Patience and Confidence in the Lord

 Preached at Christ church, Billericay on 14 November 2021

The Temple

For us to begin to get a grasp of the impact of what Jesus says to four of his disciples, we must first understand a little about the temple.

The original temple had been destroyed by the Babylonians. After the return from the exile, a second temple was built, but it was not a patch on its predecessor. Herod the Great (that’s the Herod that the wise men met) had decided to build the Jews a new temple. He had been very careful to ensure that it was built in accordance with all the Jewish requirements – even going so far as to train priests as stonemasons so that the ground would not be defiled. Most of the work was complete by the time of Jesus’s birth, but some work continued until about AD 64.

Herod’s Temple

Herod’s temple, as it became known, was a magnificent building and its courtyards had been extended using rubble from the previous destruction, most probably, to make it cover an area of about a third of the city.

Disciples View

From the disciple's point of view, the Temple was a fixture – it had existed for their entire life. They had never known its predecessor. It was also the most magnificent building in the Roman Empire for at least 200 miles. So, it would have been the most impressive building they had ever seen. It was also somewhere they would have visited, at least annually and possibly quite a bit more often, as Jewish festivals were all centred on the Temple. It dominated the city, and was a clear representation of the presence of their God. Josephus tells us that “Whatever was not overlaid with gold was the purest white”.

​The Question

What was the disciple who asked the question expecting as a reply, I wonder? Something about the Glory of God in His Temple, perhaps?

What they actually got must have come as something of a shock. It’s interesting that neither Matthew, Mark, nor Luke identify the questioner.

They all have the same answer though. “Not one stone will be left on another”.

​AD 70

The prophecy came true in AD 70. The Romans, finally fed up with Jewish revolts, laid waste to Jerusalem and obliterated the temple. They were so efficient in their task that there is no archaeological evidence to support the various reconstructions of the temple that have been attempted at various times by various people on the sparse record keeping and observational reports that survive.

Literally, “Not one stone was left on another”.

St Peter died between AD 64 and AD 68.

St James died in AD 44.

St John died in AD 100.

St Andrew died in AD 60.

Three of the four didn’t live to see the prophecy come true, and John was by then a very old man living many hundreds of miles away.

But I’m skipping ahead.

Attention Disciples!

So the threat of the loss of the temple really got the disciple's attention. The way Mark tells it, it seems they were afraid to ask and selected the four senior disciple to go and talk to Jesus later.

So, Peter, James, John and Andrew bring their concerns to Jesus once they have crossed the Kidron valley and arrived at the Mount of Olives. There is a good view of the temple from there.

They want to know when it’s going to happen, and how they will know that the time is approaching.

Jesus’s Answer

“Don’t Worry guys, it won’t happen for another 40 years”. Well, that’s probably the answer they would have liked, but it’s not what they would ever get. Because that answer would not achieve Jesus’s goals.

So instead they get a number of warnings, many more than are in our reading this morning.

So, I’m only going to look at those we heard.

Warning 1

The first warning is, “Watch out that no one deceives you. Many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and will deceive many.”

Our reading takes place after Jesus has entered Jerusalem in triumph to the cheers of the crowd, so the disciples should be well aware that their time with Jesus is coming to an end. I’m not sure they ever really believed it until the crucifixion occurred, but Jesus had been preparing them for that and for His return.

No doubt there were many who tried to take His place even before AD 70, there have certainly been plenty in recent years. They have all had their devoted disciples, and many times the result has had a tragic ending. Gamaliel mentions two in the book of Acts, in chapter 5:

Theudas, and Judas the Galilean. Both were killed and their followers dispersed.

If we are careful and remember our scriptures, we will not be deceived.

Warning 2

The second warning is “When you hear of wars and rumours of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.”

The fury of the Romans, when they attacked Jerusalem in AD 70 left more than half the population dead if reports at the time are to be believed. In those circumstances it’s hard not to be alarmed, indeed it’s hard not to be terrified. Of course, the disciples couldn’t know what would happen, but there must have been stories of rampaging Romans going on a merciless killing spree. Those are after all the sort or stories that come out of every war, whether they are true or not.

I haven’t had to live through a war, but listening to some of the experiences that people had, I cannot imagine how they could be anything other than alarmed, at best.

But Jesus tells us not to be alarmed!

​Warning 3

The third warning is “There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines.”

We’ve certainly heard of our fair share of those, and I’m assuming volcanic eruptions are included, even if they wouldn’t have made a lot of sense to Jesus’s audience.

There is no call for calmness here, just a simple statement of fact.

Birth Pains

Then Jesus says, “These are the beginnings of the birth pains”.

You may think that this is rather a strange statement for a young single man, talking to other young single men, to make. That just shows how different our society is from the first century. Now, with small families, and births mainly in hospitals, it is easy for young men to have little or no appreciation of what birth pains are like. In the first century, large families lived in small, often single room buildings. It was impossible to easily shield children from the birth of their younger siblings. Jesus and all the disciples would have been very aware of what birth pains meant, and how serious they could be.

There was an expression at the time to describe the difficult times they were going through. “The birth pains of the messiah.” It was kind of comforting, whenever there were hard times, to see this is just one more contraction on the way to the birth of or the arrival of the messiah.

Just the beginning

This is just the beginning, birth pains can go on for days. This should help us to remember that the Messiah will come back, but it may not be for days, weeks, or even generations. But His prophecies hold true, remember Peter, James, John and Andrew didn’t see the disaster that befell Jerusalem, because it occurred so long after they were told about it. We know they passed the message on, because we have the documents they wrote.

End of Reading

There, our reading for today stops, and we are left wondering why Jesus is trying to frighten the life out of the disciples. But, if you read on, the troubles get more worrying and more personal. When I preached on the Luke equivalent reading on Remembrance Sunday in 2010, I called the sermon “Keep Calm and Carry On”, after the WWII poster.

How to KC&CO

But how can we keep calm and carry on, in the face of a raging pandemic that is still killing people, and the threat that we will literally burn the earth up by causing the atmosphere to overheat. This process will reduce the usable land area and undoubtedly cause wars for both land and water. It’s already happening. In Central Africa, nomads are being forced into towns as there is nowhere to graze their goats. Some of them are being radicalized and are joining in radical groups whose aim is to destabilize their countries.

Psalm 16

Our Old Testament reading tells us how we can remain calm, and get on with the job in hand. Only by fully focussing on God and having total confidence in Him can we avoid the panic and despair that might otherwise overtake us.

1&2

Verse 1 & 2: Keep me safe, O God, for in you, I take refuge. I said to the LORD, “You are my Lord; apart from you, I have no good thing.”

There are many Psalms where God is described as a refuge, a place of safety when things get too difficult. Here the psalmist recognises that God is the only source of good things, so will not seek them anywhere else.

8

Verse 8: I have set the LORD always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.

Whatever happens, with God beside us (‘at our right hand’) we can never be shaken, wars and rumours of wars will not deflect us from His path.

Conclusion

So, to sum up. Some very bad things will happen, but they are all a necessary part of the process of getting to the return of the Messiah. Hearing about them should not deflect us from the things we have been called to do – whether they happen soon, or are delayed beyond the future we can see. None of these things should cause us to have doubts – we will not be shaken.

Let us then make the last three verses of the psalm our own.

⁹ Therefore, my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure, ¹⁰ because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay.

¹¹ You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

Amen.