The Abomination of Desolation

Amen. Remember Christ's word to us.

Let us pray. Amen.

Amen. Amen. Amen.

Amen. Page 1010.

If there's a Bible link, there should be one in your pew if you have your own Bible. Now we've been looking so far in the Gospel of Mark We've been looking through it Last week we saw what Jesus said At the temple concerning the bankruptcy The corrupt practices of the leadership Of the authorities in the temple The leaders of Israel And how he just opposed them Against the faithfulness of the widow Jesus is still in the same place Contextually, situationally He's still in Jerusalem This is again, remember, this is the Holy Week This is the Wednesday, particularly where we are now The Wednesday of Holy Week The week Jesus is about to offer his life as a ransom for many And every morning he will come to Jerusalem And he will go around the temple And he will, earlier in the week The Pharisees and the scribes and the Sadducees

Were asking him questions Remember they've decided They're determined to kill him They're just looking for an excuse So they come to ask him questions And then later in the week He's now judging them As God And he is pronouncing judgment Prophetic judgment On not just the temple and the leaders But all of Israel as it were And this is what we have really In chapter 13 But as we will look further in this chapter It's not just Israel That the judgment is being pronounced against We will see that this has a cosmic sort of scope Not just historical But a cosmic scope So The occasion for the teaching Particularly is in verse 1 Of Mark chapter 13 As they were leaving the temple We're told On their way out of the temple One of them I think it's probably one of the disciples Or somebody When I told who

Said to Jesus Will you look at those stones Those wonderful stones Teacher Rabbi In verse 1 And this wonderful building And what is he referring to He's referring to the temple The temple is one of the wonders Of the known world at that time It was such a wonderful Beautiful Human structure It was known to be beautiful Almost probably paralleling Almost paralleling Moses At Solomon's first temple Herod Had Gone to great lengths Being one of the wealthiest men In the world Of his days Has gone to great lengths To try to Win the love Of Of Of Israel By building this temple There are There are things said by Josephus A Jewish historian Who was considering this temple That Some of the stones Are so large As to be eight feet deep Can you imagine A stone

I mean These are great boulders Of marble And so It is It was the pride Of every Jew Especially The people who are The Pharisees And the Sadducees And so So this This comment Is not It's not Out of the ordinary And they said Jesus Can you just look at How beautiful this temple is But Jesus Response In verse 2 If you're in chapter 13 Is do you see These great buildings There will not be left here One stone Upon another That will not be Thrown down That is Jesus' Pronouncement Concerning this beautiful temple And then Jesus Goes on From there From verse 3 To 13 To give the signs Of the age Jesus predicts The sign Of the age Of the end times To To his disciples And he says That there will be False messiahs We're told From verse 3 To 13 That will arise To do what To lead people astray

We see that We saw that In verse 6 There will be wars And rumors of wars That will take place Nations rising against nations Kingdoms against kingdoms These will all be signs Of the age Earthquakes And famines Will be all over the world And Jesus said These Things Are the beginning Of the end So let's just Situate ourselves Briefly In the scope Of this prophecy We are in the midst Of this age That Jesus is talking about As we think about it We know there are False messiahs In our day as well Aren't there There are wars And rumors of wars There are kingdoms And nations Riding against nations There's earthquakes And famines They've not ceased They just happen In increasing measure These are the beginning Jesus says Of the beginning Of the end Birth pains Jesus said And that reminds me Of what Paul says In Romans 8

That same imagery Ivan Can you be a little more quiet And listen buddy Thank you Alright Let's get back to Chapter 13 of Mark So Jesus Jesus is saying here These are the beginning Right Birth pains Jesus said Paul picks up That imagery Of the world Groaning in Romans 8 Paul says As a mother About to give birth In Romans 8 He says In Romans 8 Verse 22 He says For we know That the whole creation That's what Paul says About the world The whole creation Has been groaning Together In the pains Of childbirth Until now That's how Paul Picking on Jesus' language Here in Mark 13 He says The whole world Is groaning In the pains Of childbirth Until now We ourselves Those who by faith Are joined with Christ Are also groaning

And Paul talks about it He said Not only creation But we Christians Those who are in Christ Who are the first fruits Of the Spirit That is those who are In the Holy Spirit We as well Groan inwardly As we wait eagerly For the adoption As sons The redemption Of our bodies We are all crying out Maranatha Come Lord Jesus And as we wait eagerly We are called As Jesus says here In this chapter To be on guard To be ready For persecutions These are the signs Of the age The hatred of the world Against the followers Of Jesus Will increase Jesus already told us But Christ also Assures us That the gates Of hell In the midst Of all of that That Jesus has described The gates Of hell Will not prevail Against this church Even as its people Are betrayed Deserted And persecuted Jesus says Gospel

Is gospel Will continue to advance In the midst Of all of that He also tells us Not only that The gospel Will advance But that the Holy Spirit The comforter The revealer Of truth Will be present With us In power To lead us To guide us To give us Courage In the face Of persecution To give us Boldness To stand firm This is God's promise So as you look At this chapter It might be Easy to just Give yourself over To foreboding In despair But this is a comfort This is God's promise To be with you In the midst Of all that is To come We looked at Revelations A few years ago On all same Sunday I wonder if You read revelations With the same Sort of these Apocalyptic Passages of the Bible Like Daniel 14 That we read earlier You read it With a sense of fear Well there is A way in which As Christians We should be concerned

About these things As the Bible Has told us Will happen For we are not To give in to fear Concerned But not despair Concerned But not fear Because we have The promises of God Throughout Both in Daniel Chapter 14 Where we read In Hebrews Where we read And here in Mark And in Revelations There are comforting Words of our Lord Saying I am with you In the midst of it Not only that Am I with you I have conquered I know This is my story That I am writing And it ends With me Vanquishing all evil And so in the midst of it Keep that in mind But then let's go Let's go more In detail To verse 14 And 23 As Jesus continues To speak of more Of these signs Of the end times Jesus for warns His church About the things That are to come So that we will not Be surprised That's why Jesus Gave us all these things Right Remember how he Ends verse 23

Then I have told you All things beforehand Jesus says To his disciples He tells us So that we will not Be surprised About what's to come So that we will not Give into confusion Or despair God in his steadfast love Always For warns For warns Is elect He always For warns We're not left over To wondering Or guessing And so if God As in In his loving kindness In his steadfast love Has told us Of what will happen And warned us And comforted us With his word What are we to do?

We are to turn to him We are to remember His words of promise Even when we are In the midst Of tribulation That is The antidote That is the help To remember That he has promised To never leave Nor forsake us That he has promised To be with us Even to the end Of the age We must remember that We must We must remember God's word And then also We must see In these verses There's a practical And there's a Pastoral nature Of Jesus' words In these verses Right?

You see the practicality Of it, right? Jesus is saying These things And he says As practical as If you're on the roof When this happens Don't go into the house In the ancient Near East In where Jesus lived They have flat roofs And you And the roofs Are kind of like Kind of like Their veranda They can In the heat of the day They can be up there They eat up there Sometimes And unlike The way we build Our houses If you want to get To your roof Probably you go Through stairs Indoors There are stairs That leads to the roof From the outside External stairs That would Close to the roof So Jesus says If you are on your roof When this Thing happened When this calamity Falls Just go straight Down the roof Don't even go in To get a tunic Go straight And run for the hills That's the practicality Of it Alright?

Jesus gives it And it is the pastoral Nature of it too And there are two dimensions In these descriptions That we have There's the historical Dimension to it As we read it But there's also A picture A dimension Of the end times Of a cosmic nature Of eschatology That's what eschatology means Eschatological dimension That means It's the study Of the end of the age And so there's Those two dimensions And I want us to read it In those two dimensions So verse 14 Jesus says to them But when you see The abomination Of desolation Standing where You ought not to be And then here Mark gives us Parenthetically A parenthetical statement This is the only time I think Mark does this In his gospel He says Let the reader understand That is The people That's us You're the reader I'm the reader His first audience Is the reader When you see The abomination Of desolation Let the reader understand Then let those Who are in Judea

Flee to the mountains And so we ought to First look at what Because I think The key thing there Is that what is The abomination Of desolation What are we to Understand about that It's a technical term We read it also In Daniel Daniel referred to it And I'm grateful That Cain read The whole chapter So there's a There's a prediction Of what's to come That the abomination Of desolation Happened in the Book of Daniel Where he predicts That there is There will be a man Of lawlessness That will arise And we cause This man of lawlessness Will cause an abomination Of desolation And that happened In Jewish history Around 185 BC When a solicit emperor One of the One of the Inheritors Or followers Of Inheritors Of Alexander the Great By the name of Antiochus Epiphanes He took over The Palestine Judea area And this man Was a man Of lawlessness

He had it against The Jewish people He wanted to destroy Them and destroy Their religion And so one of the Most The way he thought To do that Is to profane To desecrate The temple altar And how did he do this?

By offering A pig Of pig skin As an offering On top of the altar Now you don't need To know too much You just read the Bible You know what great Offense that is Right?

Because what is a pig? It's an unclean animal To even bring it Into the temple Was bad enough But then to offer it As a sacrifice On the altar Was the height Of not just insults But profanity And so this guy Did that He also erected A statue of Zeus In the temple And demanded That the Jews Were to worship This statue Instead of Worshipping Yahweh So when Jesus Says to them When you see The abomination Of desolation They will have A picture Of what that looks like In their Immediate history Thinking about Antiochus And what he did To the temple And the suffering And the war And the ruin He brought against The Jewish people They would have Understand that This means That the temple Itself Is in peril And the temple Is the center Of their faith And their religion And their worship And their civil life

And religious life And so they would have Understand all of that Wrapped up In that phrase Abomination of desolation And so Jesus says To them When you see that happens Flee to the mountains He's saying to his His disciples Jesus is saying to them And to us That there is more To come There is more Suffering And more tribulations To come There will be more Such men of lawlessness That will arise Just such as Antiochus And we've seen them Over history Right We saw that We did see that Happen In 138 BC But historically We have in view What happened In 70 AD Starting in In the mid 60s AD 67 AD And culminating In the destruction Of this same temple In 70 AD In fulfillment Of what Jesus said In verse 2 of chapter 13 There will not be left Here one stone upon another

That will not be Thrown down Again Josephus Who is a Jewish historian Tells us That Titus What he did After he conquered Jerusalem And he destroyed The temple That he pulled So I've just told you One of the things They marvel at Is these great stones That are 8 feet deep What did Titus do He pulled down All the stones All of them Small and large And destroyed them And smashed them Part of the reason He did that Is that actually I think Josephus made this To understand That the Jews Put treasures Gold To hide them Hit them In the stones But in fact It's really Ultimately In fulfillment Of Jesus' prophecy That he And Titus Pulled down The stones Of the temple And then he says So we know That such men Of lawlessness Will continue To arise And it's not only 70 AD We've seen Men of lawlessness Arise We've seen Tribulations We've seen Sort of the fulfillment

Of these things Historically Throughout The age And so we're meant To see this Historically But we're also meant To see it In a cosmic nature Jesus says Continues to say For in those days There will be such Tribulation As has not been Seen From the beginning Of creation Until now And never will be Right So we saw What happened In 70 AD If you know Your history Alright But Jesus seems To be speaking Of something Even greater Than just What happened In 70 AD Or what happened Later In the world Wars Of the 20th century There's this Thing that Jesus Says that There's a greater Tribulation that is Coming That has not been Seen Before Since the creation Of the world Think about that Statement that Jesus Made Think about the Float And the great Destruction that Happened

Even just in the Scope of Biblical history And Jesus is Saying here That there's Something coming That will be Greater But then he also Gives us words Of comfort Right Jesus Jesus says That the Lord Has already Cut short The days And if God Hadn't Cut short The days Of this Coming Tribulation No human Being will Be saved But God Has already Done that Right Even before It's happened God has Already cut Short the days Again This is Both comforting But it's also Assured It's an assurance That God is in Charge Even when These things Come And when They will Befall And whenever They befall God is in Charge And why Did God Do this He did it For the sake Of the elect Whom he chose He shortened The days Who are the Elect You You are the Elect If you've

Come to faith In Jesus Christ You've entrusted Your life To him God Your Lord Is with you Present with you He has not Left you He will not Forsake you And he is With you And he has Cut short the days Of these tribulations Why Because for your Sake You Whom he has Chosen And so Take heart Stand firm Persevere In the midst Of it I can't help But think Of William Copper And his Wonderful Poem That's been Written into A hymn Now And I'll Just read Some of it For you When he talks About the way We are to be In the midst Of the tribulations Of the world As the people Of Christ As people Who belong To Jesus He says He says This Ye fearful Saints That's you Fresh courage

Take The clouds That you must That you much Dread Are big With mercy And will break In blessing On your head Judge not The Lord By feeble Sense But trust him For his grace Behind A frowning Providence He eyes A smiling Face His purposes Will ripen Fast Unfolding Every hour The bud May have A bitter Taste But sweet Will be The flower Blind Unbelief Is sure To her And scan Is work In vain God Is his own Interpreter And he will Make it plain I wonder If Copper Had Mark 13 And Daniel 14 In mind As he As he wrote That wonderful Poem But here It is Brothers and Sisters In Christ The clouds That you Much Dread Are big

With mercy And will Break in Blessings On your Head These is The means By which God will Bring The restoration And the Consummation Of the victory That he has Already Accomplished At the cross It is Through Suffering It is Through Tribulation I think The The world Thinks That we Are going To go From one Age Of Advancement And human Ingenuity And human Sort of Awareness And human Sort of Flourishing To another Increasingly That's What they Thought In the Nineteenth Century As they Start to Move away From And make Man the Center Rather than God And human Ism Began to Thrive And as That happened And people Start to Think Well yeah We've Finally Figured it Out We don't Live in Those dark Ages Anymore

We figured It out We know How to Live as Human Beings But what Happened Even in That Nineteenth Century There was Napoleons Came along And caused Torment all Over Europe But they Were already Just sowing The seed For a Greater Ruin We have Two world Wars That were The fruit Of looking Away from God In the Twentieth Century And then After the World War Two I think To some Extent People Start to Think Again Post Modernism Right We Know Better Now We know How to Live But what Is Happening We see It in Our World It's A devolution Not Evolution We might Be Technologically Advanced But for All our Advancement It hasn't Done us Any Good We live Humanity Lives Broken Relationships Are torn Apart from One another We live In a World

Where the Lies Of the Enemy Is Rampant And Those Who Are Followers Of Jesus Are Under Siege But This Is What Our Lord Says Will Happen He's Already Given Us His Word Of Forewarning To Let Us Know That This Is The Nature Of The World As It Is And So Then If This Is All True Considering All Of These Things About The World And About What Is To Come And Also Considering The Assurances That God Has Given Us That Through It He Will Come And Usher In His Redemption How Then After We Consider All Of It How Is The Church Of Christ To Live In This World Full Of Tribulations Jesus Jesus Already Told Us One Is Don't Be Deceived There Will Be False Messiahs There Will Be False Hopes That Will Arise In The Mist Of All

Of This Don't Be Deceived The Antidote Against Deceit Is Being Anchored In God's Word God's Word God In His Mercy And Providence And Kindness Has Already Told Us What Is To Happen God's Word Is Sufficient To Guide Us Through It Do Not Be Deceived Secondly We're Told To Be Committed As The People Of God To Holiness Of Life Do Not Partake In The Works Of Darkness That Is The Fruit Of A Perishing World Rather Live As Citizens!

The Heavenly Kingdom Remember That You Are Members You Citizens Of A Lasting City And That This World Such As It Is But All It's Perceived Brilliance Is Going To Pass Away It's Destined For Destruction So Be Committed To Holiness Of Light Do Not Partake In The Works Of Darkness Be Committed In Storing Up Your Treasure In Heaven Where Moth And Fire Cannot Destroy Where It Is Laid Up For You For Eternity Do Not Put Your Treasures In Anything Of This World Do Not And Lastly Remember This Brothers And Sisters Jesus Your Lord And Savior He Is Trustworthy He Was Promised It Was Promised To Bring You Through All

These Tribulations Whenever They Arise However They Arise Whether We Are Going To Live In One Another Whether We Have Been Chosen To Live Through An Age Of Great Tribulation Or Not Remember What Jesus Says Remember His Promises To You That He Will Be With You That He Is With You That He Will Not Forsake You That What He Has Spoken He Is Able To Bring It To Pass Trust Him Persevere And In The Words Of Apostle Paul Or Some Would Say The Author Of Hebrews As He Says In The Epistle We Just Read Yet A Little While And The Coming One Will Come And Will Not Delay Stand Firm Yet A Little While The Coming One Will Come And Will Not Delay But My Righteous!

One That Is You Who Are In Christ Shall Live By Faith And If It Shrinks Back My Soul Has No Pleasure In It So Do Not Shrink Back Let Us Pray Lord We Ask For Your Help We Acknowledge That We Live In A World Where There Is Such Persecution We We Also Acknowledge And We Grateful For The Fact That We Still Live Such As It Is In A Country Where We We Experience And We Help Us To Be Mindful Of Them To Seek After Their Well Being To Remember Them In Prayer And Help Us To Be Encouraged By Their Faithfulness As We Encouraged By Saints Who Have Gone Before And Help Us Like Them To Stand Firm Upon Your Promises To

Not Lose Heart But To Faithfully Follow You And Follow After You Until You Come Or Death Comes And We Are Reunited With You We Pray This In Jesus Name Amen