What Does Jesus Say About His Coming

What Does Jesus Say About His Coming?[1]

First in a Series of Six Messages

Not One Stone!

Jackson Snyder, 1995
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Sermons of Bible Prophecy

Matthew 25:31-46

Envision a new political figure rising in our country; an imaginary man living in Washington D.C. He's is well-known in political circles because of his mix of political and religious commentary. He is a frequent talk-show guest and writes a column for left-wing magazine. And although he has never run for political office, he has a strong following among the poor and powerless.

The liberal congressmen have come out against him because he has exposed their wastefulness and their greed. Some of the conservative congressmen have likewise warned their constituancy about him, because he has labeled them "entrenched country clubbers" and called for their defeat on election day.

The president fears he might run against him in the next primary; there has been rumor that he has political ambitions. Therefore, the CIA is constantly following him and listening to him. Some presidential aides feel that there needs to be a crackdown on his kind, and they have been trying to dig up some dirt, hoping he will make a wrong move or say the wrong thing.

Today, our man is leading a demonstration of poor people in front of the Capitol building. He's about to make a speech, and the crowd becomes quiet. All ears are tuned in to what he is about to say.

His words flow more like a sermon than a political speech. It is short and to the point -- expressing his opinion that the people running the country must do all they can to reduce their own selfish expectations, and look toward those around them who are hopeless, poor, sick, and needy.

"If you greedy congressmen of this Capitol building do not do as I say," he concludes with confidence, "then, like every other great nation before us, we will be overthrown by those whom we have neglected and subverted. I tell you this day," he concludes, pointing behind him to the Capitol Building, "if we do not correct our steps to paths of righteousness for the poor, then the day will come when not one stone is left upon the other of that great and symbolic structure behind me!"

At these words, there is thunderous applause among those assembled on the Capitol steps. But behind closed doors inside the Capitol Building, his enemies have heard just what they've waited for - a threat against the government and the American way of life. And now they have grounds to silence this subversive once and for all.[2]

The scenario that I have created is very similar to that which Jesus is portrayed in in our text.

Mark 13:1-4 (NIV) As he was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, "Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!" {2} "Do you see all these great buildings?" replied Jesus. "Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down."

By saying "on the record" that the Temple in Jerusalem would be destroyed, Jesus was prophesying that everything that the Temple stood for would be uprooted along with it - every power structure, every religious ritual, every vestige of the present system. The life everyone knew would be destroyed and replaced by another!

The Temple was assumed to be permanent, sacred, and serving as a symbol for interpreting reality to all the people.

1. The Temple was thought to be permanent

a. Herod spared no expense - 3 times the size of Solomon's, more opulent that Roman Forum

b. Single stones were 20 - 40 ft., weighing 150+ tons

c. 50 years in the building, 25 more to completion

d. Because of its illusion of permanence, it was an easy mental jump from Jesus' prediction of the "destruction of the temple" to the "destruction of the world"

2. The Temple was sacred

a. Symbol of God's rule on earth; the center of Jewish thinking; geographic center of the earth; the highest place; the dwelling of God; containing the Holy of Holies - where God and man met face to face only once a year - at the day of atonement.

b. It was where Abraham brought Isaac for sacrifice; where David ruled; where Solomon built under God's direction a "house that would endure forever"

c. The Temple was sacred in the majesty of its worship; the garb of the priests, the system of its sacrifices; its solemn and detailed processions -- the people relied on it to order their very existence.

3. The Temple re-presented the world by depicting ordinary occurrances as though they originated outside in the supernatural. Even when the temple was destroyed, Jewish thinkers conceived of a New Temple in Heaven that would one day descend. The Temple, its permanence and its holiness, was the gear upon which all time, history, religion, and reality turned; life for the Jews of Jesus' day was inconceivable without it.

So the destruction of the Temple, as Jesus predicted it, would be seen as a cataclysmic rupture in the relationship between Heaven and Earth, between God and humanity. It's no wonder Jesus was condemned -- liars witnessed that he said he would destroy it! That would be like saying he would destroy the entire universe that the religious and polical had worked so hard to maintain for centuries. Through it's obliteration, the very fabric of society would be erased, leaving the powerful powerless, and the powerless in anarchic power.

We might feel something of this in America if one of our "sacred" places were likewise desecrated.

In the movie Die Hard II, a band of terrorists are able to bomb the great dome of the Capitol building with mortor fire from a nearby building while Congress is in session inside. The Capitol dome is destroyed and the United States and all she stands for is in jeopardy. Reality, as we have created it, is transformed completely with the bombing, if for only an hour or so, until Bruce Willis can single-handedly set everything aright again.

The feeling we get while watching is that this could never really happen to us; that the Capitol building is terrorist-proof, or too sacred, or too meaningful to be destroyed. It just couldn't happen here, and if it did, everything we have believed in and relied on would be in question.

That's the kind of upheaval that we must be able to experience for ourselves in some measure if we are to enter the thought world of the Christ's return with God's Kingdom to Earth. Obviously, Jesus' disciples felt the impact of his words, and they were shocked! They wanted the Roman Forum destroyed, not the Temple of God, so

{3} As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John and Andrew asked him privately, {4} "Tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?"

Jesus predicted in verse 30 that "this generation will see these things take place." As it turned out, less than 40 years passed before it happened. In 68 A.D., Jerusalem came under seige by the Romans. After two years of battle, Jerusalem fell. The city and its Temple were completely leveled and burned, and thousands were killed. In one day everything that the Jews knew and believed was at an end.

What this says to us is that our perception of reality will quickly and completely change. The fabric of everything Americans believe will be torn apart. But it won't happen over night. The change-over is insidious. We should be able to see it coming, for we have been warned. And we must see it or we are doomed.

While the disruption of reality that preceeds Christ's coming is even now bringing hardship, panic, and war on earth, we Christians must be assured that it will also usher in our greatest hope and most fervent prayer - that

Thy Kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven.

In the meantime, we must expectantly watch, diligently work, and prayerfully wait - watch, work, and wait - watch, work, and wait.

For as believers in Christ's soon coming, we must live in four layers of expectancy as time shortens.

1. There must be a moral expectancy that Christ is going to set things right. Political power struggles over moral issues are always an indication of spiritual power struggles. Political upheavals are the birth-pangs of God's Kingdom breaking in. Why? Because the coming of the Kingdom is political - we must expect universal justice as an answer to the struggle between right and wrong.

There is an absolute morality - it is God's morality - and we expect that when Christ comes, he will punish wrongdoers and institute righteousness. A Christ that comes but doesn't defeat the devil's hoards and institute equality, economic stability, and moral rectitude is not the Christ. Make no mistake, Christ is coming to judge.

2. A providential expectancy - all the longings and all the searchings that we born-again believers have felt in the deepest recesses of our hearts will be fulfilled and satisfied when He comes. In the New Kingdom, outward conditions will satify inner longings. Society will be created so that the True Children of God will be empowered in love to rule and to reign. And there will be no more tears or death or disease or debilitation.

As we live in expectation of this New Society, we actually begin to change present reality. As we see history moving towards the Kingdom of God, we aid history in preparing its arrival. God's providence is made manifest in our expectations! (Hebrews 11:1)

3. Jesus has shown us an ethic for waiting. The stories Jesus told in Matthew 24-25 show men and women in different stages of waiting for the Lord to return.

Like the owner of a house waiting for a thief, one man is ready:

Jesus Said: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him (Matthew 24:43-44).

Another man, as he awaits the return of his master, becomes greedy:

But suppose that servant is wicked and says to himself, 'My master is staying away a long time,' and he then begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with drunkards. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Matthew 24:48-51)

A bridal party is half prepared, half unprepared, for the groom:

At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish and five were wise. The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them. The wise, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps. (Matthew 25:1-4)

Some will not invest their gifts wisely, like the man who was give one talent to invest on behalf of his master:

The man who had received the one talent came. 'Master,' he said, 'I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.' (Matthew 25:24-25)

Because the man had not invested what the master had given him, this unfaithful servant is cast into outer darkness.

So Jesus describes in stories four states of waiting: either people are unaware of his coming, dreading it, preparing or not preparing for it, or ready for it anytime. It is this last state of waiting that provides us with an ethic for waiting. To be ready means to live each day in hope - each and every day - trusting in God with eager expectation.

4. But even hopeful preparation is not sufficient. There must be activity.

A little girl was upset because her brother had set a rabbit trap in the back yard. She told her Sunday School teacher about it. "I prayed to God that no rabbit would come near that trap." The teacher replied, "Then whad ya do?" "I prayed that the trap wouldn't work if a rabbit did get in it." "Then whad ya do?" "Then I told my mother." "Then whad ya do?" "Well, then I went out and knocked that trap to pieces."

Those who are living in hope are "knocking traps to pieces." As in Jesus' last great parable, read as today's lesson, we must do our best to provide

(1) food for the hungry,

(2) drink for the thirsty, a

(3) welcome for the stranger,

(4) clothing for the naked,

(5) healing for the sick, and

(6) visitation for the prisoner --

providing these in both physical and spiritual ways. We are to be living lives that esteem others before ourselves -- self-sacrificial lives -- doing the works that Jesus himself did, and still greater works. This is the secret of having assurance of our own salvation through the furnace of trial. We do God's will while we wait.

Conyers: How we respond to this moment - the poor man in our midst, the starving child, the prisoner - is in fact the way we greet the last moment of life, the last moment of our country, the last moment of our planet Earth, the first moment of a newly manifest and apparent kingdom of God.[3]

What a tie there is between the coming of the Lord and the living of our daily lives! One end-time saint, who lived out Christ's ethic for waiting, wrote these words about her hope of the coming of the Lord:

The best part is the blessed hope of his soon coming. How I ever lived before I grasped that wonderful truth, I do not know. How anyone lives without it these trying days I cannot imagine. Each morning I think, with a leap of the heart, "He may come today." And each evening, "When I awake I may be in glory." Each day must be lived as though it were to be my last, and there is so much to be done to purify myself and to set my house in order. I am on tiptoe with expectancy. There are no more grey days -- for they're all touched with color; no more dark days -- for the radiance of His coming is on the horizon; no more dull days, with glory just around the corner; and no more lonely days, with His footsteps coming ever nearer, and the thought that soon, soon, I shall see His blessed face and be forever through with pain and tears.[4]

It is this type of attitude, hope, and active morality that will survive the destruction of the modern-day Temples and Capitols and endure into the Kingdom of God. And if you watch and wait and endure to the end in faith and works, you will find yourself ruling and reigning with Christ over a recreated Heaven and Earth. If not, then there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Is Christ's return vital to you? Are you living in expectant longing for the coming of his Kingdom? Are you preparing? When your temple has not one stone left upon another, will you be able to stand in Christ?

{For Communion: Jesus said, "As often as you do this, do it in remembrance of me. I'll not drink this cup again until I drink it with you in the Kingdom."

NOTES