” It certainly is exceptional that God would bring about the birth of his Son through a virgin (which we will discuss later), but there is something else extraordinary about this. It is believed that Mary would have been between the ages of 12 and 14 when this announcement came to her. For one, the Greek word for “virgin” is used to speak of women who were betrothed but not yet married, and we are also told that Mary is in that exact situation, betrothed to Joseph, but not yet married. It was the Jewish practice of that day to arrange a marriage for a girl when she reached the age of puberty (between 12 and 13), and betrothal often lasted for a year. So, by our standards, Mary is still a child. And, even by her culture’s standards, she is young, inexperienced, and weak. Yet, it is in this very weakness that God pours out his favor. It is in this inexperience that God chooses to work his greatest miracle.

Third, the king came through an unexpected testimony. In verse 28, the angel brings his testimony of God’s plan for Mary, and he begins with a statement of God’s grace to her. He says, “Greetings, o favored one.” The word “Greeting” literally means “rejoice” or “be glad.” It is not a welcome or a salutation in our modern sense. It is a call to worship. There is a reason for this call to worship. Gabriel says that Mary is “favored.” In verse 30 he says again that she has found favor with God. The Greek word for “favor” is charitoo, which means “to show grace”. Now, as you know, much has been made of Mary among Christians, especially our Catholic friends. They attribute to Mary a sense of blamelessness that in some way merited God’s favor. Yet, that is not the sense of the text. Rather, the idea of Gabriel’s announcement is that God has purposed to show her grace. Understand, the grace of God is always unmerited favor. If it were merited, if it were deserved in some way, if it were earned, it would not be grace. God did not choose to bring the miracle of his son through Mary because she was exceptional or blameless or worthy. She is insignificant, inexperienced, and weak. It is God who is exceptional here.

So, Gabriel announces that the favor of God will result in a child. God will cause Mary to conceive and bear a son named Jesus. He will be the Son of God and the heir to the throne of David. He will be the promised Messiah. Yet, even though we know that he will be exceptional, we can’t help but wonder, with Mary, how these things will be? How will God do this? That leads me to my second point: The Unstoppable God, from verses 34-38. Mary, stunned by this announcement, asks, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” She recognizes the cultural and physical impossibility of what the angel announced. Culturally, she is not married, and it could be up to a year before she is. So, if the father of this child will be Joseph, there are some logistics to work out. And, if this is to be a supernatural work, how is that even possible?

To that question, Gabriel gives a beautiful answer that pulls on a thread that runs all the way through the Bible. He tells Mary that the conception of her son will be supernatural in every way. There are three aspects of this supernatural conception that we should recognize. First, Jesus was conceived of the Holy Spirit. In the same way that the Holy Spirit hovered over the face of the deep at the dawn of creation in Gen. 1:2, the Spirit will now bring the power of God to bear in the body of Mary. Recognize that this is a miraculous work where the spiritual takes action upon the physical. It is not, as the Mormons and the Muslims and the Greek pagans believe, that God became a physical being and participated in the conception of Jesus in a physical way. Jesus was conceived in the same way that the world was created – by the spiritual bringing life where there was not life.

Second, Jesus would be conceived when the power of God “overshadowed” Mary. The Greek word used here is episkiasei, and it is significant in the OT. It is used to speak of the glory cloud that filled the tabernacle, signifying the presence of God with his people. In her pregnancy, Mary became a new tabernacle, a place where the presence of God dwelt. And, in his life, Jesus was that same tabernacle, because in him, the very presence of God dwelt with us. As John 1:14 says, “The word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

Third, the result of this miraculous conception would be realized in a holy child. Jesus would be set apart or consecrated. Interestingly, this was legally true, because Jesus was the first-born son to Mary and Joseph, and the law required that he be set apart through a sacrifice at the temple, which they did in Luke 2. But, Jesus is not just the first born of Mary and Joseph, he is the only begotten Son of God. He is not holy because he was consecrated in the temple, but because he, in his very nature, is the very image of God.

To prove that all he has said will come to pass, Gabriel offers one proof. He tells Mary that her relative Elizabeth has conceived in her old age, even though she’d been barren her whole life. Then, he reminds her of a truth claimed through all of the Bible – “For nothing will be impossible with God.” God is the author of life, and he can bring life up from the dust, as he did with Adam. He can draw life out of the side of Adam, as when he made Eve. He can keep his promise to Abraham that through Sarah he would receive a son, even though she was barren and past childbearing age. He can answer the fervent prayers of Hannah and give her a son named Samuel out of her barrenness. He can cause Elizabeth to conceive in her old age, and yes, he can bring life from the virgin womb of a young teenage girl from Nazareth.

What is the right response to this extraordinary work of God? What is the right response to the unmerited favor of God? Mary gives us the example in verse 38. She simply answers to all of this, “I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” Oh, what beautiful faith. There are two things Mary says that are beautiful. First, she says, “I am the servant of the Lord.” There are two Greek words for “servant.” One is daiakenos, from which we get “deacon”. That would be a free servant – someone who still had rights in Roman society. But, Mary doesn’t use that word. She uses the Greek word, doule, the word for a chattel slave. Doules had no rights. They were under the complete, absolute ownership of their master. Mary recognizes that this is her position before God. We are all under the authority and complete ownership of God, whether we admit it or not. A heart of faith acknowledges that in humility.

Second, she says, “let it be to me according to your word.” She submits herself completely to the Word of God. She does not ask for modifications. She does not question further. She accepts the grace of God. She accepts the call of God. Mary’s faith is a pattern we should follow – a humble acceptance of our position before God, and a complete surrender to his will. May we walk in that same faith as we go from this place.

The King is Promised

This morning, I’d like to begin the Christmas season with a new series that focuses on the coming of King Jesus. As we’ve studied the Gospel of Mark, we’ve focused on the fact that the Gospel declares Jesus to be the King who is ushering in an everlasting kingdom through his death and resurrection. Keeping with that theme, I’d like to look at the story of Christmas from that same angle – the coming of the King. So, this season, we will consider the King Promised, the King Announced, the King Born, and the King over All. We begin with the King Promised, from Isaiah 9:1-7. Let’s read that together. From this passage, see three points: The Darkness of the Nations, the Divine King, and the Dominion of the Kingdom.

First, from verses 1-5, see the Darkness of the Nations. The context of Isaiah 8 and 9 is the darkness that God’s judgment will bring on Israel. Chapter 8 promises that God will cover Israel in darkness. Verses 21-22 say, “distress and darkness, gloom and anguish… thick darkness.” So, our text picks up on this theme, with verse 1 promising judgment on Zebulun and Naphtali. These two tribes were the northern most tribes of Israel, located in Samaria and Galilee. This location guaranteed two things. For one, it guaranteed that they would be influenced by the nations around Israel. They mingled in marriage with the nations and imported their idols. But, it also guaranteed that they would be the first to feel the force of God’s judgment. Assyria invaded Israel from the North, starting with Naphtali and Zebulun. So, the darkness that Isaiah sees in chapter 9 is first a covenant darkness. The people of Naphtali and Zebulun had the law and prophecies of God, but they rejected them and instead turned to the darkness of idols.

But, there is another darkness here. Isaiah promises that the glory of God will come first to “Galilee of the Nations.” Because of the unfaithfulness of the Northern Tribes, Galilee became a symbol for the Gentile world. Good Jews did not even consider this region to be truly Jewish. As such, the Jews viewed the Gentile world as a place of darkness. They lacked the wisdom of God. They did not have the law of God. They did not offer right sacrifices. As Paul says in Eph. 4:17, Gentiles were “darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them.”

Yet, the promise of the coming glory of God in Isaiah 9 is given first to these very people. It is Zebulun and Naphtali (the most rebellious of the tribes of Israel) and Galilee of the Nations who will be the first to see the glory of God. They will be the first to be delivered from the judgment that God will bring. They will be the first to enjoy the benefits of the kingdom of God. This very thing came to pass with the ministry of Jesus. Jesus was a Galilean. His home was in Nazareth, and he based his ministry out of Capernaum, a major city of Galilee. The people of Galilee saw his victories over Satan, the great oppressor, as he cast out demons. These powers had kept the people of Galilee in darkness for centuries, but with the coming of Jesus, they were the first to see the light. 

This brings me to my second point: the Divine King, from verse 6. This promise of light in the darkness is wonderful, but how exactly will God accomplish it? Verse 6 tells us. It will be through a royal son. The glorious way of God will be seen in a divine prince. Isaiah gives us the royal name of this king. In English, we’ve divided this name into four parts, but in Hebrew this is one long name: “Wonderful Counselor-Mighty God-Everlasting Father-Prince of Peace”.  Let’s consider what each of these parts mean. First, Isaiah says that this king will be the “Wonderful Counselor”.  In the Hebrew, neither word means the way we take it today. The word “Wonderful” could also be understood as “miracle working” or “extraordinary”. The promised son will be unlike anyone who has ever been. He will be exceptional. The word “Counselor” is not the way we take it in our modern sense – as a psychologist or someone who comforts us when we are stressed. The word speaks more of the prince’s wisdom. This son will be the extraordinary, miracle-working Wiseman. Jesus Christ is this son. He is the very wisdom of God. As 1 Cor. 1:24 says, Christ is the wisdom of God, and our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.

Second, Isaiah says that this royal son will be “Mighty God”. In Hebrew, this is a common name given to God, “El Gibbor” – God, the Warrior. Deut. 10:17 says, “The Lord is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty.” But, here, it is used to speak of the promised son that will deliver his people from darkness. How can it be that the descendent of David will be the Mighty God? This can be because of what the angel Gabriel promises Mary in Luke 1:35, “The Spirit of God will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy – the Son of God.” Jesus is the promised son of the line of David, and he is the Mighty God.

Third, this coming prince will be the “Everlasting Father.” In this phrase, we can run the risk of making a mistake. Some assume that what is being said here is that the son will be the Father – that Jesus is just a mode of existence for God, not a separate person of the Trinity. That view fails to understand what the Israelites would have heard in this title. This is a royal title that was given to kings throughout the ancient world. The King of a nation was considered its father. In the same way, God was the Father of the Nation of Israel. Psalm 103:13 says, “as a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to us.” In the same way, Jesus is fatherly towards his people. He acts as the good shepherd who cares for his sheep. In John 14:18 he promises, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.”

Finally, this royal son will be the “Prince of Peace”. In Hebrew, this title might best be understood as the “Ruler who brings shalom.” For the Jew, Shalom was more than just an end of war. Shalom represents completion, wholeness, putting things in their right order. The world, in its corruption of sin, is disordered. We see that disorder among nations, as nation rises against nation over resources and pride. We see that disorder within our families, as husband and wife act selfishly, pursuing their own desires rather than the good of the other. We see that disorder even within ourselves, as we struggle to know our own identity. But, Jesus brings shalom. He has come to set the world right. As the hymn, “Joy to the World” says, “He comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.” Eph. 2:14-17 says that Christ is our peace.

With that, consider my last point, “The Dominion of His Kingdom”, from verse 7. Isaiah’s prophecy ends with a description of the coming kingdom of this royal son. There are three attributes of this kingdom given here. First, the kingdom will increase without end. This prince of peace will usher in an ever-increasing kingdom. As Jesus promised in the Parables of the Mustard Seed and Leaven from Matt. 13, the kingdom of God will start small, but then it will grow until it fills the whole earth. And, there will be no end to this expansion. Satan cannot stop it. Governments cannot resist it. The kingdom will expand without end.

Second, this kingdom will be forever. The reign of the prince of peace will be from this time forth and forevermore. I am of the generation known as “Generation X”. I came of age in the 90s, and one of the major cultural shifts that happened in that decade was the denial of a “happily ever after.” That decade saw the rise of  “alternative” music that was a rejection of the happy, youthful style of 80s rock. Our stories rejected the Disney paradigm of “happily ever after” as well. Instead, our heroes came from broken homes and the end of the story wasn’t always so neat. This reaction against “happily ever after” was understandable, because the world cannot give you a happy ending. But, Jesus can and will. The reign of Jesus Christ has no end.

Finally, this promised son and his kingdom will not be brought by human will or power. This son is brought by the zeal of the Lord. This is certainly the story of Jesus of Nazareth. Born to a peasant teenager from a backwoods town and her carpenter fiancé. His birth was not proclaimed with a trumpet from the walls of the royal palace. It was announced to shepherds. It was not honored by the royal elite of Israel, but by foreign wisemen. No human could claim credit for the beginnings of the kingdom of God. It is only by the zeal of the Lord that it came to be. And, it is only by the power of God that Christ’s kingdom still goes forth. As Romans 1:16 says, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God to all who believe.” The Kingdom of Christ will expand into all the world, but it will not be done by force or war. It will be done by the simple and foolish proclamation of the Gospel. So, may we go in the power of God and proclaim the coming of the Prince of Peace.

The End of the Age-Seasons

This morning, we come to the end of our subseries on “The End of the Age”. For several weeks, we’ve been studying the prophecies of Jesus about the destruction of the Temple from Mark 13. These prophecies began with two questions from his disciples. They asked him, when will these things be, and what will be the signs? So far, Jesus has answered the second question first by giving various signs that lead up to the destruction of the temple. Now, Jesus ends this teaching with the answer to “when”. To see that, let’s read Mark 13:28-37. From this text, see three points: The Teaching of the Fig Tree, The Terminal Generation, and the Timing of God.

First. From verse 28 and 29, see the teaching of the fig tree. There is an interesting literary device that Mark uses in chapters 11-13. In Chapter 11, verse 12, Jesus has a strange interaction with an actual fig tree. On Jesus’s first full day in Jerusalem, after the triumphal entry, he passes by a fig tree early that morning, but he doesn’t find any fruit. Mark tells us why – it’s not the season for figs. Fig trees in Jerusalem produce fruit in late summer, and Jesus is looking for fruit in the spring. But, finding no fruit, Jesus curses the tree, commanding it to never bear fruit again. Then, he marches into the Temple, and there too he does not find what he was looking for. Instead of finding a place of worship for all nations, he finds a den of thieves. So, he drives out the moneychangers and merchants and calls the oppressed to come to him. On the way back to the Mount of Olives that evening, they pass by that same fig tree, and his disciples find it withered. Obviously, there is more than meets the eye here. Jesus was not “hangry” and acting brashly to curse this tree. He does this as an object lesson for the nation of Israel. The fig tree is Israel under the Old Covenant. The OT repeatedly refers to them as such. Hosea 9:10 compares Israel to the first fruit on the fig tree in its first season. Jeremiah 8:13 compares the disobedience of Israel to finding no figs on the fig tree. In Micah 7:1-2, God looks for “the first-ripe fig” but finds none. Now, the very son of God, the Son of the Master of the Vineyard, comes to his own people, and he does not find them in true worship, waiting for him with joy. He finds them in hypocritical disobedience. Instead of acting as witnesses to the world by calling the world to come and worship the one true God, they had set up shop in the court of the Gentiles.

This analogy of the fig tree forms what scholars call an “inclusio” in the Gospel of Mark. Starting with the fig tree of Mark 11 and running through the fig tree of our passage in chapter 13, all of Jesus’s interactions take place in the temple, and they all involve conflicts between him and the religious leaders. So, in Mark 11, he told his disciples what would happen to Israel by cursing the fig tree, and now he tells them of the timing of all these things by speaking of another fig tree. He says, in verse 28, “From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near.” In this analogy, it is spring, and the fig tree has no leaves. But, you can always tell that summer is on the way because the old dead branches of the fig tree begin to put out shoots, and the leaves begin to bud and grow. So it is with the coming judgment of Israel and the beginning of the new covenant. I think Jesus intends for us to see two fig trees here. One fig tree is that of Israel. It has been cursed. Even at the time of Jesus’s prophecy, it was withering, and it would never produce fruit again. But, there is another fig tree – the tree of the New Covenant established in Jesus himself. That tree was not dead; it was just starting to spring forth.

So, how would the disciples know when all these things would come to pass? How were they to know when to flee for the mountains or when the abomination of desolation would come? How would they know when the Son of Man would ascend in glory, or when the gathering of the elect would take place? As Jesus says, they will know the time is near when the Gospel puts out shoots and grows into the world. The more the church expanded in the book of Acts, the more the world persecuted it. Yet, with every persecution, the tree didn’t die, it just sprouted forth new shoots, from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria, to the utter most parts of the earth.

But, that timing could be a challenging to understand, so Jesus gives another measurement in verses 30 and 31. That brings me to my second point: The Terminal Generation. Jesus puts a limit on all of the signs and times that he has given so far – “This generation will not pass away until all these things take place.” In my introduction to this subseries, I pointed out that this statement serves as an interpretive key for all of the signs that Jesus gives. Jesus is not speaking of events way out in the future at the end of time. He is speaking of things that will take place in “this generation.” The generation that heard his prophecy, the generation that rejected him; they would be the ones to face all of the judgment he’d predicted. But, that generation would also be the one to see the glory of the Son of Man and the ingathering of God’s elect from the four corners of the world. As Jesus would promise in Luke 9:27, “[Some of you] will not taste death until you see the kingdom of God.” The disciples witnessed all of these things and trusted the Lord through it all. 

And, Jesus proved himself to be the divine Son of God by keeping every last word. This is why he could say, in verse 31, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” This statement is blasphemy if Jesus is not God. Jesus is claiming to speak with divine authority. He doesn’t say, “this is the Word of the Lord, and it will not pass away.” As Isaiah 40:8 says, “The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of the Lord abides forever.” God’s Word is true and trustworthy, and Jesus makes that same claim about his own words.

With that, consider my last point: The Timing of the Lord, from verses 32 – 37. After speaking with such confidence of the fig tree and this generation and his own words, now Jesus gives two warnings. First, in verse 32, he gives a caveat to his timing – “No one knows the day or the hour.” This saying is strange for a couple of reasons. For one, Jesus has just said that we can know the time, and now he is saying that no one knows. What is going on here? Jesus is drawing a distinction between knowing the season and knowing the hour. His disciples could know, based on the signs of wars and calamities and false teachers and the growth of the church, that the judgment of Jerusalem was near. But, it was not given for them to know the exact day and hour when it would happen. Why would Jesus give them the season, but not the date and hour? Because, if they knew the exact day and hour, they’d have no reason to wait on the Lord and trust him. But, there is something else strange in what Jesus says. He says that not even the Son knows the day and hour. This statement comes just one verse after he’d claimed to have the authority of God, and now he is saying that there is something that he does not know. Is this evidence that Jesus was not fully God? No, not at all. Rather, it is evidence of what theologians call the Hypostatic Union – the idea that Jesus was one person in two natures, without any mixture or confusion. Jesus was fully divine AND fully human. This doesn’t mean that he was God mixed with man, but rather that he was God AND man. In his divinity, he was the Son of God who was in the beginning with God and was God, but in his humanity, he was formed in the womb of Mary, born of a virgin, and suffered under Pontius Pilate. In his divinity, he knew the thoughts of men, but in his humanity, he wept at Lazarus’ tomb. In his divinity, he divided the loaves and fish and fed 5000, but in his humanity, he hungered for bread after 40 days of fasting. So, here, Jesus speaks of his human knowledge – knowledge that grew and matured as he aged and learned. And, in that human knowledge, he was not given to know the time that God the Father had appointed for the end of the Old Covenant.

This limitation should teach us something important, though. Jesus says that no one knows the day or hour, “But only the Father.” This brings up an issue that I’ve always had with the way we talk about the End Times. In the popular way that we talk about the Great Tribulation, the Antichrist, and the second coming, it is as though we can know the day and the hour, and we can even change it. Often, the coming of the tribulation and Antichrist are presented as warnings: “We better clean up our act or the tribulation will come.” “We better not vote for him because he could be the Antichrist.” But that is not the way Jesus presented the end of the age. According to Jesus, God the Father has set the very date on which these things will take place – we just can’t know it. As he tells his disciples in Acts 1:7, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.” The Father is not reacting to us, changing history based on how we reform. He is not waiting on us to act so he can plan his next move. God the Father has decreed all things from before the foundation of the world, and nothing catches him by surprise or upends his plans.

So, if the disciples could know the seasons and the signs, but they could not know the exact day or hour, how were they to live? Jesus tells them how in verses 33-37. They were to “be on guard and keep awake.” Then, he gives an analogy. They are like the doorkeeper of a house who was left in charge while the master was away. They were to wait and watch for his return. If they fell asleep, they would fail in their obedience to the master. So, they were to stay awake and watch. And, they did just that. Not only did they stay awake. They went out boldly and proclaimed the Gospel to the ends of the earth.

The call to stay awake is not just a call for the disciples who heard this prophecy, though. Verse 37 ends with a call to everyone who would read this Gospel: “What I say to you I say to all: Stay awake.” So, throughout this subseries, I’ve insisted that these prophecies apply exclusively to the generation of Jesus’s day, and I believe that very firmly. But, just because the kingdom of God came in power through all that Jesus prophesied in this chapter, it doesn’t mean it is the end of the story. The kingdom of God came in power with his ascension, but there is more to come. The kingdom is right now expanding and taking hold of this world. And one day, it will be consummated when Christ returns to make all things new. So, what are we to do until that day? We are to stay awake. We are to be witnesses of the kingdom in this world, that others might come to know Christ. We are to work for the glory of God and pray that his kingdom might come on earth as it is in heaven.

The End of the Age - Gathering

We are back in Mark 13 as we continue our study on “The End of the Age”. This chapter began with Jesus’s prophecy of the destruction of the temple and his disciples’ questions of the signs and times of this prediction. So far, Jesus has given his disciples the signs leading to that destruction. There will be false prophets, calamities, and wars. Jesus also predicted what the destruction would be like. It will be unlike anything that has happened before or will happen after. But, what will happen after all of this? For that, we have our passage today from Mark 13:24-27. From this passage, see three points: The Collapse of Civilization, the Coming of the Son of Man, and the Calling of the Elect.

First, from verses 24 and 25, see the Collapse of Civilization. Jesus continues his prophecy by telling of what will come after the tribulation of the Jews. For the disciples hearing of this destruction, it would certainly sound like a world-ending event. The temple would be destroyed. There would be no more sacrifice. Untold numbers of their countrymen would be killed. What hope is there in that? But, Jesus wants them to know that there will be an “after”. In one sense, the destruction of the temple did represent the end of the world. It was the end of 1500 years of tradition. The Jews had held the same practices and laws for that long, and in five months, all of it was gone. With the destruction of the temple, the Jewish religion and law radically changed so that the Judaism of today looks very different from the Judaism of Jesus’ day. There is no way for them to offer sacrifices. They cannot carry out the proper ceremonies for purity. Even though the bloodline of the priests is still alive today, they cannot intercede for the people because there is no consecrated place to do so. This event was not just a collapse of their religious tradition. It was also the collapse of a world order that had survived for 500 years. Since the conquest of Babylon, the world had operated under an unspoken agreement: a single world empire would rule over all of humanity and provide a common law and order for all men. The Jews had even come to submit to this world order, with devout believers like Daniel, Esther, and Nehemiah even serving in high positions within those empires. Though there were a few notable exceptions, these empires had provided an economy within which the Jewish people had thrived, and the leaders of Israel had learned to use this system to their advantage. The priests had especially benefited from a cozy relationship with Rome. Yet, in Jesus’s day, that unspoken agreement was beginning to falter. Zealots and Pharisees pushed for purity and national identity as they anticipated the coming of the Messiah. There had been small insults that fomented Jewish rebellion. Even the Roman census at Jesus’ birth was an offense to the Jews. But, rebellion began to boil in 39 AD when Emperor Caligula ordered that a statue of himself be set up in the temple. In 66 AD, governor Florus stole money from the temple treasury and massacred protestors. This set off the riots that led to the siege of Jerusalem. This rebellion was the final straw for Rome. There would be no more toleration of the Jews, and Titus was ordered to lay waste to the city and temple.

When something so cataclysmic happens to a society, what can it be compared to? The Bible has a regular habit of comparing such catastrophes to the collapse of the universe. Isaiah 13:10 predicts the fall of Babylon, and it says, “the stars of the heavens will not give their light; the sun will be dark… the moon will not shed its light.” Ezekiel 32 speaks of the destruction of Egypt in the same way, “God will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give its light… all the bright lights of heaven will I make dark over you.” Amos 8:9 prophesies of the destruction of Israel, “God will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight.” This is exactly the language that Jesus uses to speak of what will happen in the destruction of Jerusalem. In fact, I believe that Jesus is combining all of OT prophecy, and especially that of Joel 2:31-32 (which we read earlier), to speak of what this judgment will mean.

Now, when dispensationalists read verse 24, they take it to be a literal destruction of the universe – that God will one day destroy this material universe and remake it. But, the sun, moon, and stars all serve as symbols and signs in Scripture. In Genesis 1:14-19, when God creates the celestial bodies, the primary purpose for which they were created was not to give light. Light already existed. The purpose of the celestial bodies was “for signs and seasons, for days and years.” The sun and moon were not even given to shed light, but to “rule over” the day and night. When Joseph dreams of his rise over his brothers, he dreams of his family has sun, moon, and stars. In Daniels visions, he often portrays Israel as the firmament of Heaven. The book of Revelation speaks of the pastors as stars. This symbolism isn’t just the language of the Bible. We still use celestial bodies as symbols of power in our day. Over fifty countries (including our own) use stars in their flags to symbolize their power and authority. Even today, the symbol for the Jewish people is a star. When someone in high position loses respect, we still say that their star has fallen.

So, when Jesus speaks of the celestial bodies falling or dimming, he is speaking symbolically of the collapse of a world order. The priesthood lost all power. Sacrifices completely ended. The Jewish people were scattered into all the world. Rome, too, would slowly fade and fragment. Christian Europe would rise out its ashes.

That is not the only thing that will come after this tribulation. That leads me to my second point: The Coming of the Son of Man, from verse 26.  Jesus says that after this tribulation, “they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory.” Again, the dispensationalists connect this statement with the language of 1 Cor. 15 (“with a shout, the twinkling of an eye”), and Rev. 19 to say that this jumps forward from the destruction of the temple to the second coming of Jesus. But, I think it’s clear that Jesus is still bringing together all of the OT prophecies to point to the end of the old covenant and the beginning of the new. What Jesus says here is a direct quote of Daniel 7:13 and the coming of the Son of Man. In Daniel 7, the Son of Man is not coming down to earth. He is ascending into Heaven to sit at the right hand of the Ancient of Days. What Jesus is referring to here is not his second coming, but his ascension to the Father. It is in that ascension that he began his rule over a new creation, a new covenant, and a new kingdom. In Matt. 28:18, he tells his disciples, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me, therefore go and make disciples of all nations.” The disciples of Christ could go with the full authority of heaven and expect to make disciples of all nations because Jesus had taken up his position as the king of heaven and earth. It is certainly the case that his authority and power are realized in the conversion of the nations, but it is also realized in the destruction of Jerusalem. Every last thing that Jesus predicted came to pass in 70 AD. Every last thing that Daniel predicted came to pass in 70 AD. Jesus put an end to sacrifice. He established the way of eternal righteousness. He brought desolation on the house of Israel.

There is one last thing for his kingdom to do, and for that, consider my last point: The Call of the Elect, from verse 27. Jesus says that after the tribulation, he will send his angels to gather his elect from the four winds from the ends of the earth. The dispensationalists have read this, too, to refer to the rapture of the church at the end of the world. They argue this because of our modern understanding of the word “angel.” We always read that to mean a spiritual being, but it is not always meant that way. The Greek word for “angel” is aggelos, which simply means “messenger”. It is even used this way in the NT to speak of humans. Matt. 11:10 speaks of John the Baptist as “my messenger [angel]”. In Luke 9:52 Jesus sends “messengers” (angels) before him. Revelation 1-3 speaks of the pastors of the seven churches of Asia as “angels”. So, when Jesus speaks here of the angels gathering his elect, he is not speaking of divine beings rapturing believers. He is speaking of the proclamation of the Gospel and the calling out of his people from every tribe, tongue and nation. As Jesus promised in John 10:14-16, “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me… and I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So, there will be one flock, one shepherd.” This is the fulfillment of the promise of Joel 2:32, which sees the day of the Lord when the sun and moon are darkened and the stars fall, but in that same day, “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” It is not just the Jews who will call upon the name of the Lord and be saved. Everyone (Jew, Roman, Greek, African, Irish, Scottish) who calls on the name of Jesus Christ will be saved.

Brothers and sisters, we do not live in a waiting period. Jesus did not leave us. We are not waiting on him to come back (though he will). We are participating in the great victory of the kingdom of God. No power can ultimately resist him. He will make every enemy his footstool. He is right now gathering people from every nation to be a part of that kingdom. And we are called to participate in this great gathering. We are the messengers that are sent out to the four winds and the ends of the earth. We do that by giving to support the international mission board through our Lottie Moon offering. We do that by sending shoe boxes full of gifts through Samaritan’s Purse. We do that by our faithful attendance to church and our faithful discipleship of one another. We do that by living faithfully in front of a watching world. Raising our children in the admonition of the Lord. We do it by telling others of the salvation found in Jesus Christ. In all of these things and more, Jesus is fulfilling his work through us and bringing his rule to bear over all this world.

The End of the Age - Desolation

Last week, we began to work through Mark 13 by framing the chapter around the questions that the disciples ask of Jesus. The whole chapter centers around an interaction between Jesus and his disciples. As they leave the temple for the last time before his crucifixion, the disciples marvel at the building. They ask Jesus to join with them in their admiration, but instead, Jesus offers a judgment – “Not one stone will be left standing upon another.” This bothers the disciples, and so when they get back to the Mount of Olives, four of them get up the courage to ask him two questions: “When will this happen and what will be the signs leading up to it?” We saw last week that Jesus gives them five signs – false-Christs, conflicts, calamities, persecution, and the expansion of the Gospel into all the world. You could imagine, as the disciples heard of these terrible signs of judgment, a sense of injustice might have welled up inside of them. Jesus was not speaking of some distant land or an event far out in the future. He was pronouncing judgment on their kinsmen, their families, their friends, their culture. So, they might have been tempted to think that God was unjust to do this. We certainly struggle with this same temptation in our day. There are many who question or outright deny that God would judge anyone or send anyone to Hell. The reality is, justice is always personal for the one who stands condemned. In our text this morning, Jesus expounds on the signs leading to the destruction of the temple, and this drills in on the justice of God. Let’s read Mark 13:14-23 together. From this text, see three points: God’s justice is right, ruthless, and redemptive.

First, from verse 14, we see that God’s justice is right. Jesus gives his disciples a precise sign leading up to the destruction of the temple. He says, “When you see the abomination of desolation standing where he ought not be.” Now, there is a bit of debate as to what this abomination of desolation is. The Dispensationalists say that this abomination is an event that will happen at the end of time when the Jews rebuild the temple, and then the Antichrist defiles it by establishing idol worship in the sanctuary. This debate is spurred on by the fact that there have been “abominations of desolation” in the past. Daniel 9:26-27 says that there will be an abomination of desolation. Daniel 12:11 also references an abomination that makes desolate. These abominations have happened numerous times in history. Leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, the Israelites themselves defiled the temple with idol worship. In 167 BC, Antiochus Epiphanes entered the temple and sacrificed a pig on the altar. So, what abomination is Jesus referring to? Well, we don’t have to wonder about this, because in Matt. 23, he tells us. In Matt. 23, Jesus pronounces seven woes on Israel leading up to Matthew’s version of this same prophecy of the destruction of the temple. He condemns them for shutting up the kingdom by making access to God impossible for the lowly, for leading people astray, for being blind guides, for neglecting the weightier things of the law, for being clean on the inside but impure on the outside, for being full of hypocrisy and lawlessness, and for killing the prophets. The final woe is key (v. 35): “On you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth.” Then, in verse 37, Jesus laments the coming judgment, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you desolate.” Here is the abomination that led to the desolation of Jerusalem. God sent prophets from Abel to Zechariah, and the people of Israel killed them. And, in one final act of mercy, God sent his only Son. As John 1:11 says, “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.” Instead, they questioned him, accused him of having a demon, set traps for him, and ultimately crucified him.

What sort of judgment do such people deserve? They deserve ruthless justice. For that, consider my second point: God’s justice is ruthless, from verses 15-19. There is an interesting fact about God’s justice. On the one hand, the severity of God’s justice is well known and well-attested in Scripture. Psalm 2:9 says that the son will break the kings of the earth with a rod of iron and grind them to pieces. Psalm 110 says that he will shatter kings. Jesus speaks of Hell more than he speaks of heaven, and he describes it as unquenchable fire and a place of wailing and gnashing of teeth. Rom. 11:22 marvels at the “kindness and severity of God.” 2 Thes. 1 says that God will take vengeance on those who do not obey the Gospel. Heb. 10:31 says that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Rev. 19 pictures Jesus as the victor who treads the winepress of the fury of God’s wrath. So, it is clear from Scripture that God is wrathful, judgmental, and vengeful towards those who rebel against him. And yet, for all of this, the ruthless of God’s justice is flatly denied today. We find this denial in both pop-culture and scholarship. In pop-culture, those who want to live by their own standards will often be heard saying, “God is love”, or “you can’t judge me… Jesus said ‘judge not.’” Even well-meaning Christians will argue that “God doesn’t send anyone to Hell. You send yourself there.” Pastors and theologians have found the justice of God too hard to stomach, especially when it comes to the doctrine of eternal torment in Hell and the substitutionary atonement of Christ. With Hell, scholars argue that God is too loving to send anyone to Hell. Clark Pinnock calls the doctrine of Hell, “an outrageous doctrine… a moral monstrosity.” Speaking of the idea that God would punish his own son for our sins, Steve Chalke says that it is “a form of cosmic child abuse.”

I think one of the main reasons that people struggle so with the ruthlessness of God’s justice is because we think too little of God and too much of ourselves. Or, we think too little of our sins and too little of God’s majesty. But consider the case of Robert Henry Best. Robert was an American journalist with controversial opinions. He was brave enough to broadcast those opinions and the speeches of some of his favorite philosophers, and for that he was arrested and convicted on twelve counts of treason and sentenced to life in prison. I’m sure, from Robert’s perspective, he would argue that this was a matter of free speech, that the woke media was censoring him for conservative views, and so on. But, there is another perspective that might shed light on the severity of sentence. Robert Best was a journalist in the 1940s, at the height of WWII, and he broadcasted Nazi propaganda on his radio show. Was the sentence severe? Sure. But the crime that Robert committed wasn’t just against one person, but the entire nation – against Americans past, present, and future. So, if we will punish those who are accomplices to rebellion in such a way, how much more worthy are we all of God’s judgment?

And, more specific to our text, how much more were the Jews of Jesus’ day worthy of God’s severe justice? They had denied the Son of God and planned to kill him. They were accomplices with the devil in their rebellion. So, Jesus warns that their judgment will be ruthless. He says that those who face it should hope that it does not come in winter. Women should hope not to be pregnant. And, he says that this tribulation will be unlike any that has come before it or will be since. The siege of Jerusalem was brutal beyond imagination. It lasted for five months, and because of the in-fighting among the Jewish factions, there was no food when the siege started. It became so severe that women even killed and cooked their own children and offered it to others. When the Roman army took the city, Josephus says that they ran out of room for all of the crosses on which they crucified the rebels. Historians estimate the death toll to be between 600,000 and 1.1 million, and there were 97,000 people who were enslaved as a result of it.

Finally, consider my last point: God’s justice is redemptive, from verses 20-23. Jesus offers some hope in the midst of his ruthless justice. He says, in verse 20, that the days of this judgment will be cut short for the sake of the elect whom he chose. Yes, God is ruthless in his wrath, and he will have his vengeance, but he also proves himself to be merciful, even in the midst of his judgment. God always has a remnant that is saved by grace. Though the whole world was rebelliously violent before the flood, God found favor with Noah and saved him and his family. Though in all the region of Sodom and Gomorrah, not ten righteous men could be found, God rescued the family of Lot even as fire and brimstone rained down. As the death angel descended over the land of Egypt, it passed by the homes with blood-spattered doors because God had given his people a way of escape from judgment. Even as the last king of Judah, Manassah, killed the prophets and set up idols in every corner of the temple, God preserved a remnant of exiles like Daniel and his friends – men who would not bow down to idols, even when facing fire and lions.

Recognize, though, that the mercy of God is not based on the worthiness of those who are saved. Noah was a sinner like the rest of mankind. We see that as soon as he gets off the boat and gets drunk. Lot, too, wanted to stay in Sodom even as the angels insisted that he leave. The Israelites escaped the death angel, not because they were better, but because they had been atoned for with a spotless lamb. Even Daniel acknowledges his sin and that of his people and begs God not to treat them as they deserve. No, the elect are not saved because they are pure or perfectly obedient. They are saved because, as Jesus says, they are chosen by God. God chooses to show mercy, just as he chooses when and how he will judge. He chose the twelve disciples and sustained them, even when they were dumb and stubborn and cowardly. And, God has chosen you, if you are in Christ. You are elect, a “called-out one”. This is not because you deserve it. It is because your sins have been washed away by the atoning blood of Christ and because you have been given the righteousness of Christ, that there is now no condemnation. The wrath of God is not upon you, and even in the midst of God’s judgment, he will show you mercy.

The End of the Age - Signs

We’ve been in our study of the “End of the Age” for a few weeks now, and all of our work so far has been to build a context for what Jesus says in Mark 13. We started by looking at the great prophecies of Daniel that foretold God’s timeline for the End of the Age. We looked at Daniel 2 and 7, which were prophecies of four empires (Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome). The Lord promised that he would use those empires to judge Israel, but also to protect them, until the coming of the Messiah. When the Messiah comes, he will destroy the last kingdom, Rome, and his kingdom will grow to fill the whole world. Then, we studied Daniel 9, which gave us a timeline for all of this. God gave us 490 years to bring an end to the Old Covenant and usher in a new covenant through the Messiah. Last week, we considered Romans 9-11 and the true nature of God’s chosen people. We saw that Israel was a part of God’s covenant of grace, which Paul envisioned as an olive tree. The root of that tree was not Abraham, but Christ. So, God is now grafting Gentiles into that same tree of life, and all who come to Christ by faith are children of the promise.

With all of that background, we can now go back to Mark 13. Today, we start with Mark 13:1-13, as we consider the signs of the end of the age. Let’s read that together. From this text, see three points: The Season, the Signs, and the Stand.

First, from verses 1-4, see the Season. Mark introduces this teaching of Jesus by locating him in two places: the temple and the mount of Olives. These two locations are important and serve to set the scene. Jesus has been teaching in the temple since he entered it on the first day of the week to the happy shouts of the crowds. He entered the temple, cleared out the money changers, and set up shop, teaching for the remainder of the week. The temple is where the religious leaders set their traps for Jesus, and where Jesus made them look like fools. It is also where Jesus offered his warnings against the scribes and extoled the heart-felt righteousness of the widow who gave her last penny. I remind you of all of this, because so far, there has been very little good that has come out of the temple that was not done by Jesus or one of his followers. 

Now, Jesus leaves the temple for the last time prior to his crucifixion, and the last thing he does is pronounce a judgment on it. Mark tells us, as Jesus was leaving the temple, his disciples could not help but admire its grandeur. They called on Jesus to acknowledge the greatness of the temple. But, instead of admiring it with them, Jesus prophesies of destruction: “There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.” This statement greatly troubles his disciples, so when they make it back to their basecamp on the mount of Olives, they ask Jesus, “when will these things be and what will be their sign?” These two questions are what the rest of Mark 13 is devoted to answering. We have to acknowledge that up front, because Mark 13, and its parallels in Matt. 24 and Luke 21, have been read to refer to the end of the world, but that is not what they prophesy of. There are some important keys that show us that Jesus is speaking of the destruction of the temple and the scattering of the Jewish people, not a set of events at the end of time. First of all, as I mentioned just now, what Jesus says here is in answer to the question of when the temple will be destroyed. Second, at the end of the chapter, Jesus gives us another timeframe for these prophecies. In verse 30, he says, “Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.” A generation was understood to be forty years, and Jesus said these words in 30 AD, which means that the generation would come to a close in 70 AD – the year the temple and city of Jerusalem were destroyed by the Romans. Finally, Jesus repeatedly uses the second-person pronoun, “you”, to speak of all the things to watch for. He tells the disciples, “Don’t let anyone lead YOU astray, when YOU here of wars, be on YOUR guard.” Remember, he is answering the direct question of four of his disciples in a private setting. This is not a great sermon preached from a mountaintop. This is a precise warning to his disciples of what will happen within their generation.

With that, consider my second point: the Signs, from verses 5-12. The whole of the chapter is devoted to giving the disciples the signs leading up to the destruction of the temple, but there are five signs that he gives in this passage. First, he gives the sign of False-Christs. In verses 5 and 6, Jesus warns his disciples not to be led astray by men who will claim to be the Messiah. In Matthew’s account, Jesus explicitly warns, to beware of men who say, “I am the Christ.” Leading up to the destruction of the temple, there were numerous false-Messiahs. Theudus rose up in AD 44 claiming to be a prophet. In AD 66, Menahem Ben Judas seized Herod’s armory at Masada and then marched on Jerusalem. Josephus says that he even wore the robes of a king as he did this. Simon Bar Giora styled himself as a king during the siege on Jerusalem. Josephus says that, while Rome mounted their final assault, there were a great number of false prophets who promised that the city would soon be delivered by God.

Second, Jesus gives the sign of fomenting conflicts. He says that the disciples will “hear of wars and rumors of wars… nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom.” This too happened leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem. In 58 AD, the Roman-Parthian war broke out. In AD 60 there was a massive revolt against Rome in Britain. In 66, there were revolts by both the Jews and the Greeks. And, this all escalated to the Roman civil war of AD 69, when Galba and his troops marched on Rome, Nero committed suicide, and the “year of the four emperors” almost ended the Roman Empire.

Third, Jesus gives the sign of frightening calamities. At the end of verse 8 he warns of earthquakes and famines. Again, these all happened leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem. In Acts 11, we read of the famine of Claudius. In 60 AD, Laodicea was completely destroyed by an earthquake, and that was followed in 62 AD by the infamous volcanic eruption at Pompeii.

Fourth, in verse 9, Jesus gives the sign of fearful challenges. He warns that his disciples will be persecuted for their witness to Christ. They will be delivered to councils, beaten in synagogues, and prosecuted by government officials. This progression of persecution that Jesus gives follows precisely the developments in the book of Acts. In Acts 4, Peter and John are hauled before the Jewish council. In Acts 14, Paul enters a synagogue, and they drive him out and stone him. In Acts 24, Paul goes before Felix, the Roman governor, and the book of Acts ends with Paul on his way to Rome to appeal to Caesar. 

Finally, in verse 10, we have one hopeful sign – the sign of a full call of the Gospel. Jesus says that the gospel will first be proclaimed to all nations. Now, this sign is where many futurist interpreters of prophecy will object to my reading. They will say, “you see preacher, that has not happened yet.” If we assume that “all nations” means every nation that exists today, then this is a fair objection. But, as I’ve said before, we have to understand prophecy in its biblical context. What did the disciples understand to be “all nations”? In Genesis 10:32, it says, “these are the clans of the sons of Noah… in their nations, and from these the nations spread abroad on the earth after the flood.” Remember the story of the Tower of Babel, from Genesis 11. All people were gathered in one place, and they all had one language. They intended to build a tower that they might worship themselves and rebel against God’s command to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. God judged this rebellion by confusing their languages so that they were scattered. That judgment sent the world into darkness, so that they pursued false gods. Abraham, alone, was chosen by God to carry on true worship. So, the great question of the OT is how God would bring all nations to himself. Then, in Acts 2:5, as the Spirit of God descended on the disciples of Jesus, we read, “Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem, devout men from every nation under heaven.” The disciples rush out, full of the Spirit, and they preach, and as they do, the crowd hears them in their native languages. Luke goes on to tell us where they are from, and the nations he lists out are the nations of Genesis 10, the descendants of the sons of Noah. So, at Pentecost, the Gospel was proclaimed to all nations.

We know that the disciples understood it this way, because Paul understood it this way. Paul tells the Romans, in Rom. 1:8, “Your faith is proclaimed in all the world.” In Rom. 10:18 he says, “their voice has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.” In Col. 1:23, Paul writes, “The gospel… has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven…”. Now, at the time Paul wrote these things, Nepal had not heard the Gospel. China had not been reached. So, how could Paul say the Gospel had been proclaimed to all creation when those nations had not been reached? He could say this because neither he nor Jesus meant every last person in every last 21^st century nation must hear the Gospel before the end will come. He meant a very specific group of nations – those nations that represented the scattering of Noah’s sons.

So, now that we’ve seen these five signs, consider my last point, the stand, from verse 13. After giving all of these signs, Jesus calls his disciples to stand. He says, “But the one who endures to the end will be saved.” This statement has both a historical and an ongoing dimension to it. First, historically speaking, there were many disciples who endured to the end, but there were also those who fell away. Ananias and Sapphira sought to use the church to build their reputation, and they were both killed by the Holy Spirit as they offered their gifts. Hebrews warns Jewish believers against making a commitment to Christ and then turning back to Judaism. 1 John warns of false teachers (he calls Antichrists) who will rise up and deceive many. Leading up to the destruction of the temple, there were many who committed to Christ and then turned away when the persecution became unbearable. Those who gave lip service to Christ, who put their hand to the plow and looked back, were not saved. Only those who endured where saved.

But, this call to endurance is not just for Peter, James, John, and Andrew. All Christians are called to endure. Heb. 12:1-2 says, “Let us run with endurance the race set before us, looking to Jesus.” A true disciple of Christ is one who endures to the end. True saving faith is a faith that abides in Christ to the end. Even though the prophecies of Mark 13 were fulfilled in the generation of the disciples, much of what they faced we still face today. Every generation of believers faces false teachers who rise up and claim to be the Christ. Every generation faces war and calamity. Every generation faces persecution by the hands of our culture and government. The call of endurance is as much our call as it was that of the disciples. Like the false-christs who rose up in the 1^st century, we too can be led astray by those who claim the authority of God, but lack his power. There are heretics who claim to have a new revelation. There are religious and political leaders who claim to have the answer to all our problems.

We also live in an era of endless war and disaster. Nothing brings despair like war and natural disaster. But, Jesus warned his disciples not to be distracted by these calamities. They might seem like world-ending events, but they were not the end. God was still in control. We would do good to remember that in the midst of our own trials.

Finally, we too face persecutions. There are men who are hauled to court for refusing to bake cakes for gay weddings. There are churches that are attacked because deranged men hate Christ. There are young men who are shot while speaking boldly about their faith. Yet, in all of this, we are called to endure, resting in the knowledge that God is in control of it all. These prophecies of the destruction of Jerusalem give us that confidence. Even for all its horrors, God purposed it all. God purposes all that we face, and he causes it all for our good and his glory. So, may we endure to the end with the confidence that God is in control.

The End of the Age-Israel

We are back in our study of the end of the age, and so far, we’ve worked through the major prophecies of Daniel. In Daniel 2, we saw the image of gold, silver, bronze, and iron that represented the empires God would raise up until the coming of the Messiah, who would crush the empires and spread his kingdom into all the world.  In Daniel 7, we found these same four kingdoms represented as four beasts, a lion, bear, leopard, and a final unfathomable beast. That beast was confronted by the Son of Man, who was given the authority of heaven. The Son of Man destroyed the beast and scattered his remains. Last week we covered Daniel 9, where the Angel Gabriel gives Daniel an exact timeline of when God will complete his judgment of Israel. We saw that God had ordained 483 years from the decree to rebuild the temple till the coming of an anointed one that would bring everlasting righteousness, put an end to sacrifice, and judge the nation of Israel. This prediction brings us to 27 AD, the year that Jesus was baptized and began his ministry. In Jesus’s incarnation, he completely fulfilled the predictions of Daniel’s prophecy.

Yet, there is a disturbing question that continues to hang around in all of this. You feel the heart of this question in Daniel’s prayer from 9:19 – “O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive. O Lord, pay attention and act. Delay not, for your own sake, O my God, because your city and your people are called by your name.” The disturbing question that remains is this: Has God failed to keep his promise to Abraham? If the prediction of Daniel 9:27 is that God will bring desolation upon Israel, destroy Jerusalem and the temple, and put an end to sacrifice and offering, does it mean that his promise to bless Abraham’s offspring is forfeited? The popular view of the End Times, called dispensationalism, answers this by saying that God has not failed to keep his promise to Abraham because he is not done with the nation of Israel. They would argue that Jesus intended to usher in the kingdom of God in his first coming, but he found the Jews to be unwilling. So, he enacted a plan B – the church – which would be a separate covenant people. God would postpone the kingdom until the end of time, when he would bring the Jews back to their homeland, rebuild the temple, and reestablish the sacrificial system, which would continue even through the Millennium as Christ rules over the earth. But, there are all sorts of problems with this explanation. For one, Jesus very clearly says that his kingdom has come. In Luke 11:20, Jesus says, “If it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” In Mark 9:1, he tells his disciples that some of them will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God. Additionally, there is no sense of a separate covenant for Gentiles. Eph. 2:12-13 says, “Remember that you [Gentiles] were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”

So, how are we to answer this question of God’s promise to Israel? Thankfully, Paul deals with this question in Romans 9-11. So, I’d like to answer it by looking at key passages in those chapters. I want to consider these chapters in three points: the Remnant of Grace, the Righteousness of Faith, and the Root of Blessing.

First, consider the Remnant of Grace from Rom. 9:1-13. Let’s read that together. In verses 1-5, you can feel the sorrow of Paul as he mourns the fact that his fellow countrymen, the Jews, have not come to faith in Christ. He is even willing to be accursed for their sake, if they would but follow Jesus. This situation bothers him because the Israelites were well-established by God to receive the Gospel. They had the covenants, the glory of God in the tabernacle and temple, the law, the sacrifices and worship, and all the promises of Abraham. And yet, even with all of that, they had not, as a whole, followed Jesus.

Then, in verse 6, we get the beginning of Paul’s answer to this problem. He says, “It is not as though the Word of God has failed.” He is flatly answering “No” to our question, has God failed? It will take him three chapters to give us the reason why, but one reason why is given in this verse: “For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but ‘Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.’ This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.” We all know the story of Abraham. How many sons did Abraham have? He had two: Ishmael (who was born of a sinful decision made by Abraham and Sarah to have a child by Sarah’s slave, Hagar), and Isaac (the son born to Sarah despite her barrenness and age). In that story, God repeatedly rejects Abraham’s pleas to bless Ishmael. He does this to show that “nothing is impossible for God.” Abraham and Sarah were too old. Sarah was postmenopausal, but none of that was beyond God’s ability to keep his promise. Ishmael was the son of human effort, but Isaac was the son of grace. Paul goes even further with this answer. In verse 10, he moves to the next generation: Isaac and Rebekah. Rebekah conceived twins, and before they were born, God told her that the older would serve the younger. Now, with Ishmael, we could say that God chose Isaac over him because Ishmael was born of sin, but we can’t say that with Rebekah’s children, Esau and Jacob. They are both from Isaac, both conceived at the same time, both from the same womb, and yet, God makes a distinction. Why does he do this? Verse 11 tells us, “Though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad – in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls.” God chose Jacob over Esau, not because Jacob was a healthier child (we know that wasn’t the case), and not because Jacob ended up being a good man (we know that didn’t happen), and not because God looked down through the corridors of time and saw that Jacob would have faith. No, he chose him purely based on his grace. And, even though Esau was from the same womb and the same father, he did not receive the promise.

So, here is the first part of Paul’s answer – God has a remnant of grace. Yes, Jesus came to his own people, and they rejected him. Yes, the religious leaders set traps and accused him and condemned him. Yes, the crowds that greeted him with “Hosanna” would end up denying him with shouts of “Crucify him.” But, there was a remnant of grace. His disciples believed. As Jesus told them in John 15:16, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide.”

This answer begs another question, though. OK, if the children of God are those who are saved by his grace, how do we know who those people are? To answer that, we need to look at Romans 10:1-13. Let’s read that. With this passage we see my second point: The Righteousness of Faith. The trouble with most Paul’s kinsmen is that they failed to understand the purpose of the law. As Paul says in verse 2, “They have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.” The Jews believed that they could obtain righteousness through strict obedience to the Law, but the law itself was pointing to something greater. For one, the law serves as a mirror to reveal our sinfulness. You cannot keep the law perfectly, and if you cannot keep it perfectly, you have not kept it at all. But, there is another righteousness that is based on faith. So, Paul says, in verse 9, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Faith is the means by which we receive the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Faith is a recognition that we are worthy of judgment, because we have all sinned and fallen short of God’s glory. It is also a confession of our dependence on the sacrifice of Christ to cover our sins. And, it is a pledge of devotion to Christ as our king. This faith marks us out as children of the promise.

Because this righteousness is by faith, it means that it is open to everyone. Paul says, in verse 12, “There is no distinction between Jew and Greek… for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” This was a great mystery for the Jews – how is God going to save the rest of humanity? The Jews had the law and the sacrifices and the promises, but the Gentile world was left in the dark. So, how are the Gentiles going to be brought into the promise? Here is the answer: by faith in Jesus Christ. Everyone who believes on the name of Jesus - regardless of race, ethnicity, nation, or language – is a child of the promise through faith.

This brings me to my final point, the Root of Blessing, from Rom. 11:11-24. In this passage, Paul gives his final answer to the question of God’s promise to Israel. He explains that God is using this rejection by Israel as an opportunity to bring the Gentiles into the promise. And, he uses an analogy to help us understand. He says, in effect, imagine that you have an olive tree that you’ve cultivated and grown for hundreds of years, but some of the branches of that tree have withered and stopped producing fruit. What would a good farmer do? He would prune off the dead branches and graft in new branches to produce new fruit. The Jews are like those dead branches. They were the first to grow. They even produced fruit for a time. But, they rejected the righteousness of faith, and as a result, they failed to produce the fruit of righteousness. So, in their unbelief, God is pruning them away. In their place, God is grafting in the Gentiles, which he calls “wild olive branches.”

There are several things to recognize about this analogy. First, the Jews are cut away from the tree because they did not believe the Gospel. The dispensationalists maintain that, even today, the Jews are saved through obedience to the Law, while the Gentiles are saved through faith. This is not the view of Paul. As Peter told the Sanhedrin in Acts 4:12, “There is no other name given among men whereby we must be saved.” No one is saved apart from faith in Jesus Christ: not the English, not the African, not the Polish, and not the Jew.

Second, we often conceive of the Chosen People of God in a wrong way. We tend to think that Israel are God’s chosen people, and Gentiles are included into Israel through Christ. But that is not the way Paul portrays it. The Jews are not the root of the tree. They are a branch. And, the Gentiles don’t replace the Jews as God’s chosen people and become a new root. They are a branch that is added to the same tree. So, the tree and its root are the true source of God’s blessings, and you receive the blessings of God by being grafted into that root. So, what or who is this root? In John 15, Jesus says, “I am the true vine… every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes that it may bear more fruit… Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.” Jesus is the true root and tree of God’s blessing. Jesus is the true seed of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent. He is the true offspring of Abraham who would bless the whole world. He is the true shoot from the stump of Jesse that would reign forever. As 2 Cor. 1:20 says, “All the promises of God find their Yes in him.”

So, if you would receive the blessings of the Kingdom of God, if you would be a child of God, if you would be a part of the true Israel, you must believe that Jesus is Lord and confess that God raised him from the dead. You must be grafted into the tree of God’s grace.