Matthew chapter 24, the coming
of the Son of Man. Look at verse 23. Christ said,
now He's talking about events leading up to His second coming.
He'd spoken of events leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem
and the destruction of the temple. And He goes on to talk about
the last days and what's going to happen during these last days.
And remember, the last days are the entire period of time between
the first coming of Christ and His second coming. That's the
new covenant age. That's what we're in today. And
many times when he mentions the generation, we'll see that in
today's lesson, he talks about this generation. He's talking
about the generation of believers that are brought into the kingdom
as Christ seeks and finds and brings his sheep to a knowledge
of him and his righteousness in the gospel. And as he brings
them in during the whole new covenant period of time. And
remember, I always like to mention this when we There's two things
when you talk about the new covenant. The new covenant is only new
in the manifestation of time and the working of time. In other
words, Christ has always been the savior of his people. even
before the foundation of the world. We read that, I think,
last week in 2 Timothy 1, verses 9 and 10, where he talks about
God has given his people, whom he chose and gave to Christ,
a salvation given them before the world began. So Christ has
always been the Savior. Salvation's always been by grace.
It's never been different. Even under the old covenant law,
it wasn't different. The old covenant law was not
a covenant of salvation. It was a covenant of works that
was aimed to show them their sinfulness and depravity and
their need of grace. It was added because of the transgression. That's what the scripture says.
And so, understand that. There's never been any other
way of salvation. Some of the dispensationalists,
if you're not familiar with that term, it's people who believe
that God, some of them, believe that God saved people in different
spans of time, dispensations of time, one way and then another. And that's not how it happens.
There are different dispensations of time. There is the old covenant,
which lasted about 1500 years between Moses and Christ. But
that was not a way of salvation. It's always been by the gospel
of God's free and sovereign grace based upon the blood of Jesus
Christ, which he came and in time accomplished by his obedience
unto death. And that was the manifestation
in time of the new covenant. The gospel is the preaching of
the covenant of grace, the new covenant. And the new covenant
is the actual accomplishment in time of the terms and conditions
and stipulations of the everlasting covenant of grace made before
time. In the fullness of the time, God sent forth his son,
made of a woman, made under the law. So we live in the new covenant
age. And this is the last age. It's
the final age. And so he says in verse 23, now
he's talking about things that are gonna happen leading up to
his second coming, which will be the end of the new covenant
age. And he says, then if any man shall say unto you, lo, here
is Christ or there, he's here, he's there. Some people say he's
everywhere. He said, believe it not, don't
be gullible. Don't fall prey to it. And the
reason is in verse 24, for there shall arise false Christ, false
messiahs and false prophets who preach a false messiah and shall
show great signs and wonders, things that are impressive. Remember
Paul spoke of that in second Thessalonians two. deceivableness
or the deceptiveness of unrighteousness that impress people, big crowds,
feelings, ideas, even what they call so-called miracles and it's
all Satan's counterfeit and he says there'll be false prophets
and they'll show great signs and wonders in as much, now listen
to this, in as much that if it were possible They shall deceive
the very elect. Wow. That's the way we ought
to look at this, wow. They can come close now. And
you need to think about this now. There are false preachers who
kind of readily expose themselves to true believers. I mean, you
know, if a man stood behind a pulpit and said salvation is by works,
That wouldn't fool any of you all. But most of them who preach
salvation by works don't realize they're preaching that and they
call it grace. And they'll bring in damnable
heresies and doctrines such as Christ was made a sinner, and
you were attuned enough by the word of God and the spirit of
God to recognize that that was heresy. And you'll hear these
things. They'll call themselves Calvinist.
They'll say they believe election, sovereign grace, and all that.
They'll either deny it by some doctrine that creeps in, or they'll
deny it by compromise. And so what I put in your lesson
here is this. There's never been a time when
we need the clearest, precise gospel preaching that we could
hear. It's got to be made clear. be
on guard against those who would corrupt the Word of God. Number
one, by placing salvation conditioned on sinners and not on Christ
alone but they'll bring in other heresies that will take your
eyes away from Christ, your spiritual eyes. Paul spoke of that in 2nd
Corinthians chapter 11 by Satan's subtleties just like he deceived
Eve in the garden that he would deceive you. by corrupting the
simplicity that's in Christ, the singularity. And what does
that mean? That means that all of my salvation
is all in and by Christ, His glorious person. So I don't want
to hear any doctrine that corrupts His glorious person. He's God
manifest in the flesh. He had to be in order to save
sinners like us. He had to be God to be powerful
enough to work out a perfect righteousness that cannot be
contaminated or taken away. And he had to be perfect man,
not just man, but perfect man in order to stand in our place
and die for our sins, which he was not corrupted with or contaminated
by. He's the spotless Lamb of God
without blemish. And yet he was guilty He was
cursed, all of that, based upon our sins imputed. And that's
one of the doctrines that needs to be really hammered down is
the imputed righteousness of Christ because people don't understand
it. And people I thought did understand
it, they don't. And they've changed it, changed
the definitions of it and all of that. So we've got to be on
our toes. We've got to study to show ourselves
approved under God, workmen that needeth not to be ashamed. We
need to test the spirits. And I tell people all the time,
we must listen with a critical ear. Now, when I say that, understand,
I don't mean that we're trying to find something wrong. I don't
listen to preachers trying to find something wrong. I want
to hear the gospel. I rejoice when I hear any person
preach Christ crucified and risen again according to the scripture.
But I don't want to be fooled. I don't want to be deceived.
I don't want to be naive or gullible. If I do hear something that's
questionable or just out and out wrong, I want to be able
to recognize it. And Paul spoke of that, or the
writer of Hebrews spoke of that in Hebrews. Chapter five, when
we need to be skillful in the word of righteousness so that
we won't be deceived. And that's what Christ is talking
about here. He says these things are our thing. Some false preachers
would come so close to the truth that if it were possible, they
could deceive the very elect. That's a powerful statement.
We don't need to let that shoot in one ear and out the other.
And here's the thing, you know, we all begin our lives here on
earth in deception. There's a time that you and I
were deceived by the flesh, we fell in Adam into a state of
sin and death and depravity, deception, unbelief and then
God brought us under the gospel and gave us eyes to see and ears
to hear, that's the new birth and by that He showed us Christ
and Him crucified, and we saw it, and we've never seen it any
different if He really showed it to us now. And we can't be
moved away from it because of His glory and His power and His
goodness. You know if He let us go, we'd forsake Him in a
moment. But now, we have to be diligent
hearers. We have to take heed how we hear
and what we hear. And what we hear is got to be
the truth as it is in the scriptures. Paul said, if we are an angel
from heaven, and we don't judge preachers by their reputation
or their number of years or their personality or their clothing
or anything like that, or how much they can hold an audience
and keep them laughing, keep them away, we don't judge it
by that. If they speak not according to this word, There's no light
in them. When they talk about righteousness,
what do they mean by righteousness? What does the Bible talk about
when it talks about righteousness that saves? The word of righteousness,
the gospel wherein the righteousness of God is revealed. It's talking
about the perfection of righteousness, the perfection of obedience unto
death that can only be found in Christ, which God has imputed
to all of his people. and from which they get life
and faith and repentance and perseverance, all of the blessings
of glory, the blessings of Christ. So understand that. And some
of these false preachers, they'll, you know, somebody said, well,
they don't really perform miracles. Well, they could by Satan's counterfeit. And I don't know, you know, people
talk about, well, you know, If a false preacher, through some
providential work of God, could make the blind see and the deaf
hear, and they say, well, he's gotta be a person of God. The
first thing you need to find out about him is this, what does
he preach? What does he preach? And that's
what 1 Corinthians 13 is about, you know, when he says, have
the faith to move mountains though I can perform miracles and have
not loved that love that is Brought about by the Spirit through the
preaching of the gospel And that's where we have to go What does
he preach? What are what is the doctrine?
Remember in 2 John 9, it says, he that goes too far and abides
not in the doctrine of Christ hath not God. No matter what
else you can say about it. You might say, well, he's got
such a good personality, or he's such a good person, you know,
that kind of thing. If they don't preach the doctrine
of Christ, the glorious doctrine of his person and his finished
work, successful work, if they preach salvation conditioned
on sinners, if they measure righteousness on a sliding scale, If they think
that salvation was provided by the death of Christ for everybody
in the world, even those who end up in hell because they didn't
do their part, there's no light in them. They're not of God.
They neither know the Father nor the Son. Understand that.
And you say, but he says so much good. Well, You know the old
story about the rat poison. Somebody says rat poison is 98%
good food, but I'm not gonna eat rat poison. I hope you won't
either. Well, look at verse 25. He says,
behold, I have told you before. This is a warning, but it's not
a legal warning. I put in here, it's not legal
threatenings, but the assurances of grace. to encourage us to
persevere in the faith. Keep your eyes focused on Christ. He is at perfect peace whose
mind is stayed on thee. Don't let anybody draw you away
from that. I don't care what they say. I
don't care how kind they are. I'm sure we ought to be kind. All of that, you know. We ought
to work on our personalities, all of that. but listen to what
they say. And if they're not preaching
this gospel, let them be anathema. Another Jesus, another spirit,
all of that, understand. And so God, as I put here, God
is fulfilling his sovereign purpose and that we are sure to be glorified
based on the righteousness of Christ. Look nowhere else, look
to no one else, don't look within. You can look within to examine
yourself, but what you're trying to find out there is not how
good you are or how better you are, but do I really love Christ? If I love Christ, I love everything
this book says about him. If I love God, you say, well,
we don't love God or Christ perfectly. That's true. We have a rival,
and the rival is what? The big eye, the flesh. But if I love God at all, if
I love Christ at all, it's only by the power of God that I do
that for here in his love, not that we love God, but that he
loved us and gave his son to be the propitiation for our sins.
If we love God at all, if we love Christ at all, we'll love
what this book says of them. If the Bible says God is sovereign
and that he works all things after the counsel of his own
will, If it says that whatever comes about, comes about by the
purpose and the power and the plan of God, we're gonna believe
it and love it. We may not understand all of
it. We may get down and look up and say, why God? Why did
you do this? Why me? All of that. I know the
struggles now. I know what the Christian life
is about. You know, I always talk about our standing before
God, which never changes in Christ. Read Ephesians 1. Our state in
this world, which starts out as deceived, spiritually dead,
but then that state changes by the power of God through the
spirit under the preaching of the gospel. And then from then
on, what is it? What is our life? A struggle.
A warfare of the flesh and the spirit, a warfare against the
world, a warfare against the devil. Arm yourself, he says. All of that. Well, look at verses
26 through 27. Matthew 24. He says, wherefore,
for this reason, if they shall say unto you, behold, he's in
the desert, go not forth. Behold, he's in the secret chambers. Believe it not. For as the lightning
cometh out of the east and shineth even unto the west, so shall
also the coming of the Son of Man be. The coming of the Son
of Man. Most, or I'll say a lot of the
scholars, believe that what Christ is referring to there is the
fact that there were many who wanted to draw followings unto
themselves, and you had many different groups. Obviously,
you had the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the scribes. You
had a group called the Essenes. They were like the mystics. They
wanted people to follow them. If you know anything about the
history of Israel, you remember the mountain called Masada that
the Romans destroyed, and that's where they were, the Essenes.
They got people up there. Mysticism, and you know, people
love mysticism. We read some of that this past
week. They love it, you know, because
it leaves it up in the air. And you don't judge things, you
know, and all that, by the word. And then you had the zealots,
they were against Rome. There were many who tried to
draw a crowd into the desert or into secret hiding places,
thinking that the Messiah's gonna come and gonna lead us against
Rome and all of that. And Christ is saying, don't follow
those people. And don't think that they're
right. They say, like the Thessalonians, they said, Christ is coming before
we die. Well, I hope he does, but I don't
know that he is. And he says, that's why he says
in verse 27, as the lightning cometh out of the East and shineth
even in the West, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be.
It'll come when you least expect it. Now, the difference between
believers and unbelievers there is we are to live in expectation
of it every day, not knowing what day is coming. But we're
to live our lives as if he's coming before I get through.
I mean, that's the way it is. So understand that and this is
a positive word. You know Christ had already said
back in verse 14, this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached
in all the world for a witness unto all nations and then shall
the end come. See we know that God has a people
and it's not just Jews under the religion of Judaism which
is a denial of the gospel, a denial of Christ. And so what Christ
is doing, he's trying to get these disciples to think spiritually
according to the word of God and not according to their traditions.
Don't listen to the Pharisees. Don't think that this kingdom
is of this world. Of course, they thought it until
he revealed it to them. I mean, he sank them into them.
They knew how God saves sinners. but they still thought there
was a kingdom to be started here on earth in Israel, a temple
to be built and all of that, and they were wrong. And so he
told them, he says, don't follow these false preachers who talk
about a kingdom on earth and all that. The disciples were
told that Christ's kingdom would not be an earthly kingdom established
in Judea. And so they must not seek a redeemer
for only Jews. There's gonna be Gentiles there.
And that's why he said the gospel's gotta be preached in all the
world. God has a people out of every tribe, kindred, tongue,
and nation. And it's a spiritual nation, spiritual Israel, under
the headship of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's what we look
forward to. And you remember what Peter said
in 2 Peter 3 and 9, that God is not willing that any of them
should perish, but that all of them should come to repentance.
And when he brings that last one, that last lost sheep into
the fold, I suspect that's when he'll come. But we don't know
when that'll be. So look at verse 28 now. He says,
for wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered
together. Now of all this death and destruction
that's going to come in the end, where the carcass is, there will
be a united body of believers, justified sinners, Jew and Gentile,
all united in Christ, and nothing's gonna stop that. Even though
those who don't know Christ, they'll be like a dead carcass,
and the eagles will be gathered. Now, there are different ideas
on what that is, but an eagle, it's our national symbol, but
you know they feed on carrion. not buzzards, but that's what
it is. He's talking about death and
destruction there. So look at verse 29, immediately
after the tribulation, the trouble of those days, now remember he
told in the world you'll have trouble but be of good cheer,
I've overcome the world. Shall the sun be darkened, the
moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from
heaven. The powers of the heavens shall be shaken. What he's describing here is
in the end, the destruction of the world. Leading up in that
new covenant age in Christ's return, when the church on earth
suffers persecution, but we're not condemned. We're persecuted,
but not condemned. because there's therefore now
no condemnation to them which are in Christ. And it's just
like Noah preaching before the flood. You know, later on he
says, it shall be like in Noah's day. There was a flood coming,
and Noah didn't actually, I don't think he knew the exact day it
was gonna come, but he preached the gospel, the Bible says, for
120 years. And it calls him a preacher of
righteousness. That's what, he preached Christ, the coming Messiah,
in whose righteousness we stand. And so he says, he says, the
stars shall fall from heaven, the powers of the heavens shall
be shaken, in verse 30, and then shall appear the sign of the
Son of Man in heaven, and then shall all the tribes of the earth
mourn, that's the people who are found at that time unregenerate,
connected to the earth, tribes of, see, we who are saved, we're
citizens of a heavenly country, not of this world, this world
is not our home. But the tribes of the earth describes
those who this world's their home. And all they know is what
they think is the riches and the greatness of this world,
but it's gonna be level. And they shall see the son of
man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And
verse 31, and he shall send his angels with a great sound of
a trumpet. No secret here now. It's not
where people are just gonna start disappearing and everybody wandering.
No, he's coming in the clouds, very publicly, with the great
sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect
from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. So
the tribes of the earth will be destroyed. The people of God
will be gathered unto him in glory. 2 Thessalonians describes
that too. And I think it's 1 Thessalonians,
there's a chapter there. All of that, God's coming for
his people. And so we live, again, in anticipation
and expectation of his coming any day, and it could happen
any day now. But our concern is that we're
under the preaching of the true gospel, not being deceived, and
that we'll stand before God in Christ, washed in his blood and
clothed in his righteousness. All right.