One of the great joys in our time of worship together is to study God’s Word. How can we worship God unless we know who He is? How can we worship Him fully unless we worship Him in truth? And that truth comes to us through His Word. Let’s open our Bibles to the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew’s gospel, Matthew chapter 24.
It is with excitement that we come to this passage, this morning, as we continue our look at this great sermon on the Second Coming preached by our Lord Jesus Christ. It is known as the Olivet Discourse. And on the one hand, as I say, while it’s a greatly exciting experience to come back to this passage, I must also apologize to those of you who haven’t been with us because you’re going to have a few things missing as we approach the sermon from the vantage point we do so today. Because we’ve already moved into the sermon and find ourselves really in verse 16 of Matthew 24, picking up where we left off last time.
But just a few things by way of introduction may sort of help us to find ourselves a little bit. I don’t think there’s any more intriguing, any more fascinating subject than the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. I know of no biblical subject which can create the same amount of curiosity that this subject can create. And really, there are few things in Scripture that are as highly motivating to the believer and to the unbeliever as the sense of reality regarding the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
The Apostle Paul said, “Knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men.” In other words, realizing that Christ will come in judgment and bring a terrorizing holocaust upon the earth, we present the gospel so that men may escape that. Also, Paul said, “We labor whether present or absent that we may be in a sense accepted by Him.” So, we who are believers serve the Lord knowing that some day He’ll come to reward us and we want to be found faithful.
So, the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, both from the standpoint of warning an unbeliever of the judgment to come and of encouraging a believer with the reward to come is a highly motivating subject. And there’s no place in the Scripture where it’s presented more wonderfully than right here in Matthew 24 and 25 by the Lord Himself. Now remember, this is one sermon given by our Lord on the Mount of Olives to His disciples. He has previous to this sermon spent His last day speaking to the crowds of Israel and He has pronounced judgment on Israel. Told them their house is left desolate. They have rejected Him and He has rejected them.
At the end of that time, He left the temple. Went to the Mount of Olives and there He preaches a sermon to His disciples. It is a sermon in answer to questions that they ask. Notice them in verse 3 of this chapter. “Tell us, when shall these things be and what shall be the sign of Thy coming and of the end of the age?”
From what Jesus has been saying, the Disciples feel that the Kingdom is very near. They don’t realize that it is yet thousands of years away because they don’t understand that there are really two comings of Christ. He comes the first time in humiliation to die, there’s a long period of time, He comes the second time in glory to reign. But they don’t see those two comings, they see it as one. And so, as He has come, as He has preached and taught and healed, as He has now cleansed the temple, they believe He is readying things for His Kingdom. In fact, we find them in chapter 24 at the height of their expectation for the Kingdom to come.
And then He makes a prophecy to them in chapter 24 verse 2. Speaking of the temple which they’re now looking down on from the Mount of Olives, He says, “There shall not be left here one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down.” He predicts the total destruction of the temple to the point where one stone is not left on top of another. Now this is a massive structure…just a massive structure made out of huge stones weighing tons. Yet Jesus predicts its total destruction.
Now when He says that, this raises their curiosity and anticipation even more because it probably makes them realize that this is all going to be the judgment on what is to establish what God would have. Christ having cleansed the inside earlier in the week, threw out the money changers and the sellers and buyers, and now He’s going to knock the whole thing down and we’re going to have the Kingdom temple and the Kingdom worship and it’s all going to come. So they’re at a moment of great expectation. And they ask this question. When is it going to happen and what is the sign that we look for to indicate Your presence in Kingdom glory and the end of man’s age? So they think that is imminent.
And then Jesus answers them, beginning in verse 4, with a sermon about His Second Coming. Now some people have tried to say that this is a sermon about the destruction of Jerusalem, that this whole sermon was fulfilled in 70 A.D. when the temple was destroyed. For many reasons that is impossible, as we’ve tried to point out in our previous message. But just one other thought that I’d like to give you. People say, “Well, why does He describe and predict in verse 2 the destruction of the temple if that’s not His subject? Why in verse 2 does He say that all these stones are going to be thrown down so that no two are left stacked up? And then why would He move from there thousands of years later to the Second Coming? Why talk about the destruction of the temple?”
I’ll tell you why. It’s very simple. A prophet could only believed to be a true prophet if his prophecies always…what? Came true. Now how can Jesus be believed when predicting His Second Coming when everybody who’s hearing the prediction is going to be dead long before it happened? In other words, it’s very easy to predict something. I could predict all kinds of things way off in the future, things that wouldn’t occur, or couldn’t be verified or proven right or wrong until all of us were dead. How could I be known as a prophet if there was no way to verify it?
Typically, the prophet of the Word of God assigned by God to give a far-future prophecy gave also a near prophecy to establish his credentials. In other words, if he proves to be accurate in the historically verified prophecy, we can believe him for the one that’s so far in the future that we can’t see it. And the reason Jesus mentions the destruction of Jerusalem in verse 2 as prophecy is not to introduce the whole sermon on that same destruction, but to give you a historical point in which to verify that He speaks the truth. And so He said there shall not one stone be left upon another that shall not be thrown down.
Now what you have to understand is that the temple built by Herod was massive, I mean, absolutely massive. And we’ve described it in some detail. Let me just add a couple of other terms that might help you in your full description…in a full description understanding. The temple was built from 20 to 10 B.C. There were 10,000 stone cutters and setters working on it for that ten years, and that was just the main building. There were also one thousand priests who were trained as stone cutters and carpenters because only a priest could build a sacred place.
So you had ten thousand just workers and a thousand priests building the sacred parts of the temple. And that was just the main part of the temple. The building then went on from 10 B.C. to 64 A.D. So, you’re looking at an 84-year building project before it finally reached completion in 64 A.D. and was then totally destroyed in 70 A.D. So, 80 years is undone in a matter of months.
And you say, “Well, did the prophecy that all the stones would be thrown down come to pass?” Yes, not one stone was left upon another and the Romans literally tore it down to the very ground. Now that’s been historically verified. History doesn’t argue that at all. That happened in 70 A.D. exactly the way Jesus said it would. It seemed to be ridiculous as a prophecy, it seemed to be impossible as a prophecy, it seemed that it could never come true. And that’s what makes it such a good credential. Jesus predicts something that really could never have been anticipated, never have been foreseen. No one ever dreamed they would…that anyone could come along as powerful as that to tear that thing down, or who would want to tear such a magnificent edifice to the ground. But that is exactly what happened. And I told you about the fury and the passion of the Roman soldiers being so great that the Roman general himself standing in the middle of the temple, screaming for them to stop burning it down, couldn’t even get them to obey his own orders. They were so possessed, I believe, by Satan’s forces that they tore that thing to the ground trying to remove all remnants of the worship of God, but in fact fulfilling the prophecy of Jesus, giving Him credentials as one who speaks and speaks the truth.
Now, when we know that Jesus can be verified in the past in a near prophecy, we can believe Him for a far prophecy, right? And therein lies the reason for the prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem in verse 2, as an establishment of His credentials as a truthful prophet.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
