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Welcome to week 26 of our look through the book of Matthew. Hi, this is Pastor
Tom and we are looking this week and next week at Matthew 24 and 25. You might
know if you're a student of the Bible that these are the two chapters where
Jesus teaches about His second coming.

It's called in many places the Olivet Discourse because it happens on the Mount
of Olives, the Mount of Olivet as He goes out of Jerusalem towards the outskirts
of the city. They're able to look down on the temple from there and from that
place Jesus teaches about His coming again based on some questions His disciples
ask Him. So I like to call this the University of Olivet because in many ways
Jesus teaches us here everything we need to know about His second coming.

He's the one telling us and He's the one who's coming again. So He sums up all
that you see in Daniel and Revelation and many other places in the Bible in this
one place. This is one of the most important subjects of scripture.

I know that for many of us it is one of the things we're most interested in. As
I talk to Christians probably for more of us it's something we're not all that
interested in because we're living our lives, our everyday lives today. We know
Jesus is going to come again some day but what does that have to do with my life
today?

However, when you take a look at the scripture you find that entire chapters,
entire books of the Bible are devoted to this important truth. Some facts about
the second coming. One out of every 30 verses in the Bible mentions the subject
of the end of time or of Christ's return.

So God wants us to live our lives with that in view. There are 216 chapters in
the New Testament. In those 216 chapters there are well over 300 references to
the return of Christ.

Just shows you how it comes up again and again. In fact, only four of the 27 New
Testament books fail to mention Christ's return. And here we look at this Olivet
Discourse, this two-chapter message that Jesus preached on his second coming.

If you look at the actual words of preaching there are just over 2100 words in
this Olivet Discourse. There are just under 2500 words in the Sermon on the
Mount. So they're nearly equal and yet the Sermon on the Mount obviously gets a
lot more intention and there's a lot to preach on, a lot to study in the Sermon
on the Mount.

I entirely agree with that, but I don't want to miss what Jesus has to say here.
Jesus has a lot to say about his second coming. I know, some of us look at this
and they say, "Yeah, I know he's coming again.

I don't need to know all the details. " And I think the picture I'd give you an
eye of this is the picture of the nutrition information that's often on the back
of the food that you buy. A lot of people just ignore it.

Some people just feel good that it's there. They don't even really look at it.
Other people, they get so fanatical about it.

They've got memorized all the charts and calculations, every percentage and what
it means. And sometimes when it comes to those food calculations, the fanatics
can keep the rest of us from getting interested because we feel like, "Well, I
just can't understand it. It's just too complicated.

It's too big for me. " That can happen with the truth of the second coming.
Sometimes there are those who are so fanatical about it.

They've got so many charts, so many ways of looking at it that you feel like, "I
just can't understand it. " But the truth is Jesus wanted us to understand it.
That's why he talked about it.

When it comes to the nutrition information on the back of a label, sometimes all
the confusion can keep you from even looking at it. So you don't look at
information that's vital to your physical health. And sometimes some of the
overextended charts can make us feel like it's confusing.

It's not meant to be. That's maybe one person's way of looking at it. I'm not
putting down those who do charts, but I am going after the feeling that it gives
some of us, which is I can't understand it.

Jesus wants you to understand it. And it's truth that's good for your physical
health. The truth of his coming is good nutrition for your soul.

It's a label that he's put on your life. Jesus says, "I'm coming again for you.
" It's a label that he's put on your life that is worth looking at.

So we're going to look at the details of what Jesus has to teach, but in those
details we're going to see three major truths these next couple of weeks
together. Now as you think about what Jesus had to teach here, you see the first
of those major truths in just the first couple of verses, verse one and two.
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? I tell you the truth. Not one stone here
will be left on another.

Everyone will be thrown down. We're going to look at three major truths these
next two weeks. The first truth is don't allow your hope to be misplaced.

Don't allow your hope to be misplaced. Jesus begins this teaching beside the
temple and the disciples are pointing it out and they're most likely very
impressed with this temple. It was an impressive place.

In the building of it, Herod, this is called Herod's temple because he had built
this temple, a hundred priests had been trained as masons to lead 10,000 skilled
laborers in the building of this temple. And it was a temple of marble that was
plated with gold. Parts of it were 15 stories high.

It had foundation stones in it that were from 100 to 500 tons. And Jesus looks
at all of this and he says not one stone's going to be left on another. Well,
class is in session.

The disciples are interested. The disciples would have looked at this temple as
something that would never fall. And Jesus taught them this is a human
achievement not to be trusted.

Even those 100 ton foundation stones, they are not enough to hold a person's
hope. So one of the questions I have to ask as I listen to the teaching of Jesus
is, is my hope misplaced? So much of what's in this world looks like it's never
going to be lost.

Like it's those 100 ton foundation stones. It's never going to crumble. Don't be
tempted to misplace your hope.

Jesus is coming again and all foundations except him are one day going to
crumble. All nations, all families, all denominations, all of it's going to
crumble. What's going to last?

His people, his church. Jesus, is your hope placed on human will, human
achievement? Jesus says that's the wrong place.

No matter how strong that foundation looks in this world, don't put it there.
Put your hope in me. Well, class is in session and so Jesus has prompted some
thinking from his disciples and they immediately ask two questions.

In verse 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?

Now as we walk through this, you're going to see there's some difficult things
to understand in Matthew 24 and also in 25. One of the keys to unlocking the
meaning of Matthew 24 is understanding that Jesus is answering his disciples'
questions. They ask, when are these things going to happen?

He just said not one stone is going to be left on the other. When's that going
to happen, they're asking? When's that temple going to fall?

And what's going to be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age? Now
the truth of the matter is, they thought they were asking one question but
they're actually asking two. And Jesus is going to say some things to them in
Matthew 24 about when the temple is going to fall.

He's going to say some things to them about when his coming is going to happen,
when the end of the age is going to happen. And we sometimes can determine which
is which and sometimes we're not so sure as we look at this because all of it
hasn't happened yet. World history, in the way that you and I think about it
sometimes, is different than the world history that is explained throughout the
Bible.

We tend to define world history into two parts, BC and AD. But in the
scriptures, world history is defined into two parts, the present age and the day
of the Lord. And the day of the Lord, or the age to come, is the day when God
changes everything.

He comes and He establishes His kingdom on this earth. So when you and I think
about what these disciples are asking, they're asking, when is this day of the
Lord coming that we've been looking forward to? And Jesus begins to answer.

But as He begins to answer, He starts with a warning. Not only do you need to be
careful not to let your hope be misplaced, Jesus says here's a second major
truth. And we're going to see this again and again through this chapter.

Don't let yourself be misled. When it comes to the truth of the second coming,
it's easy to be misled because it hasn't happened yet. So someone can lie about
it, be confident about it, even though they're lying, and they can mislead even
those who have faith in Jesus.

So in verse four, Jesus answered, "Watch out that no one deceives you. " One of
the greatest dangers of the truth of the second coming is being misled. There
are false teachers down through history who again and again and again have
misled people about these truths.

So Jesus just says very clearly, don't be misled by people and don't be misled
by the signs. Don't be misled by people, by false prophets and fake Christs.
Don't be fooled by those who claim Christ's power to themselves.

And don't be misled by the signs. Don't be fooled into thinking that Jesus has
to wait for certain things to happen to come again. He could come again at any
moment.

And don't be fooled into thinking that because this certain thing happened, he
has to come again right now. He'll come again when it's God's will, only when
it's God's will. Jesus is saying be very careful.

You can be thrown off with the truth of the second coming. You can be misled. He
wouldn't have said this.

We're going to see him say it several times in these chapters if we weren't so
easily deceived, if we couldn't so easily be misled. So how do you keep from
being misled? Well, you don't trust in people.

You trust in Jesus. You don't trust in people's word. You trust in Jesus's word.

And anything you hear about somebody teaching about the second coming, you check
it according to what Jesus had to say. You check it again and again according to
what Jesus had to say. You don't trust in people.

You trust in Jesus. You don't look for signs. You look for Jesus.

Signs only point the way. What do they point the way to? They point the way to
Jesus.

That's where the focus has to be. So we're just sort of setting up this week
very quickly today. Don't let your hope be misplaced and don't let yourself be
misled.

And then the third major truth that we're going to see during these next few
weeks is if that's what I'm not supposed to do, what am I supposed to do? I'm
supposed to be alert. Be alert.

Be alert. Be ready for what he's going to do. Jesus, when he wants to emphasize
something, says it again and again and he's going to say it again and again and
again throughout these chapters.

Be alert. Be alert. He's going to give us no less than eight different pictures
of how we need to be alert to his coming.

We need to be alert. We need to learn from his examples. The truth of the matter
is we need to live with this life of anticipation.

Anticipating his coming again. Anticipating the fact alert to the fact that this
world is not all there is but there's an eternity that we're looking forward to.
So that just sort of sets up where we're going these next few weeks together.

Don't let your hope be misplaced. Don't let yourself be misled but instead be
alert to the fact that Jesus is coming again. As we begin this study together,
let's just pray that those things would happen in our lives.

As we pray today, God, we pray these three things that Jesus taught us. We pray
that we wouldn't place our hope on things that aren't going to last. Show us
when we're doing that and help us to transfer our hope to you.

We pray that we wouldn't be misled by those who sound confident about things to
come but are not trusting in your word or teaching your word. And we pray that
we would be alert. We'd be alive.

We'd be aware. We'd be awake to the fact that you're coming again. That we can
put all of our hope in you.

We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Well join us tomorrow.

We're going to dig into what it means to not be misplacing our hope and not
being deceived.