Mark 13:1-2
Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 1 viewNotes
Transcript
Today I want to frame our whole conversation with the words of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount.
“You have heard it said, but I say to you.”
These texts have often been interpreted as end times prophecies.
Things that still haven’t happened.
A great tribulation.
A rapture.
Signs of the end of the age.
Some hearing me say these things, there is no conflict going on right now in your mind.
For others, we have been so captivated by things we have been taught in the past, that we have potentially lost sight of what the scriptures are actually saying.
This was the state of affairs for the people who Jesus is speaking to in Matthew 5.
The leaders in Israel had taken the word of God and twisted and added to it so that the clear meaning had been lost.
The people couldn’t see God clearly any more.
And Jesus cares about them. So he is correcting their vision.
Jesus cares about us, so He is doing the same for us.
This is a really serious chapter in the Bible.
It concerns the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple.
It’s important that we understand this correctly:
Firstly because it is a sobering reality. In AD 70, 40 years after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, Jerusalem was surrounded by armies, and the Romans completely ransacked the place, set fire to the Temple and the city, and burned it all down.
“Round the Altar the heaps of corpses grew higher and higher, while down the Sanctuary steps poured a river of blood and the bodies of those killed at the top slithered to the bottom.”
This occured over Passover, and hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed. Josephus estimates over 1 million.
Secondly, because the destruction of the Temple has serious implications for us today, and if we understand this chapter, we will ultimately be encouraged and feel rooted in the time that we live in.
Have you ever woken up from a really hard afternoon nap and you don’t even know what time or year it is?
It’s disorienting.
Do I brush my teeth?
Is it time for breakfast?
Dinner?
Do I need to leave for school?
One of the most orienting things you can experience in life is the knowledge of what time it is in history.
If you are metaphorically sleeping your way through life, you are not alert and aware of the time.
You don’t know how to act, or how to conduct your
And Mark chapter 13 helps us tell the time.
And in this way the chapter does speak to us in our time and help prepare us for the future.
So here’s how we are going to approach this chapter.
We’re going to tackle it in three or 4 weeks.
This first week we will start with the instruction from Jesus,
You have heard it said, but I say to you.
We will see how this chapter
So with this in mind, and clarity as our goal,
let’s listen to the words of Jesus.
“You have heard it said, but I say to you.”
PRAY
1 As He was going out of the temple complex, one of His disciples said to Him, “Teacher, look! What massive stones! What impressive buildings!”
Context for the week prior.
This was a beautiful Temple. It was very high.
Polished walls, impressive courts.
A massive altar for making sacrifices.
2 Jesus said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here on another that will not be thrown down!”
Why??
What is the significance of this?
And by the way, aren’t these God’s covenant people?
Jesus is going to level a Covenant Lawsuit against Israel.
9 “Therefore, what will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the farmers and give the vineyard to others.
Apostolic Age:
30 I assure you: This generation will certainly not pass away until all these things take place.
genea
yenaAH
Every single occurence of this word in the New Testament refers to a group of people living at a particular time.
It is never used in any overarching sense to refer to everyone who live in the future.
This is a major key for understanding this chapter and Jesus speaks plainly and gives it to us.
Your bible might have a little heading at the beginning of the chapter. Mine says “signs of the end of the age.”
What age?
The age of the old covenant administration.
The days when relationship with God was mediated through priests and a sacrificial system.
This age had been in effect since the time of Moses, where a clear sacrificial system was in place.
17 “Don’t assume that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.
How would that be fulfilled?
31 “Look, the days are coming”—this is the Lord’s declaration—“when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. 32 This one will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant they broke even though I had married them” —the Lord’s declaration. 33 “Instead, this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days”—the Lord’s declaration. “I will put My teaching within them and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be My people. 34 No longer will one teach his neighbor or his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least to the greatest of them” —this is the Lord’s declaration. “For I will forgive their wrongdoing and never again remember their sin.”
A helpful analogy I have heard for understanding the differences between these two covenants is like the scaffolding around a building.
There is not a single person who has been saved who wasn’t saved by grace through faith.
It’s the grace of God alone that turns a sinner into a child of God, washed clean of our sin.
“The essence of the covenant of grace is the same throughout the Old and New Testaments—God saves sinners by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. But its historical administration has varied by time and place. For example, the covenant of grace widened from the Old Testament to the New Testament, as it was administered first with small families (e.g., the families of Noah and Abram), then with the nation of Israel, but now with the church, which is made up of people "from every tribe and language and people and nation" (Rev. 5:9). Also, it was administered in the Old Testament through what the New Testament authors describe as "types" and "shadows" (Heb. 8:5; 10:1), such as sacrifices, the priesthood, and the temple, all of which pointed to their reality, Jesus Christ (e.g., Col. 2:17).” - Daniel Hyde
“When our Lord Jesus Christ was born, lived, died, and was raised from the grave, the covenant of grace reached its zenith in what the Bible calls "the new covenant" (Jer. 31:31; Luke 22:20; 1 Cor. 11:25; 2 Cor. 3:6; Heb. 8:8, 13; 9:15; 12:24). Under the covenant of grace, Christ accomplished what Adam failed to do in the covenant of works, so we receive grace:
Man's work faileth, Christ's availeth;
He is all our righteousness;
He, our Savior, has forever
Set us free from dire distress.
Through His merit we inherit
Light and peace and happiness.”
So to get back to this scaffolding analogy,
the scaffolding is on the side of the building to help build it up.
The scaffolding is good!
The Temple in Jerusalem was scaffolding.
That doesn’t mean that it wasn’t good.
But when Jesus rose from the dead and then commissioned his followers to baptize and disciple the nations, now this presence of God that was contained to the Temple is now present wherever Christians gather all over the world!
There is no more need for sacrifices.
This is what the writer of Hebrews wants to make so clear.
1 Since the law has only a shadow of the good things to come, and not the actual form of those realities, it can never perfect the worshipers by the same sacrifices they continually offer year after year.
11 Every priest stands day after day ministering and offering the same sacrifices time after time, which can never take away sins. 12 But this man, after offering one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God. 13 He is now waiting until His enemies are made His footstool. 14 For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are sanctified. 15 The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. For after He says: 16 This is the covenant I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws on their hearts and write them on their minds, 17 He adds: I will never again remember their sins and their lawless acts. 18 Now where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer an offering for sin.
This is really good news.
Jesus paid for your sins one time!
No need for more atonement.
He’s done everything necessary to reconcile you to God!
You must only place your faith in Him to be saved and renewed and begin to part in the new life he offers you.
Peter identifies this reality when he says
5 you yourselves, as living stones, are being built into a spiritual house for a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
The thing that the scaffolding was helping construct is done.
So if this is true,
why would you hold onto the scaffolding?
How weird would it be if you were having a house built for yourself,
and after it was completed you told the construction workers,
“please leave that up, I’m actually going to put my mattress up there that’s where I’ll sleep.”
This is why it’s so odd that there are Christians who are excited about the construction of another temple in modern day Jerusalem.
For what?
The Bible has made it really clear that the church is now the temple of the living God.
So note what Jesus is doing here.
In this chapter he is going to give some clearly identifiable signs for the people to note so that they can be protected from this coming day when Jerusalem will be ransacked.
What Jesus DOESN’T do is show up in Jerusalem and say, that’s it stop using the Temple!
Not at all.
In fact Jesus’ whole life revolved around this Temple.
We see him participating in the religious life of Israel all throughout His life.
But something profound happened when Jesus died on the cross.
Do you remember?
The veil that was set up in the Temple was torn from top to bottom.
This was the beginning of what we can call the apostolic age.
This age stretches from AD 30 when that veil was torn, to AD 70 when the Temple is fully destroyed.
So what goes on during this time?
One way of looking at it is like a grace period.
This 40 years is chock full of the apostles running every direction imaginable, telling every part of the known world about the love of Jesus.
And during this time, they don’t abandon the temple.
The Jerusalem church would still meet there.
Paul continues to observe Jewish customs and Temple purification rites.
But listen to how the writer of Hebrews explains what is going on here, drawing from the Jeremiah passage I already read you.
7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, occasion would not have been sought for a second. 8 For in finding fault with them he says, “Behold, days are coming, says the Lord, when I will complete a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, 9 not like the covenant which I made with their fathers on the day I took hold of them by my hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, because they did not continue in my covenant and I disregarded them, says the Lord. 10 For this is the covenant that I will decree with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I am putting my laws in their minds and I will write them on their hearts, and I will be their God and they will be my people. 11 And they will not teach each one his fellow citizen and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. 12 For I will be merciful toward their wrongdoings, and I will not remember their sins any longer.” 13 In calling it new, he has declared the former to be old. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is near to disappearing.
13 By saying, a new covenant, He has declared that the first is old. And what is old and aging is about to disappear.
The days of the old covenant were drawing to a close.
The days when you had to make blood sacrifices for sin were ending.
Because the ultimate sacrifices had been accomplished.
The people of God now include men and women from all sorts of nations under heaven.
Next week we will dive in and see how these prophecies of Jesus concerning Jerusalem were all fulfilled in the 1st Century.
But for now, we can praise God with the knowledge that what previously would have required a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to accomplish, we can have right here today in our worship of God.