Watch Out! (Part 1)

Scripture Reading

Will you turn over in your Bibles with me to Mark chapter 13. Mark chapter 13. If you have your New King James Pew Bibles in front of you, that'll be on page 897. We did a one-off sermon last week. because I wasn't prepared to preach this passage this week, and I gotta be honest with you, as of 8.45 this morning, I was still struggling with whether or not I was ready to preach this passage, and I'm not sure I'll ever be ready to preach this passage. And as I was talking to Simon earlier in the week, to be honest with you, I had planned on just preaching this passage in one week, because I thought, let's just get done with it. And I realized, no, I was being a coward. and not actually wanting to delve into the depths of this passage and do the hard research and study that it required. And I wouldn't be a faithful pastor if I did that. And so this morning we turn to one of the hardest passages of Scripture, Mark chapter 13. Let's turn our ears now and our eyes to God's Word.

Then as he went out of the temple, one of the disciples said to him, 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. Now as he sat on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign when all these things will be fulfilled? And 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. But when you hear of wars and rumor of wars, do not be troubled, for such things must happen But the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be earthquakes in various places, and there will be famines and troubles. These are the beginnings of sorrows. But watch out for yourselves.

For they will deliver you up to councils, and you will be beaten in the synagogues. You'll be brought before rulers and kings for my sake, for a testimony to them. And the gospel must be preached to all the nations. But when they arrest you and deliver you up, do not worry beforehand or premeditate what you will speak, but whatever is given you in that hour, speak that. For it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit.

Now brother will betray brother to death. And a father is child. And children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death. And you will be hated by all for my name's sake. But he who endures to the end shall be saved. So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not, Let the reader understand. Then those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.

Let him who is on the housetop not go down into the house nor enter to take anything out of his house and let him who is in the field not go back to his clothes. But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days. And pray that your flight may not be in winter, for in those days there will be tribulation. Such has not been since the beginning of the creation which God created until this time, nor ever shall be. And unless the Lord had shortened those days, no flesh would be saved. But for the elect's sake, whom He chose, He shortened those days.

Then, if anyone says to you, look, here is the Christ, or look, here He is, do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will rise and show signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. But take heed. See, I have told you all things beforehand, but in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened.

And the moon will not give its light. The stars of heaven will fall, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory. And then he will send his angels and gather together his elect from the four winds, from the furthest part of the earth to the furthest part of the heaven. Now learn this parable from the fig tree. When its branch has already come tender, and put forth leaves, you know that summer is near. So you also, when you see these things happening, know that it is near at the doors.

Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will by no means pass away. But of that day and hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Take heed, watch and pray, for you do not know when the time is. It is like a man going to a far country who left his house and gave authority to his servants, and to each his work, and commanded the doorkeeper to watch. Watch, therefore, you who do not know when the master of the house is coming, in the evening, at midnight, at the crowing of the rooster, or in the morning, lest, coming suddenly, he find you sleeping. And what I say to you, I say to all, watch.

Prayer for Illumination

Let's pray. Father, we desperately need your Holy Spirit. We come to you in our frailty of understanding and our weakness. We come to you trusting that these words are true. That heaven and earth will pass away, but your word will never fail. It will never pass away. And so, Lord, we pray that you would teach us to hold the weightiness of this passage. We plead with you for clarity. We need your grace. Help us, Lord. Help me, God. In Jesus' name, amen. This is a hard passage.

Sermon

And one of the reasons why I wanted to slow down at this passage was because this is one of the passages by which most atheists who know their Bible well will tell you, this is how we know Jesus is a liar. Jesus is weak. Researching this passage, there's a plethora of websites all over the internet you could go to where they will parse out this passage verse by verse and show you, see, Jesus is a liar. See, Jesus didn't know what he was talking about. See, Jesus is a false prophet. The problem is that they point out that the immediate context of this passage is Jesus is talking to whom? Jesus, in the context of this passage, is talking to who?

His disciples. He's talking to the four men who came and asked Him the question. They had looked at the massive stones of the temple. I mean, Josephus tells us that these stones were in a magnitude of like 12 feet by 35 feet by 25 feet, like huge, massive stones. And Jesus says, not a single one of them is going to stand. They're all going to get cast down.

And so He's talking specifically to His disciples, and the problem that the unbelievers will point out to us is that in verse 5, He uses the second person plural, you all. In verse 9, He uses, you all. In verse 11, He uses, you all. 13, 14, 21, 23, 28, 29, etc. He's saying either in the noun or in the verb form, you all will see these things. You all will experience these things.

And so the unbeliever comes to this passage and says, see, they didn't see it. The cataclysmic end didn't happen, Jesus didn't return, and so all of you need to be freed from the shackles of your delusion of faith. Jesus was a sham, he was a liar. I gotta tell you, as I was translating this passage last week, I got to the point where he says, this generation shall surely not pass away. I remember writing in the margin of my Greek saying, are Jesus' words false?

How do we understand this? I want us to honestly, intellectually wrestle with this, and not just cast it away. Those are those atheists who want nothing to do but just destroy Christianity. We all know they have a bent, and that might be true. But if we're going to respond honestly with what Jesus says, we need to deal honestly with what He says.

So this morning, we come humbly to this passage. And I need to warn you that there is about to be a lengthy introduction. Okay, there's a lengthy introduction here. We need to go to the classroom. And I need to prepare you for what the next few weeks are going to look like.

So I make a few major qualifications on this series of Mark chapter 13. The first thing I say, I don't make any promises about. I do not make any promises that I will be able to fulfill any of the passages that I said I'm going to preach on. There's just too much material. There may be times I get to verse 6 and I say, you know what, we gotta pick it up next week. Because there's too much to unpack. Like I said, I plan for this to be a one week sermon. Now, I plan on it being four weeks for your sake. I hope the winter doesn't last long and this doesn't go on too much longer than that.

But I don't make any promises how much we're going to get through each week. Also, I do not make you a promise that I'll be able to answer every question you have with a specific verse or event. Let me just warn you, if you talk to a person and they can give you exact answers for every single verse in Mark 14 or Mark 13, and they can give you the precise location of every single verse, when it's going to happen, what's going to happen, I'm going to warn you, you need to just walk away from that type of teacher. When it comes to this type of passage, there's going to be times when we go downstairs and I'm going to have to tell you, I don't know. I don't know the answer to that question. I make no promise to you that I won't offend you. Some of you have very strong thoughts and beliefs on end times. I will not promise you that I'm not going to step on your toes. I can't promise you if you hold to any single system of eschatology.

By the way, we're going to talk about the word eschatology a lot. Kids, the word eschatology just means last things. Okay? End things. So, eschatology. If you hold, and if you're like the type of person who loves to study last things, I'll probably step on your toes. Whether you're my friend in that system or not. Because there's things here that we have to deal with.

Fourthly, I make no promise to you. that this is going to line up with your preferred study Bible. I make no promise to you that this is going to line up perfectly with your favorite preacher or teacher of the Bible. I make no promises of that. I cannot tell you that I'm going to agree with R.C. Sproul or John MacArthur on anything or everything.

So what should you expect? What should you expect as we get into Mark 13 and as we wrestle with this text? Well, you should expect that there will be big words at times. And I need to warn you that this is not the normal type of preaching that you get from me in this pulpit, but this is going to be big words at times. I will try to define the big words. The biggest big word of all these is eschatology. Study of last things. So, eschaton means last, lology means study. So, study of last things.

I'll try to define those big words when I use them and feel free afterwards, especially kids, if you're using those little worksheets and there's a word that you don't know, try to spell it out. If you want to have fun, ask your mom and dad to try to spell it out and we'll talk about it later. The other thing you need to expect is there's going to be times that I need to read quotes because other people have said it more precisely and I don't want to muck this up.

For example, D.A. Carson writes, few chapters in the Bible have called forth more disagreement among interpreters than Matthew 24 and its parallels in Mark 13 and Luke 21. The history of interpretation of this passage is immensely complex. What he's saying is there's tons of people who write all sorts of things about this passage, and it's really, really difficult to parse everything out. And so there are times where I'm going to have to rely on other people who have said it more clearly. And the best way to do that is just read a quote. Like Kim Riddlebogger says, how one interprets this important passage will go a long way in determining one's view of the millennial age. How you understand Mark chapter 13 will in a big way affect whether you become a premillennial, amillennial, postmillennial, etc. So I need to warn you about that. You need to expect that I'll have to read some quotes as we go through this.

The third thing to expect as we go through Mark chapter 13 is there will have to be a lot, and by a lot I mean a lot of explanation. We're going to spend a long time in the classroom and I need you to be patient with me here. I'm going to ask you to please endure with me through this trial of going through the Olivet Discourse. I think and I hope and I pray it's going to be profitable to all of us. It will answer many of our questions. I hope most of all it will assure in our hearts the hope of Jesus Christ and His return again. But to get to a right interpretation, we need to spend time explaining. And so you may get tired. You may at times feel overwhelmed or lost, but we need to go to the classroom in order to understand and apply these words. Two words of encouragement.

These came from an OPC pastor on this topic. Let the scriptures guide and shape you. As we come to Mark chapter 13, as you come to any eschatology type question, it is really easy to let a system of theology start shaping you and defining you, and you feel like you need to identify, like, no, I am a partial preterist, or I am a dispensationalist, premilled, pre-trimmed, you know, and you stick yourself in a system and you won't ever move. And all the scripture has to filter in and exactly line up with your system. Be careful. Systems of thought can end on end time stuff, can take their own identity in life. Schools of thought have the danger of taking precedence over the scripture. And so I'm encouraging you, as we go through the scriptures, let the scriptures themselves speak.

But secondly, an encouragement is be a Christian and not an end-time zealot. Be a Christian and not an end-time zealot. What do I mean by that? I mean, as a Christian, you must remember that you are to function by faith, godliness, humility, and love.

As we come to this passage, we must remember that we are called to live our lives putting to death things like anger and malice and wrath, especially towards those who may have a different interpretation than us on this passage. Pride, rudeness, abrasiveness, and even abusiveness is what marks zealots of end-time theology. People who say, my way or the highway, buddy, if you don't believe this, you're a capital H heretic. I'm going to warn you. Try to be careful with how quickly you label people heretics when it comes to things like end time theology. With all of that said, Let's step into the classroom and I want to give you four lenses of interpretation on this. Four lenses on interpreting the Olivet Discourse.

That's what this passage is called, the Olivet Discourse. It's called the Olivet Discourse because Jesus leaves Jerusalem, he talks about the temple with his disciples, and then on their way out of the city, they leave the gates, they go over the Kidron Valley and up the Mount of Olives, and there they're looking at the city. And this is, in Matthew, the second longest discourse behind the Sermon on the Mount. In Mark, this is the longest full discussion Jesus has. The longest one-time speech He has in Mark. And so there's four lenses that have been used to read or interpret this text.

And two views that are kind of on the opposite extremes of each other. are everything is in the past, that's called preterism, and I'm talking about full preterism, and everything is absolutely only in the future, so full futuristic. These are two very opposite extremes, and let me tell you, these guys often do not like each other, at all. Many of them are, we'll find out, are the guys I'm trying to warn you not to be these eschatological zealots. These end time zealots. They so bury themselves in their positions that they see other Christians as enemies.

View number one, everything is in the past. Preterism. They'll see Mark chapter 13 and they will explain everything as this is the fulfillment, or this has all been fulfilled. by 70 AD. What happened in 70 AD? The absolute destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. Now, we're a little bit removed from this, but for Jewish people, this is the cataclysmic event that has happened in their past.

When they came together and they tried to overthrow the Romans, they succeeded for a short period of time, and the Romans surrounded the city, They besieged the city for over three years, starving the people to death. I mean, women were baking their children and eating them. People were going down in the sewers and eating their own filth. They went into the temple and they tore apart the temple. The temple had been gilt with gold and they literally lit it on fire, so the gold would melt down and they could crush the stones to get all the gold. And full preterists will say, everything in Mark 13 is Jerusalem falling.

There's a danger with that, though, as you talk to those people who hold this position, especially if they hold it as an absolute preterist position, that some of them will come very close to denying the resurrection of the dead. Because they'll also say Jesus spiritually came back in AD 70. And we have real problems with that when we start talking about what happens in 1 Corinthians 15, when we know that Jesus Christ is going to come back again and judge the living and the dead, that we are going to be raised again. You'll also have problems with this theology if you hold to a fact of 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, when it talks about the Antichrist who will come. And then the trumpets will blast and Jesus will return again. Some of them will even go so far as to deny the physical bodily return of Jesus Christ.

Now I'm giving you again the polar extremes here, but this is some people who have said this, and so I want you to know that there are people that far that I think that far is very dangerous. But equally very dangerous on the opposite end is view number two.

Everything, every single part of this is only future. A lot of the problems that atheists and non-believers in our society have with Mark chapter 13 is a direct result of these types of people. These types of theologians and biblical scholars who will come to this passage say everything is future, and so they have to do intellectual hula hoops. They'll have to jump through all sorts of things in their mind to redefine terms and to say, well, this generation actually means something other than this generation.

And so they'll start to change the way that words are used, and they'll ignore the context in which it is written, and they'll kind of rip it out and put it somewhere else. The problem with this, if it's all future, by that same criterion, many of these futurists will deny that people like Joseph Smith was a prophet.

Because he said, no, no, at this time, this is going to happen, and it didn't happen, and so what do we know? Well, Joseph Smith wasn't a true prophet. Right? That's why we don't believe Mormonism. But Mormons will pull the same trick, and they'll say, well, no, no, no, see, we need to understand Joseph Smith's words more spiritually than that, and we're able to remove it from its context. But that's not true. That's not faithful to the text. Both say, all or nothing, and have to have everything. In one part, they'll deny large parts of the Bible, and they'll cast away 2,000 years of creeds and confessions and church history.

And on the other side, some will come up with ways of understanding very clear words in their context, in the first century church, and they'll create amazing novels and movies that will spark your imagination and really make you go, wow! But they are crazy, wild imaginations. There's a reason they're in the Christian fiction section and not in the theology section. When I was growing up, I was raised in a church that was part of this only futuristic type theology, not because we learned it from the pulpit, but we learned our theology because left behind, if you walked into somebody's shelf and they had the full collection, if they had all of them, even the white one at the end, you knew that, okay, they were good.

This is not all in the future. But there's two more views, and I think they're more careful views. View number three is a parts view, or a split-up-the-chapter type view. It's splitting up, meaning that certain parts of it might be historical, and certain parts of this passage might be eschatological, might be end-time type stuff.

Calvin himself was this type of interpreter. He broke up the Olivet Discourse into three parts. From Jesus saying these words to the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. When he told them during that time before the destruction of the temple and up to the destruction of the temple, there would be false christs and wars, nations against nations, earthquakes, famines, the abomination of desolation, fleeing to the mountains. He says all of that is historical. All of that happened at 70 AD.

But then from Jerusalem until the end of the world, there's another section in Mark chapter 13 where he says, that part lasts from the destruction of Jerusalem until Jesus returns again. The persecution, the hatred, the killings, the false prophets, the increase of wickedness, the gospel being preached to the whole world, and even false messiahs. He says all of that is what happens before Jesus returns. But when Jesus returns, when there's a final end, He says that's the eschatological portion, when the sun and moon are darkened. When the stars fall, when the trumpet blasts, when the elect are gathered and Jesus returns, all of that is the last day.

So that is the kind of parting it out, trying to figure out what's historical, what is going on now, and what's happening in the future. The last view, view number four, is the both-and view. Some people might call this types of shadows, other people might call it already or not yet. I personally like my own title for it, you can have your cake and eat it too. Meaning, this stuff did happen. What Jesus said happened.

But it's a type of the eschatological things that are going to come on the day of the Lord. Jonathan Edwards was a proponent of this view and he said, in this chapter, It represents that it had especially two events in mind. The destruction of Jerusalem and the works of God that accompanied it. The other, the second event being the other of the end of the world. So he says there's, when Mark writes, when Jesus is preaching this and Mark is recording Peter's sermon of it, he's saying Jesus is seeing two events. He's not just seeing one event at a time.

He's saying there is an event of what's going to happen with the destruction of Jerusalem, but it is foreshadowing a greater destruction and a greater redemption to come. The biblical theologian from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Gerhardus Vos, also held this view. He says, a sharp division is not made between what belongs to the one, that being the destruction of the Jerusalem, and what belongs to the end times, and it is very difficult for us to make that type of division. A professor from Oxford by the last name of Cranfield wrote a great commentary on the book of Mark, and he wrote it this way. Neither an exclusive historical nor an exclusive eschatological interpretation is satisfactory. We must allow for a double reference, a mingling of historical and eschatological.

Do you see what they're saying? They're saying it's both and, not either or. It's not all this happened in the past or all of its future. It's no, it happened in the past. And it's happening now and will happen in the future. The Olivet Discourse, according to this interpretation, is not just 70 A.D. and the local judgment of the Israelites there, but it must also be the historical sections that are treated as exclusively future. I'm not going to hide it, my interpretive lens is that fourth view. And we'll see if that actually plays out through Mark chapter 13. But I need you to recognize something here. This isn't actually a passage about the apocalypse. This is not in Jewish genre of writing, right?

There's genres of music we listen to, right? You might like pop, you might like Christian, you might like rock, you might like, I don't know, classical. You might like all these different genres of music. The same way you might like different genres of literature.

Some of you like reading history books. Some of you like reading fantasy books. Some of you like reading autobiographies. Some of you like reading, I don't know what type of werewolf movies or werewolf books are popular these days, right? But people like different genres of books.

Well, it's the same thing in Jewish writings, right? We have historical writings, we have poetic writings, we have wisdom writings, we have all sorts of writings, but one of the writings that was popular at this time was apocalyptic writing. And apocalyptic writing during this time was filled with imagery and filled with somebody receiving a vision and then trying to explain that vision and trying to lay it all out for what was going to happen in the future.

But this is not what Jesus is doing. There's only one very small part of this that Jesus is doing something like that, and that's the moon and the stars and them not giving their light and stuff like that, right? That's the only part that has any taste of apocalyptic. Everything else is pushed forward by exhortation. is pushed by His command again and again and again by a certain catchphrase.

When a word is repeated multiple times in one speech, it should tune us in that this is the important word. And the important word here is, WATCH OUT! BEWARE! BE CAREFUL! Something is in front of you, there's a trap, there's a danger, there's a hazard, and you need to watch out.

Jesus says this multiple times in this passage. And so the four different break-ups of this sermon series is actually based on each one of those watch-outs. The first watch-out here is what happens in verses 1 through 8. Then as he went out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, Teacher, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here? And Jesus answered and said to him, Do you see these buildings?

Not one stone shall be left upon another that shall not be thrown down. They went up the Mount of Olives. He sits opposite the temple. The disciples come to him. They ask, When is this going to happen? What are the signs? that these things will be fulfilled. And Jesus answers them.

He said, verse 5, watch out. We have it here in the New King James Bible. Take heed. I don't know what your translation says. Every single one of them, the Greek behind it is blepete. Watch out! That no one deceives you. The thrust of the Olivet Discourse is you need to watch out. People are going to try to deceive you. 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.

Why? For such things must happen. But the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom will rise against kingdom, and there will be earthquakes in various places, and there will be famines and troubles. These are the beginnings of, here it's called sorrows, and the Greek is birth pains. Deceivers have come, they came and they will come.

I went through all this interpretive lens and this long stuff because I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that you need to watch out. I love you too. I was weeping this morning. Talking with Olivia because so many Christians have become so gullible at this point. that their end-time theology lets them buy into and latch into cults and wicked things and people who will deceive them all over the place. Josephus clearly tells us that false Christs did come. They came when the temple was being destroyed. He tells us that Theodos persuaded people to gather up their stuff and to go into the desert. And as they crossed the Jordan River, he would command it and it would part.

Guess what didn't happen? People followed him to the river and he commanded the river, but guess what didn't happen? How do you think those people felt? They probably felt like fools, didn't they? Josephus goes on and tells us of another time that under the government of Felix, deceivers rose up daily in Judea and persuaded people to follow them into the wilderness, assuring them that they should there behold signs and wonders performed by the Almighty. Guess what happened when they went to the desert?

Nothing. There were no signs, there was no wanders, there was hunger and disappointment. Jesus warned them to watch out about this stuff. Josephus tells us that there was an Egyptian apostle who led 30,000 people to this very mount, to the Mount of Olives, and he told them, when we go up that Mount of Olives, we'll look over Jerusalem, and I will proclaim that the day of the Lord has come, the city will be destroyed. So they went out of Jerusalem, they went up the Mount of Olives, he proclaimed it, and guess what happened? Nothing.

Jesus warned them about this, watch out, deceivers are going to come. They're going to come in my name, they're going to promise you that you'll get sovereignty over the city. But it's not just back then that this happened, I think that this has happened in church history. People said that Jesus was going to return in 500 AD, guess what?

He didn't. People predicted that the millennium was going to happen in 1260. Guess what? It didn't. People said it was going to happen in 1370. And it didn't. People said it was going to happen in 1500. And it didn't. The radical Anabaptist Thomas Munster said it was going to happen in 1525. And it didn't. There were supposedly prophets who said it was going to happen in 1700, when Jesus was finally going to return. And guess what? It didn't. They did it again in 1757 and 1814.

A woman said that she was pregnant with the incarnate Jesus Christ, and He would come and bring in the last day. And guess what? Her child is not the incarnate Son of God. In 1829, the Harmonites said Jesus was going to return and all of this would happen.

And in the meantime, everybody who joined their group needed to take vows of celibacy. They weren't allowed to take wives. They weren't allowed to have children. They were to be totally communistic in their distribution of things. They robbed people of the joy of having families and stability in their life by a false promise that Jesus would come in 1829. John Wesley himself said that the millennium would start in 1836. In 1861, a man told his farmers not to plant the crops. There was no point because before the harvest came, Jesus was going to return. Guess how his children felt when there wasn't any food. When he had done exactly what Jesus had said not to do. Mormons and the Jehovah's Witnesses pull this same type of stuff, which is a big reason why we say you're a cult and we won't listen to you.

I am tired. Brothers and sisters, I am tired of people who prey upon you like wolves, who will tell you lies and play on your imagination, who will take Christians to be too stupid and gullible to not heed Jesus' words here. There's too many conspiracy theories that run amok because of this type of stuff and there's too many mass suicides that have happened. Do you realize that people believe this type of stuff so much that they will go to other countries and commit mass suicide because they think the kingdom of God is at hand? That's what's at stake here. As I was talking to Olivia, I said, I don't know how to push through all the schoolwork stuff to get you to understand how important this is, because people will try to prey on you, and Jesus tells you, watch out for those people. The kingdom of God is defamed and it gives reasons for the enemy of God to blaspheme our King Jesus Christ, because others come and they tell wicked lies. They twist Jesus' words.

So I need you to watch out. The end is not yet come. Don't fall for it. Don't be fooled. Don't be a blind zealot following a false messiah. Don't be tricked by charlatans who will give you a huge whiteboard full of all these different things that are happening. Don't fall for it. You're not looking for wars and rumors of wars.

These are the birth pains. These are the sorrows. More will come. Things will grow in intensity. Notice what Jesus says. He doesn't say, when you see wars and rumors of wars, then you know that the end is going to happen. He says the exact opposite. Look with me. I'm not making this up. Look with me. Verse 7, But when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do what? Do not be troubled. Why? For such things must happen.

The end of this sentence is extremely important. But the end is not yet. There's a war in Israel going on right now. And there are in time conspiracy theorists who are doing this today. Every time a missile is shot from Gaza, in times people will start going, Oh, look, look, look, there's another war. It's going to be the end of the world now.

Jesus says, you know what you ought to do? You ought to take mark of your own holiness. You ought to be on guard. You ought to make sure that your house is ready. You ought to watch how you live. You need to watch over your family. You need to watch over the ways in which you are loving God and loving others. You need to be more concerned about the sharing of the gospel than about the end of the world. You need to keep your mind fixed on Jesus Christ.

So I come to you this morning and I'm going to come to you the next three weeks after this with a clear admonition, the same exhortation as Jesus. I'm begging you to watch out. These are real events. They do happen. Jerusalem was destroyed. We're going to talk more about that in the upcoming weeks and in talk and talk time.

Closing Prayer

But in your life today, I need you to watch out that you're not deceived. Keep your mind fixed on Christ. I don't have a great conclusion. I just want to tell you I love you too much that I don't want you to go down a route, a route that will strip you away from your family and from your peace in Jesus Christ. Because some charlatan comes and gives you a fanciful imagination or a loctite airtight theological logic that'll make you think that You have all the end times figured out. Jesus is more humble than that. I think we ought to be also. Let's pray.

Father, we thank you that the heavens and the earth will pass away, but your words will never pass away. For every word which proceeds out of your mouth is good and perfect and true. You knew What was going to happen, you know what's going to happen. And so we confess to you that we have faith in you. So Lord, we pray that you would give us faith. And then you would give us eyes to beware. Please, God, help us. We're so easily turned aside. Give us clarity over the next few weeks, we plead in Jesus's name. Amen.