1418 - "Jesus with his disciples on the Mt of Olives" Matthew 24-25

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Each weekday, Dr. Crisp will be discussing biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Tune in daily to start your day right and deepen your understanding of how to better walk the way and enjoy the journey. Here's your host, Dr. Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Welcome to On the Way. This is Tony Crisp, and this is Podcast 1418. We're still counting down. Passover is just a few hours away, literally just hours away. A couple of days and Jesus knows what's going to happen. And so he's beginning to spend more and more concentrated time with his disciples. After all, he wants to impart to them every bit of knowledge that he possibly can. But he knows that it's going to take the Holy Spirit of God not just being around them and with them, but being inside of them to help them to remember all things whatsoever He has commanded them. Now that's what he said to them in John chapter fourteen. Remember, Jesus said when the Holy Spirit has come, the comforter, the paraklatos, the one called alongside to help you, he will bring all of these things to your remembrance whatsoever I've commanded you, and as you know over and over again in the closing hours of Jesus' life, the Bible says throughout the four gospels that they didn't know what Jesus was talking about, but later on they did when they remembered what he said and what he did, and then it all made sense because you see the Spirit of God was going to come and live inside of them forever, and because of that, then everything's going to make sense. Does this sound familiar? You can read the Bible and read the Bible, but it will never become real to you until you give your heart and life to Jesus Christ. And when you do that, that Spirit of God who inspired the book to be written will come and live in your heart, and he will show you exactly what it means. And so we have seen Jesus as he has been at Bethany, He's made his way in to the day of the presentation of the lambs. He has confronted the scribes and the Pharisees. He has told them the truth. He loved them enough to tell them the truth. And now we are on the Mount of Olives. The Mount of Olives at the end of Jesus' life and his return, that is, the end of his earthly life and his first coming, and the beginning of his resurrected life before the ascension, all of that, the Mount of Olives played a critical role. And according to the prophet Zechariah, when Messiah comes to set up his kingdom here on this earth, and he will do that, then it will be the Mount of Olives where his feet will touch down, and he will split the Mount of Olives into, and He will step over into the temple arena, and He will there rule for a thousand years. Now that's what the Bible says, whether you believe that, don't believe it, whether you try to explain it away or not, that's between you and God. But as for me, I'm gonna take the Bible as it's written, because if I don't take the kingdom of God literally, where there is a messianic age to where Jesus reigns on the earth, then I'm going to have to allegorize and symbolize and spiritualize at least a fourth of the Bible, and probably a third of the prophetic writings. But why would I do that? When we look at the prophecies concerning his first coming, and it says that he will literally be of the tribe of Judah, he will be part of the Davidic line, that he will be born in Bethlehem, he will come up as a Nazarene, and he will literally make the lame to walk, the blind to see, the mute to speak, the deaf to hear. He will literally raise the dead, he will literally die on a cross, he literally would say everything that the prophets prophesied that Messiah would say when he's on the cross. All of those things were literally fulfilled. Why would I think that when it comes to the second coming of Jesus, that everything is all of a sudden going to be just spiritual because it fits into my theological grid? In just biblical sense, that doesn't make sense. And so in chapter 24, chapter 25, you have Jesus on the Mount of Olives, and his disciples are coming to him privately. That's what it says in verse 3. And they were saying to him, Master, when will all of these things come about? Lord, when is all this going to happen? And what will be the signs of your coming? Will there be a sign to your coming to the end of the age? All of these things that we hear preached about over and over again. And Jesus talked to them about all the bad things that could happen before he came, and there's going to be a lot. As a matter of fact, in verse 15, he talks about the same thing Daniel talked about, the abomination of desolation. Throughout the writings of the Apostle Paul, he talks about the man of sin that will come, and that will do what no man has ever done before, because he'll be indwelt by Satan himself. And the great days of crushing, as a matter of fact, Jesus calls it the Megalithipsis, the great crushing. We translate it the Great Tribulation. But this is an amazing time, and all of that is in chapter twenty-four. Jesus talks to them about the coming of the Son of Man, and in verse twenty nine he says, Immediately after the crushing of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the heaven, and the powers of the heaven will be shaken. Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven. Is all of that just spiritual? I mean, is that none of this is going to happen or it's not going to happen the way it says? The Bible says it will be as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the coming of the Son of Man. That talks about the suddenness of it, the quickness of it. And then Jesus tells parables about the talents and about the foolish and the wise virgins, and then how he will come and he will judge the nations and where he will judge them. And it's not until chapter twenty six that we get into the Passover Seder itself. But I want you to understand something. That Jesus talked with them about what's coming up because that was what was closest to his heart. Because he knew he was going away. He had told them that over and over again, and in the place where they had the Passover meal, he told that's what almost all of the conversation was about, as recorded in the Gospel of John, is the fact that he was going away and how they were to look forward to the paraclete, the Spirit of God, the person of God Himself. Jesus would come and live inside of them. You see, Christ in us is the only hope, expectation of glory that we have. That's what Paul said when he talked to the Colossians. And so when you turn to the gospel of Luke, Jesus leads them out as far as Bethany, where Lazarus was, where he spent so much time, and he lifted up his hands and blessed them, and it came to pass when he blessed them, he was parted from them and carried up into heaven, and they worshipped him and then returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple, praising God and blessing God. Now that's the way the gospel of Luke ends. But the book of Acts, which is the sequel to the Gospel of Luke, it carries on the rest of the story, and there they are on the Mount of Olives again. After forty days, Jesus has now already had the Passover meal, he's already been betrayed, he's already been before the Sinhedron. He has gone before Pontius Pilate against Herod Antipas back to Pilate, and then he's gone to a cross. He's died to pay for our sins, he's been in the grave, now he's alive again, and after forty days they end up again on the Mount of Olives. And the Bible says they were talking about the same thing when he would come again. And they ask him, I mean, after all, there they were on the Mount of Olives where the Messiah is going to rule. They know that Jesus is the Messiah now. They know that he's conquered death. They know everything that was predicted has happened concerning his first coming. And being assembled together with them, he commanded them to wait for the promise of the Holy Spirit, because they were going to be baptized into one body by the Holy Spirit of God. And the scripture says that while they were there in that sacred mountain where Zechariah said the Messiah would come, they asked the question, Lord, will you restore at this time, this very time where we are right now? Here we are, here you are. We're your disciples. You said we would rule, we would do this, that, and other. So here we are. Is this when you're going to restore the kingdom to Israel? Verse seven of Acts one says that Jesus said unto them, It's not for you to know those times, those seasons which the Father has in his own authority, but I've got a job for you to do. I've got an assignment. You're going to receive a divine enablement, an empowerment from heaven. God is going to come and live in your life. I'm going to be with you till the end of the age, and you're going to be my witnesses here in Jerusalem, in Judea, Samaria until the end of the earth. Now the reason I'm talking to you about this is because the reason Jesus came was to die. To die as a substitute for our sins, to be raised from the dead, to ascend back to his Father, and then come back one day to rule and reign on this earth. You see, I'm not talking about the rapture of the church. I'm not talking about something that was a mysterion, a mystery, something that was hidden in the heart of God until the time that he revealed it to the apostle Paul. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about what the prophet Zachariah said, that after the tribulation, after everything has happened, Jesus is going to come back to this earth and he is going to defeat the enemy. He's going to bind the devil for a thousand years, and he is going to rule and reign on this planet. You say, Well, I don't believe that. Well, that's what the Bible says. And you've got some verbal gymnastics and some theological gymnastics to answer for if you don't believe that. Why don't you just take the Bible as it's written? If it's just in plain language historical narrative, whether it's written in the future or whether it's written in the past, if God says it, it's going to happen just like he says it's going to happen. And prophecy, as Tim LaHay said, is nothing more, nothing less than history written in advance. It is the future that God says this is going to happen. This is the way that it's going to happen. And when God says it's going to happen somehow, you can take that to the bank, it's going to happen just like that. And so Jesus told them what's going to happen, and he even gave them signs of when these things would come about and what to look for. He told them what to watch out for. All of that just a couple of days before it was time for him to eat the last Passover meal with them on the earth in his body of flesh, that he would ultimately die in that body and he would be raised from the dead. Man, oh man, what a journey we are on. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for letting us in on it. I pray that you'll stick with me just a couple more days as we look forward to what God's going to do in the days ahead. For on the way, this is Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

Thanks for listening to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Tune in every weekday for information on biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Fridays are for your questions. Email your questions to questions at TonyCrisp.org, then just listen for your question to be answered on Friday's podcast. That's Questions at TonyC R I S P dot org. Thanks for listening and have a blessed day on the way.