Latest / Admonition Podcast / Mark 13 (Lesson 1) - Aaron Cozort - Feb. 04, 2026
Transcript
- 0:00Good evening.
- 0:01It's good to see those out who are able to get out and hopefully by next week we'll be done and rid of all this and not starting another round of it.
- 0:14But take your Bibles if you will and open them to the book of Mark.
- 0:20So we close out Mark chapter 12 and into chapter 13.
- 0:33We'll begin with a word of prayer, then we'll get into our class.
- 0:37Our gracious Father in heaven, we come before your throne, grateful for the day, for its blessings, for the sunshine that we had and for the clearing of the roads that has
- 0:48occurred, though we know many still are uh struggling to get out and do so safely.
- 0:54Lord, we pray that you be with all those who have been impacted by the storms.
- 0:59especially those who have lost power, those who have had damage to their property and to their homes as a result of the winter weather.
- 1:06Lord, we pray that you give them the things that they need and the helping hands around them and the support that they need in order to recover and to do so fully.
- 1:17Lord, we pray that you be with those who live with far worse conditions on a daily basis and struggle through the difficulties of
- 1:26weather and natural occurrences around them.
- 1:30We pray that you give them strength and pray also that they might have peace and uh safety throughout their days.
- 1:38Lord, we pray that you be with this congregation and with its works, with its labor, with its evangelism.
- 1:45We pray that we might always strive to stand for the truth, to speak the truth, to declare what your word says in sincerity and in truth with love.
- 1:56Lord, we pray that we might be loving enough to always tell the truth and speak your word exactly as you gave it.
- 2:05Lord, we pray that you forgive us when we sin and fall short of your glory.
- 2:09We pray for those who deal with the difficulties and the struggles of this life in the physical sense.
- 2:16But we pray especially for those who are dealing with the struggle with sin.
- 2:20We pray that they might have a mindset and a heart willing to repent to come back to you.
- 2:25and to stand firmly in the truth and in the salvation and the grace that you would have them to walk in as they walk in the light as you were in the light.
- 2:35All this we pray and ask in Jesus' name, amen.
- 2:42As you get into chapter 13, remember that you're dealing with a discussion that in every record of that discussion, there's a precursor, there's initial discussion that happens in
- 3:01front of it.
- 3:02You have Matthew 24, which is following of course Matthew 23.
- 3:08In Matthew chapter 23, Jesus gives a series of woes against the Pharisees.
- 3:14He pronounces those woes against the Pharisees to declare them to be exactly what the Old Testament prophets said they would be.
- 3:26You go to Ezekiel's prophecies and declarations concerning the evil shepherds in Israel and the
- 3:36Good shepherd that God would bring as a result of the evil shepherds in Israel and you look at the Old Testament prophecies that Jesus points to in Isaiah chapter 29 The entire
- 3:52context of that is Isaiah 28 29 30 31 in that series of woes where Isaiah pronounces a series of woes against the leadership in Judah the leadership in
- 4:05Samaria, that is the leadership of the southern kingdom of Judah, the northern kingdom of Israel.
- 4:10pronounces woes against both of them to declare that they are doing that which is evil in the eyes of God because they are substituting their pride for reliance on God.
- 4:22They are substituting their doctrines for the Word of God, and they're substituting all of these things because they do not want God.
- 4:34involved in their lives.
- 4:38They want religion.
- 4:39Let's be clear about that.
- 4:40They were very religious, but they had substituted God for idols.
- 4:47Or, sorry, idols for God.
- 4:49And as a result of that, God is, through Isaiah, to pronounce a series of woes, the middle of which Isaiah says that they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, as Jesus gives
- 5:03it in the Greek.
- 5:05They teach for doctrines the commandments of men because they have substituted God's word for their teachings, their traditions.
- 5:15And so they cause people to fear God, not because of what God says, but because of what they say about what God says.
- 5:26And if there's any greater condemnation of denominationalism than that, I don't know what it is.
- 5:32Because denominations,
- 5:34regularly make it an active uh thing to substitute God's word and instead put in their teachings, their traditions, their creeds.
- 5:47You don't need to learn what the scripture actually says.
- 5:50Go learn what the catechisms say.
- 5:54Don't memorize the text of scripture.
- 5:56Go memorize this creed book and go fear God because of what
- 6:02you read in the creed instead of reading what God actually said and then doing what God actually said.
- 6:13Jesus in Matthew chapter 15, Mark chapter 7 draws this point out with a singular example of you don't even take care of your own parents.
- 6:24in spite of the fact that God in the very first Ten Commandments said, you don't do this, I will bring judgment on you.
- 6:33And yet you don't even take care of your parents, and then you claim you can't because of what I say?
- 6:40When I'm the one who told you, I would judge you if you didn't.
- 6:46Now, in Mark chapter 13, Jesus is going to talk about the destruction of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple, and every record of that declaration of the destruction of
- 7:01Jerusalem is set with a precursor of the fact that Israel had denied their allegiance to God.
- 7:13And what Jesus is saying is, because you have held on to men's doctrines instead of God, because you have actively denied what I have told you to do, because if we use Matthew's
- 7:30terminology, I desired as a hen desires to gather her chicks and you would not.
- 7:40then Jesus makes it clear you chose your judgment.
- 7:47when God is going to bring judgment on Israel in the form of Rome in AD 70, Jesus foretelling this before it happens.
- 7:59God has made it clear this wasn't God's decision.
- 8:03This isn't what God wanted.
- 8:05This is what Israel decided because Israel decided to go back on their covenant with God and to deny his authority over them.
- 8:17Fulfilled in, pictured in the parables, Jesus describes the wicked vineyard men, the wicked keepers of the vineyard.
- 8:26kill even the son of the one who owns the vineyard to try and keep it for themselves.
- 8:33There, Israel's the vineyard.
- 8:35The nation is the vineyard.
- 8:37God planted it.
- 8:38God said, this is mine.
- 8:40God said, I will be your God and you will be my people.
- 8:43And they came along and said, we can co-op this and we can keep it for ourselves.
- 8:49And we can kill the son to keep the inheritance.
- 8:53And God said, no, can't.
- 8:55because this is what's gonna happen.
- 8:57Okay?
- 8:59So we get to chapter 13, and you notice as Jesus has spoken concerning the prophecies concerning the son of David, he says, the Lord said to my Lord, verse 36, or chapter 12,
- 9:14sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool.
- 9:20That is a direct application.
- 9:24not to the foreign nations, not to the people who had denied the existence of God that Paul writes about in Romans chapter one.
- 9:34That is a direct application to Israel.
- 9:37They made themselves the enemy of the Son of God.
- 9:43And God says, you wait, you sit in your seat, you sit as the head of the kingdom.
- 9:51and you wait and watch and I will bring them down.
- 9:56Okay?
- 9:59Now, does it mean that God will ultimately do that to all the enemies of Christ and his kingdom?
- 10:07Sure.
- 10:09Israel's ultimate fate is not gonna be different than anybody else's that tries to war against Christ.
- 10:17They're all going to fall.
- 10:18That's the point of the book of Revelation.
- 10:20is that Israel fell.
- 10:24God prophesied it.
- 10:25Rome's gonna fall.
- 10:27God prophesied it.
- 10:28Guess what?
- 10:29The point is everyone else who does the same thing, all gonna end up the same way.
- 10:35And yet, the direct application to the prophecy of David is in some foreign nation.
- 10:46It's not what Israel imagined.
- 10:48They saw that.
- 10:49They read that in the Old Testament.
- 10:50thought Rome is going to bow to us.
- 10:56And God says, no, you are going to bow to me.
- 11:03So we find here in chapter 13, then as he, Jesus, went out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, teacher, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here?
- 11:18The disciples...
- 11:22Had the nature that a lot of us have, if you've ever traveled much, but you grew up in a rural or poor environment, you grew up in a very different way than maybe very opulent,
- 11:39very rich places in the world, and you go and you walk to some of these places, or you travel to some of these places, and you start looking at the structures.
- 11:49You start looking at the opulence.
- 11:52You start seeing like gold just laid over everything, just sitting there.
- 11:58You start seeing all of the things that men can construct to declare their own greatness.
- 12:06And you start going, wow, look at this.
- 12:09Now, modern days, you would have probably had the disciples with the camera phone with the temple in the background going, hey, look.
- 12:19And they're from Galilee.
- 12:21They're fishermen.
- 12:24The gold they interacted with every day was the little they could get to pay for their food for the day.
- 12:35And yet, here they are standing in front of this temple.
- 12:41And so, I imagine the way I think about this, and this isn't the text of scripture, this is the way I think about it.
- 12:49I think about the disciples probably going, hey, you remember what we read in Exodus about how the...
- 12:57uh the tabernacle was made and about the carving and the things that were done with the tabernacle and then we read in the Old Testament about Solomon and his intricate work in
- 13:09the temple and that which he built and this may not compare but look at what you have here that Herod has done for Israel to try and gain favor with Israel and he built this temple
- 13:23and it was spectacular!
- 13:26It was the closest thing they had to the Old Testament Scriptures.
- 13:30And I imagine that probably the disciples had it in that frame of mind, not just glorying in the temple, but this is what they had been taught about.
- 13:40This is what they had studied about.
- 13:42And here they have the closest thing they have to it.
- 13:48Because they're showing the stones, the things that make up the temple.
- 13:55That's their heritage.
- 13:56That's their connection to the Old Testament.
- 13:58We should probably not just assume that they're like, wow, look at this, this must be worth so much money.
- 14:09oh That's not the perception you ever get of the disciples.
- 14:13That's not the idea of the type of person that Jesus said, hey, you're gonna walk after me.
- 14:19by the way, we're not gonna have a place to lay our head, we're not gonna have this, we're not gonna have that.
- 14:24That's not the description you read about the disciples.
- 14:29So in my mind, I think we're there looking at this from Old Testament, the connection to God and the intricacy of the things that were done, which are even in a sense glorified in
- 14:45the Old Testament text.
- 14:47They talk about the skill of the workers and the people who were able to construct these things and they did it out of a desire to glorify God.
- 14:56don't think that's necessarily why Herod did it, but they see, teacher, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here.
- 15:06And Jesus answered and said to him, do you see these great buildings?
- 15:14Not one stone shall be left upon another that shall not be thrown down.
- 15:22as they are focused on the skill and the craftsmanship and the tradesmanship that were able to construct these glorious structures.
- 15:39uh You can bet that these type of structures didn't exist in Galilee.
- 15:47When Philip said, can any good thing come out of Nazareth?
- 15:50He wasn't saying anything, but they got great tradesmen.
- 15:55This was unlike anything that they had at home.
- 15:59And they're looking at it and Jesus said, don't glory in that.
- 16:04Don't glory in the construction.
- 16:06Don't glory in the grander of the temple.
- 16:11Because what I'm telling you is not one stone will be left upon another.
- 16:22And there's this reminder that what we see as solid and safe and guaranteed in this life is that which God says, yeah, there's no safety there.
- 16:40There's no assurance there.
- 16:42If you put your hope in that, you're putting it in the wrong place.
- 16:46Turn back to Isaiah chapter 30.
- 17:00Hmm
- 17:04woe to the rebellious children," he says in chapter 30 verse 1, says the Lord, "'who take counsel, but not of me, and who devise plans, but not of my spirit, that they may add sin
- 17:18to sin.'" Now, there's a thought pattern here that is worth considering.
- 17:29When David determined to build the temple,
- 17:35who decided that it was a good idea?
- 17:42David did.
- 17:44Now David ran the idea past who?
- 17:50Nathan the prophet.
- 17:53And who determined and told David that it was a good idea?
- 17:59Nathan the prophet.
- 18:02Do you notice the connection?
- 18:04Here's a national leader talking to a religious leader, neither of which is talking to who?
- 18:14God.
- 18:17Now, the difference between David, Nathan, and the people of Isaiah's day, the national and religious leaders of Isaiah's day, is that Nathan and David both had a heart willing
- 18:28to be obedient to God when God spoke.
- 18:34but you move forward to the days of Isaiah, and they're committing the same transgression, not caring what the Lord says.
- 18:45They don't have a heart to repent.
- 18:47Notice what he says.
- 18:48He says that they may add sin to sin who walk to go down to Egypt and have not asked my advice to strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh and to trust in the shadow of
- 19:01Egypt.
- 19:01Therefore the strength of Pharaoh shall be your shame and trust in the shadow of Egypt shall be your humiliation for his princes are at Zohan and his ambassadors came to Haines.
- 19:13They were all ashamed of a people who could not benefit them or be help or benefit, but a shame and also a reproach.
- 19:21The burden against the beasts of the south through the land of trouble and anguish, uh from which came the lioness and the lion, the viper and the fiery flying serpent.
- 19:32They carry their riches on the backs of young donkeys and their treasures on the humps of camels to a people who shall not profit.
- 19:40for the Egyptians shall help in vain and to no purpose therefore I have called have called her Rahab Hemshebet." Now, as you go through this text Isaiah is talking about what's
- 19:54going to happen when Nebuchadnezzar brings the Babylonians down from the north
- 20:00and Israel is going to turn around and go, let's go to the south and make an alliance with Egypt because the Egyptians hate the Babylonians and we'll get them to fight one another
- 20:10and the Egyptians will protect us.
- 20:15God's telling Israel, you see that structure down there that looks real sound?
- 20:20You see that nation down there that looks real powerful?
- 20:24elsewhere in the text here in this context he says they're going to be like a reed that when you lean on it it shatters and punctures and goes right into your hand.
- 20:34injures you instead of helping you.
- 20:36You were looking for a walking stick and what you got instead was an injury because what you saw looked like strength until you leaned on
- 20:49A lot of us who perhaps at times in our lives have gone hiking in the woods or in the mountains and thought, you know what, I need a good walking stick.
- 20:59And so you grab the nearest thing that's laying on the ground that looks stout, it's big and it's thick and it looks like it'll hold you.
- 21:07And then you put your weight on it and it just crumbles.
- 21:09Cause what?
- 21:10It's rotted in the inside.
- 21:11Okay?
- 21:15Here's the picture of what Christ is saying about Israel.
- 21:20You see the stones?
- 21:22they look strong.
- 21:24They're rotted on the inside.
- 21:28They are rotten to the core spiritually.
- 21:33And because of that, all the assurance that you have in this grand structure that looks like it will stand the test of time, it will be here until generation after generation
- 21:45after generation comes because they've...
- 21:48It's been standing for generations.
- 21:50Surely it will continue.
- 21:53Crisis.
- 21:56You go over to Mark chapter 9 and verse 1, and Christ will tell them that some of those people right then would not taste death till they see the kingdom of God come with power.
- 22:07But there's more to that context.
- 22:10There's a judgment of Israel in view in the kingdom coming to power.
- 22:17And here Jesus says, in essence, you're going to still be around.
- 22:23You're going to be able to walk right here.
- 22:27and you won't see a temple.
- 22:30He goes on to say,
- 22:34Now, or verse 3, now is he sat on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple.
- 22:38So, in your mind's eye, imagine here's the temple mount, then there's a valley, then there's the Mount of Olives.
- 22:48And as you're staring from the Mount of Olives, you can see across to the temple.
- 22:54So, here they are, before they, initially as the scene open, as the chapter open, they're right there next to the temple.
- 23:01Now they've left the city, they've gone out to the Mount of Olives.
- 23:04Jesus is now looking back on the temple.
- 23:11And Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately.
- 23:17You kind of have the core group among the disciples.
- 23:22Peter, James, John, Andrew.
- 23:24By the way, how are these people related to one another?
- 23:31physically speaking.
- 23:35Peter and Andrew, brothers.
- 23:37James and John, brothers.
- 23:39And by all indications of the scripture text, cousins.
- 23:42eh Their family.
- 23:46They also make up the core of the disciples, of the apostles, where Jesus quite often when he goes off by himself, three of them, excluding Andrew, are quite often the ones who go
- 23:59with him.
- 23:59eh
- 24:01So they come to him and they ask him privately, tell us when will these things be and what will be the sign when all these things will be fulfilled?
- 24:12Their direct question, by the way, Mark only includes two of the questions, but their direct question is about what he said when they were standing next to the temple.
- 24:26And he said, not one stone.
- 24:31will be left upon another.
- 24:33But furthermore, you cannot separate that discussion from the prior discussion of the Pharisees being judged and Jerusalem being judged.
- 24:50This was a direct prophecy of judgment against the religious leadership, against the city, against the temple.
- 25:01They want to know ah when, how, why is this going to occur?
- 25:12Jesus 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.
- 25:26Jesus first addresses the authority.
- 25:33The discussion about when doesn't matter until you realize that you're not allowed to listen to everybody who comes along thinking they know when.
- 25:45that you don't go with every new idea that gets spouted by someone who thinks they've got some insight into what's going on, let alone the ones who come saying, I'm the Christ and
- 25:57I'm coming and here we go.
- 26:03It is worth realizing that as the days of 87 approached, 8068, 8069, and even prior to that back in around 8066, you would begin to see Jewish riots.
- 26:22You would begin to see, because Rome is, that period of time, Rome is in upheaval.
- 26:27from around AD 63, Nero dies around AD 62, from 63, 64, 65, you have a period of about two years where you have, I think, four Caesars that come to power and are gone in two years.
- 26:46And finally, you have Vespasian who is going to come to the throne, the father of Titus, and he is going to come to the throne in the midst of quelling
- 26:57Jewish riots and rebellions.
- 27:01Leading up to these events, the Jews are going to have people coming forth saying, we're leading a rebellion against Rome and we're going to be victorious.
- 27:12And Jesus says, oh no they're not.
- 27:15Don't throw your lot in with them.
- 27:18Do not join their party.
- 27:22Do not give your strength to them.
- 27:27because they're not me.
- 27:29And ultimately what is going to occur is while it looks like Jerusalem and the Israelites are going to begin to get their own control over their own nation, ultimately what's going
- 27:41to be is their own destruction.
- 27:44So Titus and Vespasian are going to come with the Roman army.
- 27:47They are going to come to the gates of Jerusalem.
- 27:52They are going to besiege Jerusalem and then another emperor is going to fall.
- 27:59Vespasian is going to go back to Rome to take over the empire.
- 28:04Titus and the army is going to pull back from Jerusalem during which all the Christians leave.
- 28:13And you're gonna see why.
- 28:14in the text because as Vespasian gets control over the civil war going on in Rome, he is going to redirect all of the attention to the Jews.
- 28:28Because if you have a war at home, the best way to get civil rest at home is to find a different enemy to fight and get everybody together to go fight that enemy.
- 28:44Titus is going to come back in AD 70 and he is going to, as the son of Caesar now, he is going to wipe Jerusalem off the map.
- 28:52Okay?
- 28:54Keep that in mind as you're reading these words because every bit of this is Old Testament terminology couched in the fall of a nation.
- 29:07And these are the words that tell you what the Old Testament prophets had said and what is ultimately coming to pass in the form of Jerusalem in 8070.
- 29:21But Jesus first warned them, be careful of the authority you follow.
- 29:24Anybody claiming to be me, anybody claiming to be the Messiah, anybody who's leading a revolt saying we're going to overthrow Rome and we're going to again establish national
- 29:35sovereignty, don't follow them.
- 29:39They're not me.
- 29:41He goes on to say, for many will come in my name saying I am he and will deceive many.
- 29:48But when you hear of wars,
- 29:50and rumors of wars do not be troubled for such things must happen, but the end is not yet.
- 29:56Now, when you come to this text, you're going to find people, especially if you listen to general popular opinion, you're gonna find people going end means end of time.
- 30:12And you must be insistent on letting the text dictate what the text means.
- 30:18Wait a minute, did it say end of time?
- 30:21Or did say the end?
- 30:23Now the end of what has previously been discussed in the direct context?
- 30:35Jerusalem?
- 30:37What else?
- 30:38There's three things.
- 30:40The temple?
- 30:43and the authority of the Pharisees and the religious leaders.
- 30:47Okay?
- 30:49The religious leaders, the temple, and Jerusalem.
- 30:54Those three things are the immediate context.
- 30:58And until you find something in the text that redirects the attention away from the immediate discussion to something else, you must interpret the end to be in view of the
- 31:12immediate context.
- 31:14and the end of time is not in view.
- 31:19Certainly not in the book of Mark.
- 31:21We'll leave the discussion of Matthew for another time.
- 31:24He says, but when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be troubled for such things must happen, but the end is not yet.
- 31:34For nation will rise up against nation and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be earthquakes in various places.
- 31:43and there will be famines and troubles.
- 31:46These are the beginning of sorrows.
- 31:52Now you can go back to history, we could outline every single one of these, but we won't for the second time, and you can see in the 8060s a series of events.
- 32:05You have national troubles inside Rome.
- 32:09You have earthquakes going on that totally disrupted many of the things in the Roman Empire.
- 32:17You have event after event after event all wrapped up right there.
- 32:21in the 80s, 60s and beginning leading up to 80, 70.
- 32:26Which by the way, have you heard of any earthquakes in the last 20 years?
- 32:32Any massive ones?
- 32:34Any nation affecting ones?
- 32:38Is that terribly abnormal?
- 32:41No, not in history at all.
- 32:44It's not abnormal at all.
- 32:46I tell you what, I know what's been terribly abnormal.
- 32:49All the wars, right?
- 32:52You know, I think back to my childhood and every war that I heard about on television and every war we were never told about on the news that now only as an adult you start reading
- 33:04history and you start going, wait a minute, the ones that we were told about were smaller than the ones we were never told about.
- 33:13Like, I don't remember all the times Mao showed up on the news.
- 33:17There's a number of people that Mao killed in China just dwarfed everything that ever happened in Vietnam.
- 33:23But where was it on news?
- 33:24It wasn't on the news.
- 33:25Why?
- 33:25didn't affect.
- 33:28We weren't there.
- 33:29We weren't party to it.
- 33:31But what's the point?
- 33:32This is the normal state of humanity.
- 33:37But when people start listening and they start seeing and they start...
- 33:41interpreting the times, they're saying, wait a minute, look at this.
- 33:46Wait a minute, look at this.
- 33:48Well, what about this?
- 33:51And they start trying to formulate some sort of grand idea about the end of time.
- 33:59Jesus said, people are going to start telling you things and they're going to start troubling you with ideas and they're going to start giving you indications that they know
- 34:07what's coming.
- 34:09So I'm arming you in advance.
- 34:11I'm telling you in advance what's coming and what to pay attention to and what not to.
- 34:17Walker.
- 34:34Absolutely.
- 34:35We are incredibly myopic in history.
- 34:38Every time that we're living through it, it's different than every other generation that's lived through the same thing.
- 34:47This happened in the 1910s when World War I was occurring.
- 34:53You can go back and look at the religious writers of the time and they're saying end of times coming, end of times coming, end of times, Christ is going to return any moment now.
- 35:01And then you skip forward 20 years and in the 1930s and Hitler rises, end of times coming, end of times coming, all these things.
- 35:09They're always pointing back to the book of Revelation and the Matthew 24.
- 35:13And they're saying, look, look, it's happening.
- 35:17When in reality, Jesus is saying, what I'm telling you is to ignore all those people.
- 35:25pay attention to who I tell you to pay attention to.
- 35:29Now notice what else.
- 35:31He says, these are the beginning of sorrows.
- 35:36And this terminology here is birth pangs.
- 35:39Okay?
- 35:42For the person in the room who's recently had a child.
- 35:47When those physical tremors start occurring, you start realizing that
- 35:54The time is approaching.
- 35:58Jesus says, yeah, you're gonna see it.
- 36:02You're gonna know what's coming, but you're going to know because God told you what's coming.
- 36:09Not because of all these rumors and all of these things that are going on around you and being spread.
- 36:15He says, these are the beginnings of sorrow, but watch out for yourselves, for they will deliver you up to councils and you will be beaten in the synagogues.
- 36:28You will be brought before rulers and kings for my sake for a testimony to them.
- 36:35Jesus tells his disciples, in between now and this time of judgment that I'm talking about, you're coming under fire.
- 36:49And you're going to come under fire from the exact same people who are going to claim that they are the salvation for Israel.
- 36:59You're going to be brought under judgment.
- 37:02You're going to be brought before the Gentile kings.
- 37:05You're going to be brought and you're going to be beaten and you're going to be...
- 37:09and all of this is going to happen to you at the hand of Israel.
- 37:16when you go look at Paul's missionary journeys.
- 37:20Was it the Gentile soldiers who were constantly trying to kill Paul?
- 37:28No.
- 37:29It was the Jewish religious leaders.
- 37:36Paul in Jerusalem, having been arrested, found refuge among the Gentile soldiers from the Jews who wanted to kill him.
- 37:49And that's exactly what Jesus tells them is coming.
- 37:55All of this was a picture to help the disciples realize Israel is not your future.
- 38:08that when Christ came to establish a kingdom, it was not the kingdom of Israel.
- 38:15When Jesus came to establish His kingdom, yes, He is the Son of David.
- 38:23Yes, He is going to reign on the throne forever, exactly as the Old Testament prophesied.
- 38:31but not on national Israel's terms.
- 38:35Not on a nation of Israel.
- 38:38So Paul will write in the book of Romans, they are not all Israel who are of Israel.
- 38:44His emphasis, his point is, if they would be obedient to God, they would be Israel.
- 38:49They would be the descendants of Abraham.
- 38:51They would be the children of Abraham.
- 38:53They would be the ones who inherited not only his flesh and his blood, but his faith.
- 39:00but they're not.
- 39:03Paul would write over in Romans chapter 10,
- 39:11Romans chapter 10 and in verse 1.
- 39:15Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved." Now, Paul's writing this maybe around 51, 52 AD, 20 years before Jerusalem's gone.
- 39:34And Paul says, I cannot express to you beyond saying God is my witness, if you go throughout the rest of the text, that my desire for Israel is that they might be saved.
- 39:49He says, for I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge, for being ignorant of God's righteousness and seeking to establish their own
- 39:59righteousness, have not submitted.
- 40:03to the righteousness of God.
- 40:09and that phrase in chapter 10 verse 4.
- 40:14tells you Jerusalem has to fall.
- 40:18The temple has to crumble.
- 40:21Nothing will be left.
- 40:23Notice what he says, for Christ is the end of the law.
- 40:31Would the law end if the temple remained?
- 40:35Would the priesthood end if the temple remained?
- 40:38No.
- 40:42Paul is foreshadowing this, making it clear that the Old Testament had declared that this was going to happen, that this should not be a surprise.
- 40:55because as Israel is judged the question is going to be, well wait a minute, I thought Israel was God's people.
- 41:07Is God gone?
- 41:08Does God not care about his people anymore?
- 41:13Do remember what Moses argued to the Lord when the Lord told Moses on Mount Sinai that he needed to get down from the mountain because God was going to wipe the people out and
- 41:24start over again?
- 41:27What did Moses argue?
- 41:34On behalf of Israel.
- 41:43Absolutely.
- 41:46Moses made the plea before God, if you do this, the nations around are going to look at this and say you were powerless to deliver them, so you killed them.
- 42:01Moses argues that the world is going to observe this action, and the world is going to declare that either God is not just, or God is impotent.
- 42:16while God is saying, know, Moses from these rocks, I can raise up another people like Israel.
- 42:26all these centuries down the road, you find God saying, that rebellious people that never would submit to me, never would be faithful to me.
- 42:44their time has run out and my long suffering is over.
- 42:51All right, we'll pick up here in Mark chapter.