Faith in the Midst of Suffering
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Last week, Drew preached on sixteen verses that seemed, at first glance, to be frightening verses. The temple would be destroyed. Believers would be persecuted. And if we are a people prone to fear, we may have read these verses with fear and trepidation. And yet Jesus said that we must not fear because these things must happen. In fear, we may have missed the point of it all, and I think Drew did an excellent job at pointing it out. God is working out his plan. He has not left us in these moments. His Spirit gives us words to say. He will not let one hair be harmed.
The question is not, “do we know it?” He said it. We’ve read it. We heard Drew preach on it. We know it. But do we believe it? Remember what Jesus said about our hearts. Basically, we live according to what’s in our hearts. That’s not just emotions; it’s thoughts as well. It’s our being. In essence, it’s our worldview. Does our worldview hold that God is in utter control, that he is working out his plan, and that he has not left us, but is always with us? Or is our worldview that this world is spinning out of control and someone needs to grab the steering wheel and get this world back on track?
This morning, we see Jesus continuing on with his monologue and the monologue is filled with horrible prophecies, but the horrible prophecies are not meant to leave us in a state of fear, but of faith. And what we see is Jesus giving his disciples four pillars to support hold their faith. The first pillar is education. The second pillar is extrication. Thirdly, there is the pillar of explanation. Finally, there is the pillar of expectation.
The Pillar of Education
The Pillar of Extrication
The Pillar of Explanation
The Pillar of Expectation
“But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near.
Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let those who are inside the city depart, and let not those who are out in the country enter it,
for these are days of vengeance, to fulfill all that is written.
Alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days! For there will be great distress upon the earth and wrath against this people.
They will fall by the edge of the sword and be led captive among all nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
The Pillar of Education
The Pillar of Education
The first pillar that we have is the Pillar of Education. Often times, though not every time, we see that God educates his people on what he is doing. He educated Noah about the destruction of the world. He educated Abraham and even Lot about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. He educated Gideon about the destruction of the Midianite. He educated Daniel about the destruction of Babylon, and the future plans for the world. He educated the Israelites on their own destruction.
Sometimes his education is more detailed than others. Sometimes he paints with a broad brush for us and sometimes he paints with a fine brush and goes into details. When God informed Abraham about the future of his people, he didn’t go into great detail. When meeting Elijah on Mt. Horeb, he had a plan and commanded Elijah to anoint the King of Syria, the King of Judah, and find Elisha as his protege. He didn’t go into much detail beyond that these men would take care of things. But there were other times when God went into quite a bit of detail. Again, Daniel’s prophecies are extraordinary. Isaiah’s Suffering Servant passages are amazing in detail. Deuteronomy 28-30 details God’s plan if Israel remains faithful and what they are if Israel doesn’t remain faithful.
In this case, Jesus—God the Son—is going into some pretty minute details. We’ve already saw some of them last week: the destruction of the temple; not one stone left on another. There will be persecution for believers, being turned in even by family and friends. There will be wars and natural disasters. And now we come to another detail. Jerusalem will be surrounded by armies—we can translate that as army camps. And he tells them that when this happens, the time of desolation is near.
This word, “desolation” would have caused the ears of all who heard to perk up. Their minds would have gone back to Daniel or Ezekiel. Daniel mentioned the abomination that would lead to desolation. Ezekiel had spoken of Babylon that would come in and make Jerusalem desolate. Could there be anything more frightening than to hear that the beloved city and the beloved temple would be made a desolate wasteland? After all, wasn’t the purpose of all the holy living and education from the Pharisees, Scribes, and such supposed to prevent God’s wrath from coming again?
But Jesus wasn’t educating the disciples and his hearers or us in order to scare them. He wasn’t educating them to make them frightful, but to make them faithful. The whole point of prophecy is not to cause us to think things are out of control, but to point us to the fact that God is in control. God is in control down to the last detail. Therefore, there is no need to be afraid. This is happening just as God said it would—just as God has planned that it would.
And its easy to sit here and say, “Well, yeah, Jesus told the disciples what would happen, but he hasn’t told me anything.” But that isn’t entirely true, is it? He may not have spoken to you and me audibly. He may not be going into the details of our lives. But that doesn’t mean that he has left us without an education. We have sixty-six books here that tell us what God is up to. There are 1,189 chapters that go into detail about God’s person, God’s plan, and God’s people. Our problem is not that God has not given us his plan; our problem is that we are not satisfied with God’s plan. Our problem is that we are not convinced of God’s plan. We aren’t quite trusting it and as a result, we don’t trust him. Or maybe it’s really the other way around. We don’t trust him and so we don’t trust his plan.
Either way, make no mistake God has educated us on what he is doing. The broad plan is to bring glory to himself. A little bit more detailed plan. He will do it by drawing all peoples from all nations and tribes and languages to himself. A little more detailed plan: he will do it by saving his elect by the life, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of his Son. A little more detail: he will save not only by means of justification—a declaration of not guilty, but by sanctification—making the elect to conform to the image of his Son, and glorification—the finishing process where we are like Jesus fully and completely.
So I ask, for must of us, this is nothing new. We’ve heard this all our lives. Does this plan satisfy you? Are you convinced of this plan? Do you really believe that everything works to your good because you love God and are called according to his purpose? Or have these words lost all meaning, all hope, all comfort? God has educated us on his plan; do we accept it as he has given it?
The Pillar of Extrication
The Pillar of Extrication
Which takes us to this second pillar that Jesus gives his disciples: The Pillar of Extrication. Destruction and desolation are coming. When his followers see it, they are to extricate themselves from the city. They are to flee, not return, escape.
Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let those who are inside the city depart, and let not those who are out in the country enter it,
This typically is counter-intuitive. What usually happened, under seige, is that those who were outside the city in the suburbs and such—towns and villages within a few miles—would flee into the city. The city had walls—strong, tall walls that were built to protect. If a foreign army is marching toward you and you get wind of it, you flee to the largest city you can in hopes that you can wait out the seige and the army will go away. Jesus said to his followers, “Don’t do that.”
He says it three different ways. You may remember the term “parallelism,” in which a lesson is taught by repeating the same thing in different ways. This is a type of that. Those in Judea flee, inside the city depart, outside the city stay out. Jerusalem is not the place you want to be when the armies come. And it wasn’t.
In AD 66, the Jews rebelled against Rome. There were skirmishes for the first couple of years, but finally Rome had enough. General Vespasian turned emperor Vespasian left his son Titus to squash this rebellious people. Titus took his army and encamped them around the walls. Jerusalem was under seige for six months. By the end of the seige, there was little water and no food. People were dying in the streets and no one had the energy or time to bury them. They laid in the streets rotting. By the time Rome entered, the people were so emaciated it was hard to fight, but adrenaline and love of nation compelled them. In the end, according to Josephus, Rome killed up to 1.1 million of the people and exiled another hundred thousand. Tacitus said it was more like 500,000 were killed. Either way, Jerusalem was destroyed. It was desolated, along with the temple.
Jesus said to his followers that it was okay to extricate oneself from this affliction. It was okay to run. But not in fear, but in faith. The historian Eusebius later recorded that the Christians did exactly as Jesus had said. They left Jerusalem when they heard Rome was coming. Thousands of Christians lived in the hills and wilderness across the Jordan River while hundreds of thousands of Jews died under seige. And when Rome allowed people to re-inhabit the city, it was the Jewish Christians who had been educated by Jesus and had extricated themselves from the city, that ended up being the first to return.
You know, not everyone is called to be a martyr in the sense that we are called to die for the faith. We are all called to be witness of the faith and to die in the faith, but not all are called to die for the faith. Though Peter would die for the faith late in his life, there was the time in which he was in prison and was miraculously delivered from it. David fled from Saul when he was being pursued by him.
God does at times allow for us to extricate ourselves from suffering. The pillar of extrication, the pillar of escape ought to bolster our faith in God’s plan. While there may not be an escape from every moment of suffering, as suffering is one of God’s greatest and most often used tools to extricate sin from our lives, God can and often does provide a way of escape.
We know that Jesus already said there would be persecution, famine, war, and such. Some believers will die and at the same time not one hair of their heads will perish. By endurance they gain their lives. But when God does provide extrication, there is no shame is taking it so long as we are not sinning in the process. That would not be extrication by God’s hand but by our own desire or Satan’s temptation. In other words, we are not murdering, stealing, committing adultery, in order to escape.
The Pillar of Explanation
The Pillar of Explanation
And this leads us to the third pillar: The Pillar of Explanation. The difference in my reasoning between the Pillar of Explanation and the Pillar of Education is that Education is the what, while the Explanation is the why. That might be a distinction without a difference but it helps me out. Jesus gives an explanation as to why the destruction and desolation will happen.
for these are days of vengeance, to fulfill all that is written.
Though there are few words used here, there is a lot to this. I will try to summarize it as best I can. This is not simply Rome’s vengeance on a rebellious people, but God’s vengeance on a rebellious people. Rome is his instrument of vengeance, just as Babylon was. The rebellious people had rejected their Messiah and so rejected God.
No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.
John tells us in 1 John 3 that Jesus had come to put an end to sin—an end to transgression—and destroy the works of the devil. He came to atone for our sin, our iniquity, our transgression. He is the propitiation for our sins as John said in 1 John 2. He is the anointed one—the Messiah, the Prince. Yet, we know that Jesus was cut off. He was rejected and murdered by the people of Israel. He came to bring eternal life, and the people rejected it and rejected him. He who came to bring life was put to death. But in the midst of that, he established a new covenant with all who would believe in him. As the writer of Hebrews pointed out, Jesus was the last sacrifice because he was the true sacrifice. His blood was more precious than the blood of bulls and goats. His sacrifice was eternal. No other sacrifice would now do.
But the Jews kept making those sacrifices because the Jews kept rejecting their Messiah who could have been their ultimate sacrifice if they had just believed. But due to their rejection, God sent the Roman army to bring about the final desolations, both to the temple and the city.
But before these 60,000 troops entered the city, much of it had already been destroyed. There were three factions in the city. Each had its own leader that wanted to handle things a particular way. Since no one could agree, revolt within the city began to happen. Much of the grain was accidentally burned as a result, as were houses. Once Roman soldiers breached the city, the temple was burned, then the lower city and then the upper city. Just as Jesus had predicted in
The king was angry, and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.
God’s vengeance had come and in his vengeance, he stopped the abominable sacrifices for good; non temple, no sacrifice.
Keep all of that in mind as we read Daniel 9:24-27
“Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place.
Know therefore and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks. Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time.
And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing. And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed.
And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate, until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator.”
Here is what we must understand; every act of temporal judgment is a sign of the final judgment. God is not fooling around. He is bringing about a two-sided plan: the salvation of the elect and the judgment of those who reject his salvation. As those who are his elect, everything is working for our good and to his glory. As those who reject, it is a building up of iniquity until the judgment comes, which results in God’s glory.
Thus, we can see that even with the evil around us, whether natural disasters, wars, persecution, or whatever it might be, it is brought about by a glorious and almighty God for our good and the enemy’s judgment. Thus, there is no need to be fearful; instead we can live a life that is faithful.
The Pillar of Expectation
The Pillar of Expectation
This takes us to the last pillar: The Pillar of Expectation. We see that everything that Drew preached about last week and everything I have preached on today had finished by AD 70. It would be a terrible time for pregnant and nursing women. Jesus’s word in verse 23 is the same word as he spoke against the Pharisees. It’s translated as “Alas” here but “Woe” elsewhere. That’s why I say it is not simply a matter of condemnation but of sadness. But notice in verse 24 about how long we should expect this to happen.
They will fall by the edge of the sword and be led captive among all nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
While there is some detail here, it still is pretty vague. When is the time of the Gentiles fulfilled? We have no idea. But there is a set time. Again, we see God’s control in this. He has a set time when he says enough. Paul pointed this out in Romans 11 as well.
Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.
Again, there is the two-sided plan of God. There is a hardening of Israel against the Messiah and thus many will be judged for that. But there is also the trampling underfoot Jerusalem by the Gentiles. These are still God’s instruments of judgment. We see then that even now, Jerusalem is not at peace. Though Israel is officially a Jewish nation, it is filled with non-Jews and in many ways it is both helped and hindered by Gentiles; its greatest ally, but also greatest influencer as to its policies: the United States. So long as we live in the time of the Gentiles, the Gentiles will trample the Jewish people. Understand the US is not defending Israel for Israel’s sake, but her own sake. The moment Israel tries to wiggle its way out of America’s influence, is the time America will be no friend of Israel.
On the flip-side though, there is salvation given to the Gentiles, which is Paul’s point. So on one side, Gentiles are God’s instruments of wrath against Israel, but also those slated for destruction themselves. On the other side we see Gentiles being grafted into the olive tree being joined with the people of God.
But there will be a day, when the fullness of Gentiles has come; the Jewish people will once again be given the opportunity to receive their Messiah. We don’t know when this time comes, but God does. It will not happen one second before or one second after his timing.
Conclusion
Conclusion
As we finish this section of Luke, I want us to see that there is one other place in which God has given us these pillars to sustain our faith. If every temporal judgment and show of God’s wrath is a sign pointing to the ultimate judgment and wrath of God, then we need to see that these pillars exist for the final judgment.
First, the pillar of education has been built. From the time of Genesis 3 until then end of Revelation, we have been given an education as the what God will do in the final judgment. Every person will be held accountable for his actions, thoughts, and words spoken. He has educated us on what his wrath will look like. The earth and sky will burn—in other words every sign of evil will be eradicated. Those who are still in rebellion against God will be thrown into hell. And Jesus spoke about hell quite a bit; it was no metaphor.
Second, there is the pillar of extrication. There’s a way out. No one need suffer the eternal wrath of God. Paul wrote in Romans that we are all in the same boat, sinners by birth. Yet Jesus took on himself the wrath of God, being a substitute for us so that God’s wrath would be satisfied against us. This way God would still be just because his law has been broken and judgment must be poured out. But also the justifier as he has transferred our sin off of us and onto Jesus, so he can declare us not guilty. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
Third, there is the pillar of explanation. God has explained why he will judge. It is vengeance, but a holy vengeance. He has explained his holiness and his expectations as creator. If you’ve been a parent, you’ve been given the responsibility of rearing your children. As they grow and rebel, you must discipline. You must make decisions/judgments about what they are doing. Are they obedient or rebellious. God has thoroughly explained that we, his creation, are rebellious bunch. The difference between us as parents and him as Creator is holiness. We can let things slide. Who among us hasn’t disobeyed our parents? Who among us is perfect? God can’t say that. He expects perfection and holiness. Apart from which, we are told in Hebrews, no one will see God.
Fourth, he has given us the pillar of expectation. What can we expect? We can expect as redeemed children of God to love as we’ve never loved before. We can expect that things are going to get bad from time to time. We can expect temporal judgments making way to the eternal. But we can be the light of Christ by being the love of Christ. And the greatest love is tell others and point others to Jesus, the only way out of the final judgment.
By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.
We love because he first loved us.
Prayer
Our heavenly Father,
May these pillars support our faith and crumble our fears. You are the Almighty God who controls everything; there is nothing for us to fear or to be anxious about knowing that you’ve got this and everything is working out exactly as you would have it. In Jesus’s name we pray. Amen.
