Tonight, I wanna start a short series through what is called the Olivet discourse, Matthew chapter 24 and 25, but we're actually going to start with some introductory verses in the 23rd chapter. And tonight's message is Prophetic Insights from Jesus. And I want you to turn to Matthew chapter 23, and we're going to read verses 37 through 39. and this is gonna set us up for moving our way, working our way through chapters 24 and 25. Because this message, spoken by Jesus in chapters 24 and 5, came while He was with His disciples on the Mount of Olives, it's called the Olivet discourse. And this passage contains the most significant message that Jesus delivered on prophecy. And as we look at it, you're going to see why it is so important for us to interpret this correctly, because many people read it and get confused, many people read it and misinterpret it, and what I want to do is I want us to read it and study it to remove the confusion and to, as best we can, interpret it rightly. So we're going to pick up in verse 37 of chapter 23, where He says, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! See, now your house is left to you desolate; for I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!'" And what is happening here is, as Jesus is ending the final days of His life before the cross, He's already made His triumphal entry into Jerusalem by this time, and He's pointing out that the Jewish people had rejected Him. And He refers to them as a people, even though He calls them Jerusalem. So when He says in verse 37, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem," He's obviously not talking about the houses and the streets and the physical structures and the walls around the city. He's talking about the inhabitants of the city. And that leads me to say tonight our first point is that Jerusalem as a city is the symbol of God's prophetic plan. Jerusalem is a literal city. We know that. It's a geographical location, so we're not minimizing the literalness of the fact that He was in Jerusalem when He cried out, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem." But a city cannot reject a Messiah. Bricks and mortar can't reject a Messiah. Walls can't, cobblestone streets can't. Not even a temple building can. It is the people who occupy that city. And He's using Jerusalem in that figurative sense. When you hear Him exclaim, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem," He says it twice, you can hear the grief in His voice. He is crying out in sorrow over Jerusalem. And not only that, but there is an implication in what He says about them. Did you notice in verse 37, He says about Jerusalem, meaning the people of Israel, "You are the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her." And what He's doing here is He's referring to the history of the Jewish people of resenting God's anointed messengers whom God raised up to preach and to confront them with their need to repent of idolatry and sin and immorality and to return to the Lord, their God. And they had a very poor track record when it comes to honoring God's messengers, and Jesus is incriminating them in this cry against Jerusalem. But there's not only grief and there's not only an implication, but did you notice there is love in the heart of Jesus for the Jewish people? Because He said there in verse 37, look at it in your copy of the Bible, He says, "How often I wanted to gather your children together." And He's speaking to the city as though the city has offspring, but He's referring to the Jewish people. "How often I wanted to gather you together like a mother hen gathers her chicks under her wings." But look at what He says. He says, "But you were not willing." And this, I was looking over this again this afternoon, and this moved my heart so much to see what Jesus was saying. "How often I wanted to treat you like a hen would treat the chicks that had hatched from the eggs. I wanted to gather you under My wings and hold you close to Myself." This speaks of His deep love for the Jewish people. And this is so important for us to reflect on that Jesus came to the Jewish people as a Jewish Messiah. He Himself was Jewish. And it would do us well to make more of that in a day and age when Anti-Jewish sentiment is on the rise and Anti-Semitism, as we call it, is on the increase. Let's remember Jesus loved the Jewish people, and that's what we see there in verse 37. But let's think about Jerusalem being the symbol of God's prophetic plan. Prior to the reign of David, who was the second King of Israel about 1,000 years before Christ, Jerusalem was not the capital. But David conquered Jerusalem and established it as his city, and he built his palace there, and that is when, although David conquered and claimed Jerusalem, God was leading him to do that because it was the city of God's choosing. And then it was David's son, Solomon, who was led by God to construct a permanent temple there in Jerusalem. He didn't construct it anywhere else, he constructed it in Jerusalem because it was part of a divine plan of God. And then you know we studied the Book of Daniel and we know that in the sixth century before Christ, God allowed Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king, to destroy Jerusalem, the temple on the Temple Mount, to plunder all of its contents, to rip the people away from their homeland in Jerusalem and the surrounding area. And then God in His goodness let the exiles return under Persian rule and the temple was rebuilt. And then eventually, God sent His Son Jesus to Jerusalem. There is no doubt that this city is the heart of God's prophetic plan. And when God was speaking to Solomon about the temple that Solomon would build, he said in 2 Chronicles 6:6, "The Lord said, 'Yet I have chosen Jerusalem, that My name may be there.'" So we could talk a lot about the city of Jerusalem and the significance of that city in Scripture, but for Jesus to cry out in the final week of His life with grief in His heart, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone the messengers that God has sent to you, I wanted you to come to me. I wanted to love you. I wanted to lavish you with My favor. But you would have nothing to do with Me." So we're just reminded about the significance of Jerusalem, and just as it bore significance from the time that it became the capital of Israel in King David's day, to the time when his successor, his son, King Solomon, built the temple, to the time when it was destroyed and then rebuilt, and here we are, where Jesus has come from heaven to the earth, He is standing in the city of Jerusalem, and we realize this is central to God's prophetic plan. And so Jerusalem is a literal place, but it symbolic of God's ultimate plan, which will culminate in the Messiah coming back to the earth. We're gonna talk about that a little bit later. Now, here's what I want us to look at next as we look at just these last three verses before the Olivet discourse. And I want you to write this down that Jesus was letting the Jewish people know Jerusalem, as He called them, that God's protection would depart from Jerusalem. His protection would depart from Jerusalem. And He said to them in verse 38, "Your house is left to you desolate." Let's look at verse 38 again. He said, "See, your house is left to you desolate." I want you to underline that in your copy of Scripture. Now, here we are in chapter 23. It was in chapter 21 that Jesus made His triumphal entry, and just after He made His triumphal entry, He cleansed the temple. You remember the story. He went in there and He drove out the money changers and overturned the tables. And He said to them, "My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have perverted it, you have corrupted it and made it into a den of thieves." And when you see Him cleansing the temple there after His triumphal entry, and now He's towards the end of that last week of His life, and He is saying to them that their house has been left to them desolate, it's as if when He cleansed the temple on the front end of the week, there was symbolism in the cleansing. It was His way of saying, "Look what you have done to My Father's house." And now as He's on His way to the cross, eventually He is saying to them, "This is what you've done to My Father's house through your corrupt religious system," and through the religious establishment of the priestly system which was very corrupt, and all of the unbelief that the nation manifested as a whole, including, by and large, their wholesale rejection of Jesus as their Messiah. Jesus says, "You want this house? You got this house. This is My Father's house, but you have claimed it as your own and turned it into something other than the house of prayer and the house of worship." And I wanna stop right there in saying to you that this has particular meaning for what God's plan is for the Jewish people, and we're going to build that out in our message tonight, but I think it's worth just parking here for a moment and talking about God's patience. And there is no church building that can be equated to the temple in the time of Jesus or in the day of Solomon, because the body is the temple now. We are His dwelling place as Christians. This building that I'm in is not the temple. This is a house where we gather to worship, but it's not the temple. But having said that, we think of a church as symbolizing God's house. And in the same way that Jesus is saying to them in verse 38, "Your house is left to you desolate," as if He's saying, "This was God's house but you took control of it. God wanted to fill this house with His glory, but you perverted it and corrupted it through sin, disobedience, and a lack of repentant heart. And even you've rejected the very Son of God who came from heaven to the earth." And so He was saying God's hand has been lifted from off of this temple. It's no longer God's house, this is your house now. You want it? God says you got it. And where I'm going with this, folks, is to say I believe that this has happened in many churches throughout history. There have been many churches that at one time had great potential. At one time, they were strong and vibrant and thriving. And you look at them now, and they're a shell of their former selves. And I mean, I'm not talking about just the ravages of COVID that has emptied all churches. I'm talking about pre-COVID times where you wonder what happens when a church dies, what happens when a church has to fold and close its doors, as is happening across our country? Hundreds of churches close every month in the United States of America. The statistics are staggering. And I'm not here to diagnose every one of them as though they suffer the same cause and symptoms, but I am telling you this. I believe that God reserves the right to say to a church when a church says, "We're gonna do this our way. We don't need God, we don't need the Holy Spirit, we don't need the Bible," God reserves the right to remove His hand of blessing from that church and say, "Okay, you want this church? I paid for it with the blood of My Son, but you call it your church, you're gonna run it your way, you don't need Me, you don't want Me, you don't want to honor Me, you don't wanna put Me first, you don't want to exalt Me with contrite and humble hearts, then it's your church now. Do with it the best you can." And it's important for us, and wherever you are a member of a church, to remind people who worship alongside you that this is all the Lord's. We don't wanna do this in our strength. We don't wanna do this without Him. We don't wanna get ahead of Him. We don't wanna be against Him. We want to be yielded, surrendered, fully given over to the Holy Spirit in His direction. So back to our text, Jesus was letting these people know that God's protection was going to be removed from Jerusalem, and He pronounces the desolation of Jerusalem. And this is where, if you have been part of our prophecy study, we've talked about how in God's prophetic plan, which is 490 years, remember, we talked about how God is gonna press pause on His plan for Israel, and after this period of time, He's going to press resume. Well, this, I believe, is confirmation that our interpretation that God would press pause on His plan for Israel, particularly after 69 of the 70-week prophecy in Daniel 9, this is it. For Jesus to say in verse 38, "Your house is left to you desolate," desolate means forsaken, desolate means without God's blessing, desolate means without God's protection. God has handed over your house. God has handed over your city. God is removing His protection from the Jewish people. That's what that means. And so this is, to me, the interpretive confirmation of how we have understood God's shift from Israel exclusively to what would eventually be the church, which would come along in Acts chapter two, okay? So it's hard for me to see this any other way when He says, "Your house is left to you desolate." That's God pressing pause, "and now I'm going to put it, Israel, aside and focus on the Church of Jesus Christ. I'm not replacing Israel with the church, I'm pressing pause on Israel for the church." But the good news is this: Jesus is saying here that Jerusalem will welcome the Messiah when He returns. They will welcome Him when He returns. And this is proof to me that He's not completely written off Israel. Pause does not mean utter abandonment and replacement by the church, oh no. And so what I want you to do is to look with me in verse 39, where Jesus said, "For I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'" Okay, this quote, "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord," is from Psalm 118. And out of many of our Psalms in the Old Testament, Psalm 118 is what we call a Messianic Psalm. Either New Testament writers or Jesus Himself quoted from Messianic psalms, invoking their significance as being fulfilled through Him, in part or in whole, as we know many Messianic prophecies have a dual fulfillment: when Jesus came the first time, when Jesus comes the second time. But He says here, you, speaking to them, and obviously He's not referring literally to those exact inhabitants, but He's speaking figuratively to the city of Jerusalem. He's saying, "You will not see Me again until you cry, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.'" Now, don't miss this, because if you'll remember, I told you, here we are in these last few verse of chapter 23, but in chapter 21 is when Jesus had made His triumphal entry into Jerusalem. And do you know that's exactly what the people cried when they waved their palm branches? On the triumphal entry, they cried, "Hosanna, blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord." So think about this. They've already cried, "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord." That was a Messianic reference from Psalm 118. But Jesus says here, "You're not gonna see Me again until you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.'" And this is amazing because as He rode into Jerusalem, earlier in this Passion Week, they cried that. He is prophetically referring to a time when He will return to Jerusalem and they are going to welcome Him as their Messiah in that day. When He entered Jerusalem on the triumphal entry and they cried, "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord," that week ended on the cross. But when He returns, and as verse 39 says, "The next time you see Me will be when you are welcoming Me as your Messiah," there will be no cross when they cry, "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord" upon His return. So what Jesus is saying here is that He's pointing out to them there is going to be another entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. Now, think about it. We have already talked about all of this, but what I am intrigued by is that in properly reading the words of Jesus, we have this spelled out for us with precise detail just from three verses, and these three verses are before He even moves into chapters 24 and 25, which are what we're really going to be studying. But I have taught this several times before, and I've always thought you cannot start the study of the Olivet discourse in chapter 24. You have to start in chapter 23. So the point of this is simply that Jesus is acknowledging, "Okay, Jerusalem, Jerusalem. You grieve Me because I wanted to gather you but you would not come to Me. Therefore, your house is left to you desolate, God is removing His hand, shifting His focus. However, just as you cried, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord,' not even understanding who I was earlier in Passion Week, so you will see Me again, this holy city, when I come back, and in that moment, you will cry, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord,' and this time, I will not be coming to go to the cross. I will be coming to wear My crown to rule the earth and My millennial kingdom." You say, "Is all of that in these verses?" Every single bit of it is in these verses. Now, here's what we have to think about. From the time between verse 38, where God says, "Your house," Jesus says, "God is removing His hand, your house has left you desolate," that's pause on God's program for the Jewish people, to verse 39 when He says, "The next time you see Me, you will cry, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord,'" which is His return to the earth to set up His millennial kingdom, which we've talked about, what we have there is a gap of time. It is a mystery because it's not explicitly stated, but it is there nonetheless, I believe. And that leads me to this point. There is going to be an intervening period between rejection and acceptance. An intervening period between rejection of Christ and acceptance of Christ. And this intervening period is the period of time between verse 38 where He said, "You wanted Jerusalem, you want the House of God to be yours, fine, God's done, He is giving you over to desolation. But you're gonna see Me again. This city will welcome Me when I come the next time, and you will cry, 'Blessed is He.'" We have the house is made desolate because they rejected Christ, He would go to the cross shortly after this, but then you have Jerusalem crying out a Messianic declaration of praise when He comes again. You have their rejection of Him when He came the first time, you have their acceptance of Him, the Jewish people's acceptance of Him, when He comes the second time. And between those two periods, when He was here 2000 years ago and they rejected Him as a people, and when He comes back, as John saw in Revelation 19, and they accept Him because He will save them from being obliterated by the global alliance of armies in the Battle of Armageddon, things we've all talked about. Between their rejection of Him, which we know is described in the gospels, and their acceptance of Him when He returns, there's this period of time in the middle. That's what I'm calling the intervening period. So this intervening period, which is implied here between verse 38 and 39, is what we call the mystery of the church age. It's the mystery of the church age. Why do we call the church age a mystery? We call it a mystery because it was not foretold in the Old Testament prophecies. No one saw it coming except for God. The only thing that we see in the Old Testament is that God would use the Jewish people to bless all nations and that God would establish His kingdom through the Jewish people. There there's no notion of this idea that there would be a plan of God in which Israel would be placed aside and God would create a new group, a new family, in which Jew and Gentile, unclean Gentiles, strangers to the covenants of God with His people in the Old Testament, Jew and Gentile would be made into one family through their shared faith in Jesus Christ. Now, in our day in time, it's a rare thing to find someone who is Jewish who has placed their faith in Jesus Christ, but you need to know they're out there. And it's beautiful when we can realize that we have Jews who've placed their faith in the Messiah Jesus Christ, and Gentiles who've placed their faith in Jesus Christ as the Messiah, and Jew and Gentile are unified in the family of God called the church. It is this notion that the Jews and Gentiles in a future age would be united through their shared faith in a Messiah, this was something that no one in the Old Testament, none of the prophets, no matter what they foretold and prophesied, none of them could have seen that happen. And this is referred to in the first chapter of Ephesians, this idea of it being a mystery, something that was hidden but which was unveiled in recent times. But I wanted to go ahead and read from Ephesians 3, where Paul talks about it more in depth. He says in Ephesians 3, "For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for you Gentiles, if indeed you've heard the dispensation of the grace of God which was given to me for you, how that by revelation He made known to me the mystery," there it is right there. God made known to Paul the mystery. He says, "As I've briefly written already," which was back in the first chapter, "by which, when you read, you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ." There it is, twice now. Look in verse five. He says, "Speaking of this mystery, it was not known in other ages." He says, "Which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed by the Holy Spirit to His holy apostles and prophets." And what is the mystery? Right there in verse 6, I've got it underlined. The mystery is "that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ through the gospel, understood with Jews who believe in Christ." So I hope you're following this, that the Apostle Paul in writing these words, he is saying, "I am so in awe, I am so thankful, I am so pumped that God in His goodness revealed to me, through His Spirit, this mystery which had not been revealed to the prophets of old." But now in the time of Christ, in the age of Christ, since Christ coming, God has birthed something called the church in which the Jews, the children of the covenant, and the Gentiles who were strangers and foreign to God's plan, they now constitute through faith in Christ a body of believers around the world who are part of God's plan, but God kept it hidden, and Paul is saying, "I feel so blessed that I'm privileged to now know about this." And you know, I sometimes think I don't appreciate that I'm a part of God's church, that I am part of those strangers and foreigners who were outside of the covenant blessings of God promised to the children of Abraham. When I think that I am a Gentile, a stranger to God's covenants, and that through faith in Jesus, I have been brought in to God's kingdom plan through this intervening period, this mystery call the church. So you say, "What does this have to do with what we're looking at?" Because in verse 38, Jesus knows the cross is near, He's weeping over Jerusalem, and He says, "Your house is left to you desolate. But one day when I come back, you will receive Me as your Messiah." There is a period of time between those two points that is the church age that no one saw coming. Jesus saw it, but what I want you to realize is He did not refer to that, neither in these three verses of chapter 23, nor anywhere in chapters 24 and 25. This intervening period is that same mysterious gap between the 69th week and the 70th week in the Daniel 9 prophesy. This intervening period, which is also the church age, it's that mysterious gap between every Messianic prophecy which was not fulfilled when Christ came the first time, but which will be fulfilled when He comes the second time. In other words, for every one of those prophecies about the Messiah that Jesus only partially fulfilled when He came the first time, but will totally fulfill when He comes the second time, it's that period between the two fulfillments of the prophecies that is the intervening period or the church age. And this gap is what cannot be seen in those prophecies about the Kingdom of God and the rule of the Messiah, in each age of which there is a dual fulfillment: His first coming, His second coming. And what is the period of time between when Jesus was there the first time and Jesus comes again? The church age. So what I want to do is I want us to think about how these verses in chapter 23 set us up to properly interpret the Olivet discourse. So I think what you would say is everything I've just said is my introduction. I hope you haven't given up. I hope it's not too much to take in. But let's think about Matthew's gospel. The context for the Gospel of Matthew, don't miss this, these are the words of Jesus that Matthew wrote, but so were the words recorded in Mark and Luke and John. But the difference is Matthew, who authored this first book of our New Testament, it was written, he wrote it, as an evangelistic tool to convince Jews that Jesus was the Messiah. So Matthew is the most Jewish in nature of the first four books of our New Testament, the four gospels. Think about Jesus' cry in verse 37, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem." This is Jewish in nature. Jesus is speaking to the Jewish people. When we move into chapter 24, where Jesus will be talking about the Great Tribulation, He says, "Let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains." He is speaking to Jewish people. Why didn't He say, "Let those who were in Moscow flee to the mountains, let those who are in Washington, DC flee to the mountains?" Because these words are to Jewish people. And Matthew crafts this message drawing on the words of Jesus, making sure it is clear in every reader's understanding, Matthew's gospel is written to Jews. Not only this, but in the 20th verse of chapter 24, Jesus speaks about the Sabbath Day. Now, isn't it interesting that He is talking about the last days before His return in chapter 24? Why would He be referring to the Sabbath Day in the days immediately prior to His return? Christians don't observe a Sabbath Day. We observe Sunday, the Lord's Day. So that is another interpretive clue, and we're gonna revisit all of this when we move through this, Jesus is talking to Jewish people. And then Jesus quoted in chapter 24, He quoted directly from Daniel 9, from Daniel's prophecy about the end times. And what was Daniel's prophecy in Daniel 9 about? Gabriel the angel said, "70 weeks are appointed for your people and for your holy city." That prophetic plan from Daniel 9 was exclusively intended to be applied to God's plan for the Jewish people. And what happens, many people try to impose upon Matthew 24 all of our understanding about the rapture of the church, which is not referred to in Matthew chapter 24, and the concept of the resurrection of the saved dead when the trumpet sounds, before we're caught up in the clouds. All of the things that are taught in 1 Corinthians 15, in 1 Thessalonians 4, Jesus does not make reference to those. And you have to step back and understand that God reveals His truth the way His Word was revealed. You know, He didn't just plop the Bible down in 300 AD and we had Genesis to Revelation. No, that Bible was composed over a period of 1600 years by over 40 different authors. So we have an expression called progressive revelation. So when Jesus is speaking here and Matthew is structuring and building his words and composing this letter of Matthew, Jesus is speaking to Jews, He is not speaking to the church. It is not until later when the epistles of the New Testament were written, most of which were written by Paul, that we have our doctrine of prophecy built out for the church later in the letters of the New Testament. Matthew is looking, Jesus recorded in Matthew, I should say, is looking past these epistles, which had not even been written yet, which is another reminder here that Jesus is talking about and to the Jews. So, if God's pressed pause on His plan for Israel, which we believe happened in the last week of Jesus' life, then when we move into chapter 24, and Jesus starts talking about the Tribulation period, this is after God has pushed resume play on His plan for Israel, nowhere in Jesus' teaching about prophecy is the mystery of the church included. And this is where so many people mess up on Matthew 24 and 25. They force the church into this and it leads them astray because it's an interpretive misstep. So Jesus, in this prophetic passage, He reaches forward past the church age to the final period when God resumes. And you know what we call that, the 70th week of the Daniel 9 prophecy. That's what this is about in Matthew 24, all right? So let's look in verse one of chapter 24, and it says, "Jesus went out and departed from the temple, and His disciples came up to show Him the buildings of the temple." And from there, verse three tells us that they went over to the Mount of Olives. So here He is, He's in the last week of His life, and He takes His disciples from the temple, and they walk across the Kidron Valley, you know what was at the base of the Kidron Valley, Gethsemane, where shortly from that moment, He would be agonizing in prayer and then walking up out of the Kidron Valley on the eastern slopes of the city of Jerusalem, ascending up to the Mount of Olives, because the Mount of Olives is on the eastern side Jerusalem. And it's just worth noting that back in the day when the prophet Ezekiel lived, Ezekiel witnessed something very amazing, which was the Shekinah Glory of God departing from the temple in Jerusalem and making its way this, cloud of glory, until finally it went and stood the Shekinah cloud glory of God, on the Mount of Olives. He talked about it in Ezekiel 11 in verse 23. He says, "And the glory of the Lord went up from the midst of the city and stood on the mountain, which is on the east side of the city." And so think about it. What Ezekiel had seen back in his day of that Shekinah Glory leaving the temple, going out across the Kidron Valley, and ultimately at the slopes of the Mount of Olives and hovering over the Mount of Olives, that Shekinah Glory departing from the temple blazed the path for what would happen hundreds of years later when Jesus Christ, in the last week of His life, walked out of the temple with His disciples, walked down through the Kidron Valley, up the slopes of the Mount of Olives and stood there, and from that vantage point, which gives you the most advantageous panoramic sweeping view of the city of Jerusalem, He spoke the message that we're going to spend the next several weeks talking about. But just as the glory of God in Ezekiel's vision had departed the temple and went to the Mount of Olives, so Jesus symbolizes God's protection over Jerusalem and His favor on the Jewish people departing from the temple and Jerusalem and Jesus walking up the slopes to deliver this prophetic masterpiece about the last days when God resumes His plan for Israel after the church age. All right, I hope you're following with us. And so he begins his prophecy, as we'll talk about next week, with this promise that all of those buildings of the temple, not one brick would be left on top of another because Jesus prophesied as the house was left desolate, God's protection had been removed, the temple in Jerusalem would be destroyed one day, and we're gonna talk about that next week. So I wanna wrap everything up before I pray. Let's review the context here Matthew was written to the immediate audience of Jewish readers. So think about this with me. Matthew is a believer in Jesus Christ, and after Jesus has ascended back to the Father, the Holy Spirit is prompting Matthew to write an account of the life of Jesus, to write the words of Jesus which he had heard. And Matthew is led in his heart to write his gospel, where we're studying tonight. The Sermon on the Mount is in the Book of Matthew. You know, all these wonderful passages are in the Book of Matthew. Matthew was led to write this book to convince Jews to believe in Jesus, all right? Now, here's the second thing. For 2,000 years, Matthew has been the first book of the New Testament. And even though it was written for Jewish audiences, it has been read and enjoyed by both Gentile and Jewish audiences, because it is the inaugural book of the New Testament, which is the new covenant that brought into being the mystery of the church. So it's the bridge between God's plan for Israel and then God's mysterious plan no one saw coming to merge Jew and Gentile into one church in that mysterious intervening gap period, until which time God shifts His focus back exclusively to Israel, which will happen in the 70th week of Daniel 9, which is the Seven Year Tribulation. Matthew's the perfect bridge for it. So, you know, I personally, Matthew's my favorite gospel. You probably aren't supposed to say that about a book of the Bible. I know I've said Romans 8 is my favorite chapter, but Matthew is, among the four gospels, Matthew's my favorite. Even though it was written to Jewish audiences, God uses it to reach everybody. So it was first written shortly after Jesus went back to heaven by Matthew to reach Jews. But tucked into our New Testament collection at the very beginning of our 27 New Testament books, people like me, Gentiles, we've been blessed, challenged, and drawn to the Lord through it. Now, here's what I want you to realize. When the church is raptured, Matthew will once again become a letter intended for a Jewish audience during the Tribulation, and this is how we best can interpret chapters 24 and 25. The doctrine of the rapture, and any reference to the church age, that mystery that has not even been unveiled yet by the time Jesus is speaking these words, none of that is in there. Consider this: when the church is raptured, and I believe it's gonna happen before the Tribulation because the church will be taken out and God will shift back to Israel for the Seven Year Tribulation, which will be that last seven years of the 490-year plan mentioned in Daniel 9. Do you realize that every copy of the Bible that is in existence is gonna be left behind? We're not taking paper Bibles with us to heaven. We're going to heaven alone. We're going to heaven in a cloud of glory. You're not taking anything from earth to heaven. And you say, "Well, I wanna take my Bible to heaven," no, you won't need your Bible in heaven because Him of whom the Bible speaks will become sight to us. We won't need the Bible to inform our faith because we will see Him face to face. So the Bibles will be left behind. And in particular, out of all of the books in our New Testament that could be most helpful to a Jewish audience, it's almost like a reversion back to why Matthew wrote it in the first place, this book of Matthew in our Bible will become an evangelistic tool for the Jews who are living during the Tribulation. And you say, "Well, who is going to preach to the Jews about their Tribulation period from Matthew chapters 24 and 25?" Well, we know who's gonna be preaching during the Tribulation, the two mighty witnesses that we've talked about from the Book of Revelation, and the 144,000 Jewish evangelists. They are the ones who are going to be preaching during the Tribulation. So those two witnesses in Revelation and the 144,000 Jewish evangelists, those will be the ones proclaiming the gospel during the Tribulation period. And they will be able to use the Gospel of Matthew in order to do that. Never fear, it all makes sense. So before I close, I just wanna give you what I'm calling the Rules of Interpretation 101. Interpretation 101, first one is always interpret Scripture in its context. And that's what I've tried to do by building for us the idea of the Jewish flavor and intent of Matthew's gospel. We cannot read the church doctrine of prophecy into Matthew's gospel. Number two, always interpret Scripture with Scripture. And so if you'll just take a shot of those, those are the two most foundational rules of Bible interpretation. You always interpret Scripture in its context, and you always interpret Scripture with Scripture. And so with that said, what we're going to do is, as we go through this passage, if you got lost in any of the introduction, these were seeds planted, seeds planted, and just like in Daniel, and just like in Revelation, if you've gone through those studies, there have been light bulb moments where you didn't get something, but somewhere along the way, and you know, I've heard from some people who said it wasn't until we did that timeline and the very last prophecy overview that it all came together, and the blur cleared up, and it all just was made real through that timeline. I believe the same thing's gonna happen as we move through these two chapters in this short series on Jesus' Insights on Prophesy. Lord, thank You for letting us study and thank You for giving us insights into the mysteries of Your Word. We thank You that you are educating us and enlightening us on things that most people don't even understand about the end times, about Your plan for Your people, Israel being prepared for their Messiah to return. But oh, how grateful we are that we already know Him. We already love Him. He's already ours. So Father, thank You for giving us Jesus. Thank You for giving us the Bible. Thank You for giving us this mystery of the church that what no prophet or apostle of the past could have foreseen, we are now enjoying because we're a part of it. Help us to give thanks for it every day in Jesus' name. Amen.
