8.4.24 Matthew Yetter
Please join me in prayer.
May the words of my lips this day and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, oh Lord. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.
When I went to college 36 years ago, it was under an Air Force scholarship to become a meteorologist. People would ask me why I chose that profession, and I liked to reply that a weatherman is the only job in the world where you can be wrong at least 50% of the time and still be employed!
All joking aside, this stands as quite a contrast from the Old Testament Prophets. Let’s face it: they were very rarely liked or even appreciated by the people of their time. They were known for telling it how it was, rather than what people wanted to hear, calling people out for their transgressions and very often speaking dire warnings about what would happen without a major course correction. Nobody was safe, from the meanest shepherd to the most powerful king.
Anywhere else in the world, that kind of talk – especially to your ruler – was a sure-fire death wish.
But Israel was different because prophets were from God, and you mess with them at your peril. However, this divine protection only applied if they truly were speaking for God. And so, the people would watch in hope that the prophet would make a mistake. You see, only God is all-knowing. Only God knows the future, and this created a kind of litmus test for the people of Israel. Only a true prophet of God would be accurate in their predictions. If they were ever wrong, then they clearly weren’t from God, after all, and all bets were off.
In other words, Old Testament Prophet was the only job in the world where you had to be right 100% of the time to be allowed to live.
When Daniel asked me in June if I would be willing to fill in today, he suggested that I focus on one of the Attributes of God. In that list was Omniscience – the fact that God is all-knowing. This immediately made me think of prophecy, which is a topic that has been dear to my heart ever since my youth. And so today, I wish to focus on the topic of Bible Prophecy.
You see, if Christ is the cornerstone of the church, prophecy lays the foundation. We find this right in the Apostle’s Creed, in which we confess that we believe that Christ is the son of God, as well as the beliefs that he will come again and that we will enjoy everlasting life with him.
And so today, I will talk about how:
Prophecy demonstrates the divinity of God.
Prophecy proves that Jesus is the Messiah.
And finally, that prophecy can both guide us in the future, and give us hope today.
Now I know that for many people, prophecy kind of has a bad rap. Some of it is nice and clear, with glad tidings, other parts are shrouded in mystery or paint a dire picture of the near future.
As a result, it’s a topic that we often find ourselves uncomfortable with.
And yet, its importance simply cannot be overstated. You see, the Bible contains 31,124 verses. Of those, 8,352 contain prophecy. This means that over ¼ of the Bible – a full 26.8 percent of it – is prophetic.
God clearly felt that prophecy was important, or He wouldn’t have given us so much of it! What this means that I’ve already been talking about my first point – that prophecy proves the divinity of God – from the moment I started speaking today.
Because if only God is omniscient and if only God can tell us the future with any accuracy, then every single prophecy that comes true is continued proof of His divinity. When all of the Bible is taken together, we see a very clear plan for creation, including humankind. With every prophecy, God has been saying, “I’m going to do this… I guarantee it!” And every time a prophecy has come to pass, it has proven that God is large and in charge.
Prophecy is like God’s signature, written across all of Scripture.
This naturally leads into my second point, that prophecy proves that Jesus is the Messiah. In cracking that walnut, we’ll come to more greatly appreciate the divine nature of God Himself.
This is something that strikes especially close to home for me because a few years after graduating high school and traveling across the country for college, I found myself at a spiritual crossroads. I had been raised Christian, and my family had gone to church nearly every Sunday. Once out on my own, I found the Campus Ministry Center and continued to attend weekly services. But I eventually found myself wondering: was I doing this because it was something I truly believed? Or was I doing it out of habit?
Prophecy answered that question for me. It proved to me beyond any doubt that God is indeed sovereign and that Christ is His son.
Imagine that I have a friend flying into town and since you’re going to be in Bozeman the same day that he arrives, you have volunteered to pick him up. There’s just one problem: You’ve never met him. And so, I give you a description. I tell you that he has tan skin, brown eyes, black hair, and will be wearing grey sweats with a quirky hoody proclaiming, “Everything is more fun in Alaska!” But I don’t stop there. I also tell you that when he comes through the doors he will shout, “I’m Matthew’s friend! I’m from Alaska, and I’m here to attend Western!”
The Bible is a bit like that, except that it’s not exaggerating. There are more than 300 prophecies in the Old Testament that point to the birth, life and death of Jesus. And get this: they were all given at least 400 years before his birth – some even thousands of years earlier.
Thirty-three of these prophecies were fulfilled on the very day of his crucifixion. Every single one of those prophecies was fulfilled not merely in general terms, but down to the tiniest, most exact detail.
Talk about precision!
When Jesus revealed himself to the Jews, he dropped this bombshell that is recorded in John 5:39: “You study the scriptures thoroughly because you think in them you possess eternal life, and it is these same scriptures that testify about me.” In other words, the whole Old Testament was like a giant neon sign pointing to Jesus.
Through the study and understanding of prophecy, we can come to greater faith in both God and Jesus. Through this study, we also have the clearest understanding of God’s great plan of redemption for our world and its inhabitants. These facts make the study of prophecy something that should be cultivated in each of us.
And this is where we come to what will likely be the biggest sticking point for some of you as you listen to my sermon today. The point I’m referring to is that prophecy can and should guide us, as well as providing hope for the future.
I say that it’s likely to be a sticking point because all too many of today’s Christians are content to stop at the prophecies that pertained to the birth, life and ministry of Jesus. While stating that we anticipate Christ’s eventual return, we ignore or even reject the possibility that prophecies might apply directly to us today, and that return could be imminent. Even more, we try to skip past anything that talks about what will happen between Christ’s ascension and his return.
This, my friends, is a dangerous position to take. It ignores the fact that only some of the Old Testament prophecies were fulfilled 2,000 years ago. Many, many more deal with what is yet to come. It also ignores how strong of a role that prophecy plays in the New Testament!
It’s important to note that today’s scripture reading was a direct answer by Jesus to his disciples when they asked what to expect before Christ’s return. Notice what he didn’t say. He did NOT respond by telling them that, “you don’t need to worry about that.” Instead, he gave an extremely detailed response – one with warnings that clearly apply to Christians living on earth. Jesus – and by extension, God – absolutely wants us to be aware of what current events might mean to us as his followers.
Did you know that in the 216 chapters of the New Testament, there are 318 references to the Second Coming of Christ? In fact, if we were to omit all prophetic passages from the New Testament, we would have to remove one out of every thirty verses. We would also have to skip 23 of the 27 New Testament books that mention prophecy.
For every prediction about the birth of Christ, there are eight about his Second Coming.
Today’s reading from Matthew 24 is only one of the many places where Jesus himself spoke about the future. Let me call your attention again to verses 32 and 33:
“Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door.”
Christ is explicitly commanding his followers (and that includes us) to study prophecy, so that we can recognize God’s hand in what is happening around us and know when the time of Christ’s second coming is drawing near.
In Luke 12:56, he said, “Hypocrites! You can discern the face of the sky and of the earth, but how is it you do not discern this time?” The people of Jesus’ day had become experts at reading meteorological indicators to predict the weather. Yet, they ignored the prophetic signs of the Messiah’s coming.
This warning applies to us as well. If God did not want us to be thinking about events that have not yet happened, He would not have put so much prophecy into the New Testament. Christ does not want us to be like the hypocrites of his day. He wants us to be studying prophecy and seeking his guidance as we attempt to understand the day and hour in which we live.
You might say, “But Matthew, how can you know that those prophecies point to today? That’s what Christians have been thinking for 20 centuries, after all. Why is our time different?”
That’s a fair question, and one for which I have two answers.
The first answer is that the fig tree is putting out leaves like never before. In fact, it was not even possible for the end times to arrive before 1948, because Israel had been scattered to the winds by the Romans in the 1st century. It was only in 1948 that it became a nation again, and scripture very clearly describes events that happen specifically to the nation of Israel. There are many other signs as well, that have not existed at any other point in history. For example, our environment. God appointed humanity as caretakers of this world that we live in. We have failed at that assignment so miserably that we are in real danger of making the planet uninhabitable for future generations.
The more one studies prophecy, the more readily we spot the signs all around us. And there are some truly amazing surprises that can be discovered.
Now, when I mentioned that I was going to be talking about prophecy today, a dear friend of mine asked me to please not quote from Revelation. They even went so far as to say that the book has no business even being part of the Bible.
I won’t argue against their point that Revelation is filled with a lot of metaphorical imagery that can make it extremely difficult to understand. But let us look to chapter 1:
“The revelation from Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who testifies to everything he saw – that is, the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ.”
Let that sink in. Just because Revelation is challenging does not make it unimportant. John makes it clear that what he is writing was given to him by God. Revelation also happens to be the only book of the Bible to explicitly promise a blessing to those who study it. The book was meant for all Christians, and that includes us.
Now let’s take a brief look at the first two verses of Revelation 11:
“I was given a reed like a measuring rod and was told, “Go and measure the temple of God and the altar, with its worshipers. But exclude the outer court; do not measure it because it has been given to the Gentiles.”
I’m bringing this passage up because when I traveled to Jerusalem, I had the privilege to visit the Temple Institute. This is an organization that is dedicated to rebuilding the temple. Knowing that they can’t yet actually work at constructing the building, they have faith that they will be allowed to do so at some point in the future. As a result, they have put terrific time and money into crafting the many accoutrements necessary for proper temple worship. These include the tables for the Shewbread, the menorahs, the priests’ vestments, and even the high priest’s breastplate with its 12 gem stones. It was amazing to see all of these modern artifacts in person.
But what of the temple itself? John makes it clear that the temple is present during the end times, so it has to be rebuilt between now and then. The work of the Temple Institute therefore represents another leaf on the figurative fig tree.
Yet we also know that the temple mount is currently home to the Dome of the Rock, and that there is no way that Muslims would ever allow it to be destroyed in favor of a Jewish temple. That would be World War Three right there!
But God has clearly stated in His prophecy that the temple exists, and if we have faith in His sovereignty then we can be 100% sure that it will happen. Revelation 11 gives the answer. You see, we know that the temple was situated such that you could draw a line from the East gate of the Temple Mount complex through the front doors of the temple itself and the Holy of Holies, then the West gate. Those two gates still exist today, even though they’ve been walled up. A direct line between them runs well north of the Dome of the Rock. This means that the temple could be rebuilt without disturbing the second most holy place in the Islaamic faith. And if that were to happen, the temple itself would stand on the Temple Mount, being used in worship by the Jews while the outer court would remain under the jurisdiction of the Muslims. Exactly as Revelation foretells.
Please bear in mind that I’m not saying this absolutely will happen in that way. It is always important to make sure that one is not making events fit prophecy or worse, making prophecy fit events. From the prophecies, we can be 100% certain that the temple will be rebuilt and equally certain that the courtyard surrounding it will be given to the gentiles. The scenario that I outlined is an extremely likely way in which that would be fulfilled, but it is not the only possible way. Only time will tell for certain. But by knowing the prophecy, we will be able to recognize its fulfillment when it does finally happen.
We will recognize another of the fig leaves that Christ spoke about.
There are a great many more gems that can be uncovered by studying Revelation. However, I won’t go into more today other than to say that to properly understand that book one must look to the rest of Scripture for the keys that unlock its more cryptic portions. In other words, you can’t fully understand the final chapter without understanding the rest of the Bible.
If anyone would like to talk with me another day and in greater detail, I would welcome that.
But I’m nearly out of time, and we have only covered the first answer to the question of “Why is our time different?” Yes, the fig tree of Matthew 24 is putting forth leaves like at no other point in history. But we don’t really know how big the tree is. There could be many more leaves yet to come. So perhaps our time now is not any different from what it was 100 years ago. But – and here’s the kicker – my second answer to that question is that IT DOESN’T MATTER.
Even if we’re still 1,000 years away from Christ’s return, the study of prophecy is extremely relevant today. For by studying prophecy, we gain an ever-increasing understanding of and appreciation for God’s love for us. We more clearly understand his plan for humanity. And, even as the events around the world continue to unfold in often scary ways, we can find comfort in the fact that God is in control.
Prophecy is so prevalent in the Bible because it points us to God. Through it, he demonstrates His omniscience. Through it, we can recognize his omnipotence. And even when things are at their darkest, we can have hope.
Amen.
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