SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/21/2023 9:48 AM
My Worship Time
Focus: “PT-3
Intro to Matt. 24:1-3”
Bible Reading & Meditation
Reference: Matthew 24:1-3
Message of the verses: “1 And Jesus came
out from the temple and was going away when His disciples came up to point out
the temple buildings to Him. 2 And He answered and said to them, "Do you
not see all these things? Truly I say to you, not one stone here shall be left
upon another, which will not be torn down." 3 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 want to continue looking at John MacArthur’s
introduction to these verses in the gospel of Matthew.
“Israel
took immense encouragement from the words of Jeremiah: “ ‘Behold, the days are
coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I shall raise up for David a righteous
Branch; and He will reign as king and act wisely and do justice arid
righteousness in the land. In His says
Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely; and this is His name by
which He will be called, “The Lord our righteous”’” (Jer. 23:5-6; cf. 30:9-10). They longed for the day when the spoil taken
from them would be divided among them (Zech. 14:1), when “living waters [would]
flow out of Jerusalem” (v.8), and “there [would] be no more curse, for
Jerusalem [would] dwell in security” (v. 11).
They rejoiced that “the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will
never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not be left for another people….but
it will itself endure forever” (Dan. 2:44).
“By the time of Jesus, the Jews had formed in their
minds a very clear scenario of how they believed those predicted events would
unfold. To understand what the Jewish
expectations were, it is helpful to read their literature from that time. In his A
History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ ([Edinburgh: T
& T Clark, 1893], pp. 154-87), Emil Schuer gives excerpts from numerous
extrabiblical Jewish writings of that era which reveal those expectations.
“First,
consistent with the teaching of Zechariah 14 and other Old Testament
prophecies, they believed that the coming of the Messiah would be preceded by a
time of terrible tribulation. Just as a
woman experiences intense pain shortly before the delivery of a child, so
Israel would experience great torment shortly before Messiah arrived.
“2
Baruch 27 reported,
And honour
shall be turned into shame,
And strength
humiliated into contempt,
And probity
destroyed,
And beauty
shall become ugliness…
And envy
shall rise in those who had not thought aught
Of themselves,
And passion
shall seize him that is peaceful,
And many
shall be stirred up in anger to injure many,
And the shall
rouse up armies in order to shed blood,
And in the
end they shall perish together with them.
“According
to another source, there would be “quaking of places, tumult of peoples, scheming
of nations, confusion of leaders, disquietude of princes” (2 Esdras [Ezra]9:3).
“The Jewish Sibylline Oracles declared,
“From heaven
shall fall fiery swords down to the earth.
Lights shall come, bright and great, flashing into the midst of men; and
earth, the universal mother, shall shake in these days at the hand of the
Eternal. And the fishes of the sea and
the beasts of the earth and the countless tribes of flying things and all the
souls of men and every sea shall shudder at the presence of the Eternal and
there shall be panic. And the towering
mountain peaks and the hills of the giants he shall rend, and the murky shall
be full of dead bodies and rocks shall flow with blood and each torrent shall
flood the plain…And God shall judge all with war and sword, and there shall be
brimstone from heaven, yea stones and rain and hail incessant and grievous. And
death shall be upon the four-footed beasts…Yea the hand itself shall drink of
the blood of the perishing and beasts shall eat their fill of flesh. (3:353ff.)
“The Mishna
anticipated that just before the coming of Messiah,
Arrogance
increases, ambition shoots up,…the vine yields fruit yet wine is dear. The government turns to heresy. There is no instruction. The synagogue is devoted to lewdness. Galilee
is destroyed, Gablan laid waste. The
inhabitants of a district go from city to city without finding compassion. The wisdom of the learned is hated, the godly
despised, truth is absent. Boys insult old men, old men stand in the presence
of children. The son depreciates the father,
the daughter rebels against mother, the daughter-in-law against the
mother-in-law. A man’s enemies are his
house-fellows.”
I
realize that some of this sounds strange, and actually some of it is familiar
with the things found in the Word of God, however the point in all of this is
to understand the mindset of those Jewish people who were living in the time of
Christ. The disciples of Jesus were the
ones asking Jesus the questions found in Matt. 24:1-3, and the reason was
because of the things that they had been taught about what will happen in the
future from places like we have been looking at. I for one am happy that they asked these
questions.
11/21/2023 10:23 AM
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