PT-1 "On The Mount" (Matt. 24:3)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/25/2023 10:21 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                            Focus:  PT-1 “On The Mount”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                      Reference:  Matthew 24:3

 

            Message of the verse:  “And as He was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?”

 

            I think that the questions that His disciples asked to Him are questions that people everywhere around the world should be asking, and after asking searching the Bible for the answer.  People die every day and many have never asked this question, and if they did never searched out to find the answer that Jesus gives to His disciples.  The answers to these questions are what I will be going over as I go through the 24^th and 25^th chapters of Matthew in the next few months.  One of the things that I truly like about following the sermons and the commentaries of is that he goes into great dept in his studying of the Scriptures.  There are 225 sermons that MacArthur has in his study of Matthew and four commentaries there is a total of 1726 pages in them.  I have mentioned in earlier SD’s that I don’t like “airplane preaching,” but love to dig into the Scriptures to see what God is teaching me.

 

            Jesus and His disciples leave Jerusalem through the eastern gate, crossed the Kidron Valley, and ascended to Mount of Olives a place where it is believed that Jesus spent some nights there before He went to the cross.  I want to look at a question that Peter, James, John, and Andrew were asking found in Mark 13:3-4 “3 As He was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew were questioning Him privately, 4 “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign when all these things are going to be fulfilled?’”  Perhaps these disciples were asking these questions as they were walking along, and when they got to the destination they would then ask Jesus.  Now remember the introductions that we looked at before we began to dig into these verses and you will have a better idea of why they were asking Jesus these questions.

 

            MacArthur gives more insight into this as he writes:  “For some time the disciples had been convinced ‘that the kingdom of God was going to appear immediately’ (Luke 19:11).  Therefore, in the context of the situation and of the disciples’ probable frame of mind, the word when seems to imply immediacy, suggesting the time might be tomorrow; the day after, or no later than the end of Passover.”

 

            I became a born-again believer in January of 1974 while listening to sermons from a man named Hal Lindsey’s on cassette tapes, which I still have although I am not sure they can be listened to because of their age.  I know that the Lord is going to return to take His bride, the church back to heaven with Him as the Bible makes perfectly clear and as I look back on almost 50 years of being a believer I have seen different signs or shall I say birth pangs which make it clear that the time is not too far off, and so I can ask the question “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign when all these things are going to be fulfilled?’”  I hope and pray that it will be soon.

            Now the words these things referred to what Jesus had just been talking about namely, the former house of God that would soon be left desolate (23:38) and also destroyed (24:2).  His disciples were expecting the final stages of the Messiah’s work to unfold in rather quick succession.  It is true that the nations surely would rise up against Him, He would defeat them swiftly, purify Jerusalem, regather the Jews from around the world, and establish His glorious kingdom.

 

            What they wanted to know was “what will be the sign of Your coming?  MacArthur adds “What would the first indicator be? How will we know when those remaining events transpire?”  They still understood the Messiah’s coming as a single continuum of events, having no comprehension of the church age that would intervene between His two comings.  And they probably thought that the sign of Christ’s coming would be something appropriately spectacular, such as a great darkness at midday, a brilliant light at night, the appearance of an angelic host, or a great blare of heavenly trumpets.”

 

11/25/2023 10:59 AM