Here’s Hope: Jesus Cares About You
Matthew 24:36-44
St. John’s United Church of Christ
Greeley, Colorado
November 26, 2023
Rev. Juvenal Cervantes
Advent is a time of waiting and it is also a time when we live with expectancy, that kind of waiting not just stuck and wondering what’s going to happen, it is a hopeful kind of waiting that we’re in and hope is not an easy commodity to come by in a world like ours.
It would not be difficult to paint a picture of our world as one that is filled with struggling and with sorrow, and with suffering and with very little evidence of hope. There is nothing in this world that we can clearly place our hope in.
If we paint a picture of world, it would be a world that lives with the scourge of war. War is not an occasional thing that happens in our world, it is a constant thing that happens in our world.
We like to think of ourselves as people of peace, but of the 247 years there’s been a United States of America, all but 49 years have been times when we have been at war.
You go back to the Revolutionary War, the war of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, all of those were small compared to what happens next. World War I resulted with 20 million killed and 21 million injured, more than a 1/3 of the people killed were civilians. In World War II 62 million people died in the war and more than half of those were civilians. In Korea 2.5 million people died, mostly civilians. In Vietnam 10 million people, mostly civilians. Followed by the Persian Gulf War, the Afghanistan War, the second Gulf War, we have lost 4.2 million Americans and much more in the rest of the world.
Then now the war in Ukraine, the war in Israel. This is a world at war, always been so and remains so, no big jumps at trying to end that no matter what we call it. In our country we spend eight times more in our military in our budget than the next largest spender in the world and more than the others combined.
We prepare for war constantly. Ironically, we call it preparing for peace, but there is not peace. There has not been peace.
We would paint a picture of the world that is wrecked by disease in so many ways. We can name all of the cancers and many other disease, Covid in the last few years, almost 7 million people have died of Covid since 2020, 12 million people have died of Aids since 1980. There’s scourges of disease in our world and were wrecked by that and we have not turned the tide on that in spite of all the medical advances.
It would be a world that is marked by big disparities in finances between the rich and the poor and it is a growing division between rich and poor.
It would be a world with titanic natural disasters. Everyday it’s either earthquakes, or volcanoes or tsunamis, or landslides, or hurricanes or tornados, constantly this world is disrupted and whole states are wiped out, in a single storm. We can see that all around us.
It would be world of unthinkable moral decay. You look around in the crime and violence and disregard for human life, the distinction of poverty and wealth and the destruction of our environment, all of those things are going on all of the time.
There is not something that we can look around and say, “That’s hope!” Not as long as it in human hands. We apparently don’t have the capacity to remedy this, you and me, if we did this, we would have done this a long time ago. We cannot stop fighting and killing each other, we cannot get rid of all the diseases, we are unwilling to resolve the plight of the poor and solve the problem of poverty, we’re of course incapable of stopping natural disasters, we’re willing to tolerate the corrosive effects of drugs and crime on our culture, we prefer our consumptive lifestyles to anything that that would resemble care for the future of the planet.
The world, left in human hands has very little basis for hope. That’s where Jesus comes in. I want to commend any human effort that any human being makes to remedy those issues and to stave them off to whatever degree that is possible. That’s all well and good. The problem of us not solving is not that we’re incompetent or that we are weak, it’s because we are incredibly, hopelessly, selfish. And if there is any hope outside of ourselves, it is outside of ourselves. That’s the message of the gospel, that the hope that remains for the world is outside of human hands, outside of human control.
God has plans for this world that transcends all our futile efforts, and all our frustrations and all of our hopelessness. God has plans.
A seminary professor began his lectures with ten basic questions about theology and the 10th question was, “How will it all end?” and the answer that he gave was, “It will end with Him with whom all began.”
The future belongs to God and God has plans that transcend all of our futile efforts. That’s what the kingdom of God is all about, God has intentions of setting the world to rise. He’s promised that he would do that. How will he do that?
I would point us to two chapters in the Bible, Matthew 24 and 25 give us an insight to God’s plan for this world. Matthew 25 is all in red ink, because it is Jesus who is speaking. Unfortunately, this chapter has been high jacked by people who want to figure out how the world is going to end and when it’s going to end and what will happen, in what sequence and that sort of stuff. I suggest this morning we just listen to Jesus and let him speak on himself on this matter as much as possible.
The reason he’s addressing this question at all, is that it is his last week in Jerusalem before his crucifixion. On Monday and Tuesday he’s gone to the city with his disciples and there’s conflict with his opponents and it’s gotten pretty intense and on Tuesday afternoon, having one debate after another with people who really want to kill him, and they are walking out of Jerusalem and the disciples, I guess to make some conversation, tried to change the subject and look around the beauty of Herod’s temple, and one of the disciples says, “Master, look at this majestic building the beautiful stones, let’s have a discussion about architecture and aesthetics for a while instead of this intense, scary debate.” And Jesus says, “You see all of those buildings, not one stone is going to be left on top of another.” He did not calm them at all, is in Matthew 24:1-2:
Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. “Do you see all these things?” he asked. “Truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”
Now, that left a question in the disciple’s mind, “If the whole temple will be destroyed, if the city of Jerusalem is going to be destroyed again, as it was 586 years, it must mean that the world is going to come to an end, because how can God’s plan be fulfilled with Jerusalem being destroyed? The world must be about end. So they raised the question to him. They thought of it as one question, but Jesus raised this as two questions (24:3-28- Jerusalem; 24:29-31- 2nd Coming).
Matthew 24:3:
As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. “Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”
For them, this is one question. And Jesus then begins to address their question.
When will this happen, when will Jerusalem be destroyed? And 2) what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?
You find in Matthew 24, he talks about the destruction of Jerusalem in Matthew 24:3-8. Then he turns his attention to the second question, “the sign of your coming” in verses 29 and following.
How will we know that Jerusalem will be destroyed? He tells them there will be false messiahs, and there are going to be wars, verses 4-5, and he says, “Don’t confuse those with the end.”
If often hear people say, “We’ll Jesus will be coming back soon because it says there will be wars and rumors of war and that’s what’s happening!” There have always been wars and there always will be until He comes back, and Jesus says, “Dent confuse those with signs of the end, these are not the signs of the times, they are just the times.
In verse 6 he said, “These things will happen, wars and false prophets.” Then he says there will be rebellion, natural disasters, pestilence.
Then in verse 8: all of this will be the beginning of the end. Don’t confuse the craziness of the pain, the struggle, the suffering of the world with signs of the end of the world, those things will go on, there will be something clearer than that before Jerusalem is destroyed.
He tells in verses 10-13, before Jerusalem is destroyed, his followers will be persecuted, some will be put to death, there will be false prophets, there will be an increase in wickedness and the gospel will be preached to the gentiles, to the nations before Jerusalem is destroyed.
And then he gives one clear indication that these disciples can know that Jerusalem is about to fall.
Verse 15:
“So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’[a] spoken of through the prophet Daniel—let the reader understand—
Well that’s very helpful, isn’t it?
In Daniel 9:27, Daniel foresaw a time when the gentile armies would come against Jerusalem, and they did, in about 167 BC. The Greek armies came against Jerusalem, they ravished the temple. They took a pig and they sacrificed it in the temple, the abomination of the desolation of the temple.
And Jesus said, “When you see that happening again. When you see the gentiles storm in, don’t expect that God is going to save Jerusalem, it is about to fall, which happened in AD 70, the Romans destroyed Jerusalem.
In the gospel of Luke, chapter 21, Luke writes about that same for the benefit of the gentiles who may have not known about the abomination of desolation,
Luke 21:20
When you see Jerusalem being surrounded by armies, you will know that its desolation is near.
The tribulation of the destruction of Jerusalem is in verse 13-28 and speaks of the horror of the downfall of Jerusalem which took place.
Now Jesus turns to the second question: “What will be the signs of His coming and of the end of the age?”
He says, “There are going to like they are very close together for a while.” They thought of this being one question, but there is the imminence of the destruction of Jerusalem and there is the hope of the second coming and they are not the same events. And Jesus looks out into the future, verse 29-30:
“Immediately after the distress of those days
“‘the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’
“Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.
Two events as if they were close in time and he himself said he did not know when it would take place.
It’s like looking at two mountain peaks. In a great distance. If you’re driving to the Rockies, for a while it looks like two mountains are just next to each other, but the closer you get to the first one, the more evident it is that second remains at some distance.
Jesus words are to encourage us to live lives of faith and of hope.
There are three ideas that converge throughout the New Testament when we think of the second coming of Christ, Paul and others:
1. Christ’s return is certain.
2. The TIME of Christ’s return is UNCERTAIN
3. THEREFORE…. Live hopefully, Live righteously, Live Missionally.
The first is the certainty of Christ return
This is part of God program from the beginning, to redeem this world.
Mt. 24:36
“But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.
This is not about a timetable, this is about hope.
Mt. 24:42
“Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.
Mt. 24:44
So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.
In school the teacher usually begins the semester with a syllabus with lots of information. Then there’s the day of reckoning: test time. After test then the holidays.
C.S. Lewis, one of the greatest thinkers in Christendom, reflects:
For what comes is Judgement: happy are those whom it finds laboring in their vocations, whether they were merely going out to feed the pigs or laying good plans to deliver humanity a hundred years hence from some great evil.
The curtain has indeed now fallen. Those pigs will never in fact be fed, the great campaign against White Slavery or Governmental Tyranny will never in fact proceed to victory. No matter; you were at your post when the Inspection came.
“The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.” And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them.
And for us this is the end of all stories, and we can most truly say they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story.
All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.
My friends, the time is coming when hope will be realized. The cross, the resurrection and the return of Christ will make all things new for you and for me. This is our hope.