Introduction
I’ve been short-sighted since I was 12. I had to get glasses and I got called names at school about it, but I was so pleased that I could actually read numbers on buses again. I could watch and enjoy TV. I could see what my teacher was writing on the board. My whole world, that had been a blur, came into focus.
About five years ago, I started to have to hold a book away from my face to get the print in focus. I went to Specsavers and the moment had come; I am both short-sighted and long-sighted. So I have to wear bifocals.
To understand Mark 13, you sort of need bifocals. You need a lens that helps you see both close up and far away, because Jesus in this chapter talks about some things that were very close to his time, in particular the destruction of the temple that took place in AD70.
But he also talks about the very distant future, still future for us in fact; the climax of human history, when he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. No one knows when that is going to happen.
This is certainly the most difficult chapter in Mark’s Gospel to understand, and I confess that some of it is above my pay grade. I’ll do my best to keep what I do know simple, but you will need to stay with me and focus. So, if you’re up for that, let’s dive in.
And by the way, don’t worry if you can’t spell Armageddon – it’s not the end of the world…
On the screen, you see a landscape. Some hills are nearby and others are far away. You can’t tell the distance between the hills in the foreground and those in the background. It could be half a mile. It could be 20 miles.
This is what Mark 13 is like; it’s one view, but actually, it’s about two different realities.
The part that speaks most about the far future is from v24 onwards, and Isaac will speak about that next Sunday. Jesus refers to the far future as “that day” or “that time.” For example, in v26. “At that time people will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.”
This Sunday, when it speaks of the future, mostly it refers to events that are past to us but which were still future to those Jesus was talking to the week before he died. Jesus refers to the near future (the events up to and including AD70) as “these things.” For example, v30. “Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.”
So far, so good. But it’s not quite as simple as that. There are in fact some words about the distant future in the first half, and some words about the past in the second half; they are slightly mixed up, for a very good reason.
It’s because the signs of the times leading up to the destruction of the temple, about 10 years after Mark wrote these words down, and about 35 years after Jesus said them, are very similar to the signs of the end when Jesus returns some day in the future.
In other words, when Jesus returns, history will repeat itself in many ways; so you can learn a lot about the end of the world by studying what happened before the destruction of the temple.
Background
The temple in Jerusalem was an exceptionally grand building for the ancient world, certainly bigger and finer than any pagan temple anywhere in the Roman Empire.
Herod the Great began to build it about 15 years before Jesus was born. The scaffolding was still up when Jesus died. And they didn’t complete it until 30 years after Jesus was raised from the dead. (I’m confident REACh will move a little more quickly than that).
It towered 45 metres (or ten stories) high. The floor space of the whole complex spanned 144,000m2, that’s big enough for 20 football pitches. It was one of the great wonders of the world, probably second only to the larger pyramids in scale.
Its gates and column decorations were covered with hammered gold which sparkled in the sun and its walls were made of enormous white stones. The largest they’ve found in the small section of the temple mount that still survives is 13 meters long, over 4 meters thick and over 3 meters high.
To give you an idea, the slabs in Stonehenge weigh about 25 tons each. This temple stone has an estimated weight of 570 tons. Archaeologists have no idea how they moved these rocks a single inch!
And it’s this overwhelmingly breathtaking architecture that Jesus’ disciples marvel at in v1. Gazing up at this stunning edifice they can’t help but say, “Look teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!”
This great spiritual centre, with its Most Holy Place at the heart of it, where God himself dwelt in unapproachable majesty, where people would flock from miles away, just to be near the presence of God, where sacrifices would take place in the hope that God would cleanse and forgive sin… was awesome to behold.
“Yeah, do you know what?” says Jesus (v2). “It’s all going to be flattened. Every stone will be thrown down.”
In less than a week’s time, when Jesus dies as a flawless sacrifice for sin, sins will be cleansed, sinners will be saved, the separating curtain will be ripped from top to bottom, the presence of God will be open to all and the temple will become obsolete and irrelevant.
In other words, the ritual, the sacrifices, the blood, the religion, the priests, the curtain… It’s over. God is finished with it.
Well, they leave the temple, absolutely stunned. Imagine looking at Saint Paul’s Cathedral and being told that in your lifetime, the whole lot will be pounded to dust. It’s scarcely believable. “Did Jesus really say all this is going to be rubble and hardcore?” This sounds like an earth-shattering cataclysm. As far as the disciples are concerned, Jesus must be talking about the end of the world!
So when they get to the Mount of Olives, which looks across the Kidron Valley at the temple, four of them ask Jesus what he meant. “Tell us, (v4) when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are about to be fulfilled?” How does Jesus answer?
General Warnings of Near and Far (v5-13)
He starts by saying what not to get alarmed about. As I see it, v5-13 are general warnings of what Christians can expect at any time and which do not mean the end is nigh. In fact, Jesus specifically says so in v7. “Such things must happen, but the end is still to come.”
First of all, in every age, you’ll get false prophets and false messiahs leading people astray. Jesus mentions this in v6-7.
You can read a detailed account of the times leading up to the demolition of the temple in the writings of a Jewish historian called Flavius Josephus. And it is striking how similar his historical memoirs are, looking back, to the prophetic words of Jesus here, looking forward.
Josephus recorded that, as the Romans began to encircle Jerusalem, many would-be heroes sprang up saying, “I am from God, I will save you, follow me.” And people were so afraid, many flocked to them. But significantly Christians didn’t, because they remembered that Jesus had said quite specifically to pay no attention to them.
But there are false teachers in every generation. We have plenty today and it doesn’t mean the end must be around the corner. False teachers lead people astray with their false gospels that cosy up to the world. They tell people what they want to hear, they’re soft on sin, they side-step repentance, and they glorify and please men rather than God. Watch out for self-proclaimed Christian leaders who advocate a way of life no different to the liberal and secular culture we’re in.
In v7-9 Jesus warns of perils that will cause great anxiety. In particular, he mentions wars, rumours of wars, an increase in famines and earthquakes.
Again, this is exactly what did happen between Jesus saying this and the end of the temple. There were rumblings of unrest throughout the Roman Empire. There were four different famines during the reign of Emperor Claudius alone. The historian Tacitus wrote about Rome in AD 51: “This year witnessed many signs or omens... including repeated earthquakes.” Josephus wrote that earthquakes were "a common calamity” at that time.
But Jesus said to not be alarmed, as we shouldn’t be by such things today. They may be cataclysmic but they are not necessarily apocalyptic.
In v9-13 Jesus warns that Christians will always be unpopular. And of course they did get the wrong side of the authorities, as the Acts of the Apostles explains in great detail. They found themselves arrested, imprisoned and hauled before the courts. Christians were made scapegoats for every problem imaginable in those turbulent times as they took the gospel to every nation.
There’s talk here about discrimination from all angles; you might be disparaged by organised religion, persecuted by governing authorities and even ostracised by your own family; indeed he says, “Everyone will hate you because of me.” We know this is what happened to the early church. The book of Acts is full of it.
And according to a recent study by Open Doors, reported just last week in one of our daily newspapers, 215 million Christians live in areas with high levels of persecution worldwide. Over 3,000 Christians were killed and nearly 800 churches were damaged last year alone.
But Jesus means to encourage us when he says, “Those who stand firm to the end will be saved.” Not “might be” or “could be” but “will be.” Remember that even if your whole Christian life is marked by suffering, the end will not be bitter, but beautiful.
So v5-13 are general warnings about tough times for Christians that will be true both in the few years before AD 70 and the many years prior to Christ’s return in glory.
Specific Warnings of Near (v14-23)
But in v14-23, I believe Jesus refers only to the particular era of the destruction of Jerusalem because he specifically mentions Judea in v14, which is the area immediately surrounding that city. So we’re now focusing directly on the mountain in the foreground so to speak.
The disciples contemplated the destruction of that temple, and asked, “What will be the sign that all this is about to happen?” Here’s Jesus’ answer.
In v14 he says, “When you see “the abomination that causes desolation” standing where it does not belong – let the reader understand – then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.”
This is talking about a particular and conspicuous event that, as soon as it happens, it will be the signal to get out of Jerusalem immediately. And Jesus says, “Don’t even bother packing. Don’t go back inside to grab your valuables – run for the hills as fast as you can.”
And notice, Jesus doesn’t say in v18, “Pray that this won’t happen.” Because it must. There is no going back. Instead he says, “Pray that it won’t happen in winter.” And history records that it didn’t, thank God. The fact that it happened in the spring and summer reduced greatly the suffering of Christians who fled, especially children and expectant mothers.
So what is this “abomination that causes desolation standing where it does not belong” that Jesus mentions in v14? It’s a phrase that appears 3 times in the Book of Daniel and it means something grotesquely sacrilegious in a holy place.
Centuries earlier, it referred to the time when the Greeks conquered Jerusalem under Alexander the Great, when a man called Antiochus Epiphanes walked straight into the temple, put up a statue of Zeus and sacrificed a pig on the altar. Jesus says here, when you see something like that about to happen again, get out of town as quick as you possibly can.
In the years just before AD 70, the Romans came and surrounded Jerusalem. They arrived with statues of their gods, their idols, and it didn’t take an above average IQ to work out that they were going to put them in the temple where they do not belong.
Here’s what happened. When the Romans arrived, they didn’t attack straight away. They waited several weeks. They gave the population a chance to surrender and during that time people were free to come and go.
But, remembering Jesus’ warnings here, hundreds of thousands of Christians fled to the hills. Tragically, the Jews all packed into Jerusalem thinking there was strength in numbers and that the city walls would protect them. And a shedload of false messiahs sprung up saying “I’ll save you” exactly as Jesus predicted in v20-22.
When the Romans saw they weren’t going to surrender, they laid siege to the city. They cut off food and water supplies. People started to suffer dehydration and starvation. Pregnant mothers miscarried. Babies died from malnutrition. Their mothers resorted to cannibalism.
Finally, when the city was too weak to fight, the Romans launched their attack. Exactly as Jesus had said, they set fire to the temple and smashed it to rubble till not one stone was left on another.
The scale of human suffering was shocking. Jesus, looking ahead to it, says in v19, “those will be days of distress unequalled from the beginning… and never to be equalled again.” It was a bloodbath. The fourth-century historian Tacitus estimated that about half a million died. Josephus put the figure at over double that.
If only they had heeded these words from their Messiah in v14-19 they would have been saved. But because Jesus said it, they wouldn’t listen and they didn’t believe it. It is the most tragic and heart-rending story.
Ending
As I end, I want to just say that Mark 13 is not an almanac. God has not given this to us to help us work out the date of the end. In fact, Jesus said not to do that. This chapter is to remind us to be ready at all times for his return.
Three times in today’s passage, and eight times in the whole chapter, Jesus says to be vigilant, with words like “watch out”, “be on your guard,” ”be alert” and “keep watch.” If you remember nothing else from this morning, remember this; don’t fall asleep spiritually. The main reason why smoke alarms don’t work when there’s a fire is that people take the batteries out.
These days, practically everything you buy has to have some kind of warning on it. Some are faintly ridiculous. Three famous ones are:
• Sainsbury’s peanuts: ‘Ingredients: Peanuts (100%). Warning - Contains nuts’
• On a musical first birthday card – ‘Warning - not suitable for children under 3 years due to small parts’
• Nytol Nighttime Sleep-Aid: ‘Warning - may cause drowsiness’
• On a shirt label: ‘Warning - do not iron while wearing shirt’
Because warning labels can be so daft, we often ignore them.
On 13 March 1991, one of the deadliest crashes in the history of Britain's motorway network, a 51-vehicle pile-up, took place on a foggy M4 near Hungerford. Ten people died and 25 people were injured.
One man, Alan Bateman, climbed out of his damaged car and ran along the central reservation to warn oncoming vehicles of the accident ahead. Some drivers sounded their horns at him and drove on into the crash.
Jesus warned of danger ahead. He wants people to avoid disaster. Some heed his words. Others ignore him.
Everything Jesus said 35 years beforehand about AD 70, including the complete destruction of a building that seemed built to last forever, came true in every detail. You can trust his word for your future too.
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 4 February 2017
No comments:
Post a Comment