Neither Path Leads Out

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[0:00] the sermon and our reading today is from Mark chapter 13 verses 1 through 8. This is number 4 in our sermon series called The Vineyard. Here's a quick recap, okay. Week 1 we talked about Abraham and God's covenant with him that all the people of the world would be blessed by Abraham and of course that these covenants that God made failed over time because they depended on human effort And time and again, you saw moments of compliance with the covenant and then moments of falling away from the human responsibility in the covenant. Then the second week, we looked at the parable of the vineyard in Isaiah chapter 5, where God made a case against his people saying he would take away the protection that was given to the vineyard, which was Israel, and other things, you know, something else would would happen, that somebody else would trample over the vineyard in essence, and predicting there that God was going to remove his protection from the people of Israel. They were going to be taken away to a foreign land, which came true. But then, of course, they did return. Last week, we had Jesus telling the parable of the vineyard of the New Testament. And last week, we had it, we just had Adam reread it from a different passage, because it's in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Last week, we read

[1:21] read it from a different, we read it from Mark. This week we're reading it, we read it first from Luke, and then we're going to follow up in Mark today from a follow-on to the parable. So today is what this looks like in that moment in history, and what is being taken away. Because in the parable of the tenants, or the vineyard, sometimes it's called the parable of the vineyard, sometimes it's called the parable of the wicked tenants. It all works. Jesus said, the vineyard will be taken away from you and given to those who will produce the fruit that is required. And I just want to remind you of, you know, I had these, I did, I promised. So, you know, it's like God was expecting this in Isaiah and he got this tiny little pumpkin, but these are so close in size that I thought I would do something different. And so I'm going to put these back here somewhere. And so this is a pretty big pine cone. So maybe God, but actually I think this is what God got. But this, this is what God expected. Can you believe the size of this pine cone? Isn't this great? This is on my desk. There's a secret place about a half a mile from here that has a tree that drops these all the time. Sometimes I drive past it on my way home and I collect them because nobody else.

[2:36] They're just laying there on the ground. And it's part of a public park, so I feel entitled, I guess. But isn't this great? And there's bigger ones than this. But this is, look, it's the size of my head. This is a big pine cone. So I feel like this is better. And I was looking for an even smaller pine cone, but I couldn't find one. So I thought, what if it came with a tiny little pine cone and then this giant pine cone? But, you know, this is what God expected, but this is what God got.

[3:00] I'll put those back there as an object lesson. And they'll just sit there the whole time. Oh, that's kind of nice. Okay, that works out. So that was from Isaiah 5, actually. so today what this looks like in that moment of history where Jesus is going to flesh out even more in this dialogue that he has with his disciples about the temple that pastor Victoria mentioned what why is it going to be taken away why is this going to happen and then finally next week just to give you a heads up the apostle Paul is going to tell us what it looks like for us to be faithful workers in the vineyard so Paul is going to give us that information next week so we have that to look forward to. So today we're looking at the next chapter after the parable of the vineyard. In Mark it's in chapter 12. Today we're in chapter 13. So this all follows along right on the same day. Everything is happening on the same day here. The parable of the vineyard is told and then the disciples have a dialogue with Jesus about the temple. And Jesus makes a strong prediction about the temple which we're going to see. Now here's a quick background on the temple. Sometimes we call it the Second Temple or we call it the Temple of Herod the Great.

[4:09] It was a huge temple. In fact at the time it ranked among all the wonders of the Roman world because of how big it was. It wasn't just the building. It was big. It was set on top of a high terrace that that had been sort of shaped out of giant stones, limestone stones. They don't even know how they got moved there. It rivals the Great Pyramids almost in its architectural prowess. so this large terrace was made and filled in with soil and rock and things like that and on top of this large terrace which would be easily about the size of a football field or larger quite large for that time was set the temple and all the temple courts around it a portico or sometimes called Solomon's porch there's a set of colonnades that were covered and people would be in there but as you got closer into the middle you found this ornate temple parts of it were covered with gold Only certain people could go into the temple. Obviously, there was the court of the Gentiles. You get further in, the court of the Jews. Even further in, you know, there's just parts like the Holy of Holies where only one person could go once a year. And so it was a very elaborate structure. Now, how did they, how did Jerusalem manage to get this amazing, because this costs money, right?

[5:22] You think about it. This costs money, and it's a small country. They didn't really have the resources. sources. Well, it turns out that Herod the Great, who is a very fascinating character, but also a horrible person, it was important to him, because he really wasn't Jewish at all, but he wanted to rule the country of Israel, that he wanted to make himself seem as good a friend as possible with the Jewish people. He wasn't Jewish at all. He was Nabataean, so that was from a culture just a few few hundred miles away, maybe about 100 miles away. So he did two things. One was he married the granddaughter of some very famous Jewish royal family, the Hasmoneans. We could look that up later. So he married her. I don't know if she was so interested in it, but he had power, and he thought by marrying her, I can kind of marry into this Jewish royal family, and that had her killed and the son that she had with him. So he, it didn't work, you know, like he had problems. He had problems in his own family. So he wasn't a great person. And this attempt to be Jewish by marriage lasted for a while until it didn't last, right? The other thing he did was he said, I'm going to build them this temple because if I build them this temple and I'm the

[6:42] one, you know, that they know built this temple for them, then they'll have to love me and accept up me and so on and so he spent time lobbying the emperor in Rome he knew where the money was it wasn't local so he would go you know he would send emissaries to Rome saying look this is an unruly bunch in the land they're they're always looking for a fight if you send us money right we'll build this temple for them that will pacify the masses so to speak we'll keep them in line and so that That was the calculus. That was the calculus that he was going for. And so a lot of money poured in. This temple was built. Of course, the temple itself was able to create a lot of wealth because they would charge people to come in. You'd have to buy animals there to make a sacrifice. You couldn't use Roman money to do it because it had the face of the emperor on it, so you had to exchange it for temple money. And everywhere along the line, somebody was taking a cut, including the priests and all these other people. And who else got a cut of it at the very top? right? So the emperor got a cut of it, too. So the whole system was corrupt, but the idea is, let's build this temple that will cement me as the premier Jewish Israelite king,

[7:55] even though he wasn't, you know, ethnically Jewish at all. So the thing, though, was he obtained the funds for it. He directed the construction of it, which meant he had control over what happened in it. That meant that whoever was going to be the high priest and officiate over all the ceremonies at the temple was beholden to him. He got to choose who the high priest was. You kind of get what's going on. And so if you wanted to be the high priest and work at the temple and have a bit of a following yourself, you had to compromise yourself. You had to skim off the top. You had to give some to him. You had to sort of, you had to tell everybody, Herod is a good king. It was obvious everybody that Herod was a terrible king, but you had to say Herod is a good king. He's our guy We got a little let's not you know All the other people out there like the zealots and the people who want to oversee. Let's just keep the status quo Let's keep it the way it is. This is good. Let's this is good, you know, so you had this Priestly class that was beholden to Herod and was beholden to keeping things the way they were they were compromised by money They were compromised because they wanted to control they wanted to be the ones that were in charge of the ceremonies at the temple

[9:07] so there's a whole group of jewish society that was compromised by the romans and by herod and by this whole system and by wealth you get kind of get that so that the temple which theoretically should have been this place of true and pure worship of god was an incredibly conflicted area of compromise and so that was one response to the temple was uh let's just go all in on this we'll just kind of go oh well you know we have to pay the we have to pay all these taxes to use it we have to give up control to use it we have to say Herod is a great guy to use it so that was one group of the population there was a whole nother group of that that looked at all that and said that's completely wrong that's completely messed up so you have a group like the Essenes who we think John the Baptist might have been a member of this group it was a sort of a separatist group it it had a complex down by the Dead Sea and they didn't go to the temple at all they thought we're not going to worship there that place is completely corrupt they sat there down by the Dead Sea and they said we're going to wait until a messiah figure comes or a band of angels shows up and cleans it all out the children of light are going to come and destroy the children of darkness

[10:21] that's how their books read and then when that happens maybe we'll go up to Jerusalem and we'll we'll occupy the temple and we'll have it. There were other groups called the Zealots. One of them was one of Jesus' disciples. One of Jesus' disciples was a member of this sort of political group called the Zealots. And they said, we have to get rid of these, not only the Romans by force, but all the people who have been compromising and collaborating with them all along. They all have to go. They're all traitors to the cause. So we have to just wipe that out and by force. So we have to collect weapons. We have to train. we have to do everything we can politically and militarily to cleanse the temple so that it's ours, forgetting the fact that it was all paid for with somebody else's money. Kind of interesting, right? So you see the temple, again, which should have been this wonderful place of worship of God, was a flashpoint for conflict between different groups of Jews, and it was a place that that symbolized just how much they had compromised for the sake of, you know, getting what they thought they wanted. And so we're going to read today that Jesus predicts that the temple is going to be destroyed. And if you think about it soberly, because you could think about that

[11:39] thing, what a loss. One of the archaeological wonders of the world, it's gone. But as we'll see, it had to go because it was what was keeping them stuck in some ways. It was a symbol of all all sorts of corruption, and so for it to be destroyed in a weird way was actually what allowed them to go past some things, okay? So it put people in a tough choice. What are we going to do with the temple? Can we go worship at the temple? Then we're compromising. If we stay away from the temple, we don't feel like we're doing what we need to do, or we're going to join some group that wants to overthrow the people running the temple by force, and those are good. so today we're going to begin to understand that Jesus advocates for neither of these groups he thinks they're both wrong it's really interesting he's going to offer an alternative to how to think about the temple and in fact choosing either one of these will lead to the destruction of the temple itself so we'll see why why that is in a little bit let's go to our reading but that's the background of the temple and there's more to it so very fascinating but let's go to our reading now Mark 13, 1 through 8. It reads like this. As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said

[12:51] to him, look teacher, what large stones and what large buildings. Then Jesus asked him, do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another. All will be thrown down. When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, Tell us, when will this be? And what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished? Then Jesus began to say to them, Beware that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name and say, I am he. And they will lead many astray. pray when you hear of wars and rumors of wars do not be alarmed this must take place but the end is still to come for nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom there will be earthquakes in various places there will be famines this is but the beginning of the birth pangs let's pray heavenly father thank you for your word we ask that you would add your blessing to it. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, let's look at our text. Go ahead and look at it in your bulletin. It's pretty short, verses, eight verses. And again, a very surprising prediction. I mean, that is pretty stark. Like this thing, it wasn't even done yet. When Jesus was looking at it with

[14:17] his disciples, the work was ongoing. You know how, if you look at cathedrals in the Middle Ages, nobody who started it ever lived to see it completed. Some of them took over 100 years to build. Well, this temple took, this temple outlived Herod. And even at the time, so this was started, you know, well before this, it was, it was well underway. But even as Jesus and the disciples were looking at it, it still hadn't been completely done. This is about 30 so AD.

[14:46] There still was work going on. It was still usable, but there was still work to be done. okay so it was always being built right but there's this prediction that this building that's not even done yet is going to be destroyed in a very like complete way right not one listen like not one stone will be left upon another now you may not know this but you I think you might know this that that was actually true okay that part was completely true as a prediction as a prophecy of the future. That was absolutely true. About 40 years later, so in time for it to really get completed, 40 years later in 70 AD, we have historical records of all of this, there was a revolt among the Jewish people. The Zealots finally got the upper hand in that society. They collected enough weapons. They went up there. They took control of the Temple Mount. They took control of Jerusalem. They fought back and forth. They killed a lot of Roman soldiers. They killed a lot of other jewish people and then the roman army says well this can't stand because this is what the romans do is if you if you rebel if one little part of the roman empire rebels they have to really smash it because if if they're seen to have gotten away with it then every little pocket

[16:06] of the empire that's unhappy which is all of it is all going to rise up at the same moment and they're terrified of that right so they're like let's go there and let's teach them all a lesson and for the whole world to see so we're going to destroy everything and so this is kind of what you see like there's an old story about Carthage when it was destroyed that they salted the fields around Carthage so that it could never be re-inhabited again as a sign to everybody not to mess with them right that story turns out may not be true but it's the the concept is very much there in the Roman way of thinking is let's destroy it completely let's make it unlivable so that everybody who passes by in the future will go, oh, let's not do that. It's the same reason why they executed people by crucifixion. Let's not run afoul of the Romans. It's going to be horrible if we do. And so the Romans did come. They came, they fought, they destroyed everything. The last holdout was in this little mountaintop retreat fortress called Masada. That was a few years later. that was the last of it that was finally when it was stamped out and then actually Jerusalem was nearly unlivable for about a century afterwards it was just you know it was all run down and

[17:21] you know Jewish people at the time they couldn't really live there they moved off even further into diaspora a lot of them moved south into Egypt many of them moved further away into the Roman Empire it was a challenging time the challenge so that came true so isn't that that interesting that Jesus says I tell you the truth not one stone will be left on another and he knew in advance 40 years in advance that the Romans were going to come and do that but that also means that he knew in advance that his fellow countrymen especially the zealots were going to rise up with their weapons and try to do to the oppressors with the same methods that the oppressors used to destroy them so violence begets violence and Jesus in essence is saying if you use the tools of the oppressor to try to unseat the oppressor you will be destroyed and it's not it's kind of a it's kind of like prophetic and a prediction but it's also kind of like common sense right it's almost like a proverb it's both a prediction and a proverb if you use violence violence will come to you this is a much bigger these people have a lot more weapons than you do they have a lot more power than you do they're going to come back and they're going to finish

[18:33] all of this off so you have to be careful so you can't use you can't do that basically is what Jesus is saying that's the prediction so um he's then he's asked um when will this be a few of the disciples come up to him and say oh how you know this is pretty big building how's it going to get is this going to happen tomorrow you know is this going to happen very soon when will this be and he doesn't say well it'll happen in 40 years so he's a bit cagey about that to be honest right but he says there will be signs of it before it happens there'll be false messiahs that will come there will be armed conflict there will be other signs like earthquakes and famines okay now here's a very good place for all of us because we hear things like this like famines and wars and rumors rumors of war and earthquakes and things like that, and our mind kind of drifts from, is he talking about 40 years from now, right? Or is he talking about way in the future that we haven't even reached yet ourselves? Do you guys see the difference, right? Is there a moment in time that is in our timeline that's historical, that time continues after it? Is he talking about that time, or is he talking about the time which we think of as really

[19:51] kind of the end of time where Jesus comes back and and he brings all the dead to life and he inaugurates a kingdom a heavenly kingdom that may even be on earth we don't know and he we go and live with him in bliss and we see our loved ones again and all that right and so when people read this that even this passage they're like well which what is he talking about here is he talking about the date the temple will be destroyed or is he talking about when he comes again well it turns turns out there's places where he talks about the end end. Let's put it this way. There's the end of the temple in 40 years, and then there's the end end. I'll call it the end end just for simplicity, right? The end end is something that we haven't even seen yet, but we believe may come at some point, right? And actually, the way the world is going, I've often said, maybe soon would be good. You know, I hate to say that because I have children and I want them to grow up, but what kind of world are we giving them? I don't know. So sometimes I think, I hope the end end comes soon but then other times I think well it doesn't matter though so there's things that we get a little confused about that so I want to separate that out Jesus here I believe is talking

[20:57] about 40 years from now and so what are the things that will happen before the temple is destroyed there's going to be armed conflict that's what's going to happen right you know there's going to it turns out maybe there will be some famines and there's some earthquakes these are the sorts of of things that interrupt commerce. These are things that make war more likely, right?

[21:17] And then there's the end end. And that's different because Jesus most often says about that, that you won't really always see the signs of that. Does that make sense? Because you've heard that. He says it's going to come like a thief in the night. You're not going to know the day or the hour. Although he does hint, let's be honest, at times, well, a lot of crazy things may happen, you know but you still won't really know but in this case you know this is going to happen this is an actual historical event okay so that's important um and uh we know um we know exactly we basically know exactly when the temple was destroyed it actually came upon about um Um, so I think one of the mistakes that Christians have made is when they read passages like this, they put all of them in the category of the end times of the end end, where in this case, we're actually talking about something that's going to happen within 40 years. Now, why I, you're like, why is this so important? That's why is it so important is because this follows on again from the parable of the vineyard. This is actually an outgrowth of what's going to happen when the parable of the vineyard comes true. The parable of the vineyard doesn't come true at the

[22:38] end end. The parable of the vineyard comes true in events like this, the destruction of the temple in 70 AD. He's saying, look, the sun is going to come and the tenants are going to say, let's kill kill him. Let's reject him. And then what is going to happen is that the owner is going to come and he's going to give the vineyard to those who will give him the produce. Now that's not an end-end thing, is it? Because why does the landlord need produce when the world is gone? He doesn't. The landlord needs produce now. He wants people working in the vineyard now who will in in time going forward until the end end actually produce and so this destruction of the temple I I thank you all for hanging with me in this because it gets a little complex but I think it's really fascinating the the destruction of the temple is sort of a part and a parcel of this prediction that the vineyard will be taken away from those who do not produce its fruit and and be given to those who will. And there's a warning in all of this that's sort of under the covers here, but it's the two choices that people thought they had. Jesus is saying neither of them are right. He's saying if you compromise yourself and you take money or power or influence from the Romans

[24:03] so that you can run the temple, you're not gonna be able to worship me at all. That's idolatry and you won't be producing the fruit fruit that I've called for, because I've called for justice. I've called for you to bring the light of Christ, the light of God to all the nations. That's not going to happen if you compromise yourself. And on the other side, he says, if you use the means of the oppressor to overthrow the oppressor, then you've made an idol out of violence and out of power, and you are still not producing the fruit that I want you to produce and so either side of this you're not going to be producing the fruit and so this thing that's probably causing all the problems this temple that Herod built for all sorts of wrong reasons it has to go it has to go and so it does get destroyed and I'm not going to say that God destroyed it and Jesus doesn't say that either but the it's the outgrowth of this path that people are on let's overthrow them the natural consequences they're going to come back the Romans are going to come back and destroy everything and if you can't pull yourself off this path then it's going to happen now Jesus speaks about this doesn't speak about this in any kind of sort of conditional way like if only you would

[25:25] pull yourself back from it this won't happen he's saying no this is going to happen so Jesus Jesus understands already that the people who are committed to violence are not going to be dissuaded from it at all. So as you start to unpack all this, you see just how sad the whole situation is back then. They're on a one-way track to destruction, and they will not get off of it. And so Jesus does weep over Jerusalem. He weeps for the city, and he weeps for each step of the way of all the things that have to happen. They have to reject him. They have to crucify him. they will lose the temple because it's a sign of all sorts of corruption for them on both sides and what does Jesus say then so the only way through is to not choose either one of those things there's a third path which really is all about staying centered on him he's the center of the vineyard if you stay connected to him you'll always be in the vineyard and from there you can work and so that's what his disciples do they they don't take part in the overthrow of the temple they don't take part of the Romans they don't take part in the compromised worship that takes place at the temple they don't do those things they cling to him and they come through that

[26:38] destruction more or less intact although a lot of them are martyred but the message and the work stays intact and even flourishes and grows so why is this so important well I think it's important for us because I mentioned last week that one thing we talk about today is that the mistakes mistakes that the leaders back then made, whether it was to compromise with the Romans or to advocate for violence or political violence, those are the same mistakes that the leaders are making today. And that's a big issue for us as Christians in our country. Now, I want to say something about this because sometimes I talk negatively about other churches and other pastors and other Christian leaders, and I don't do that. I don't enjoy it. I do not enjoy it. I really don't. I do it through tears, honestly. And we must say that there are good churches out there, and there are good pastors out there, and that the whole church of Christ on earth, as long as it is true to the scriptures and it's led by the Spirit, it's got nothing to worry about. It is the vineyard. It is doing what it needs to do. And there are many expressions of the true church on this earth. And praise God, I mean, if you don't think this is one of those places,

[27:54] then you got to get up and walk out right now. And I hope my best faithfulness is to figure out when I'm not doing that well and come back to that. But I'm hoping that our church is a true expression that we believe in the authority of the scriptures and we want to be led by the spirit to do the work that God calls us to in the world. And if we ever divert from that, then we got to stop or come back to the center or say, God, destroy this temple or destroy this vineyard and give it to somebody else who will do what they need to do with it but there are there are we have to say a bit prophetically today that there are leaders christian leaders and politicians and so on in our country right now that are making all the same mistakes as were made back then and that should tell us something it always keeps happening it always keeps reoccurring and so we have some churches that are what you call prosperity gospel right they and to them they some of them the The pastors have become quite prosperous, like some of them are millionaires, some of them are talking about needing private jets, and they're asking everybody to pay for them. It's just amazing, you know, and like there was this pastor named Creflo Dollar, we talked

[29:05] about this about four years ago. He asked all his followers on Twitter to help, help the ministry, help him buy a G5, which is like a Gulfstream 5 jet so that he could fly over, and it only cost 20 million dollars or whatever like that. and some people tweeted back like uh you know jesus paid it all go ask him you know this is such a good zinger you know uh and um and his name is creflo dollar and i don't know if that's his real name or not so i'm going to change my name to money bags mcgee and i'm just gonna if i want to do that i'm just be like come on let's put my pocket out here and stick it in you know if the Christian faith if being a pastor running a church is a way to amass wealth we're talking we're now we're talking about those temple leaders aren't we compromising yourself for for wealth status etc we have other pastors other churches in this country and this falls under what we call the category of Christian nationalism which says we're the church is taking the lead in imposing our political power over the whole rest of this country and making it look like we think it should look. And that's idolatry. That's using the means, they think they're oppressed, that's using the means of the oppressor to overthrow the oppressor.

[30:27] It's idolatry. So they don't like some political decisions that were made. I get that. That's fine. So let's create a party or let's create a political movement of Christians Christians so that we can impose our will on everybody else. This is a huge problem for many, many reasons, but the biggest is the Great Commission and the Great Commandment. Go into all nations to make disciples of people. Now, no one's going to join your faith if you lead with, by the way, you have to vote like me first. No one's going to join unless people wanted to anyway, but all these people, some of them, I think they're just political first and Christian second. In fact, there's a study that came out that 40% of some of these people don't even believe in the divinity of Jesus. So they don't even have the basic, you know, catechism of what it means to be a Christian. It's crazy.

[31:20] And so that's the other side. Let's get power. Let's get political power or let's threaten violence. Even some of them are doing that. Now, this is a problem. So what's going to happen? could Jesus show up again today and say not one stone is going to be left standing on top of another he's going to look at America and the Christian some Christian churches in America and say this is all going to get torn down not necessarily because I'm going to do it because it's unsustainable you're on a track to your own destruction what's going to happen you need to get out of there and so on some level what's left of it is those churches that again believe in the authority of the scriptures and are led by the spirit they stand to inherit whatever is left of American Christianity after these other things fall apart and they will I think they will but I think we need to speak to them and they're on some level they're our brothers and sisters so we need to speak to them in love and we need to pray for creflo dollar you know we need to pray for some of the christian nationalists and say lord bring them back to a true knowledge and love of your son you know bring them to that place where they can actually use that influence whatever influence they have

[32:41] to talk about the gospel instead of about money or political power if it happens i hope it does but i'm not you know i'm not i might be just as fatalistic as jesus because once you get on that track once you've tasted that drug you know I don't know if people can wean themselves off it all that easily because it gets them results so I'm kind of depressed can you tell I'm laughing right now but I'm depressed I'm sad about it you know our goal as a church is to take the third way through these two choices that we face now stay connected to the center of the vineyard that's Jesus Christ himself some destruction may come to political processes in our country to churches in our country they're going to sell out they're going to wash out and we're being painted with the same brush that's what bugs me the most we're being painted by with the same brush but a time will come when we will distinguish ourselves I hope because of our witness that we witness only to Jesus and we're led by the spirit so that's our way through this now I'm done except for this next week we'll talk about what that looks like in actuality the apostle Paul will tell us what does it mean to work faithfully in the vineyard once you inherit it from those who won't work in

[33:59] it and I believe our church and other churches like ours are going to and are inheriting all those things that other people aren't doing that aren't producing anything that God wants them them to produce and so my goal is for us to be a big pine cone church you know not a little pumpkin church I wish I had a giant pumpkin here but next week we'll talk and then we'll be done next week we'll talk about what it means what it looks like to work faithfully in the vineyard