The Destruction of Jerusalem

The outer portion of the temple was covered with layers and sheets of gold, so brilliant that when the sun came up at the dawn, people couldn't look directly at the walls of the temple because the refugence of its glory was so bright that they were blinded.

They had to look away. In Jesus' day, the temple was one of the ancient wonders of the world, vast in size and beautifully and carefully crafted. This made the prophecy of Jesus even more shocking to his hearers when he declared its destruction would come, that Jerusalem would be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles. Hi, I'm Nathan W Bingham and thank you for joining us today for Renewing Your Mind. Each Lord's Day, R.C. Sproul is walking us through the gospel of Luke. Today we find ourselves in chapter 21. We meet the poor widow with two copper coins, and we hear what Dr. Sproul calls the most astonishing prophecy ever recorded.

Here's Dr. Sproul. This morning we're going to continue our study of the gospel according to Saint Luke, starting a brand new chapter, chapter 21. And I will be reading from verse 1, actually through verse 24.

And I ask the congregation please to stand for the reading of the Word of God. 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. And while some were speaking of the temple, how it was adorned with noble stones and offerings, He said, As for these things that you see, the days will come where there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down. And they asked Him, Teacher, when will these things be? And what will be the sign when these things are about to take place? And He said, See, that you are not led astray, for many will come in My name, saying, I am He, and the time is at hand.

Do not go after them. But when you hear of wars and tumults, do not be terrified, for these things must first take place, that the end will not come at once. And then He said to them, Nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom.

There will be great earth, there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and pestilences. There will be terrors and great signs from heaven. But before all this they will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons. And you will be brought before kings and governors for My name's sake. This will be your opportunity to bear witness. 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. But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near. And let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and those who are inside the city depart, and let not those who are out in the country enter it. For these are the days of vengeance to fulfill all that is written. Alas, for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days, for there will be great distress upon the earth and wrath against this people. They will fall by the edge of the sword and be led captive among all nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled." These weighty words of warning are given by our Lord Himself, and the record of that 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. In chapter 22, I should say chapter 21, I'm in a hurry, but not that fast. Chapter 21 begins after a brief parenthesis in which at the close of chapter 20, Jesus utters words of condemnation. And then in the next part of the parenthesis, He opens chapter 21 not with words of condemnation, but with words of commendation. Let's look briefly at the end of chapter 20 where Jesus said, beware of the scribes who like to walk around in long robes and love greetings in the marketplaces, the best seats in the synagogues, and the places of honor at feasts.

These who devour widows' houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation. Now earlier, Jesus had severely rebuked the Pharisees and the scribes and the leaders of the day, the religious leaders of the day, for being hypocrites. Now He singles out the attorneys who were theologians. They were masters of the Old Testament law. And He said they loved to parade around in glory and enjoy the adulation of the people in the marketplace, in the synagogues, and wherever they can be elevated in places of honor.

But theirs is a culture of deceit, and to them will come the greater condemnation. And immediately after these words, then Jesus moves to the speaking of tender words of commendation with respect to the most famous donor in all of Christian history. Chapter 21 begins with these words, Jesus looked up and He 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 that she had to live on. And Jesus was observing people in the temple, and 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. And 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. That's all she had in the world. She certainly could have taken one of those copper coins and dropped it in the poor box. That would certainly have been more than sufficient. Instead, she took them both and gave them away, all that she had for Christ.

And do you know what happened? Jesus saw her do it. We have people today, the twenty-first 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.

We sing, take my life and let it be. We make all these claims, but I don't know how you feel, but I know that whatever devotion I have given in my life to Jesus, whatever sacrifice I have ever made on any occasion for the sake of His kingdom pales into utter insignificance in light of the action of this poverty-stricken widow, whose might was seen by Jesus and blessed it. Then Jesus moves on to uttering one of the most astonishing prophecies ever uttered in our lives, 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. Do you realize how radical that prediction was?

They walk outside. The disciples are still in awe. Every time they came near the temple, they couldn't get over the awe that they felt with the majesty of this edifice. The first temple that was built by Solomon was a magnificent building, and it lasted for several hundred years, about four hundred years, until it was destroyed by the Babylonians and then partially rebuilt, and there was more destruction and so on until about twenty years before this time King Herod began the reconstruction of the temple to make it the most glorious building on the face of the earth. And there were two things about this temple that were extraordinarily noteworthy.

First of all, it's vastness, its sheer size, a thousand feet square, thousand feet in that direction, thousand feet down that way, thousand feet back in the back. And Herod, the master architect, chose stones that were huge as they were quarried and brought in order to build the interior of the temple, single stones that were sixty-seven feet long, made of pure white marble, seven feet high, nine feet wide, a single stone. And he adorned this building with jewels and gold, precious stones. The outer portion of the temple was covered with layers and sheets of gold, so brilliant that when the sun came up at the dawn, people couldn't look directly at the walls of the temple because the refugence of its glory was so bright that they were blinded.

They had to look away. This was one of the wonders of the ancient world. And 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. He's going to take away their city.

He's going to take away their temple. And when Jesus said that, no one could believe it. And 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. And 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, there would be wars. There would be rumors of wars.

There would be famines and petulance and plagues and all of those things. And then He said, this generation will not pass away till all of these things are fulfilled. And so the skeptics leap 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 Olivet Discourse and say that Jesus was a false prophet because His predictions didn't come true. So much of the prediction came true so vividly, so compellingly that it would prove to the most obstreperous skeptic that this was a true prophet.

But that timeframe issue hangs out there as a cause for much debate. Now I'm going to postpone till next Sunday, God willing, a treatment of that problem of the timeframe. But let me jump down quickly to Luke chapter 21 where he says in verse 20, When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, know that its destruction is near. Let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let those who are inside the city depart. These are the days of vengeance to fulfill everything that is written.

I'm going to beg for five more minutes of your patience that I can finish this. Alas, for the women who are pregnant, so these will be great distress on the earth and wrath against this people. They will fall by the edge of the sword, and listen to this, led captive into all nations. Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.

That critical word there, until, in the Greek means up to this point, and then it stops. So 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. I'm Irish by descent. My great-grandfather came to this country during the potato famine in Ireland in the middle of the nineteenth century. My grandfather marched every year in the Orangeman's Parade in the city of Pittsburgh on St. Patrick's Day. My mother tucked me into bed every night by singing Tura, Laura, Laura, an Irish lullaby. The one day I was allowed to stay home every year was on St. Patrick's Day because the city of Pittsburgh would have music playing all day of the famous Irish songs. My son wears a kilt. All his children have Irish names. My daughter has her children all named Irish names. But we don't gather around the table on Sunday night and say, next year in Dublin, or pray for the peace of Dublin. For all intents and purposes, we've become assimilated into this country. We're Americans, not really Irishmen.

But the Jews were sent out of their homeland, dispersed throughout the whole world, never, ever lost their identity for two thousand 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 jig, dancing tune that we would be normally familiar with, but it was a hora.

You remember the song, 1948? Zana, Zana, Zana. Zana, Zana, Zana, Zana, can't you hear the music play? In the village square. And then went on to sing, Zana, Zana, join the celebration.

There'll be people there from every nation. And on and on the hora went to the top of the music charts, celebrating the founding again of the Jewish nation. But it wasn't until 1967 that the Jews recaptured Jerusalem. I mean, you remember the few days there of that war, the television cameras were whirring 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.

I lived in Boston at the time. One of my colleagues was Meredith Cline, who was one of the most famous Old Testament scholars of the twentieth century. And I went to his house, and I said, Meredith, what do you think of this? He said, I'm going to have to rethink my eschatology. He said, people are reading the Bible in one hand and the newspaper on the other. But there's still only one out of five Jews back in the Holy Land, and maybe it'll be another two thousand years before they really recover total control of the city.

But I don't think it's by accident that the hottest place in the political issues of our day is the Middle East. But Jesus said the city will be destroyed first by the Romans, but not forever. And next week, God willing, we'll look at the problem of those elements of the prophecy that concerned the question, when will these things be?

When will this take place? You're listening to the Sunday edition of Renewing Your Mind. I'm Nathan W. Bingham. Today's sermon was preached by R.C.

Sproul while he served at St. Andrew's Chapel in Sanford, Florida. These sermons in Luke, 113 of them, mark the beginning of what would become his expositional commentary on Luke. For your donation of any amount, we'll give you digital access to this commentary so you can go deeper in your study of Luke's Gospel. So give your gift today at renewingyourmind.org. As mentioned by Dr. Sproul today, next time we'll consider in greater detail the controversy surrounding the timing of Jesus' prophecy. That's next Sunday here on Renewing Your Mind. you