SteadfastSegars.com Use promo code Covenant10 for 10% off your order. Hi, I'm Matt Plett with Eschatology Matters, part of the Fight Last Feast Network, and sponsored by Steadfast Segars. We're picking up on the all of it discourse in Matthew chapter 24, looking again at verses 5 through 8. Last episode we left off with the Spatian, leaving Jerusalem to go challenge for supremacy for over the Roman Empire, which he eventually won, but as he left Jerusalem, he left to Sun Titus in charge. Now the Spatian ended up when he went to go challenge in Rome, he took his best soldiers with him, leaving his son Titus with something of a mercenary band of soldiers in Jerusalem to quell the Jewish rebellion, and this is going to prove to be important. Titus, now commanding the Roman forces around Jerusalem, laid siege to the city of Jerusalem to quell these Jewish uprising, these Jewish civil wars in April of the year 70. Now inside the walls of Jerusalem, there were provisions and there was food that would have lasted several years. But remember, there's no unity inside the city walls of Jerusalem. The Jews are infighting among themselves. The moderates wanted peace, and the zealots wanted war. These factions of Jews are someone interesting. The zealots among the Jews would be kind of like the wild-eyed radicals. They're looking for war, they're angry, and they want to incite things. The Pharisees were kind of the theological conservatives weren't quite as radical as the zealots, but certainly did not want any kind of compromise with Rome. The Sadducees were the equivalent of our liberals today. They could work with whoever. They really didn't have principles that they felt any need to live by. They wanted to compromise. They were happy for the state to take over their religious and cultural life. Then you had the Essenes who were almost like the ancient Anabaptist sect that they just wanted to withdraw and they didn't want to be part of all this commotion. They just wanted a spiritual release from this whole thing. The Jews were by no means united. Of course, as Christians, we would understand this to be part of the judgment on these people for their rejection of Christ. God's anger, God's fury, what Luke calls the days of vengeance, is now visiting Jerusalem for killing their Messiah. This is exactly in keeping with Jesus' theological interpretation of history that he gives on Tuesday to the Pharisees about the vineyard owner who kills and butchers those who kill his son and think they will keep the vineyard and then he gives the vineyard to other tenants. Also in the parable of the wedding feast where these people are too busy to attend the son's wedding feast, the king who has now been slated that his son is not being honored is going to burn the city and kill these people. Jesus offers a theological interpretation of what is going to happen to Jerusalem. God's wrath against this evil city for rejecting their Messiah is now visiting on the day of vengeance. And Titus, in the Providence of God, happens to be the one with his mercenary band of soldiers who oversees this. So in April of 70, Titus goes in to quell the Jewish rebellion. The zealots were led by a man named John of Geshalla and they were at war against the Sikari led by a man by the name of Simon Bar Giorah. And in order to keep the Sikari from getting control of the food and also of the city's entire hand and really taking rulership of the city, they wanted to force a battle so that the rival tribe could not take over the city of Jerusalem. And so the zealots rather than figuring this out, decided to, in a fit of hotheaded rage, they burnt the city's food supply rather than work with the Sikari. So this is kind of an act of suicide. They burned their own food. This was a terrible idea because they're surrounded by the Romans. And they could have lasted for years with the food supply, but they burned it because of their own civil war, making everyone in Jerusalem that much weaker and just easy prey for the Romans once it was time to come in. The historian Josephus, who was a Pharisee, writes this about this time in his cataloging of the Jewish Wars. This is Josephus. As if determined to aid the Romans, they fought each other and burned the city's grainaries, which would have suffice to feed the people for many years. By doing this, they brought famine upon themselves, leaving nothing but despair to confront their enemies. And further in the Jewish Wars, Josephus writes, The extremities of hunger were so dire that men nod their belts and shoes and even the leather stripped from their shields. Some devoured whips of hay and others crept out at night to search for herbs. There were those who, in desperation, opened the bodies of the dead to find sustenance in the contents of their stomachs. This is despair. You're going out at night and you're cutting dead bodies open to remove stomach contents, because that is the level of starvation in the city of Jerusalem because of the civil war, because of burning the stores, and you can see how weak they are for when the Romans come marching in. Without food, there is no strength and Jerusalem is unable to resist. The city is an absolutely miserable condition when Titus' mercenary army enters. Now, this army also does not have the discipline of a professional army. Remember, the professional army went back to Rome with the Spatian. And so these soldiers go into a kind of frenzy. They were further angered at the city by the atrocities they saw. So they already hated these Jewish people, and then when they saw these Jewish people very literally living like animals and cutting dead bodies open, they were just disgusted and revolted at what a despicable city this was. So it kind of ends up being a self-fulfilling prophecy that Titus' soldiers just saw this as so uncivilized, and they were so angered by what they saw that they just really got whipped up into a frenzy. Josephus gives a specific account of a woman named Mary that shows how desperate things are in Jerusalem at this time. He says, again, in his Jewish wars, this is Josephus. There was a certain woman named Mary, daughter of Aliezer in the village of Bethezuba. Famine now grew up in the city, and driven by hunger and fury, she seized her own infant child and said, poor baby, in war, famine and rebellion, why should I keep you alive? Come, be food for me, and an avenging meal for the rebels. What is left but for the Romans to come and for me to finish my misery with you? After this, she slew her son, roasted him, and ate one half, hiding the rest. There is one account that she had offered some to the Roman soldiers, and they were just repulsed by this offer to eat an infant child. Tacitus in his histories writes this, the temple, famous beyond all other works of men, fell in flames. The gods had turned away from a people guilty of every crime. The temple's wealth much talked about was consumed by flames and the victor seized whatever remained. Thus was Jerusalem destroyed by the hands of its own people as much as by the enemy. The war ended with the capture of the city, but its memory will last forever. And again, if we're going to let scripture interpret history for us, which we must, this is the judgment that God had promised under the old covenant in Deuteronomy 28. These are exactly the curses that God had promised Israel would be visited with. Some people who do not share this understanding of history or this understanding of eschatology will charge people like us, or all millennial or post millennial folks, and say, well, if there's not an abiding place for Israel in the future and this dispensational system, then God has broken his covenant with Abram, which they understand to be an unconditional covenant. And yet, when you read the covenant stipulations in a chapter like Deuteronomy 28, you see that when God judges the city for rejecting their Savior. This is not God breaking his covenant. This is God keeping his covenant. God is doing exactly what he said he would do if these people apostatized. In Deuteronomy 28, every condition is laid out and the judgment from heaven is laid out what will happen if these people reject God. In Deuteronomy 28, 16, we read, cursed shall you be in the city and cursed shall you be in the field. Verse 20, the Lord will send you curses, confusion, and frustration because you have forsaken me going on. The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies and your dead body shall be food for all the birds of the air and for the beasts of the earth. Further, God is going to bring in a hard-faced nation to destroy you. This is Rome coming to destroy Israel. A hard-faced nation is going to destroy an apostate anti-Christ Jerusalem. In this passage of judgment in Deuteronomy 28, we also see that the most delicate person will fight for food. A woman and her husband will fight with each other over who will eat her after birth when it falls out and their towns will be besieged and people will eat their young. This is what happened in Deuteronomy 20, in verse 59 of Deuteronomy 28. There is an especially poignant phrase here where it says, the Lord will bring on you and your offspring extra-ordinary afflictions. This patch, this matches pairs with what the people say in Matthew 27 at Jesus' trial. When Pilate is looking for a way out and the Jewish people there are all yelling, crucify him, and when Pilate tries getting out in Matthew 27, 25, it says in all the people answered, his blood be on us and on our children. Damning language, clearly, they did not know what they were saying. They did not know what they were doing, but they were walking right into the judgment that God had promised to bring them in Deuteronomy 28 if they would reject their Savior. These are the days of vengeance. Jerusalem has broken covenant with Yahweh, and now Yahweh is bringing on the promised judgment to this city. Of course, the Christians, the Jewish Christians, this should not be understood as saying that Jewish people are beyond all hope because the earliest Christians were Jewish people, but those who were believers, those who took Jesus at his word knew exactly what was happening when the Roman soldiers surrounded Jerusalem. They left. They went to Pella. They were, in fact, saved because they read history correctly. They took Jesus at his word. They understood what was happening. They understood the timestamps. They understood the prophecy, and they obeyed. So those Jews were spared. It was the apostates and the those who had rejected Christ who stayed in the city to face this judgment. Josephus further describes the city of Jerusalem after the Roman siege. He says the countryside, like a desert, was stripped to bear ground by the Romans. For every tree within 90 furlongs, which is about 11 miles of this city was cut down. The soldiers erected so many crosses for the crucified that there was no space for the crosses, nor crosses for the bodies. The Romans were crucifying these Jewish people. And so here Josephus is saying all the trees were cut down, and that still wasn't enough to take care of all the bodies. The Christian historian Eusebius writes this in his ecclesiastical history. And again, this is a strong case for preterism, or seeing that these events are in our past, because Eusebius writes his church history book in the year 311. So the Christian church is about 300 years old, and Eusebius writes a book of church history for something that's only 300 years old at that time. And he talks about the all of it discourse in the past tense. So Christians in the year 300 are looking at these prophecies from the all of it discourse, and they're saying, well, clearly that happened, you know, 230 years ago, this happened, 240 years ago, this happened. So these early Christians saw the all of it discourse as being in the past tense. And I will also point out at this point that the very first commentary on the book of Revelation takes a preterist stance, at least for large swaths of Revelation, speaking about the prophecies in that book as already having happened from the standpoint of the early Christians. Eusebius writes this, it is fitting to recount the calamities that befell the entire Jewish nation after the crime against our Savior, and the sufferings which overwhelm the people of the Jews immediately after their plot against our Lord. The judgment of God in fact overtook them for the transgression of this kind. And he goes on, the temples fall signified the abolition of the Jewish sacrifices and ordinances, and it was the visible testimony that the covenant had been set aside, while the new covenant preached by Christ took its place. So this is significant. The temple was a type and a shadow of God dwelling among his people. And now in the substance, Jesus Christ comes and he is rejected by the Jewish religious leaders. Of course, those who saw Jesus and took him for who he was became Christians, and those Jews who truly understood the Old Testament, those Jewish people who truly understood Moses and Abraham became Christians. And I think this is a mistake in notion among Christians. They think, well, the Jews are just kind of going on this straight line through history. And at some point there was an off-ramp for the Christians who got off the Jewish train and took an off-ramp into Christianity. That is a wrong way to view it. Properly understood the Jewish people, the believing Jewish people, understood that history, redemptive history was unfolding. And so those who understood Abraham, those who understood Moses, those are the ones who listened to the prophets and those are the ones who accepted Jesus Christ. So those who are saying on the straight line accepted Jesus, and that became the Christian church. And the ones who took an off-ramp were those who rejected Jesus Christ. So Old Testament Judaism really doesn't exist anymore. The Judaism that we have today is an apostate rejection of Christ and naturally because Moses and Abraham saw Jesus at least typologically. They modern, the modern Jewish religion is not a rightful heir of Abraham and Moses. It's a different religion entirely. Those who understood the Old Testament received Jesus Christ and those Jewish believers became the seed of the Christian church. But now this Christian church is up and running. And I often like in this too, like an acorn. Once the new oak tree comes sprouting up and this new church life comes out of this acorn, the husk on the acorn falls off. In the types and shadows, this is what the book of Hebrews about. This is what the book of Galatians is about. The husk, these types and shadows fall away. There's no more need for a temple anymore because Jesus, the substance, has come. And so not only is the destruction of Jerusalem a judgment on the apostate Jews who rejected their Messiah, and it is that. But it's also just a simple fact that the temple service will purpose anymore. What would it point to? The substance has come. The temple is now obsolete. It's like the husk on an acorn that falls away. Once the new life has come out, the husk falls off. And now things are up and running. So think of the temple like training wheels. You take them off once kids can ride the bike. So the believing Jewish people, the believing Christian people are now up and running. It's time to take the training wheels off. There's no need for a temple. And so in the providence of God, the way the temple is removed is by a judgment from the Romans for the apostate Jews who remained in Jerusalem and who did not receive Jesus Christ. You see, it also goes on to say here, but the people having refused the salvation which came from God were utterly destroyed. And all this fell upon them in full measure just as Jesus had foretold. So again, this is the Christian historian, you see, he is writing in the early 300s looking back at the year 70 and giving a theological interpretation that lines up with Jesus's own theological interpretation of what was going to happen to the unbelievers in this city. But needless to say, once you see this picture and you see the first hand historical account of what happened in Jerusalem, suffice it to say, Titus left Jerusalem in absolute ruins. Everything was burnt, everything was destroyed. The Jewish people had destroyed their own food supply. Not one stone was left upon another just as Jesus said. But Titus, because of his mercenary soldiers that did not conduct themselves like gentlemen on this war campaign, they got into a frenzy. They went crazy. Titus was actually very angry at his soldiers for the level of destruction that they had leveled against this city. There's one account that Titus is screaming out to God. He's screaming out to the God of the Jews begging him, begging God to be witness that this level of destruction was not on Titus's hands. Titus wanted to operate a clean and gentlemanly military campaign. His mercenary soldiers went ballistic and Titus is pleading to the God of the Jews to be a witness that I did not command this level of destruction. The people did this to themselves, Titus said, their own God destroyed them. Sutonius, another historian, writes that when a victory wreath was given to Titus, then this was a custom once a military leader had launched a successful campaign. He was given a victory wreath, but Titus actually refused his wreath for his quelling of the rebellion in Jerusalem. He has said to have said that there is no honor in vanquishing a people forsaken by their own God. So again, Titus's mind, even though he was the one overseeing this campaign, even though he was unhappy with his soldiers, he saw a theological interpretation of this as well. Their own God rejected them. What happened here is inhuman. Even in general, didn't have a stomach for this. And so he refuses his wreath because he sees that even though was through his agency, through the agency of his army, this was God's doing to bring this city so low. And again, this fits with Jesus' interpretation of what would happen to this city for rejecting the Messiah. And to go back to Christ's own theological interpretation of these events, let's recap, the vineyard owner has now taken vengeance over his vineyard. He has put these wicked tenets to a miserable death. The king has destroyed the murderers of his son and he burnt their city, just like Jesus said. The warnings that Moses offered under the old covenant and Deuteronomy 28 have terminated into this event. All the righteous blood shed from able to Zechariah have fallen on this city, just as Jesus said. Their house has been left desolate, just as Jesus said. Yet, just like when God cursed the serpent, there is also a faint whisper of hope mixed in. God is a merciful God and even in judgment, he offers the terms of hope. He offers the terms of peace. Verse 8, in Matthew 24 says, these are but the beginning of the birthpings. So this is not the end. Birthpings are intense, but there is a glorious reward at the end. Roman Jerusalem are both convulsing and the contractions are strong. And this might remind you of storing the Old Testament or Phineas' wife at Shiloh as the old world kind of roars as the glory departs Jerusalem. This is another kind of birthpings story. The glory is about to leave and this woman shrieks as she goes into the night. But these birthpings also signal new life. A new world is emerging from these intense contractions. New tenets are going to be let in. The wedding feast is not cancelled. It actually gets broadened, who is invited to the wedding feast when the stiff neck are removed. Now the wedding feast is announced on the highways and the biways. All are welcome. Jews are welcome and Gentiles are welcome. So there's a note of hope. There's a note of grace even in the most severe judgment. Perhaps another fitting image of what happened in 70 is the picture of the wine skins. The old wine skin was discarded. The new wine, the new covenant, it couldn't be contained in that old system. We need new wine skins for this new wine. We need a new world to emerge to hold this new wine. So you don't just put the new covenant into the old world. We need a new world. And this was a major shaking. The end of the temple meant the end of that old world. The old covenant world. That old covenant world was insufficient for the new reality. And the new covenant is so much superior that it requires new wine skins. It requires a new world order, a new world system. Because there is simply no way that the old covenant world could contain Christ's kingdom. Christ's kingdom is much too big to be confined to one little slice of geography. And if we want to put a devotional or an applicatory note on this for our own times, people wonder, well, if this all happened in the first century, how is this applicable for us? Well, I think many things in the past remain applicable for Christians today. Jesus's death, Jesus's resurrection, Jesus's gift of the Holy Spirit of Pentecost and his ascension. These are all one-time events in our ancient past that continue to bless us today. And I think as this old covenant world passes away as the temple is destroyed and the new world is being raised up in the new covenant, I think there's application for us here today as well. There's a great reminder here that those who were listening to Jesus, those who were submissive to Jesus, did escape to safety. They were kept in safety the whole time. They went to Pella as soon as that Roman army dispersed. When Sester Skellis had surrounded Jerusalem, the Christians knew exactly what to do because they trusted their Savior. They took Jesus at his word. So whatever approach one takes to these prophetic tasks, what happened in the first century here is indisputable. And I think if we're being honest about that, I think one of the problems with futurism in my mind is that, and I grew up on this in the 80s and 90s, there was all rapture fever and there's always some kind of end time prediction and so forth. But with biblical prophecy, you can make the future, you know, 20 years out, 50 years out ahead of me, you can make that do whatever you want to do. You can speculate about what kind of war is going to happen or what this is going to do. The Eurozone and all in my lifetime has been Gog and Megog is Russia and Germany and the Eurozone and these, it's all speculation. It's all nonsense and none of it has come true. But when you take these prophecies and you see that they were very literally fulfilled in actual historical events, it just clicks into place in a very satisfying way and that just really buttresses the fact that I don't think those Matthew 24 should be read in a futuristic way. Just apply it over top of the actual historical events that are well recorded for us and we see that this doesn't need to become idle speculation. This is great proof of prophetic fulfillment. This is great proof that Jesus meant what he said and he said what he meant. This actually happened. There's a great apologetics value here in seeing that this went exactly, Jesus was not mistaken. He didn't get the timing wrong. This happened exactly as he said it would. So I don't think it takes much imagination to think about what it was like to live in a safe time, in a time of peace, in a time where we're well fed and well provisioned. Then and now it's easy to assume that God just owes us perpetual peace and people who live in peace, people who enjoy peace tend to become complacent, they tend to become proud and self-sufficient. A whole generation of people can be born on third base thinking they hit a triple and they think mistakenly, well that's just how the world works. We're always going to have the pox remonna, it's always going to be peaceful, we're always going to be free from wars and rumors of wars and so forth and we can take a real takeaway lesson from these first century people that we need to take the Lord at his word and he is we are not owed perpetual peace. This is a great reminder that if we want to stay under the protection of God, we must take him at his word, we must obey, we must be willing to submit to his will and to his word. To not give the vineyard owner his due or to respond to the summons of the king when he wants to celebrate his son, this is serious thing. In our own time, how many cars are at the bald diamonds or at the hockey rink or at Costco on a Sunday morning without a care for the things of the Lord? We don't have time to celebrate the sun because we're taking care of our own things, we don't have time for this wedding feast invite, I've got my things to attend to as it says and one goes off to his farm and another to his business. For us today too, how much money do we spend on leisure and on nonsense? While the work of the kingdom remains unfunded or underfunded. How much time to spend needlessly scrolling or looking at unedifying things while your Bible collects dust? We cannot presume on the Lord's protection and peace and patience forever. He ran out of patience with Jerusalem, they had enjoyed patience and profit after profit for centuries, but even then God finally has enough. When they reject his son, it's finally enough and even then there's an entire generation. God gives them 40 years to consider what they've done to receive his son and after 40 years, they still don't do it and now God steps in enjudgment and we should not think in our own time, we've grown up with tremendous peace and prosperity in our time. We ought not to think that that is just simply owed to us that God must give that to us, not at all. This should serve as a stern warning to us still, that we should not presume on the patience of God. We should not presume that God's patience will never run out. It clearly has and it will again. There's a final judgment yet coming. And for those who truly do know the Lord, for those who are able to read his word and obey his word, there is always safety and rest. Jesus and Matthew, as well, he gives the image of a mother hand gathering her young as the eagle of woe circles overhead. God continues to give safety to his people, just like those who left for Pella. God continues to protect those who are truly his. And so that's where I want to leave it here in terms of application. It is one thing to believe in Christ. It is another thing to believe Christ. Believing in God is not the same thing as believing God. These early Christians did not just believe in God, they believed God, and they went to Pella, and they were spared the destruction of this great tribulation that Jerusalem went through. So are we willing to likewise take God at his word to stay in his safety when there's tribulation and judgment all about us.