This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Hi, this is Pastor Tom, and I want to welcome you to day four of our look
through Matthew chapter 24. Yesterday, we looked at some of the signs that are
pointing to the return of Jesus. Today, we get to look at what the signs point
to.

We get to look at the visible return of Christ. Now, you may have heard of the
rapture and the tribulation and the millennium. Some of those events are going
to happen at the end times that we can see in the book of Daniel and the book of
Revelation.

That's not what Jesus focuses on here, so we're not going to focus on it. Now,
we're going to see some indication of some of these things in some of the
stories he tells later, but right here in verse 30, he focuses on his visible
return, the return that everybody's going to see, all the nations, all the
world. In verse 30 and 31, listen to this.

These are words that are brimming with hope for you and I as followers of Jesus.
This is the moment of victory. At that time, the sign of the Son of Man will
appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn.

They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and
great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will
gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.
This is the visible return of Christ, different from the rapture.

At his return in the rapture, people don't know what happened. All the earth
doesn't see, but here all the nations see. At his return, all the earth will see
Jesus returning.

He will establish his reign and rule on earth. Now, in previous generations,
people used to say, "Well, the Bible doesn't know what it's talking about. How
could everyone see Jesus returning?

There's only one Jesus, and he's returning. He can only come on one side of the
earth in one place. " Well, now we know that through video, through people on
their phones looking at what's happening, that the whole world can see anything
that's happening all at once, but I don't know that he's going to do it through
technology.

I think it might rather be through some miraculous way that we're all able to
immediately see that Jesus is coming again. He's coming again. Now, these words
of Jesus here are echoed in the Revelation, Revelation 1-7, "Look, he is coming
with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all
the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him.

" So in both of these verses, verse 30 here in Matthew 24 and Revelation 1-7, we
read about the nations of the earth mourning when they see Jesus. They will
mourn because it will become immediately apparent that they built their lives in
the wrong foundation. You can't hope in this world.

You can only hope in Jesus. And our goal as believers is simply this, to have
more people rejoice and fewer people mourn at the return of Jesus. When you help
someone to put their faith in Jesus Christ, you assure that the return of Jesus
will be this moment of inexpressible joy rather than a moment of excruciating
grief.

So Jesus says, "That's the hope. That's what you're looking forward to, my
visible return. " And then he begins to talk about how you and I need to think
towards that hope, the attitude we need to have.

These three major truths we're looking at this week. First, don't let your hope
be misplaced. Second, don't let yourself be deceived.

And third, be alert to the return of Jesus Christ. Remember, back in verse 6,
Jesus said, "Don't be alarmed. Don't be alarmed, be alert.

Don't live in fear, live with faith. " That's what God wants for you as a
follower of Jesus. Any look at this world situation, any look towards the
future, he doesn't want you to be alarmed.

He wants you to be alert. He doesn't want you to live in fear. He wants you to
live with faith as his follower.

He talks about this in verses 32 to 36. Now, learn this lesson Jesus taught 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's near, right at the
door. I tell you the truth. This generation will certainly not pass away until
all these things have happened.

Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. No one knows
about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven nor the sun, but only the
Father. Now, Jesus tells us two very important truths here that help us to be
alert to the fact that he is coming again.

First truth, you can be sure this will happen. You can be certain this will
happen. Learn from the fig tree, Jesus said.

You know that when the leaves start to come out, the summer is on its way, but
Jesus said also learn from trusting in me. My words, he says, will never pass
away. You can trust my word, and Jesus is the one telling us here, "I'm coming
again.

I'm coming back. I'm going to change everything. " You can count on this.

Don't trust in this world. Trust in his word. Now, there is a difficult saying,
there's a difficult passage here when Jesus says this generation will not pass
away until all these things happen.

Well, that generation that he was talking to has passed away and another and
another and another and another for the last 2,000 years. So did Jesus miss the
timeline? Obviously not.

So there's two possible explanations of what Jesus is teaching here. One is that
generation means race. He's saying the Jewish race will not pass away before the
second coming, and that is certainly true.

Jesus is going to bring back in a number of Jews to faith in him at the end of
times. Or the idea is that this generation refers not to the disciples that he
was talking to then, but to the generation that's going to view these signs that
happen at the end of time. The generation that sees the sun and moon and stars
falling.

There's not going to be long, he says. When you see that, it's not going to be
long. This generation is not going to pass away.

Now, I know some people think, wait, the sun's going to fall out, the stars are
going to fall, the moon's going to be darkened. That would make it really
obvious. And at the end of time, he is going to make it very obvious.

We live in this time when we're trying to discern the signs of when he's going
to come, get a sense of it. But at the end, it's going to be extremely clear. We
can be confident that he's coming again, and he's going to make it very clear
that he's coming again.

The whole world is going to see when he comes again. That's the first truth. You
can be confident.

You can be sure of it because Jesus said it would happen. The second truth is
you cannot be sure of the exact day or hour that it will be happening. Jesus
says it very clearly in verse 36.

He says, "No one knows. The angels don't know. I don't even know.

The Father in heaven knows. " So that verse tells us that somehow set the exact
date of his return is nothing but blasphemy. You're saying you're better than
Jesus?

He doesn't know and you know? It's amazing down through history how someone who
boldly proclaims the date of Jesus' return is able to draw people in. It has
happened thousands upon thousands of times.

Jesus tells us that anyone who predicts the exact day of his return is a false
teacher. They are a liar. They're pretending to know more than Jesus knows.

One of the many books that's written about the second coming is titled "99
Reasons Why No One Knows When Christ Will Return. " I haven't read the book
because I got everything I needed out of the title. I shouldn't get all you need
out of the title of a book.

The number one reason is that Jesus said, "No one knows the day or the hour. "
So when you and I think about the kind of hope that we need to have in Jesus,
he's teaching us here. When you think about the second coming, one of the truths
of being alert to it is realizing you can be certain of my words, you can count
on it, and don't count on people who twist my words.

That's what we've been talking about all through this week. This decision to not
let my hope be misplaced, to not let myself be deceived, but to be alert instead
to live out the words of Jesus Christ. He just keeps coming back to say the same
thing again and again and again to us.

So once again, I want to pray that these words of Jesus will sink into my heart,
sink into your heart. Would you pray with me? Jesus, we ask that our hope would
not be misplaced, but it would be in you, not in this world.

And when we see these signs and we start to worry, I pray that you'd help us to
realize we don't have to worry or be anxious because we're not trusting in this
world. And if we're worried and anxious because our trust is in this world, I
pray in that moment you'd help us to set aside our anxiety by putting our hope
in you. Lord, don't let us be deceived by some false sign, some false teacher
who tries to soothe our worry with a lie instead of us setting our worries aside
with the true hope that we can only find in you.

Lord, we don't want to be those who live without hope or those who live with a
false hope. Instead, we want to be alert to the fact that you're coming again.
We want to live with a sense of anticipation, sense of joy.

So let us live with that sense of joy today, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen.
Tomorrow we're going to see Jesus begin to give us some pictures of how to live
with this sense of spiritual alertness.