The Abomination of Desolation
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
September 7, 2014
Because of all the difficulties involved in Mark 13, Jason said last week that as we preach through it over the next few weeks we will be having something of a “trusting building exercise.” I think that’s a good way to put it. But Mark 13 is in the Bible, and I believe, as I know many of you do as well, that if it’s in there, than there is something in there that God will use to teach us, encourage us, challenge us, and help us to know the depths of his love for us in the Gospel, even when the title of the sermon is “The Abomination of Desolation.”If you have a Bible, you can follow along with me as I read vv. 14-27, or you can follow along on the screen. Mark 13:14-27,
14 “But when you see the abomination of desolation standing where he ought not to be (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 15 Let the one who is on the housetop not go down, nor enter his house, to take anything out,16 and let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak. 17 And alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days! 18 Pray that it may not happen in winter. 19 For in those days there will be such tribulation as has not been from the beginning of the creation that God created until now, and never will be. 20 And if the Lord had not cut short the days, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect, whom he chose, he shortened the days. 21 And then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘Look, there he is!’ do not believe it. 22 For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform signs and wonders, to lead astray, if possible, the elect. 23 But be on guard; I have told you all things beforehand.24 “But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, 25 and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. 26 And then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. 27 And then he will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.
Let’s pray…This morning, this passage confronts a little bit. It confronted the disciples. And I’ll get into the context in a moment, but it’s clear that they, the disciples, were too enamored with outward appearances.In fact, to them, outward appearances were far more important than they ought to have been. They became a source of pride, and a false security, or we might say a false hope. It happens easily enough, and quickly enough, doesn’t it? All of a sudden, we get an educational degree, or a promotion, or things go well for a season, or we start 2 services at church, we get a large tax return, or you fill in the blank, and we get prideful about it and it becomes a false security for us, a false hope.In Mark 13 Jesus gives his disciples a shot of humility, and I’m sure it was hard to swallow, but he doesn’t leave them there. He also gives them a source of true hope—something they can bank on when life gets hard and when all other hopes have been destroyed.This morning, we are going to look at this portion of Mark 13 under these two headings, humility and hope. Let’s start with humility.
1. Humility
Here’s the context: Jerusalem is bursting at the seams with people. It’s Passover week and people from all around have come to this great city to celebrate. Jesus has spent a few days in and around the Temple, and if we said that he ruffled some feathers, that would be a huge understatement. After these encounters, the plot of his execution by the religious leaders is firm.And the final verses in Mark 12, the chapter just before, Jesus comments on financial offerings that were taking place. Some people, the Bill Gates’ of the day, as Jason has said, were putting in a lot. And 1 widow, puts in just a little bit, but Jesus says she put in more than anyone else because of her faith and her situation.And now it’s time to go, time to leave. Jesus and the disciples walk out of the temple, and the disciples make one last observation, and it’s about the Temple.But before I tell you what they said, let me tell you something about the Temple. When we studied Haggai in August, we talked of how the people of God rebuilt the Solomon’s Temple between 520-515 BC. But when they rebuilt it in Haggai, it did not have the glory that it had in Solomon’s day when it was first built. It was much smaller, and far less impressive. And that’s how it remained for 500 years.Then came Herod, a leader of the Jewish people, and the Temple got a facelift; it doubled in size from Solomon’s Temple.
The beauty and size of Herod the Great’s Temple Mount exceeded that of most of the seven wonders of the world. It was more than twice the size of the Acropolis in Athens. Its perimeter was 0.96 miles and enclosed a space equivalent to one-sixth of the entire city… One of the stones of the temple complex still remaining measures 45 x 11.5 x 12 feet and is estimated to weigh 570 tons.” (Wayne Grudem and Thomas R. Schreiner, ESV Study Bible, Luke 21:5-6)
Let me put it like this: Herod took a rural, country church, and he made it into a mega-church—a mega-church not with a mere building, but with an entire campus, and a campus of such beauty and magnitude that it would make the most prestigious Ivy League school envious.And Jerusalem is packed with people from rural communities, like many of the disciples were from, and they are amazed such outward appearances of the Temple. And Jesus has just said that he is not too impressed with the offerings of the religious people.Now, what is it that the disciple’s say to Jesus as the true King leaves the building, leaves the Temple? V. 1,
“Look, Teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!”
Maybe it was an innocent comment, simply appreciating the beauty of it. Or maybe, and I think this is more accurate based on how Jesus responds, maybe what this disciple was saying was, “Hey, Jesus, you know Temples like this, they don’t grow on trees. I’m sure the widow’s offering was great, but that don’t pay the bills. That don’t move stones that weigh 600 tons.”You can see it can’t you? What they could see with their eyes, the outward appearances, had become a source of pride and a source of false security, false hope. And Jesus responds in v. 2,
“Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.”
Wow. And the passage says they walked out of the Temple area, and up to a nearby mountain called Olivet from which they could look back over the Temple. It maybe took a half hour, maybe an hour. I wonder if they walked in silence, or maybe they made some small talk.However it happened, we read next,
Peter and James and John and Andrew asked [Jesus] privately, “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign when all these things are about to be accomplished?”
In other words, “Yeah… so that thing you said Jesus… about that really impressive building that took years to build… and is so sturdy that it would take the strongest army in the world to destroy it… could you tell us when that’s going to happen?”And what follows is a monologue—a very difficult monologue for the disciples to understand and for us to understand as well—where Jesus rebukes their pride in appearances (and our pride) and replaces it with a true source of hope.If the disciples received a dose of humility, I think we get one from this passage as well. Let me describe just two ways: the first is humility before the Word of God, and the second is humility before history.
1.1 Humility before the Word
First, humility before the Word. This passage, is a hard passage to understand. It just is. Let me read you two quotes:
“[This chapter is] one of the most perplexing chapters in the Bible to understand, for readers and interpreters alike” (James R. Edwards, The Gospel According to Mark, 383).“[The first part of verse 14] is one of the most difficult in Mark’s gospel, if not the entire NT” (David E. Garland, Mark, Expositor’s Bible Commentary, 925).
Those quotes come from scholars I respect that have spent years pouring over the Bible, and probably at least a decade over just Mark.While I’ve spent far less time, I believe what they said. When I translated verses 14-27 two weeks ago, I listed out some of the questions I had about each verse. A few days ago, when I typed them out there were 62 questions that I had about these verses. And to complicate it more, the whole passage is stuffed with other biblical allusions, which means you have to understand those passages as well. And I also read half a dozen commentaries, and I listen to 3 sermons on this passage. And all of them, took slightly different takes.At our church, we do think studying the End Times is important because it matters; it really does. And some things are very clear. But I’m stressing humility, especially as we talk about the End Times, because some of the most… I don’t want to say arrogant, perhaps I should say, self-assured… some of the most sell-assured Bible teaching comes when people teach about the End Times. And I think that’s wrong. Jesus ends the passage by saying that “no one knows the day and the hour…” when these things take place (v. 32). That’s significant.I’m not surfacing these difficulties to advocate “defeat,” as though the Word of God is so opaque that no one can understand it. I’m not saying that at all. In fact, as we close, I’ll point out several things that are very clear and very compelling in this passage and that give great hope. But what I am advocating, is humility before the Word of God.In Isaiah 66:2, God say, “But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.” God loves people who don’t stand over his Word to judge it, but stand under his Word to be judged by it.I love the Word of God, I love the Bible for the same reason people love the deep end of a pool. People love the deep end of the pool because you don’t hit the bottom when you dive in head first—you can swim and play and learn and grow without ever running out of space. The reason I made a list of 62 questions, read half a dozen commentaries, and listened to a few sermons on this passage is because I really believe that if we swim in the Bible, God will to teach us, encourage us, challenge us, and help us to know the depths of his love for us in the Gospel, that is, if we are humble.
1.2 Humility before History
Before we move to the ‘hope’ in this passage, let me give one more way this passage works humility in us. The other aspect to humility that comes out of this passage is humility before history, or maybe a better way to say that is to say humility in our place in history.There is a great tendency to look around at the world—the good and the bad—and think that we are it. The disciples looked at the Temple in all of it’s glory and it’s place in the religious life of the people of God and they thought, “Woah, if this is destroyed—which how could that even happened—but if it did happen, then what would become of this world? Surely, if this happens that is the end of everything.” And it wasn’t.We have that same tendency as well. We watch the news and we think, “This is bad. Maybe this is the end.” What I want to say is maybe, but hold that thought loosely. Jesus says no one know that answer. What he wants from us is to be ready, and faithful in the present. He wants us to roll up our sleeves and commit to follow him: right here, right now, no matter how hard it gets, not worrying about the end.A few years ago, I had a co-worker and we would occasionally talk about our different religious beliefs. And there was some overlap, but I understood him to be part of another religion because some of his central beliefs about Christianity were so different. And one of those beliefs that we disagreed over was whether or not the Word of God is a finished document, or whether not God may still be adding to it.I bring this up not to talk about whether or not the Word of God is complete, but because as I would talk to my friend one of the reasons that he thought the Word of God must still be growing—which is not the historic Christian belief—is because the world is so bad and in need right now. He would say, “But Benjamin, don’t you think that with both all of the tragedy and all of the advancement, that today God would have to keep speaking to us with new words.”In other words, whatever is happening in our generation—the good and the bad—is all that there is. I’m sure if you asked someone who lived in the middle ages and went through the Black Plague, they probably thought that; or someone in Poland in World War II; or someone in Judea in 70 AD.Maybe you don’t think this, but there are probably some outward appearances that have become a source of pride and false hope. What Jesus aimed to do for the disciples, and what he aims to do for us, is to replace our pride with humility and our false hopes with true hopes.
2. Hope
And that brings us to our next point: hope. For all the difficulty of the passage, there is a source of great and clear hope within it. I’m going to point out two sources of hope that can be seen in this passage. The first is Hope in Jesus Return, and the second is Hope as His Elect.Let’s look at the first, hope in Jesus’ second Return.
2.1 Hope in His Return
Look with me at vv. 21, 24-26,
21 And then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘Look, there he is!’ do not believe it… 24 “But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, 25 and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. 26 And then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.
The key phrase for me comes in v. 26: “then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.” Jesus is saying, there will be those that talk about other Messiahs and other Christ and other ways to be ‘saved,’ but you, my followers, don’t believe them, because what I’m talking about, he says, will be obvious to everyone everywhere. In other words, when the Son of Man really comes back, look out. It’s going to be big-time.There are too many other passages in the New Testament to quote that describe what it will be like when Jesus comes back, but let me just give you two that give us great hope.The first comes from 2 Thessalonians 2:8, where Paul writes of the way that Jesus, when he comes back, will destroy the Evil One. Paul writes,
The Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming.
The way I might blow a tinny bug off of my arm, this passage says that when Jesus comes back to this earth, he’ll look the evil one straight in the eyes, blow on him, and all of his powers will crumble.One other verse. It comes from Revelation 21. John, who was with Jesus in Mark 13, years later wrote of the glory that it will be when God comes back for his people at the end of time,
4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
It’s going to be a great day, a day when leukemia, and famine, and sin, and evil will be done away with, and we will be with God. That’s a place to put our hope.And this brings me to my last point. Namely, Hope as his elect. It’s going to be a great day, but that assumes that we are on his team.
2.2 Hope as His Elect
Look with me at these verses about the elect.
20 And if the Lord had not cut short the days, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect, whom he chose, he shortened the days… 22 For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform signs and wonders, to lead astray, if possible, the elect. 23 But be on guard; I have told you all things beforehand… 27 And then he will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.
God’s care and concern for the elect pervades this passage. It’s in the foreground of God’s mind, even as the cataclysmic events seems foreground in the passage. The disciples were placing their hope in what they could see, and God points them to hope in something they can’t necessarily see, but is very real, namely his care for his elect.So who are the “elect”? It says in v. 20 that they are those whom God has chosen.But there is something interesting about that. You see when we chose things, what types of things do we choose? If we chose a candidate, or a car, or a cell phone, or an elective in school, or elective surgery, which ones do we choose? We choose the best, at least the best we can.That’s not how it is with God; the Bible makes this clear. God chooses those that are not the best, but rather are the most needy and those that have sinned against him.What elect means is that God has chosen undeserving people to be recipients of his grace. People that have sinned and angered God in many ways, people full of pride and hope in the wrong things, just like those disciples were, and just like we are—some of these people, God reaches down, changes their hearts, and holds them in his arms all the way into glory. The elect are not varsity Christians, but those that would not have otherwise made the team.There are various ways to describe what it means to be a Christian. You could say a follower of Jesus, or the faithful—those that have put their faith in Jesus—or you could say a disciple. And those are good ways to talk about Christians; the Bible does talks this way at times. Sometimes, the emphasis is on our response to God’s grace—as in follower or disciple. And sometimes in the Bible when a Christian is described, the emphasis is on God’s initiative in a Christian’s life before a person responds, as in a name like “the elect.”But it is significant to me that 3 times in our passage, at a time when it seems that everything is falling apart, when every human structure and comfort is crumbling, and every outward hope has been destroyed, Jesus stresses God’s love and commitment to his elect.This is the only place in Mark’s gospel where Jesus uses the word elect to describe Christians. That’s significant.In this passage, Jesus says, “Pray that this doesn’t happened in winter, and pray that it doesn’t happen when you are pregnant, because it will be so hard without these other difficulties.” But he also is saying, “Know this: I have chosen you. And I will see you through to the end.” And that is supposed to be a source of hope to the disciples, and it is for us as well.I know in Christians circles the discussion of election can be controversial, but way before it is controversial, it out to be precious to us; it is to me.
Conclusion
No matter what is going on in your live right now (cancer, death, health failures, unwanted singleness, hardships marriage and parenting, infertility, job loss, finnincial disasters, persecution for you faith, know that if you have repented of you sins, trusted in Jesus, than you are chosen by God and his strong arms will see you through your current trials and all the way into his presence, whether that is through death, or at his second coming.Pray with me as we close.
