Matthew 24:1-14 - Homiletics

The great prophecy: General predictions of coming sorrows.

I. THE TEMPLE .

1 . The Lord ' s departure. Jesus went out. He had taught in the temple for the last time. He had greatly loved that holy house of God. He had shown a burning zeal for its honour. Twice he had expelled the crowd of traffickers who made it a house of merchandise, a den of thieves. He "would not suffer that any man should carry any vessel through the temple." He so strongly insisted upon the duty of regarding the house of prayer with solemn reverence. When but a child, he had spent in the temple the hours during which Mary and Joseph were seeking him. There was no need, he told them, for anxiety; they might have known where he was to be found. He was constantly in the temple during his visits to Jerusalem. At this last visit he had "looked round about upon all things," showing his deep interest in all that pertained to the worship of God. He had watched the people casting money into the treasury for the temple service. Now he went out. The rulers of the temple had rejected him. Chief priests, scribes, and Pharisees, all who had authority in the temple, or were held in reverence as teachers and expounders of the Law, were ranged against him. He had uttered his last awful warnings, his last sorrowful lament for the hardness of their impenitent hearts. He "went out." Simple words, but very awful in the depth of their meaning; they are echoed in the ΄εταβαι ì νωμεν ἐντεῦθεν of Josephus, in the "Excedere deos" of Tacitus. "Behold," he said," your house is left unto you desolate." The temple is desolate when the Lord of the temple hath departed. The humblest church is glorious exceedingly when the Lord is present. The costliest and most gorgeous building is desolate in the sight of God when the Lord Jesus is not there. He is found of them that seek him; he is present when two or three are gathered together in his Name. Let us seek him in the Church, and we shall find him there. Let us take heed, whatever we do, never to lose sight of him whose presence gives the truest consecration.

2 . Conversation with the apostles. They came to show him the buildings of the temple. They were proud, like all other Jews, of that magnificent structure, those enormous blocks of marble, those costly decorations. They called the Lord's attention to those goodly stones, those precious gifts. He could not share in the enthusiasm of his disciples. Costly offerings are precious in the sight of the Lord, only as the expression of faith and love. Outward magnificence was nothing to him when the beauty of holiness was gone. The very splendour of the temple saddened the Saviour's soul. It was like the religion of the Pharisees, fair outwardly; but the services there performed were formal and heartless. And the Lord saw, in the clear vision of his Divine foreknowledge, what in less than forty years was coming. "There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down." That magnificence was soon to pass away. The holy city would sink in blood and fire, and that while some to whom the Lord was speaking were yet living on the earth. The temple buildings would be levelled with the ground; nothing would remain save those solid substructions, which even now excite the wonder of the pilgrim. The Lord knew all this; he could not take delight, like the apostles, in that short-lived splendour.

II. THE MOUNT OF OLIVES .

1 . The question of the disciples. The Lord sat on the Mount of Olives, in full view of the holy city with its glorious temple. He sat there in sorrowful silence; his holy soul was filled with sadness as he thought upon his people's sin, and the coming judgments. The crowd had dispersed. Four of the apostles, Peter and James, John and Andrew, came privately to him. They had listened in awe and wonder to his stern condemnation of the scribes and Pharisees. They had heard him say that they themselves, the Lord's messengers, would suffer many things, that the accumulated guilt of Jewish history would fall upon the present generation. He had told the Jews that their house was left unto them desolate; that they should see him no more till they, too, like the multitude whom they had blamed on Palm Sunday, should cry, "Blessed is he that cometh in the Name of the Lord!" Now he had prophesied in plainer terms the coming destruction of the temple. They were perplexed. "When shall these things be?" they asked; what sign would there be of that Parousia, that presence of which the Lord had spoken, and of the consummation of the age? The Prophet Daniel ( Daniel 9:25-27 ) had taught the Jews to associate the times of the Messiah with the destruction of the city and the sanctuary. He had spoken of a consummation, of a desolation: when should these things be? It is a question which has been often asked, which we often ask ourselves in shuddering awe, in trembling expectation.

2 . The Lord ' s answer. He does not answer the question directly; it was not his wont to satisfy speculative curiosity. When he was asked, "Are there few that shall be saved?" he said, "Strive to enter in at the strait gate." So now his first words are words of warning, "Take heed that no man deceive you." His answer is intended rather to guide the life of Christians than to disclose the awful secrets of the future. The date of the day of judgment is an unsolved and insoluble problem. It is known only to the Father. It is not his will that this mystery should be revealed; it is better for us to be ignorant. Knowledge of the time, if far hence in the remote future, might lull us into security; if near at hand, might fill us with intense excitement, and unfit us for our ordinary duties, as was the case with the Thessalonians when they thought that the day of the Lord was immediate. The Lord gives us no data for discovering when the end shall be. The bearing of his answer is practical; he shows us what ought to be the attitude of the Christian soul toward the solemn future; it should be that of calm and trustful expectation. The Christian should keep in view not only his own death, but the coming of the Lord. He should keep in his thoughts not only the possibility that today, any day, he may die, as he has seen others die; but also the possibility that today, any day, the Lord may come; and with the coming of the Lord may come the end of the world, the resurrection of the dead, the judgment. This is the purpose of the Lord's words, not to give us that knowledge which (verse 36) we cannot have, which, if we could have it, would not be for our good. The Lord speaks throughout this chapter in the mysterious tones of prophecy. He speaks of a nearer coming, and of one comparatively distant; of the end of the Jewish dispensation, and of the end of the world. The two comings, the two consummations, are blended together in the prophecy. It is not easy everywhere to disentangle them. In those passages which appear to relate to one only of the two tremendous catastrophes, we find features which seem to belong to the other. From the prophetical point of view, the two seemed nearer together than they now appear to us; the intervening distance was lost sight of. One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The destruction of Jerusalem and the temple was the end of the Jewish dispensation. It might well seem to the Jews like the end of the world. It was so crushing, so tremendous, attended with sufferings so frightful, bloodshed so terrible. To us Christians it is a meet figure of the greater catastrophe which is to come. We are bidden to look forward. It is not simply our own death which we are told to expect. We may die before the coming of the day of the Lord; we may be soon called out of the world; and the world may go on its way for ages. But he shall come again to judge both the quick and the dead. This is the prospect which the Lord sets before us in this solemn discourse. We may be among the living when he shall come; we may hear the voice of the archangel and the trump of God; we may see the dead rising at the call of Christ; we may, yet alive, "be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air." Then "the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." St. Peter's memory, as he wrote these solemn warnings, seems to reproduce the words which he heard from Christ, when, along with James and John and Andrew, he came unto him privately on the Mount of Olives. The same apostle sums up the practical teaching of this great eschatological discourse in a few striking words. "Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace,"—"looking for and hasting the coming of the day of God."

3 . Warnings in detail.

LESSONS .

1 . The temple without Christ is desolate. Magnificent buildings have no beauty in God's sight if Christ is not found there.

2 . We must, like the apostles, watch for the signs of Christ's coming.

3 . But the truest wisdom is to live in constant expectation of it.