Admonition Podcast

Good evening.

It's good to see those out who are able to get out and hopefully by next week we'll be
done and rid of all this and not starting another round of it.

But take your Bibles if you will and open them to the book of Mark.

So we close out Mark chapter 12 and into chapter 13.

We'll begin with a word of prayer, then we'll get into our class.

Our gracious Father in heaven, we come before your throne, grateful for the day, for its
blessings, for the sunshine that we had and for the clearing of the roads that has

occurred, though we know many still are uh struggling to get out and do so safely.

Lord, we pray that you be with all those who have been impacted by the storms.

especially those who have lost power, those who have had damage to their property and to
their homes as a result of the winter weather.

Lord, we pray that you give them the things that they need and the helping hands around
them and the support that they need in order to recover and to do so fully.

Lord, we pray that you be with those who live with far worse conditions on a daily basis
and struggle through the difficulties of

weather and natural occurrences around them.

We pray that you give them strength and pray also that they might have peace and uh safety
throughout their days.

Lord, we pray that you be with this congregation and with its works, with its labor, with
its evangelism.

We pray that we might always strive to stand for the truth, to speak the truth, to declare
what your word says in sincerity and in truth with love.

Lord, we pray that we might be loving enough to always tell the truth and speak your word
exactly as you gave it.

Lord, we pray that you forgive us when we sin and fall short of your glory.

We pray for those who deal with the difficulties and the struggles of this life in the
physical sense.

But we pray especially for those who are dealing with the struggle with sin.

We pray that they might have a mindset and a heart willing to repent to come back to you.

and to stand firmly in the truth and in the salvation and the grace that you would have
them to walk in as they walk in the light as you were in the light.

All this we pray and ask in Jesus' name, amen.

As you get into chapter 13, remember that you're dealing with a discussion that in every
record of that discussion, there's a precursor, there's initial discussion that happens in

front of it.

You have Matthew 24, which is following of course Matthew 23.

In Matthew chapter 23, Jesus gives a series of woes against the Pharisees.

He pronounces those woes against the Pharisees to declare them to be exactly what the Old
Testament prophets said they would be.

You go to Ezekiel's prophecies and declarations concerning the evil shepherds in Israel
and the

Good shepherd that God would bring as a result of the evil shepherds in Israel and you
look at the Old Testament prophecies that Jesus points to in Isaiah chapter 29 The entire

context of that is Isaiah 28 29 30 31 in that series of woes where Isaiah pronounces a
series of woes against the leadership in Judah the leadership in

Samaria, that is the leadership of the southern kingdom of Judah, the northern kingdom of
Israel.

pronounces woes against both of them to declare that they are doing that which is evil in
the eyes of God because they are substituting their pride for reliance on God.

They are substituting their doctrines for the Word of God, and they're substituting all of
these things because they do not want God.

involved in their lives.

They want religion.

Let's be clear about that.

They were very religious, but they had substituted God for idols.

Or, sorry, idols for God.

And as a result of that, God is, through Isaiah, to pronounce a series of woes, the middle
of which Isaiah says that they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, as Jesus gives

it in the Greek.

They teach for doctrines the commandments of men because they have substituted God's word
for their teachings, their traditions.

And so they cause people to fear God, not because of what God says, but because of what
they say about what God says.

And if there's any greater condemnation of denominationalism than that, I don't know what
it is.

Because denominations,

regularly make it an active uh thing to substitute God's word and instead put in their
teachings, their traditions, their creeds.

You don't need to learn what the scripture actually says.

Go learn what the catechisms say.

Don't memorize the text of scripture.

Go memorize this creed book and go fear God because of what

you read in the creed instead of reading what God actually said and then doing what God
actually said.

Jesus in Matthew chapter 15, Mark chapter 7 draws this point out with a singular example
of you don't even take care of your own parents.

in spite of the fact that God in the very first Ten Commandments said, you don't do this,
I will bring judgment on you.

And yet you don't even take care of your parents, and then you claim you can't because of
what I say?

When I'm the one who told you, I would judge you if you didn't.

Now, in Mark chapter 13, Jesus is going to talk about the destruction of Jerusalem and the
destruction of the temple, and every record of that declaration of the destruction of

Jerusalem is set with a precursor of the fact that Israel had denied their allegiance to
God.

And what Jesus is saying is, because you have held on to men's doctrines instead of God,
because you have actively denied what I have told you to do, because if we use Matthew's

terminology, I desired as a hen desires to gather her chicks and you would not.

then Jesus makes it clear you chose your judgment.

when God is going to bring judgment on Israel in the form of Rome in AD 70, Jesus
foretelling this before it happens.

God has made it clear this wasn't God's decision.

This isn't what God wanted.

This is what Israel decided because Israel decided to go back on their covenant with God
and to deny his authority over them.

Fulfilled in, pictured in the parables, Jesus describes the wicked vineyard men, the
wicked keepers of the vineyard.

kill even the son of the one who owns the vineyard to try and keep it for themselves.

There, Israel's the vineyard.

The nation is the vineyard.

God planted it.

God said, this is mine.

God said, I will be your God and you will be my people.

And they came along and said, we can co-op this and we can keep it for ourselves.

And we can kill the son to keep the inheritance.

And God said, no, can't.

because this is what's gonna happen.

Okay?

So we get to chapter 13, and you notice as Jesus has spoken concerning the prophecies
concerning the son of David, he says, the Lord said to my Lord, verse 36, or chapter 12,

sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool.

That is a direct application.

not to the foreign nations, not to the people who had denied the existence of God that
Paul writes about in Romans chapter one.

That is a direct application to Israel.

They made themselves the enemy of the Son of God.

And God says, you wait, you sit in your seat, you sit as the head of the kingdom.

and you wait and watch and I will bring them down.

Okay?

Now, does it mean that God will ultimately do that to all the enemies of Christ and his
kingdom?

Sure.

Israel's ultimate fate is not gonna be different than anybody else's that tries to war
against Christ.

They're all going to fall.

That's the point of the book of Revelation.

is that Israel fell.

God prophesied it.

Rome's gonna fall.

God prophesied it.

Guess what?

The point is everyone else who does the same thing, all gonna end up the same way.

And yet, the direct application to the prophecy of David is in some foreign nation.

It's not what Israel imagined.

They saw that.

They read that in the Old Testament.

thought Rome is going to bow to us.

And God says, no, you are going to bow to me.

So we find here in chapter 13, then as he, Jesus, went out of the temple, one of his
disciples said to him, teacher, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here?

The disciples...

Had the nature that a lot of us have, if you've ever traveled much, but you grew up in a
rural or poor environment, you grew up in a very different way than maybe very opulent,

very rich places in the world, and you go and you walk to some of these places, or you
travel to some of these places, and you start looking at the structures.

You start looking at the opulence.

You start seeing like gold just laid over everything, just sitting there.

You start seeing all of the things that men can construct to declare their own greatness.

And you start going, wow, look at this.

Now, modern days, you would have probably had the disciples with the camera phone with the
temple in the background going, hey, look.

And they're from Galilee.

They're fishermen.

The gold they interacted with every day was the little they could get to pay for their
food for the day.

And yet, here they are standing in front of this temple.

And so, I imagine the way I think about this, and this isn't the text of scripture, this
is the way I think about it.

I think about the disciples probably going, hey, you remember what we read in Exodus about
how the...

uh the tabernacle was made and about the carving and the things that were done with the
tabernacle and then we read in the Old Testament about Solomon and his intricate work in

the temple and that which he built and this may not compare but look at what you have here
that Herod has done for Israel to try and gain favor with Israel and he built this temple

and it was spectacular!

It was the closest thing they had to the Old Testament Scriptures.

And I imagine that probably the disciples had it in that frame of mind, not just glorying
in the temple, but this is what they had been taught about.

This is what they had studied about.

And here they have the closest thing they have to it.

Because they're showing the stones, the things that make up the temple.

That's their heritage.

That's their connection to the Old Testament.

We should probably not just assume that they're like, wow, look at this, this must be
worth so much money.

oh That's not the perception you ever get of the disciples.

That's not the idea of the type of person that Jesus said, hey, you're gonna walk after
me.

by the way, we're not gonna have a place to lay our head, we're not gonna have this, we're
not gonna have that.

That's not the description you read about the disciples.

So in my mind, I think we're there looking at this from Old Testament, the connection to
God and the intricacy of the things that were done, which are even in a sense glorified in

the Old Testament text.

They talk about the skill of the workers and the people who were able to construct these
things and they did it out of a desire to glorify God.

don't think that's necessarily why Herod did it, but they see, teacher, see what manner of
stones and what buildings are here.

And Jesus answered and said to him, do you see these great buildings?

Not one stone shall be left upon another that shall not be thrown down.

as they are focused on the skill and the craftsmanship and the tradesmanship that were
able to construct these glorious structures.

uh You can bet that these type of structures didn't exist in Galilee.

When Philip said, can any good thing come out of Nazareth?

He wasn't saying anything, but they got great tradesmen.

This was unlike anything that they had at home.

And they're looking at it and Jesus said, don't glory in that.

Don't glory in the construction.

Don't glory in the grander of the temple.

Because what I'm telling you is not one stone will be left upon another.

And there's this reminder that what we see as solid and safe and guaranteed in this life
is that which God says, yeah, there's no safety there.

There's no assurance there.

If you put your hope in that, you're putting it in the wrong place.

Turn back to Isaiah chapter 30.

Hmm

woe to the rebellious children," he says in chapter 30 verse 1, says the Lord, "'who take
counsel, but not of me, and who devise plans, but not of my spirit, that they may add sin

to sin.'" Now, there's a thought pattern here that is worth considering.

When David determined to build the temple,

who decided that it was a good idea?

David did.

Now David ran the idea past who?

Nathan the prophet.

And who determined and told David that it was a good idea?

Nathan the prophet.

Do you notice the connection?

Here's a national leader talking to a religious leader, neither of which is talking to
who?

God.

Now, the difference between David, Nathan, and the people of Isaiah's day, the national
and religious leaders of Isaiah's day, is that Nathan and David both had a heart willing

to be obedient to God when God spoke.

but you move forward to the days of Isaiah, and they're committing the same transgression,
not caring what the Lord says.

They don't have a heart to repent.

Notice what he says.

He says that they may add sin to sin who walk to go down to Egypt and have not asked my
advice to strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh and to trust in the shadow of

Egypt.

Therefore the strength of Pharaoh shall be your shame and trust in the shadow of Egypt
shall be your humiliation for his princes are at Zohan and his ambassadors came to Haines.

They were all ashamed of a people who could not benefit them or be help or benefit, but a
shame and also a reproach.

The burden against the beasts of the south through the land of trouble and anguish, uh
from which came the lioness and the lion, the viper and the fiery flying serpent.

They carry their riches on the backs of young donkeys and their treasures on the humps of
camels to a people who shall not profit.

for the Egyptians shall help in vain and to no purpose therefore I have called have called
her Rahab Hemshebet." Now, as you go through this text Isaiah is talking about what's

going to happen when Nebuchadnezzar brings the Babylonians down from the north

and Israel is going to turn around and go, let's go to the south and make an alliance with
Egypt because the Egyptians hate the Babylonians and we'll get them to fight one another

and the Egyptians will protect us.

God's telling Israel, you see that structure down there that looks real sound?

You see that nation down there that looks real powerful?

elsewhere in the text here in this context he says they're going to be like a reed that
when you lean on it it shatters and punctures and goes right into your hand.

injures you instead of helping you.

You were looking for a walking stick and what you got instead was an injury because what
you saw looked like strength until you leaned on

A lot of us who perhaps at times in our lives have gone hiking in the woods or in the
mountains and thought, you know what, I need a good walking stick.

And so you grab the nearest thing that's laying on the ground that looks stout, it's big
and it's thick and it looks like it'll hold you.

And then you put your weight on it and it just crumbles.

Cause what?

It's rotted in the inside.

Okay?

Here's the picture of what Christ is saying about Israel.

You see the stones?

they look strong.

They're rotted on the inside.

They are rotten to the core spiritually.

And because of that, all the assurance that you have in this grand structure that looks
like it will stand the test of time, it will be here until generation after generation

after generation comes because they've...

It's been standing for generations.

Surely it will continue.

Crisis.

You go over to Mark chapter 9 and verse 1, and Christ will tell them that some of those
people right then would not taste death till they see the kingdom of God come with power.

But there's more to that context.

There's a judgment of Israel in view in the kingdom coming to power.

And here Jesus says, in essence, you're going to still be around.

You're going to be able to walk right here.

and you won't see a temple.

He goes on to say,

Now, or verse 3, now is he sat on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple.

So, in your mind's eye, imagine here's the temple mount, then there's a valley, then
there's the Mount of Olives.

And as you're staring from the Mount of Olives, you can see across to the temple.

So, here they are, before they, initially as the scene open, as the chapter open, they're
right there next to the temple.

Now they've left the city, they've gone out to the Mount of Olives.

Jesus is now looking back on the temple.

And Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately.

You kind of have the core group among the disciples.

Peter, James, John, Andrew.

By the way, how are these people related to one another?

physically speaking.

Peter and Andrew, brothers.

James and John, brothers.

And by all indications of the scripture text, cousins.

eh Their family.

They also make up the core of the disciples, of the apostles, where Jesus quite often when
he goes off by himself, three of them, excluding Andrew, are quite often the ones who go

with him.

eh

So they come to him and they ask him privately, tell us when will these things be and what
will be the sign when all these things will be fulfilled?

Their direct question, by the way, Mark only includes two of the questions, but their
direct question is about what he said when they were standing next to the temple.

And he said, not one stone.

will be left upon another.

But furthermore, you cannot separate that discussion from the prior discussion of the
Pharisees being judged and Jerusalem being judged.

This was a direct prophecy of judgment against the religious leadership, against the city,
against the temple.

They want to know ah when, how, why is this going to occur?

Jesus answering them began to say, take heed that no one deceives you, for many will come
in my name saying I am he and will deceive many.

Jesus first addresses the authority.

The discussion about when doesn't matter until you realize that you're not allowed to
listen to everybody who comes along thinking they know when.

that you don't go with every new idea that gets spouted by someone who thinks they've got
some insight into what's going on, let alone the ones who come saying, I'm the Christ and

I'm coming and here we go.

It is worth realizing that as the days of 87 approached, 8068, 8069, and even prior to
that back in around 8066, you would begin to see Jewish riots.

You would begin to see, because Rome is, that period of time, Rome is in upheaval.

from around AD 63, Nero dies around AD 62, from 63, 64, 65, you have a period of about two
years where you have, I think, four Caesars that come to power and are gone in two years.

And finally, you have Vespasian who is going to come to the throne, the father of Titus,
and he is going to come to the throne in the midst of quelling

Jewish riots and rebellions.

Leading up to these events, the Jews are going to have people coming forth saying, we're
leading a rebellion against Rome and we're going to be victorious.

And Jesus says, oh no they're not.

Don't throw your lot in with them.

Do not join their party.

Do not give your strength to them.

because they're not me.

And ultimately what is going to occur is while it looks like Jerusalem and the Israelites
are going to begin to get their own control over their own nation, ultimately what's going

to be is their own destruction.

So Titus and Vespasian are going to come with the Roman army.

They are going to come to the gates of Jerusalem.

They are going to besiege Jerusalem and then another emperor is going to fall.

Vespasian is going to go back to Rome to take over the empire.

Titus and the army is going to pull back from Jerusalem during which all the Christians
leave.

And you're gonna see why.

in the text because as Vespasian gets control over the civil war going on in Rome, he is
going to redirect all of the attention to the Jews.

Because if you have a war at home, the best way to get civil rest at home is to find a
different enemy to fight and get everybody together to go fight that enemy.

Titus is going to come back in AD 70 and he is going to, as the son of Caesar now, he is
going to wipe Jerusalem off the map.

Okay?

Keep that in mind as you're reading these words because every bit of this is Old Testament
terminology couched in the fall of a nation.

And these are the words that tell you what the Old Testament prophets had said and what is
ultimately coming to pass in the form of Jerusalem in 8070.

But Jesus first warned them, be careful of the authority you follow.

Anybody claiming to be me, anybody claiming to be the Messiah, anybody who's leading a
revolt saying we're going to overthrow Rome and we're going to again establish national

sovereignty, don't follow them.

They're not me.

He goes on to say, for many will come in my name saying I am he and will deceive many.

But when you hear of wars,

and rumors of wars do not be troubled for such things must happen, but the end is not yet.

Now, when you come to this text, you're going to find people, especially if you listen to
general popular opinion, you're gonna find people going end means end of time.

And you must be insistent on letting the text dictate what the text means.

Wait a minute, did it say end of time?

Or did say the end?

Now the end of what has previously been discussed in the direct context?

Jerusalem?

What else?

There's three things.

The temple?

and the authority of the Pharisees and the religious leaders.

Okay?

The religious leaders, the temple, and Jerusalem.

Those three things are the immediate context.

And until you find something in the text that redirects the attention away from the
immediate discussion to something else, you must interpret the end to be in view of the

immediate context.

and the end of time is not in view.

Certainly not in the book of Mark.

We'll leave the discussion of Matthew for another time.

He says, but when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be troubled for such things
must happen, but the end is not yet.

For nation will rise up against nation and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be
earthquakes in various places.

and there will be famines and troubles.

These are the beginning of sorrows.

Now you can go back to history, we could outline every single one of these, but we won't
for the second time, and you can see in the 8060s a series of events.

You have national troubles inside Rome.

You have earthquakes going on that totally disrupted many of the things in the Roman
Empire.

You have event after event after event all wrapped up right there.

in the 80s, 60s and beginning leading up to 80, 70.

Which by the way, have you heard of any earthquakes in the last 20 years?

Any massive ones?

Any nation affecting ones?

Is that terribly abnormal?

No, not in history at all.

It's not abnormal at all.

I tell you what, I know what's been terribly abnormal.

All the wars, right?

You know, I think back to my childhood and every war that I heard about on television and
every war we were never told about on the news that now only as an adult you start reading

history and you start going, wait a minute, the ones that we were told about were smaller
than the ones we were never told about.

Like, I don't remember all the times Mao showed up on the news.

There's a number of people that Mao killed in China just dwarfed everything that ever
happened in Vietnam.

But where was it on news?

It wasn't on the news.

Why?

didn't affect.

We weren't there.

We weren't party to it.

But what's the point?

This is the normal state of humanity.

But when people start listening and they start seeing and they start...

interpreting the times, they're saying, wait a minute, look at this.

Wait a minute, look at this.

Well, what about this?

And they start trying to formulate some sort of grand idea about the end of time.

Jesus said, people are going to start telling you things and they're going to start
troubling you with ideas and they're going to start giving you indications that they know

what's coming.

So I'm arming you in advance.

I'm telling you in advance what's coming and what to pay attention to and what not to.

Walker.

Absolutely.

We are incredibly myopic in history.

Every time that we're living through it, it's different than every other generation that's
lived through the same thing.

This happened in the 1910s when World War I was occurring.

You can go back and look at the religious writers of the time and they're saying end of
times coming, end of times coming, end of times, Christ is going to return any moment now.

And then you skip forward 20 years and in the 1930s and Hitler rises, end of times coming,
end of times coming, all these things.

They're always pointing back to the book of Revelation and the Matthew 24.

And they're saying, look, look, it's happening.

When in reality, Jesus is saying, what I'm telling you is to ignore all those people.

pay attention to who I tell you to pay attention to.

Now notice what else.

He says, these are the beginning of sorrows.

And this terminology here is birth pangs.

Okay?

For the person in the room who's recently had a child.

When those physical tremors start occurring, you start realizing that

The time is approaching.

Jesus says, yeah, you're gonna see it.

You're gonna know what's coming, but you're going to know because God told you what's
coming.

Not because of all these rumors and all of these things that are going on around you and
being spread.

He says, these are the beginnings of sorrow, but watch out for yourselves, for they will
deliver you up to councils and you will be beaten in the synagogues.

You will be brought before rulers and kings for my sake for a testimony to them.

Jesus tells his disciples, in between now and this time of judgment that I'm talking
about, you're coming under fire.

And you're going to come under fire from the exact same people who are going to claim that
they are the salvation for Israel.

You're going to be brought under judgment.

You're going to be brought before the Gentile kings.

You're going to be brought and you're going to be beaten and you're going to be...

and all of this is going to happen to you at the hand of Israel.

when you go look at Paul's missionary journeys.

Was it the Gentile soldiers who were constantly trying to kill Paul?

No.

It was the Jewish religious leaders.

Paul in Jerusalem, having been arrested, found refuge among the Gentile soldiers from the
Jews who wanted to kill him.

And that's exactly what Jesus tells them is coming.

All of this was a picture to help the disciples realize Israel is not your future.

that when Christ came to establish a kingdom, it was not the kingdom of Israel.

When Jesus came to establish His kingdom, yes, He is the Son of David.

Yes, He is going to reign on the throne forever, exactly as the Old Testament prophesied.

but not on national Israel's terms.

Not on a nation of Israel.

So Paul will write in the book of Romans, they are not all Israel who are of Israel.

His emphasis, his point is, if they would be obedient to God, they would be Israel.

They would be the descendants of Abraham.

They would be the children of Abraham.

They would be the ones who inherited not only his flesh and his blood, but his faith.

but they're not.

Paul would write over in Romans chapter 10,

Romans chapter 10 and in verse 1.

Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved." Now,
Paul's writing this maybe around 51, 52 AD, 20 years before Jerusalem's gone.

And Paul says, I cannot express to you beyond saying God is my witness, if you go
throughout the rest of the text, that my desire for Israel is that they might be saved.

He says, for I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to
knowledge, for being ignorant of God's righteousness and seeking to establish their own

righteousness, have not submitted.

to the righteousness of God.

and that phrase in chapter 10 verse 4.

tells you Jerusalem has to fall.

The temple has to crumble.

Nothing will be left.

Notice what he says, for Christ is the end of the law.

Would the law end if the temple remained?

Would the priesthood end if the temple remained?

No.

Paul is foreshadowing this, making it clear that the Old Testament had declared that this
was going to happen, that this should not be a surprise.

because as Israel is judged the question is going to be, well wait a minute, I thought
Israel was God's people.

Is God gone?

Does God not care about his people anymore?

Do remember what Moses argued to the Lord when the Lord told Moses on Mount Sinai that he
needed to get down from the mountain because God was going to wipe the people out and

start over again?

What did Moses argue?

On behalf of Israel.

Absolutely.

Moses made the plea before God, if you do this, the nations around are going to look at
this and say you were powerless to deliver them, so you killed them.

Moses argues that the world is going to observe this action, and the world is going to
declare that either God is not just, or God is impotent.

while God is saying, know, Moses from these rocks, I can raise up another people like
Israel.

all these centuries down the road, you find God saying, that rebellious people that never
would submit to me, never would be faithful to me.

their time has run out and my long suffering is over.

All right, we'll pick up here in Mark chapter.