These words of our Lord here
in Matthew chapter 24 are part of our Lord's answer to
the questions of his disciples concerning the destruction of
the temple in Jerusalem. There are also answers to his
second coming and to the end of the world. In verse 3 it says,
And he sat down at the Mount of Olives, the disciples came
unto him privately, saying, Tell us When shall these things be
and what shall be the sign of thy coming and of the end of
the world? Now since these things fall either
in the past or the future, men and women of religion have found
them to be both historical and also eschatological playgrounds
where they can place these events in a timetable context that has
very little or nothing to do with them or with their life past or present. A cursory look
at the tone of the words that are spoken finds no language that would
cause anyone to feel that he may hear these words in anything
but a sense of urgency. There's a sense of urgency in
the words of our Lord. The sense of the words whether
they consider the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem or
the coming of the Lord to gather his elect to himself, whether
you are standing and listening to him back then or hearing his
words preached today, the message is that something is in the air. Something is in the air. Something
is about to happen sooner than later. It's been 2,000 years
since he spoke these words, so it's 2,000 years closer than
it was before. The believer knows this about
scripture, that all scriptures given of inspiration to God is
profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and
instruction that the man of God might be truly furnished unto
all good works. The believer knows also that God is not on
a human timetable. As we think of time, for the
scriptures declare that that which hath been is now, and that
which is to be has already been. So God doesn't deal with us or
doesn't deal with His purpose in time like we think of time. Eternity is kind of like a linear
line and right in the middle somewhere is this thing called
time taking up a very little space. But it's all part of God's
eternal purpose and God's eternal plan. But this passage is a word
of comfort to the children of God. a word of warning, a word
to be watchful, a word of consolation, teaching our Lord's care for
His people in this world and His kind preparation of them
for the tribulation and trials that are sure to come in this
world. These are His words for His elect who are all believers
in the Lord Jesus Christ. There's a great deal here for
the believer. When the Lord destroyed Jerusalem, the Lord God destroyed
Jerusalem, the temple, and set aside the nation of Israel, he
made a final declaration, a manifestation of what Christ had accomplished
by his coming and by his dying on Calvary Street. In Hebrews
chapter 10, our Lord said, lo, I come, it is written in the
volume of the book, it is written to me, to do thy will, O God.
He taketh away the first, that is the old covenant, the old
covenant made with the Jews. And he established the second.
That's the new covenant with the eternal elect. Those chosen
in Christ before the foundation of the world. When this took place, he finished
the old Mosaic legal system. The conditional covenant. He
finished it off. That's what we read in verses
15 through 21. When ye therefore shall see the
abomination of desolation spoken by Daniel, the prophet, stand
in the Holy Page, whoso readeth let him understand." And we know
that this began shortly after our Lord left this earth and
continues to this day. The abomination of desolation
stands in the pulpits of the world today, making himself to
be God according to 2 Thessalonians 2. declaring himself to be God,
you say, well, I don't know any preachers calling themselves
God, but listen to what they're saying about how God saves sinners. Listen to what they're saying
about salvation. The Bible says some things about salvation.
The Bible said it's God's salvation. The Bible says God does it from
beginning to end. Christ is the alpha and omega
of, the usher and finisher of faith. It was Christ alone in
his work on Calvary's tree that satisfies God's just demands.
finished the law and set aside the law because it was no longer
had any claim upon the children of God. He did all that. Men stand in the pulpit and say
that's not the case. That he simply did what he could
do. And it's up to you to make that work that he did fruitful
and effectual by your will and by your decision. Now that's
a lie. But it's a lie believed by the
most of people who call themselves Christians in this day. It's
a lie, not the truth. It's the lie. That's the abomination
of desolation. Who's God in the situation where
you decide who gets saved? Who's God there? Who's running
the show? You are. Not God, if you're the
decider, you're not, God's not the one who saves people, you
are. You save yourself. We ought to
be praying to you and not to God. That's why we invented the
invitation system, so preachers could stand up and beg men to
do something. And entice men with sad stories
and long versions of one psalm or two psalms. And plead and
tell them to close their eyes and raise their hands and bow
their heads and all those things. Those were invented so man could
feel that he had done something that indeed saved his soul. That
makes him God and puts God off of his throne. When Christ came, he set aside
the Mosaic law. Verse 16 says, then let them
which are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let him which is on
the housetop not come down or take anything out of his house,
neither let him which is in the field return back for his clothes. And woe unto them that are with
child and to them that give second those days, but pray ye that
your flight be not on the winter, neither on the Sabbath day. For
then there shall be great tribulation, such was not since the beginning
of the world to this time, nor ever shall be, nor ever shall
be. This is what's going to happen.
This is, he's talking to the Jewish people here. All his disciples
were Jews except for one. Luke wasn't a Jew, he was a Gentile.
But all his disciples were Jews. And they believed that he had
come, initially, to set up a kingdom here on earth. to overrule the
Roman Empire and so forth and have Israel rule everything.
Well, he's telling them that's not going to happen. You see
that place where you worship, that temple? He said not a stone's
going to be left in that place. Every stone's going to be cast
down. Every stone. He said it's coming a time when
you're not going to have a place to worship, you're not going
to have a means of worship, you're not going to have a priesthood, you're
not going to have an altar, you're not going to have a sacrifice,
you're going to just have to run. That's all you're gonna be able
to do. He was setting it aside. Historically, these weren't concerned
with the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. by the Romans. It
was a woeful day of terror for Jews when Titus showed up with
his armies, not including the ones that perished in the city
itself. More than one million Jews met a horrible death at
that time, a million Jews. And around 100,000 Jews were
carried away into slavery at that time. It was assuredly a
day of great tribulation, no doubt, such as was not since
the beginning of the world. In a true sense, the events of
that time were but the answer from God for what the people
would later actually request. They said, as Christ was carried
to the hill on Golgotha, let his blood be on our heads. And
that's what this is all about. His blood was on their heads
when they nailed him to a cross and he gave up his life freely
for his people. It ended them. I know people
say today that they celebrate the feast days like Rosh Hashanah
and Yom Kippur and things like that, the Day of Atonement, but
they don't. They gather together and they gather around the table
and they eat bitter herbs and so forth and they eat lamb and
so forth. They've added an egg or two and
things like that. But you know what they lack?
They lack three things that are absolutely necessary for Jewish worship.
Absolutely necessary. An altar, a sacrifice, and a
high priest. They don't have those. God says
that's the way it's done. It's the high priest that goes
in on the day of Yom Kippur, on the day of atonement. It's
the high priest that goes in with the blood of the Lamb and
springs it on the mercy seat. There ain't no mercy seat no
more, not an actual mercy seat. There's no Ark of the Covenant.
I know Indiana Jones thought he found it, but he didn't find
the Ark of the Covenant. That has to be, there has to be an
altar, there has to be a sacrifice, there has to be a high priest,
and none of those things exist. I remember Don Fortin telling
a story one time, he said those three things at an open door.
He was preaching in Australia, and the doors were open at the
church, and this Jewish man came by, and that's what he heard.
Just as he was coming by, Don said, there's three things absolutely
necessary for a Jew to worship, and none of them exist today.
And that Jew stopped at the door and was listening. a high priest,
an altar, a sacrifice. That Jewish man was converted
to Christ. Still writes to and talks to. Because in that moment,
God gave him a revelation that his religion was nothing. It
was defunct. It was gone. In fact, when the
temple veil was rent from top to bottom, the Ark of the Covenant
wasn't in there. It had been captured 150 years prior and
was lost. Nobody knew where it was. It
was captured by the Chaldeans a hundred years, 50 years after. The high priest was faking it
all these years. For those 400 years of silence,
he was faking it. He was faking it. He was going
under that temple. There wasn't no altar to sprinkle no blood
on. There wasn't no mercy seat. There wasn't no cherubim facing
each other. There wasn't no Ark of the Covenant. So all of that
took place. And our Lord, when He went to
the cross, finished that. He finished that. He finished
it by using the Roman soldiers, the Roman soldiers. When he destroyed
their city, he destroyed their entire system and means of worship. Everything was gone. And rightly
so, because it was all merely a shadow and not the substance
of Christ and his work. All those things pointed to Christ.
The high priest, the sacrifice, the altar, that all pointed to
Christ. Those were his shadow of good things to come, but not
the very things that it says in Hebrews chapter 10. They were destroyed because they
had been fulfilled by the Lord Jesus Christ and substance had
arrived, you don't need a shadow. I got some pictures of Debbie
in my wallet. I look to him a lot. I've looked at pictures of her
all this week. For some reason, I guess I miss her a lot and
so I look at pictures. You know why? Because she ain't here.
But you know, when she's there in the house with me, I never
look at pictures of her. Cause she's there. I don't need
to look at pictures. Well, all those old type pictures
are gone. Their shadows are gone. You don't need them because Christ
has come. It's all been fulfilled. The
substance has arrived. The son of righteousness has
arisen with healing in his wings and the shadow has been dispelled.
The daily sacrifices, the yearly feast, the mercy seat, the holy
of holies, the priesthood, the altar, the table of showbread
were all essential parts of worship during the time of shadow. When
Christ came and died and was burned and rose again from the
grave and ascended to the right hand of God, the legal system
ceased to function. You, as a believer, have nothing
to do with the Mosaic law. Nothing. Not one iota of your
existence as a child of God has anything to do with the law of
Moses. Why? Because it's not in effect. It's been set aside. God destroyed
it forever. And Scripture declares that Christ
is the end of the law. Christ is the end of the law
for righteousness to everyone that believes on the Lord Jesus
Christ. What need is there of an earthly
temple? Christ is our temple, Scripture said. What need is
there of a material altar? Christ is our altar. What need
is there of an earthly mercy seat? Christ is our mercy seat.
That word is used four times in the New Testament. You know
how it's translated? Propitiation. Mercy seat. Satisfaction. God said in Deuteronomy 25, I'll
meet you at the mercy seat. I'll commune with you at the
mercy seat. I'll commune with you where propitiation has been
made. Where propitiation has been made, reconciliation has
been made, and you are welcome into the presence of God. We
don't need a mercy seat. We have one. His name is Jesus
Christ. Here in his love, not that we
love God, but that he loved us and sent his son, the propitiation
for our sin. What need is there? Sabbath days.
Christ is our Sabbath. He's our rest. In Christ, we
are totally free from the yoke of bondage. And that's clear.
We're not under the law. We are under grace. We're married
to another. It says in Romans chapter four.
This passage teaches also some other things. This passage teaches
that martyrdom or self-imposed suffering is not a requirement
of faith. It's not a requirement of faith.
We don't have to die for our God. Our God died for us. We don't have to die for our
God. Now it may be that we are put to the place someday where
we are backed into a corner and we either die for Him or fail
to confess Him, one or the other. That may happen one of these
days. It happens today in other places where people name the
name of Christ, they're being beheaded because they refuse
to, they're being martyred. But martyrdom is not a requirement
of faith. Suffering is not a requirement
of faith. It's not a requirement of faith.
It's simply the lot and purpose of the child of God in this world.
But you don't want to make yourself suffer. People like to think
that that somehow pleases God. That somehow gets God on their
side. That somehow God will pay attention if they suffer. A woman
told Sylvester one time she wanted to suffer because she felt like
that was meritorious before God. The Roman Catholics have a day,
they call, or a 40-day period, I believe it is, called Lent.
Isn't that 40 days long? 40 days long called Lent, where
they supposedly give up stuff and suffer for God so God'll
pay attention to what they're doing. And I mean, some of it's
really stupid. Some people give up ice cream,
some people give up steak. Like, God's gonna pay attention
to that? They're gonna stand before the judgment seat of God
and say, you've got to accept me, I gave up ice cream for you. One stupid preacher in Michigan,
actually, one priest in Michigan it was, said he was gonna give
up the Bible for 40 days because he loved to read the Bible, and
that was what happened. He's gonna give heaven up for
God. You know, people can be stupid if you listen to them.
Suffering is not something you choose. Martyrdom is not something
you choose. This is made clear here. Being
prudent and choosing your battle is a valuable thing in this world.
We don't have to look for a fight. They will come because sufficient
to the day is the evil thereof. You can count on that. Our Lord
plainly told his disciples to flee from certain death. He said, get out of here. Flee
from certain death. Now there were some who stood
and fought and died for what they believed. But our Lord didn't
tell his disciples to do that. He says, get out of town, get
out of town. Our Lord plainly told his people
to run from death at the hands of the marauding Roman legions.
This does not indicate cowardice. There is no question that we
confess Christ. We are to confess Christ before
men, and if no other course exists, to die for him. But there are
times when it is more wise to be silent than to play what we
think is the hero. Discretion being the better part
of valor. We must never walk away from what we know to be
the right thing to do. We must always seek to do that.
We must never deny or be willing to compromise the gospel of Jesus
Christ, even for life's sake. We must always remember that
sometimes the fight may be more about our own emotion, however,
rather than about the glory of Christ and without our participation
in the fight. The enemy fights as one that
beats the air. I can't tell you how many times I've made this
simple statement to preachers who call me or are in some kind
of fray with some other preachers, and then they want my support
and want me to put my wagons in their circle, and I just don't
do that. I usually tell them one thing. It takes two to make
the fight. If you don't fight, he gonna
look stupid fighting. Don't fight. Don't fight. It's a useless thing. Years ago, when Scott Richard
went to surgery to have his, I guess, he had to wear one of
the colostomy. He went into surgery. His surgeon,
he found out, was Muslim, and Scott was a solid grace preacher.
I expect that Scott found it prudent not to discuss theology
with a man about to cut him wide open. Sometimes it's prudent
to keep your mouth shut. If you're in the holy temple,
let your words be fused. Let not you be rash with your
mouth, saith the scripture. This passage teaches sometimes
it's good to run. Sometimes. Also, the words of
our Lord are designed to comfort his own people. Verse 22 through
24, it says, and except those days should be shorn. There should
no flesh be saved. But for the elect's sake, those
days shall be shortened. For the elect's sake, those days
shall be shortened. Verse 21, for then shall the
great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the
world to this time, but those days have been shortened. The
Lord always takes care of his people. Those days of tribulation
were shortened for the elect's sake, he said. Human history
is a display of God's love and care for His elect. He hears
their prayers. He keeps them by His Spirit.
He orders and manipulates all the affairs of the world for
their good, for all things work together for good to them that
love God, to them of the called according to His purpose. He
allows neither men nor devils to harm them. He said, no weapon
formed against you shall prosper. No weapon. He sacrifices men
and nations for me. He told Israel, he said, I gave
Egypt for you. I gave up Sheba. I gave Ethiopia
for you. I wiped out nations for you.
And he'll do it for you too. And these are words of useful
information. We live in a strange world, but it wasn't strange,
any stranger than it was back then. A lady called me last night
and she said, I can't believe all this stuff that's going on.
And she was just all in a fix. And I said, there's nothing new
under the sun. Different people doing the same
old stuff. You think this political battle's been going on and what's
going on now is new? It's not new. It's not new. And it'll happen again. It'll
happen again. Don't worry about it. God did
not leave his throne. on November the 8th. He did not vacate his throne.
The one that's supposed to be there is there, and when God
is done with him, somebody else will be there. But don't go cursing
second causes when God Almighty is the first cause of all things.
Bow and be thankful that you know that He is in charge. But he says in verse 22, he says,
excuse me, in verse 24, he says, for there shall arise false Christs
and false prophets and shall show great signs and wonders
insomuch that if it were possible, they would deceive the very elect.
Wherefore, if they shall say unto you, behold, he is in the
desert, go not forth. Behold, he is in the secret chambers.
Believe it not. Believe it not. There are many antichrists in
this world. I'm just waiting for Mr. Trump to do something wrong,
and I'm sure that the religious people that supported him for
this election, they're going to start calling him the antichrist.
I remember when Henry Kissinger had such power as Secretary of
State of the United States. A dear friend of mine said, I'm
going to check his stable and see if his six white horses in
there. He thought Henry Kissinger was
the antichrist. People, there are antichrists
everywhere, but don't worry about them being in government because
antichrists operate in religion. Remember, it's Christ, anti-Christ. They present themselves as Christ. They present themselves as a
savior, a savior. Any religion and any doctrine
and any gospel that turns your eyes away from Jesus Christ alone
as he's revealed in scripture, Jesus will lock Christ alone
for all your salvation. Mark it down, it's Antichrist.
A Christ who loves but cannot save is Antichrist. A Christ who pays a debt that
you might have yet to pay yourself is Antichrist. A Christ who calls
but does not cause the one he calls to come is Antichrist. A Christ whose work depends on
the will of the work of the sinner to make it effectual and complete
is Antichrist. A Christ who wills the salvation
of any who are not actually saved by his power is Antichrist. Because Christ does all those
things and finishes them. If he's willed to save you, you're
going to be saved. If He calls you, He's gonna cause
you to approach unto Him. Blessed is the man whom thou
choosest and causes us to approach unto thee, saith the scripture. Something else, verse 27. For as the lightning come out
of the east and shineth even to the west, so shall the coming
of the Son of Man be. When our Lord comes again, it's
not gonna be a secret. It's gonna be loud. And oh well, the last trump shall
sound. Doesn't sound like a secret rapture
to me, where suddenly thousands and thousands of people disappear
and planes crash and cars crash and people, you know. Kind of
like old Kathy Robinson said that one person was talking about
the rapture over there and she's talking about how great he's
gonna be when he called out. People disappear and Kathy says, can
I have your house? When you're raptured. I really
like your house. When our Lord appears, His coming
will be as startling and as sudden as a loud clap of thunder and
a bright shining of lightning. Everybody will see it. His coming
will cause the wicked to cry for the mountains to fall on
them. But it will be the delight of every believer when the Lord,
when we sing it, when the clouds roll back as a scroll, when the
trump shall resound and the Lord shall ascend, even so it is well
with my soul. The believer waits with anticipatory
exhilaration for that day. For all those that love his appearing,
Paul told Titus. Peter said, looking for and hasting
the day of the Lord's appearance. And finally, look at verse 28.
For wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered
together. The eagles here, the word eagle
here, can also be interpreted buzzard or vulture. But it can
also be interpreted ego. Just seems right in there, is
a wherefore there, or because wherever the carcass is there
where the eagles be gathered, it just seems to be almost out
of place. What does it mean? What does it mean? There are
two prevailing views on the verse, and I believe that both are correct. But we must consider this as
metaphorical. Taking the obvious fact that
unclean birds, whether buzzards, vultures, carrying crows, or
eagles, feed upon dead carcasses. That's what they do. That's what
it's teaching. Whatever comes from that, it
teaches that we must look out upon the Serengeti and see an
elephant's carcass out there and see the buzzards. and the
vultures sitting there eating them. That's the picture that's
drawn. Where the carcass is, there's where the vultures shall
gather. The first view of this meeting
is this is a verse about religion. We know the Jews' religion is
gone. And so it has something to do with that, this destruction
of the temple here. The carcasses refer to empty
dead Judaism. And the eagles of the flocks
have lost religious men and women who cling to it with intractable
tenacity and salacious hunger, even to the destruction of their
own lives and of the lives of their children. And so it is
this hour. Find a church that is utterly
void of knowledge of God, his gospel, his word, his grace,
his son, and his glory, and you'll find a church full of lost religionists
teaching, feeding, preaching, and trying to live by the law.
Feeding on the dead is what they're doing. Where there is no life,
people cling to rituals, ceremonies, creeds, and emotionalism. And
where there's life, none of that is needed. None of it. The other view is this. that
Christ himself is referred to as the carcass. This may seem strange, but when
our Lord hung in agonies, the blood on the tree did not appear
to men as anything but a slain beast. I know you see pictures
of him on the cross, and he's a fine-looking little Gentile
kind of guy with red hair, red beard, blue eyes. I don't know
where they got that, because he's way too pretty. Scripture says
there was no comeliness in him that men should desire. Whatever
Jesus Christ looked like, you didn't like him because of what
he looked like. You'd probably turned off by
what he looked like. But what he said, never a man spake like
this man. They were astonished at his doctrine,
at what he taught. If you see that picture on the
wall, that's not what Christ looked like. It's indescribable what he looked
like. He had the beard plucked out
of his face. I don't know how many of you
had beards. I remember when I had a full beard, and Sarah used
to hang on it. It almost killed me. Tears cut my eyes. She'd
grab ahold of it. He had the beard. He said he gave his back to the
smiters and his face to them that pluck off the hair. If you got up close to his face,
you'd see where men had cleared their throats and spit in his
face. You'd see a crown of thorns plaited
and pressed down into his flesh upon his skull. If you were able
to see his body for all the blood, you would see that he took the
full Roman lash. Forty strikes from a cat of nine
tails. 360 furrows plowed in his flesh.
Because the cat-of-nine-tails was not just a buggy whip. It
was nine lashes and at the end of each line there was a stone
or a piece of metal or a piece of glass. And they whipped a
man and it wrapped around him and they jerked it. And it tore
the flesh. His hands were nailed and his
feet were nailed to a cross. He didn't look like a man. He
looked like a bloody beast. And he was buck naked. He didn't
have a can and towel wrapped around his loins. He was humiliated. What did he look like? Isaiah described
it as his visage was marred more than any man. He looked like a carcass. He was the lamb that had been
slain. That word slain means drawn and
quartered, slain for our sins. So much of what we do has to
do with that death. The Lord's table is designed
to show forth his death until he comes again, and we feed on
that. We eat that. Baptism is a confession
of his death, and he elects death in him. The preaching of the
gospel is a declaration of the accomplishments of his death.
The eagles there refer to sinners like you and me who flee to him
for salvation and life, feeding on his word, feeding on his gospel,
feeding on the feast of fat things, wine on the leaves from well
refined. Scripture says, to him shall the gathering of the people
be. To him. Our Lord crucified is the great
lodestone, the divine, irresistible magnet of the elect. He will
draw men to himself. I, if I be lifted up, will draw
men to myself. This he spake concerning the
death, that he should die at Jerusalem. In a sense, we come
together here three times a week to feed upon this glorious person. the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb
of God for sinners crucified. And for the believer, tribulation,
trouble, sorrow, and woe are his sure and constant companions
on this sojourn here on this earth. But there is by sovereign
grace a place to lay your aching head, a soft, cool cloth to wipe your
feverish brow. Electing love, he shortened the
days for the elect's sake. The crucified savior, divine
providence, God does everything for the elect's sake. For the elect's sake. Praise his holy name. Father,
bless us for understanding. We pray in Christ's name, amen.