Amen. In Genesis 22, verses 1 through 2, God commanded Abraham, saying, “Abraham,” and he said, “Here I am.” And he said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on a mountain which I will tell you.” So the next morning Abraham saddled his donkey, took two of his menservants, young men, with him, along with Isaac. He cut some wood, and then they headed off to the place God said he would show to Abraham. When they reached the mountain God showed him, Abraham put the wood on Isaac’s back and told the servants to stay — that they’d be back. They’re going to go up onto the mountain. And so they left. Isaac carried the wood of the altar for the sacrifice, while the two servants waited at the bottom.
Once at the top, you know the story: Abraham built an altar, he tied up his son, he put his son on the altar, he raised the knife and was about to plunge it into the boy to kill him. The angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And Abraham said, “Here I am.” And the voice said, “Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing against him, for I know now that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.”
That was the beginning of a particular area and a particular small mountain range — a mountain in that range. And a lot of history has happened on or around that little mountain between the time of Abraham and Isaac and the events recorded in Luke chapter 21, and all spoken about in all four of the Gospels.
Abraham and Isaac came down from that mountain, Isaac alive and well. That doesn’t mean, though, that the Lord was done with that mountain, or with Abraham and Isaac. For that mountain — Abraham and Isaac, estimated to be about 2050 BC — was just the beginning of that mountain’s history. By the time Abraham and Isaac had shown up on that little mountain — 2050 BC or so — a group of people had already settled in that area, in that land. They were called the Jebusites, and they would ultimately build a little city there in that little mountain range. And that city was called Jebus. Okay: King David conquered and changed the name of Jebus to Jerusalem — a little town at the time, nestled there in the foothills of that mountain upon which Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son.
But from the time David conquered it, Jerusalem was now a Hebrew city, a city of the covenant. Think of it this way — I say this all the time. It’s hard for an awful lot of Protestants to understand it, but it’s nonetheless true: Jerusalem and the temple are the visible church of the Old Testament. Not to be confused with the hidden church, the one that exists by faith alone, not outward rites and governances and the like. But from the moment David conquers Jebus and renames it Jerusalem, it is then populated by people of the covenant, of the promise.
Now King David’s son, King Solomon, was the one who built the first temple to Yahweh, and he did that in the 10th century BC. Then Solomon’s temple stood for more than 400 years, until the Babylonians invaded and they destroyed Jerusalem, hauled off most of its population into slavery and captivity, and utterly decimated, destroyed the temple in 586 BC. Now Jerusalem and the temple laid in ruins for seventy years, until Cyrus the King of Persia allowed the people, the Hebrew people, to go free and to return to their homeland and rebuild their city and temple, if so desired. And the Hebrews did: they rebuilt the city and they rebuilt the temple — although a rather modest version of the original. But it was the second temple. And it lasted from that time of the release of the Babylonian captivity until about 20 BC, when Herod the Great — that’s the Herod that wants to kill the baby Jesus. But at that time, 20 years before the birth of Christ, Herod was actually a saint. He hadn’t gone insane. He hadn’t been consumed by paranoia and hate and suspicion. But Herod had a problem: he wasn’t actually a Hebrew, nor was he actually a real king, for that matter. He was a puppet figure from the Roman government, placed as king over the Hebrew people, and the Hebrew people didn’t much appreciate that appointment.
So Herod the Great in 20 BC decided that he’d do a little public relations work that would last about 80 years, and they began an expansion and rebuilding of the temple — 20 BC, before the birth of Christ. The public relations campaign didn’t work, because he went back. The temple was still being expanded and renovated at the time of Jesus. An 80-year project: at the time of Jesus, there were about 30 years left to go. It was massive in size. And so, at the time of the events recorded in Luke 21, the temple was still under construction, yet it was an impressive sight. Some new buildings and courtyards being constructed looked massive. Just individual stones that were stacked one upon the other to make the walls, and the foundation stones were huge — weighed tons. But they were beautifully constructed. And then the decorations that began to adorn the temple itself were impressive.
So Luke 21:5: some were talking about the temple, that it was adorned with beautiful stones and votive gifts. You see, in the minds of the Jews, the temple stood as a national symbol — the national symbol of their standing, their unique standing before the Lord God, Yahweh Elohim. Most believed that the temple was an example of what they could do that would please God. It was where they were going to construct a beautiful and ornate temple in which to offer their worship and their praise, their prayers to the Lord God, Yahweh. Tell me, they would bring their offerings and their prayers and their sacrifices to God in compliance with the law, to take great pride in what it is they were doing. You see, unfortunately, they had turned a religion of faith — the one true faith, Abraham’s faith — into a works-righteousness faith, in which they thought they could fulfill the law, and thus do it now in a gorgeous and massive temple.
So the disciples marveled at the sight as they started to make their way out of Jerusalem and up to the Mount of Olives. They marveled at the enormous blocks of stone, and they too had great sense of pride in what was being built by their people. Then Jesus — how you know, lots of pastors have to go and ruin the fun, right? — he interrupts the whole thing. He turns to them and says, “As for these things which you are looking at, the days will come in which there will not be one stone left upon another that will not be torn down.” That was a shocking prediction, prophecy, at the time. Even though the renovation and expansion had a long way to go, Jesus was already telling them that it wasn’t going to last.
At the time of Luke 21, the temple still had 30-plus years of construction to be completed. It was completed, by the way, finally in 64 AD. Not long thereafter, the Romans had had enough of the constant rebellions and political problems that the Hebrews had caused in and around Jerusalem over the decades of Roman rule. So the Romans decided in the late 60s AD to lay siege to the city, and in 70 AD the city fell. The Romans went in with the order to the commanders not to allow one stone to stand upon another.
From the moment the construction began under King Solomon, the temple was due for extinction. The Lord God himself had made the temple and given it a set term, an expiration. The purpose for which the temple and the tabernacle were originally built had passed away. It was no longer valid. It was obsolete, made so by the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, God’s only-begotten Son. With the coming of the promised Messiah, the temple would become simply obsolete — and worse than that, an impediment to the person and the work of Jesus Christ.
So we have fast-forwarded two thousand years, from Abraham and Isaac’s mountainous plot, to the climb of another only-begotten, beloved Son: Jesus Christ, who himself carries his wood on his back to be the sacrificial lamb who takes away the sin of the world. This time there would be no reprieve, no angel of the Lord interceding from heaven to save God the Father’s only-begotten Son, who was being offered as the perfect sacrifice — the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and your sin as well.
In Christ Jesus, the temple and all the bloody sacrifices related to it became obsolete. The temple, after the crucifixion, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, was no longer needed — not for bloody sacrifices at all. The sacrifices of animals were no longer needed, because as Hebrews 9 tells us, he, the Lamb of God, entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctified for purification of the flesh — how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God!
The temple also wasn’t needed any longer for God’s dwelling place. That’s what the Holy of Holies was all about: God himself dwelled among his people behind the curtain in the Holy of Holies. It wasn’t needed anymore. 1 Corinthians 3:16: you are now God’s temple, and God dwells in you. Just as the order of the sacrifice of Isaac was a foreshadowing, a type of the Christ to come, so also the temple was a foreshadowing of the church of the New Testament that was to come. It pointed forward and was connected to the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of all the sacrifices offered for a thousand years on the altar in the temple of Jerusalem. He was the lamb and he was the scapegoat, both at the same time, that gave all the other lambs and all the other scapegoats of the Old Testament period value, meaning, efficacy.
By Luke 21, Jesus was on the verge of rendering the temple obsolete. Jesus’s atoning sacrifice would fulfill all that the temple had done and more: the sacrifices, the festivals, the feasts, the function of the temple as a place for the congregation to meet and where the law and the gospel of the promised Messiah was to be preached and taught. When Jesus died, the curtain in the temple, from top to bottom, was torn in two. The Holy of Holies had escaped, had broken out — no longer resided behind the curtain. That should have told the religious leaders of the day something about Jesus and something about their temple. It didn’t.
This is one of those occasions, however, as they were on their way to the Mount of Olives, that the disciples sort of understood — clearly, Jesus was talking about more than just stones and physical temples. They understood that there were more things attached to what Jesus said. They questioned him: “Teacher, when therefore will these things be?” They use the plural. They know that if something happens to the temple, something great and big and grand and terrible is on its way as well.
The temple was not the only creation that had a shelf life. So just as the temple became obsolete and was destroyed on a specific day and in a specific way, all the creation itself is becoming obsolete and will be destroyed in a specific way on a specific day. The disciples asked for signs so they can be ready for the demise of the temple and whatever else was going to follow. They wanted signs, and Jesus gave them signs. But first he begins with a warning. And you know, priorities, order, sequence — sometimes in the Greek they’re very important. He begins with a warning about religious men, about the church: “See to it that no one leads you astray, that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am he,’ and ‘The time is at hand.'” All kinds of people think they have all kinds of great schemes. They can predict the second coming of Christ. But Jesus says, “Don’t go after them. Don’t buy it. Don’t buy into the false teaching.” For the false teachers, in simple terms: don’t be misled. Remain a part of the true Christian church. It’s the only way you as a Christian will persevere and be rescued in the end. Only the Christ who is the Christ can deliver. No other false future. Only the Christ who is the Christ can keep you safe. Only the Christ who climbed the same mountain as Isaac — only to die for the atonement of the sins of the world — only he can, in fact, do what his word says is going to be done.
Secondly, Jesus teaches here that before the end comes, the ordinary way of life is filled with sin, hardship, war, pestilence, famine, waves, tidal waves, tsunamis, volcanoes — only, every day, the marks of sin will be seen: nation against nation, neighbor against neighbor, family member against family member. It is a description of what has been going on since the day Christ rose from the dead to this very present moment. It’s not some special time of a thousand years. It’s ordinary business: that sin runs its course. Sin has consequences. Sin is all about death. The wages of sin is death. That Bible passage is about our sin and our death, but it also applies to all of creation, which was created for us. It means not only your physical death; it means the death of the whole — the death of the old creation. Matthew 24:33 and following: “When you see all these things, you know that the end is near, at the very gates. Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”
See, after urging Christians to remain faithful to the doctrine that he teaches, Jesus offers up a list of what our life and what this world is going to be like as history moves to its end: unrest, nation against nation, betrayal, and much, much more. Things, you see, will always go from bad to worse. The country isn’t going to get better; it’s going to get worse. The West is not going to get better; it’s going to get worse. The world is not going to get better; it’s going to get worse. And here’s the news: human beings aren’t gods. We can’t stop them. We have all kinds of politicians that think they can micromanage your life — “we can stop whatever’s coming.” No, you can’t. We’re not God. There’s only one God: the Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Things are going to get worse, and anybody who promises otherwise, it’s nonsense. We can’t save the planet. We can’t avert humanity’s destiny.
For Jesus and the Christian, hear this: Jesus sees hardships, persecution, not only as a sign of the end times, but as an opportunity for the Christian — the Christian church — to do its work. He says that first to the disciples, to whom he’s speaking directly, and second to all Christians by virtue of their relationship to him. Persecution, he says in verse 13, will lead to an opportunity for your testimony, for your confession of faith. “For I will give you utterance and wisdom which none of your opponents will be able to resist or refute.” That is: you have my words. I’m giving you my word, the Word of God. And if you have it and use it, and use it to answer, then you have made the most of your opportunities. If you’re going to go about your life in fear about what’s next, in fear of hardship or persecutions that are coming, then you miss the point. Such things, while on the one hand are suffering and death, on the other hand are a great opportunity for the church to continue on its rescue ministry. Such things are opportunities. Colossians 4:5: “Conduct yourselves with wisdom toward outsiders, making the most of the opportunity.”
Jesus is not only offering a historical prophecy about what is going to happen on that mountain. He’s teaching good old-fashioned Bible theology. By way of the law, everything is corrupted by sin, and everything will in the end be laid waste. Just like him — sin and the history of sin in this world will come to its just end, forever. For the unbeliever and the unbelieving world, the end will be a time of unprecedented great terror and panic. People will run to mere mortals and institutions looking for salvation and rescue. As Jesus puts it: “Men fainting with fear and the expectation of things which are coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.” The law is doing what the law is supposed to do, and sin is running its course. But for the Christian, Jesus says, “When these things begin to take place, straighten up, lift up your head, because your redemption is drawing near.”
The unbelieving world will one day be obsolete. The Christian church and all who belong to it will be rescued, redeemed. The old will pass away. The new heaven and the new earth will come to be. The end will usher in the new beginning. Revelation 21:4: “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.” Only the gospel, the Word of God, endures forever. Only the true Christian church, the hidden one, endures forever. Your sins, your failures in this life, even the consequences thereof, will pass away. These things will pass. Jesus exhorts you then, saying, “Straighten up and lift up your head. Be confident and proud, joyful and happy.” Bearing his wooden altar on his back, as he and his father went up on that mountain outside Jerusalem, God the Father did not — Romans 8:32 — spare his own Son, but delivered him over for us all. Oh, how will he not also with him freely give us all things!
So we lift up our heads, confident, not living in terror, not living in fear. We are to be a people like that. We’re not to be complainers. We’re not to be people who are constantly worried about things, being anxious about nothing — Philippians. So raise your head. If you, Christians, look forward to the last day, make the most of your opportunities to speak the gospel. Do the work of your vocation. That’s the epistle lesson this morning. Even though the world itself is being destroyed, tearing itself apart — stand boldly, confidently, uprightly, with head held high, because your redemption is near, for your sins have already been forgiven.
May the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.