Faithful Generosity and the Prophecy of Destruction

"Jesus looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the offering box and he saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. And he said, 'Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them, for they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.'" [00:00:21]

"Settle it, therefore, in your minds not to meditate beforehand how to answer for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict. You will be delivered up even by parents and brothers and relatives and friends and some of you they will put to death. You will be hated by all for my name's sake, but not a hair of your head will perish and by your endurance, you will gain your lives." [00:02:08]

"These weighty words of warning are given by our Lord himself, and the record of that is preserved by the inspiration and superintendence of God the Holy Spirit. This is the word of God. Please receive it as such and be seated. Let us pray. Again our Father, we ask that you would help us, for we find many of these things in this text difficult to understand, but by the power of your Holy Spirit, you may illumine them for us, for we ask it for our sake and for the sake of Jesus. Amen." [00:03:33]

"Jesus was observing people in the temple. He watched those who were people of wealth and affluence who would go out of their way and go into the offering box and out of the abundance of their great wealth, they would put in their donations. Then he noticed this widow. She had two coins, two copper coins, and the Greek word tells us their value. These two coins together made up the value of one-fourth of one cent, a quarter of a penny." [00:07:10]

"Instead, she took them both and gave them away, all that she had, for Christ. You know what happened? Jesus saw her do it. We have people today, the 21st century, who actually give less than this in the church, and Jesus sees that, too, but this woman enjoys the blessed commendation of Christ, 'I see you. I see what you have done.' Jesus realized that this woman was all in." [00:08:18]

"Then Jesus moves on to uttering one of the most astonishing prophecies ever uttered in all of Sacred Scripture. In fact, I believe it is the most astonishing prophecy recorded of all time when Jesus looks at the temple as the disciples are admiring the stones and the adornment of this building, and he says to them, 'As the things that you see, the days will come where there will not be left one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.'" [00:09:52]

"This was one of the wonders of the ancient world. Jerusalem, the city and its temple were considered to be impregnable pieces of real estate. This was the temple of the Lord. This was Mount Zion. In the eyes of the Jewish people completely and totally indestructible, but Jesus said, 'It's going away. Not one stone is going to be left upon another.' This is going to end in absolute desolation, absolute destruction when God responds to the unbelief of his people and visits his people in what Luke calls, 'The days of vengeance.'" [00:13:13]

"Yet, if there's anything that proves the truth of the Bible and the truth of Jesus in his claims, it would be this singular prophecy that was fulfilled in its details in 70 A.D. when the Romans came and annihilated Jerusalem and the temple. Yet, at the same time, this text ironically is the text most used to support skepticism and unbelief in the church, because in connection with the prophecy of the destruction of the temple, Jesus said that he would come on clouds of glory at the end of the age." [00:14:15]

"Then he said, 'This generation will not pass away till all of these things are fulfilled.' The skeptics leaped at that text. Bertrand Russell in his book 'Why I'm Not a Christian' said, 'I'm not a Christian because Jesus made this unbelievable prophecy and it didn’t happen in the timeframe that he said it would.' I know it's hyperbole, but I felt like every day when I was in seminary some professor would call attention to the ultimate discourse and say that Jesus was a false prophet because his predictions didn’t come true." [00:15:16]

"Jesus is saying this, 'The city will be destroyed. The temple will be destroyed. The Jewish people will be sent into dispersion throughout all the world until a point in time where that vengeance will end.' The only other time that I know of that Paul speaks of the times of the Gentiles is in Romans, Chapter 11 when he talks about the return at some point of the Jewish people." [00:17:19]

"The Jews were sent out of their homeland, dispersed throughout the whole world, never, ever lost their identity for 2000 years. Then in 1948, a song went to the top of the popular music charts that was extraordinarily unusual. It wasn’t a jig, it wasn’t a dancing tune that we would be normally familiar with, but it was a hora. Remember the song, 1948, 'Tzena, Tzena, Tzena, Tzena, Tzena, Tzena, can't you hear the music playing in the village square.'" [00:18:58]

"It wasn’t until 1967 that the Jews recaptured Jerusalem. Remember the few days there that wore … the television cameras were wearing when they were having a firefight in the middle of the city of Jerusalem, and in the middle of that firefight the Jewish soldiers suddenly threw their weapons on the ground and ran to the Wailing Wall and began to pray and to weep even while bullets were flying all around them." [00:20:00]