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Holy Trinity Anglican Orthodox Church
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The Sign of the Son of Man |
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Matthew 24:23-31 February
15, 2009 Matthew chapters 24 and 25 are part of one of the most quoted and least understood passages in the entire Bible. They are a summary of the teaching of Jesus that took place on the Mount of Olives on Tuesday, just before His crucifixion on Friday. This “Olivet Discourse” then, is one of Christ’s last sermons. The cause of the many misunderstandings of the sermon comes from two sources. First is the highly symbolic language. Jesus said things like, “the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven” (Mt. 24:29). He also spoke of “the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet” (Mt. 24:15). These “signs of the times” confuse people who don’t understand them The second cause of misunderstanding is more fundamental. It comes from a basic misunderstanding of the entire passage, and this stems from a misunderstanding of the question of the disciples, which is found way back in the third verse of the chapter. Let me refer to the setting, the original, historical setting of the passage again. It was Tuesday of Passion Week. By Friday evening, Christ would be dead and in His grave. So time was precious to Him. He went to the Temple and openly confronted the self-righteousness of the religious leaders, who claimed to love God, but could not recognize God when He stood before them. This confrontation ended with the woes upon the Pharisees and Christ’s heartfelt mourning over the city; “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, but ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate” (Mt. 24:37-38). Jesus was saying that the Temple they loved was going to be destroyed. Even Jerusalem itself would be destroyed. Its house would be left unto her desolate. The disciples were dumbfounded. They could hardly believe what they were hearing. So, as they followed Jesus out of the Temple they showed Him the buildings of the Temple. This means they were telling Him how wonderful and beautiful the Temple was. But Jesus said to them, “verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down” (Mt. 24:2). In other words, this Temple is going to be completely destroyed. The disciples followed Him in silence to the Mount of Olives. There they asked the question burning in their minds, “when shall all these things be? And what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?” (Mt. 24:3). This is precisely where the misunderstandings of this passage start. They come from projecting our knowledge onto the disciples, and from assuming that they are asking what we would be asking if we were saying this to Jesus today. In other words, people assume that the disciples question about His coming and the end of the world mean the same thing we mean today when we talk about the Coming of the Lord and the end of the world. They assume the disciples were asking about the Second Coming of Christ. Here is the problem with this; the disciples didn’t know about the Second Coming. They hadn’t even figured out the First Coming yet. The First Coming of Christ only made sense to them when the Holy Spirit came to them on the day of Pentecost, and that was more than fifty days in the future from their perspective. They did not know Jesus was really going to be crucified, dead, buried, raised from the dead, ascend into heaven, and come again. They had no idea anything like that was going to happen. So the disciples were not asking about the Second Coming of Christ at the end of the world as we know it. They were asking about His return to Jerusalem. They wanted to know when He was going to go back, throw the Romans and the religious leaders out of Jerusalem, and set the disciples up as the rulers of the New Israel. That was what they thought the Messiah was supposed to do, and they wondered when He was going to get to it. But didn’t they ask about the end of the world? Yes, but that doesn’t mean they meant the same thing we mean when we talk about the end. They referred to the end of the age of Roman oppression. They meant the end of the then current situation of Gentile domination of Israel. They had come to think of the Messiah as the political deliverer of Israel, who would lead the Jews on a world-wide campaign to crush the Gentiles and give the entire world to the Jews to enjoy in peace forever. They wanted to know when the end of the current world situation would end, and the new world of Jewish power would begin. If you understand this, you have begun to understand the meaning of Jesus’ answer in Matthew 24:1-26:2. I need to talk about one more thing before I go on. One of the great clues to understanding the Olivet Discourse is found in Mathew 24:34, “Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.” In other words, the generation Jesus addressed on that day, the generation of the Apostles, would see the fulfillment of all the things Jesus was talking about, before they died. Jesus was answering their questions, not ours. All of this was fulfilled in the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. The Romans sacked the city, demolished the Temple, and executed Jews across the empire. Now here is the point Jesus is making in our reading for today. Don’t be fooled by the many false christs and false prophets that come in His name. Jerusalem was full of false messiahs, all of them attempting to be the kind of political messiah/warrior/king many of the Jews wanted. Barabbas was a false Christ. There were others. Jesus is warning His disciples not to be fooled by them. If they hear that the messiah is in the desert preparing to strike the Romans, don’t believe it. Don’t join themselves with Zionists and Zealots who seek to bring in the Kingdom of God by hate and violence and war. Those are not God’s messiahs, and their ways are not His ways. Their kingdom is not His Kingdom. The false prophets and false christs continue even unto our own day. Jesus’ warning not to be deceived by them is as relevant to us as it was to the Apostles. Second, don’t be fooled into thinking that wars and famines and pestilences and earthquakes are signs of the Second Coming. Every time there is an earthquake or flood or natural disaster, I can count on someone quoting Mt. 24 and telling me the end is near. But Jesus’ point is that these things are not signs. They have nothing to do with His return. He said, “be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet” (Mt 24:6). These things are always happening. They are constants in this fallen world. The only thing they are signs of is the fallenness of man and nature. They do not mean the Second Coming is near. They are not the immediate precursors of a “rapture” or a “tribulation.” Don’t be deceived by these things, and don’t follow those who are deceived by them. Third, Christ went on to tell them about His real mission. This is found in Matthew 26:2. You need to know that this verse is vitally connected to the Olivet Discourse. In fact, it is the conclusion of the Discourse. It was after Jesus had finished telling them that He was not the military leader they were hoping for, and not to be deceived by the pretenders, that He told them again why He came. He concluded His sermon with these words; “Ye know that after two days is the feast of the
passover, and the Son of man is betrayed to be crucified.” Jesus came to be the atonement for our sins. That is the meaning and the point of the Olivet Discourse. Thanks be to God. Amen. The Rev. Dr. R. Dennis Campbell, Vicar, Holy Trinity Anglican Church,
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