Facing Trouble

Thank you, Carl. I want to thank you also. I don't know who did the scrape the snow everywhere. Does anybody here know who did that? Anybody own up to scraping all the snow off the sidewalks for us? Ozzie did? Okay. Ozzie and Alicia. Alicia will take credit for anything. Well, we know who to call on next time. We appreciate that. Some of you came in the building and you may have seen people around you and recognized them for the first time. All the lights that are new out there over the holiday time. The trustees did all that. Doug was up here and Ozzie was up here and a couple of guys I didn't know were up here working too. So we appreciate their help very much. You weren't going blind. We just didn't have very good lights out there. So if you're worried about that, you can rest one thing or scratch one thing off your worry list. I want to use a passage from Matthew chapter 24, if you would turn to that, please. In this passage, Jesus has been confronting his disciples with some very shocking things to tell them. They pointed out to him the temple, the magnificent temple that was being built. This temple was huge. It's 46 years under construction. 10,000 workmen worked 46 years building this temple. It's enormous. It wasn't finished when this event with Jesus took place. It still had several years to go, but the disciples looking at it were amazed at its size and magnificence and said, boy, look at this temple. And Jesus said, I'll tell you one day, not one stone will be left on another. I'm sure that they were just shocked. How could that happen? They asked Jesus, most of us would, when is this going to take place? And how will we know when you're coming back again? Jesus didn't answer their question. Instead, he began to focus on not when he was going to come back or all this was going to happen, but what should take place in their lives. He said, I'm concerned about two things. One is I don't want you to be deceived about all the things that are going to happen in the future. So listen to me and not to anyone else who seems to know what's going on, for I'm the one who tells you what's going to happen. There'll be other people who come along and say they know, but I'm the only one who can tell you the directions. Even the Father doesn't know what's going to take place. He hasn't revealed that to me yet. Only the Father does know what's going to take place. He said to them, there are bad things that are going to happen in this world. Wars and all kinds of disasters are going to take place and a lot of people will be anxious and nervous about it, but you shouldn't be because I've promised you I'd take care of you. So when they talk about the terrible things that are going to happen, you should have comfort and peace because of the promises that I've made to you. Jesus said, what is going to happen to you is terrible too, for you're going to find people turn against you and hate you. You're going to find people who will try to persecute you because of what you've done for me and your belief in me. Some of you are even going to die because of your following me. You're headed into some very difficult days ahead of you. So don't be worried about it. Don't be nervous about it. I will give you direction. He said to them, when this time comes, you're going to find all kinds of wickedness around you. Terrible wickedness. Even your own friends who are followers of me will turn away from me and grow cold and indifferent. And some of them in the times of persecution will even point you out so you'll be caught and put in jail and killed. It'll be a really difficult time. But I want to promise you one thing. If you will be faithful to what I tell you to do, and you'll do the job that I've given you to do, make disciples, no matter what happens to you, you will be saved. Jesus' words of comfort to them was not to worry about when this is all going to happen, but what you do in response to the obedience that I have asked of you. I want to begin reading in chapter 24 of Matthew, verse 15. Here Jesus changes sort of the direction of what he's talking about. He begins to focus on the issue of the temple being destroyed and of Jerusalem. But what he's really doing here is he's giving them clear and plain guidance about how to face the difficult times that are ahead of them. I will guide you through all these things that will come. So when you see standing in the holy place the abomination that causes desolation spoken of through the prophet Daniel, let the reader understand. Then let those who are in Judah flee to the mountains. Let no one on the roof of his house go down to take anything out of the house. Let no one in the field go back to get his cloak. How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women, nursing mothers. Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath, for then there will be great disasters unequal from the beginning of the world until now and never to be equal again. If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive. But for the sake of the elect, those days shall be shortened. At that time if anyone says to you, look, here's the Christ, or there he is, do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will appear and form great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect if that were possible. See, I told you ahead of time. Now Jesus uses two words in this passage that are used in the Bible several different times. The abomination of desolation. It sounds sort of ominous, doesn't it? It should be. It's supposed to be. The word abomination means evil, wickedness, tragedy, terrible things. All the bad things that you can imagine are wrapped up in this word abomination. Terrible, evil, wicked, bad things are going to happen to you. That's what he was telling them. Desolation, to be desolate means to be empty or to have nothing or to be destroyed or to be vacant, to be worthless. You're going to have something terrible, evil, and wicked that is going to result in destruction, emptiness, and nothingness. Now this word, this phrase, these two words were used in the book of Daniel three times in chapter 9 of his book and chapter 11 and chapter 12. He was telling about things that were going to happen in the future. Oftentimes the prophecies in the Bible are a little fuzzy. They're not really clear. You see this when the disciples, after something's happened for them, they say, the scripture will say, and they didn't understand what Jesus said until this event took place, and then they got this is what Jesus meant by all of this. I don't know why God did that. I think I read somewhere one time a guy said that God made all the prophecies sort of fuzzy because if he didn't, then we would read them and know what was going to take place at a certain time. We'd try to make it take place, take it out of God's hand. Maybe that's why he did it. But it's always true that after an event takes place, the people look at it and say, oh, this is what God was talking about. Now we understand about what he really meant about all of this. Now this phrase, the abomination of desolations, had already been used one time in Israel's history. Very destructive period. The Jews were always rebellious against anybody who tried to take over their country as most people would be, but they saw it as a religious as well as a military and political event. And so whenever somebody came to take over their land, they saw it as striking at the very heart of what their nation was about. God made a promise, I will give you this land. And it was not merely economic or political, but it was breaking the promise of God that they felt like just could not happen. But it did in different times and places. For when the people of Israel turned cold toward God, he drew his hand back in protecting them. He drew his hand back from guiding them. He no longer made provisions for their care and help. And then when they turned back to him, he would come in and he would begin to provide and to care for them and give them the guidance and victory that they needed over the circumstances they faced. It happened over and over again through the Old Testament. Well, this time is between the Testaments, the close of the Old and the beginning of the New. About 168 B.C., the Greeks had risen to power. Alexander the Great with his kingdom and the Greek soldier came and they captured Israel and they captured Jerusalem. It was a bloody fight. They sieged around the city and people were starving to death. And all over the nation of Israel, people flocked to Jerusalem before the soldiers came and vowed to defend it with their lives. And many, many were killed. And whenever Antigonese Epiphanes came into the city with his army, he decided that the religious nature of this city was the key. So he went to the temple and on the altar there he offered a pig as a sacrifice to the pagan gods. He offered other unclean animals. He set up in the temple images of the Greek gods to desecrate it. This evil, wicked, terrible things destroyed the sanctity of the temple. And so the people in Maccabees, in between the Old and New Testament, the book of 1 and 2 Maccabees tells the story. They saw this as the abomination of desolation come to pass. Well, all that was over by Jesus' day. And now the country was having their new temple built greater than anything they'd had before. Things looked bright for them. There was great strings of nationalism. The Romans occupied the territory, but they didn't like it. They wanted to throw off this foreign army. And over and over again, there were revolts that broke out. There were fights that broke out over what was taking place. In about 70 A.D., a group of soldiers rose and recaptured the city of Jerusalem from the Roman government. Titus was sent from Rome to set down this rebellion. Whenever the soldiers came, people flocked again to the city of Jerusalem as they had before 100 years previously. They wanted to defend the city to the last man, and they could quote verses of Scripture saying, this is the place God has given us and I'll never leave you. They counted on that being the clear course to victory. I think Jesus was warning them here about that event, the abomination of desolation. When Titus got to the city of Jerusalem, he surrounded it as he had before, cut off all supplies of food and water from the city, trying to starve the people out. They held out. He was able to batter some of the doors down and got in some of the inner part of the city, the outer ring of it, but in the very citadel up by the temple, most of the people had gathered there. He couldn't get in. They were fighting in every kind of way, and part of what they did was set a house afire next to the temple and spread it to the temple, and the temple burned to the ground, destroyed. They broke the doors down finally. People were dying. Their interpreter, who was a Jewish man, says in a book that he wrote the history of the Jewish people that 1,100,000 people died in this fight. 1,100,000. When they walked into the city, the Roman soldiers were so aghast at the devastation and destruction that they just walked out without looting the temple itself. The stench and the bodies were everywhere. Stories are told about what took place during that time. One woman gave birth to a child and she roasted it on a fire and they ate it. Horrible, horrible things. Abomination of desolation. Jesus was warning the people who were his followers of what was going to take place. They'd ask when was the temple going to be destroyed, and he was talking about it. But you see, the temple was more than what we can conceive of ourselves. If somebody were to come and tear down our church building, we'd say, well, that's a bad thing, but it wouldn't destroy our Christian faith. For the Jewish people, the temple was the center of all that they believed in. God literally lived in one of those rooms. This was the place whenever you sinned, if you came and brought a sacrifice, an offering in which you would receive forgiveness of your sins. And if you had sinned and there was no memory in your own mind of that sin, once a year the high priest would go into the place where God was living and there he would offer a sacrifice for you and all the sins of all the people would be forgiven and they would start over again. And now the door closed on that. No longer would a sacrifice be made at the temple. No longer would the high priest go into the Holy of Holies and offer a sacrifice for the sins of those who could not go. No longer would there be forgiveness for sins for the people of Israel. The door was closed, slammed shut. Everything about their religion was gone now. And the Jewish faith has never been the same since then. No sacrifice has been offered. If Jesus and his followers were to come back and go to Jerusalem, go to the temple, it would be so different as if it wasn't even the Jewish faith that they knew. This event wiped out what had been required by Moses and had been practiced in the temple for centuries. We just can't imagine the devastation for this. For many of those people, it was like the Jewish faith was wiped out. An abomination of desolation. So Jesus was saying to his followers, this is what's going to take place to you. Now I know when you read this passage, sometimes you hear people talk about it as if it were a future event. That in the last days when Jesus returns, there will be an abomination of desolation. Some terrible, destructive thing that will be happening that will cause all the Christians to see this devastation again. And it could be. There had already been one abomination of desolation and now there's another one. There could be another one and another one before the end of time comes. None of us know that for sure. But this one, they were to see and experience for themselves. Now what's important about this is, this is the most devastating thing that had ever happened to the people of Israel in that day. The most devastating thing. And here Jesus is talking to them about the fact it's going to occur. And he's telling them how they should react to this. So when you see the standing in the holy place, the abomination that causes desolation spoken through the prophets Daniel, let the readers understand. Then let those who are in Judah flee to the mountains. Jesus here is describing for his disciples exactly what they ought to do. What's really important about this is that the terrible disasters that happen in the lives of people, God guides his people through them. I'm warning you that the temple is going to be destroyed and it's going to be devastating. It's going to be what Daniel promised, an absolute destruction of the most important things that you have. It's going to be terrible. But I am going to guide you. Now here's a very important thing for us to catch. What God is telling us is, in our future there are things that happen that we don't even know about that are going to be terrible and tragic and that's for everybody. Everyone in the world has their own little abomination of desolation. I shouldn't say little because that concept itself is overwhelming. You're going to have things in your life that simply stop you and stand you on your head and turn you around and wreck your life. Maybe you've already had some of them. Sometimes it happens with the death of somebody important in your family. Sometimes it happens with the destruction of your marriage or your home. Sometimes it happens in financial failures. Sometimes it happens in relationships. Things that change your entire life. And when you're going through that you think, I don't know if I can make it. I don't know if I can stand all this. What's important here is that Jesus is saying to his followers, you're going to face the most devastating thing you've ever faced but I want to tell you, I will guide you through that. Now what's comforting to us is that Jesus was leaving this world and we no longer have access to him. We can't sit down face to face and talk to him like they did. He said to them, I'm leaving you and I'm going to go to heaven with the Father but it's very helpful to you that I'm doing it because I'm going to give you my Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God. So that instead of us having one person here who can talk to us and people in another town having no one to talk to them, every believer wherever we are has the very presence of the Spirit of God inside of them and Jesus said he will give you my words. He will give you what I would give you if I were with you. So none of us will ever be out of the range of this presence of God to guide us through the times of difficulty that come to us, no matter how devastating they are. And here's what Jesus shows us. When the time comes, I will tell you what to do. Now the first thought that came to the Jewish people whenever their temple was besieged or their city of Jerusalem was besieged was, let's all run to the city of Jerusalem and get inside and fight to the death to defeat the enemy. Jesus said to his followers, when you hear that the army is coming, you run as fast as you can. Now wait a minute. There are passages throughout the Bible where God said, when the enemy comes to face you, you stand because I will give you the victory. How do you know whether to stand and fight or to turn and run? Jesus told them. At this battle, at this time, you run. You run to the hills. East of Jerusalem there were small foothills there. You may have seen the Dead Sea Scrolls, pictures of where those were found, caves and rocky territory. And they would flee to those. And the stories tell in the 770 A.D. that many of the Christians fled Jerusalem to those places and lived until the devastation was passed. They listened to Jesus. You don't know whether to stand and fight sometimes or to give in and run away. How do you know? What Jesus says, I'll tell you. You can't simply say, well, in the Bible in this passage it said we should always stand and fight. It doesn't always say that. It says at that time he told them to stand and fight. The Spirit of God inside of you will tell you what you ought to do in times of trial and difficulty and pain and anguish and suffering. Your human wisdom will not be sufficient for that. But I will tell you. So I tell you, let those in Judea flee to the mountains. Let no one on the roof of his house go down to take out anything out of his house. Let no one in the field go back for his cloak. Houses then were built together, hooked up and the roofs were all flat and they had a small slant in them for drainage. People ate up there oftentimes. They had conversations up on top of the roof. They would go up there for cooling in the evening or in the morning. And they might be up there when they hear news that the armies are coming. When you hear that, here's my instruction for you. You run as fast as you can. Don't even go down the stairs. Go in the house and get your valuables. I want you to save your life. If you're out in the field plowing, people all lived in the towns where the walls were. Protect them. And then you go out in the morning and work their fields. And you go out with a coat in the morning. It's kind of cool and the day gets a little hotter. They lay it down by the side and they work without their outside coat. When you hear that the army is coming, don't even go find your coat. You just run for the hills. I'll tell you when to run and what to do. And when I tell you what you should do, don't worry about reasoning through if it's the best thing to do. I'll run off here just as soon as I go get my money downstairs. I'll take care of that. I'll go run to the hills as soon as I go down and make sure everything's okay inside there. Don't worry about that. When I tell you to do something, you do it. Don't rely on your own judgment as to what the best thing is for you. Trust me. Man, I tell you, a lot of times in your life, whenever you're in difficult circumstances, God asks you to do things that just don't seem right. I mean, they're not evil or wicked, but you think in your human mind, this doesn't seem like it's the right way to handle this. You have to learn, Jesus said, to trust me. Remember he told them, if you will trust me and be faithful to what I tell you all the way to the end, you will be saved. He told them that in preparation for this. How long would it take to walk down off the roof and inside the house and get your gold or your clothes before you left? Not very long. But don't do it. I'm telling you, run as fast as you can as soon as you hear the news. It's the kind of thing that God gives us to let us know what the right thing to do and the wrong thing to do really is. How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers. Now he raises another issue. It may be bad for you, but you're going to have people around you that are worse off than you are. They're going to be mothers giving birth to children, mothers who are nursing their children, and they're going to be in worse condition than you are. Help them on your way. He draws attention to the needs of people that are even greater. Remember the most important thing we do when we live for God is to look around us at the people who are there and to care for them. So they have a mission, obedience to God and caring for those who are in worse circumstances than they are themselves. Pray that the flight will not take place in the winter or on the Sabbath. Now he gives them a clue. Whenever you hear that these terrible things are taking place, you ask God to intervene in circumstances that you face. The winter time, rains came almost every day, the reeds, fields were muddy, the roads were muddy, difficult to travel. In the winter time and on the Sabbath day, trying to travel as a Jew in the country, they would say, well you can't walk but it's Sabbath day's journey and then you have to stop and spend the day. I mean you can't run from an army if you just can walk about a half mile and you have to spend the day. I mean they'll catch you. Ask God to intervene in your behalf so that as you're running, no one will try to force you to obey the law that doesn't apply to you now. Ask God for the help you need in the circumstance that you face and he will respond to you. Run when I tell you to run, stop when I tell you to stop, help when I tell you to help, do it immediately without questioning me and depend on the fact that I'm going to take care of you. For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now and never to be equaled again. You may face in your life times that are the worst times you'll ever go through. Now we didn't face what they faced and I don't face what you face but every one of us have places and times in our life when we think this is the worst thing that has ever happened to me. Maybe you're going through it now. You don't know what to do. You can't solve it. You can't make it work right. Here's what he's telling you. Ask me. I will guide you and when I guide you, do exactly what I tell you and when I tell you what to do, do it as soon as I tell you to do it but don't forget to ask for my help and don't forget to look around you for people you need to help on the way too. For when you're in your worst sets of trouble, you can't forget that you're there in the world for my purpose. I will help you. I will guide you. In verse 22 he said, if those days had not been cut short, no one would survive but for the sake of the elect, those days will be shortened. What Jesus told them was, it's going to be the worst thing that ever happened to you and you may think you can't make it through there but I'll tell you this, because you belong to me and you're living the way I tell you to live, I will make sure that the full impact of this destruction will not come to you. You, as my child, will not be destroyed. That's a promise that he makes. I will guide you. I will provide for you and I will protect you from being crushed or destroyed. You will suffer. You will have all kinds of difficulties. He's already told them a bunch of them but I want you to keep remembering in the darkest of the days that you have that you belong to me and I have made you a promise and however difficult it gets, God will stop it before it crushes you. So you can have optimism even in the most difficult circumstances that God is somehow or other going to intervene in this situation in your behalf. And when you look back on it, you will see that you've experienced the hand of God in ways that you never imagined. Remember this, every miracle in the scriptures came to the people in a time of their worst circumstances. The Israelites were there by the Red Sea, the Egyptian army was crashing down on them, the water in front of them, the army behind them, God parted the waters. No Egyptian army, no parting of the waters. It is only in those times when you have nowhere else to turn that you will discover the wonderful, magnificent power of God to bring his hand and stop this short of your destruction. What a wonderful encouragement it is for us not to know that these terrible things are going to happen, he just said they would, but to know that no matter what there is ahead of us, no matter what we're going through at any time, God guides us, tells us what to do, gives us confidence in the face of all of those things. And he ended this with the word of warning. At that time anyone says to you, look, here is the Christ, or there he is, don't believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect if that were possible. See, I told you ahead of time all these things. In the middle of your darkest days, when you're going through difficult times, you're going to get a lot of advice. I mean a lot of advice. You may pay for some of it, but you'll get a lot of advice. Check every single thing that people tell you. Now, in your life, in this stage of your life, and in the world's history, no one's going to come up to you and say, I'm Jesus, come back to the earth, let me give you some advice about your life. It's not going to happen to you. What you are going to have is people say, well, I'll tell you what I would do. I have a friend went through that, and this is what they did. Or, I've studied these things out, and if you'll just come and visit with me, I'll help you through it, and we'll solve your problems together. The Christ, you see, was the Lord who gave guidance and direction to his people. You can get guidance and direction from whoever you want to, but don't let anyone deceive you by giving direction and advice that conflicts with what Jesus has already told us. Now, the world will say to you, that seems stupid to me, I wouldn't do that. And it does seem stupid to them, but you just listen to what God tells you to do. In the days of our most devastating experiences, we are weak. We are subject to being influenced by people who want to tell us what to do, and so there is a tendency to move God out of the way, and focus our attention on people we can see with our eyes, and hear with our ears, and take their advice about what to do. But for you, remember, if you do what I tell you to do faithfully all the way to the end, you will be rescued. I can get you almost to the end, one mile short, and then you stop and go the other direction, and everything's lost. If you endure to the end, you will be saved. So beware, whenever you face the most difficult days in your life, you'll have people who want to help you. They'll have wonderful compassion, and they may have great advice. Listen to all of it. Listen to hear if the advice coincides with what God says in the Scriptures. If it doesn't, throw it away. Run from it. For he's told us, if you belong to me, I will guide you through the abomination of desolation that comes to you. And if in the world, when the end of time comes, if we're all still here, and we hear of the news, and we say, this is the abomination of desolation that's been promised, we will have practice going through it ourselves, and now we'll be ready for the big show. Jesus said, I'm going to tell you guys what's going to happen, so that you'll be ready when it does. The key? You have to believe in me, that I'm smarter than you are, that I know more than you do, that I'm smarter than your friends, that I know more than they do, that even what I ask you to do, even though it might not seem like your choice, is always the right thing. You see, that's what it means to have Jesus Christ as the Lord of your life. You decide at some time to say, God, I'm not smart enough to do this. I can show you a thousand decisions I've made to prove it. I'm not smart enough. But I believe you are. And so today I say, would you take control of my life? Would you show me how to live, and I'll live in obedience to you, no matter what happens? That's what it means to enter the kingdom of heaven. And once you enter the kingdom of heaven, then you listen to God day by day, step by step. You read the scriptures to learn what God is like. You talk with Him regularly to learn how He lives and how He talks to you, so you can recognize Him. And then when your abomination comes, you're ready. Would you bow your heads, please, for a moment? Jesus took time to warn His disciples. He does the same thing for us. If when you asked God earlier if you loved Him with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and you felt like, maybe I can't say that, I really want to ask you today to solve that problem. I want to ask you to say to God, today I pledge to you, I will love you with all my heart, soul, strength, and mind. I will do whatever you tell me, no matter how hard it is, no matter how crazy it looks. I'll do what you tell me, because I believe if I do that, all the way through my life, I will be saved and safe. If you never made that commitment to God, I'm going to ask you this morning to do that, right where you're sitting. In a moment I'm going to ask you, as we sing the invitation hymn, to get up from where you are, come to the front, and to say openly and publicly, with joy and pride, today I've given everything to Christ. Maybe you've made that promise to God in the past, but you know you're not keeping it. You know you need to recommit your life to Christ, to rededicate yourself to His service. If you've heard in your own heart that that's what you ought to do, Jesus gives you a word about His directions. Don't delay. Don't say, I'll do it tomorrow, I'll do it next week, I'll do it when it's more convenient. When I tell you to do it, do it then. So if you believe in God, and He's told you that, you do it. Maybe He's let you know this is the church family that you ought to be a part of. This is a time in which you say, I know what you want, I will do it. Father, you've made it clear, working with your own disciples through Jesus, that you warn us about the future, that you warn us about the present, that you show us what we should do. And you've made it clear that if we do what you tell us, we'll be safe. So I ask, Father, for every single one of us here, that what you're asking today, we would do without hesitation or without fear. In Jesus' name I ask this, amen. Would you stand please as we sing this invitation hymn? I'll be here at the front if you want to talk with me, Carl and Debbie will be here if you want to talk to them. This is a time when the Lord speaks, tells you what to do, and you do it. ♪ Lord Jesus, I long to be perfect with hope. I want thee forever to ransom my soul. Break down every idol, cast out every foe. Now watch me and I shall be whiter than snow. Whiter than snow, yes, whiter than snow. Now watch me and I shall be whiter than snow. Lord Jesus, for this my life's humblest vow, you have helped me to bear a complete sacrifice. I give up myself and whatever I know. Now watch me and I shall be whiter than snow. Whiter than snow, yes, whiter than snow. Now watch me and I shall be whiter than snow. Lord Jesus, we're thankful that what you do for us, we cannot do for ourselves, and you freely offer it, that regardless of our rebellion and sin, to simply trust you with our lives means that we become pure, holy, righteous, clean, more clean and white than even the pure snow. For each person this morning who said yes to you, I pray that you would walk with them this week with extra power and strength, that they might know that you're with them. For every one of us who are facing difficulties, give us your instructions day by day that will follow them. For every person who's faced what you want and said, I'm not ready, be patient, lead us day by day and carefully to the path of fullness in life. In the name of Jesus we pray, amen. Psalm 48 says, I delight to do your will, my God, and I pray that be my heart. I'll say yes, Lord, yes, to your will and to your way. I'll say yes, Lord, yes, I will trust you and obey. When the Spirit speaks to me, with my whole heart I'll agree, and my answer will be yes, Lord, yes.