Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Did Jesus Think He Was Living in the End Times? | Who Is Jesus? | Mark 1.14-15

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. Right now, we are asking, who is Jesus? When coronavirus hit, people started asking, are we living in the end times? Now, the Christian news world, which is a super weird, bizarre place, just to be honest, it started reporting about all of this crazy end-time stuff. There was an African locust plague that was happening at the, exact same time. And these news reporters are saying, see, it's a sign of the times. Now, never mind the fact that the verse that they quoted as proof of their point isn't actually about the end times at all. Leading up to the election, Pat Robertson said that God told him that Donald Trump would not only be elected, but that it would mark the beginning of the end times. Look, ever since the mid-90s, the left behind series, another fun end times thing, it popularized the idea that Christians would be

Starting point is 00:01:04 rapture, that when Jesus comes back, he would basically make all of us disappear, leaving behind our clothes. So I guess we're flying up naked into the sky, maybe spiritual selves, physical selves, not clear. But the point is, we get to escape with Jesus while the tribulation happens down on earth. And what's so interesting is the idea of the end times, it's not just a Christian obsession. It's all over the place. It's on TV. It's in Hollywood. Now, they don't talk about the end times in a quote-unquote Christian way, but that's what zombie. movies are about and zombie TV shows. We've got movies about natural disasters, alien landings, and just the general destruction of the human population, and sometimes the entire planet.

Starting point is 00:01:46 Now, let me make a few observations. First of all, for whatever reason, most of us think of the end times as something that's going to happen in the future. Second, most of us associate the end times with the destruction of the world. Third, our ideas about the end times. They don't actually come from the Bible. They tend to come from pop culture, whether that's general pop culture or Christian pop culture or just weird Christian teachers out there that tell us funky things. So when we ask the question, did Jesus believe that he was living in the end times, we should actually also ask the question, what did Jesus think of when he thought of the end times?

Starting point is 00:02:27 According to Jesus, what did the end times actually entail? Now, remember, we've been talking about how we have to build. a cross-cultural relationship with Jesus. Why? Well, he lived in a different world. He never saw Nicholas Cage act in a left-behind movie, nor had he ever heard the idea of a rapture. Because that was invented in the 1800s, by the way. But let's just start with the basics. Did Jesus believe that he lived in the end times? And the answer to that question is yes, he most certainly did believe that he was living in the end times. Check out Hebrews 1 versus 1 and 2. long ago at many times and in many ways God spoke to our fathers by the prophets but in these last days

Starting point is 00:03:11 in the end time so the author of Hebrews is saying I think that we and all the people that I'm writing to we live in the last days he has spoken to us by his son the author of Hebrews by the way is not alone and the idea that Jesus brought about the last days in Acts 2 verse 17 Peter says that we live in the last days and 1. John 3. John 218, John says that it is the last hour. Jude and Paul, they all agree. Now, why did the early church all agree that we live in the end times? Where did they get this idea from? It's from Jesus. That's where they got it from. Mark was the earliest recorded gospel. And right at the beginning of his gospel, he summarizes Jesus' message as the announcement that the last days, which the Old

Starting point is 00:03:56 Testament prophets all announced and heralded, those last days, they are finally at hand. Check out Mark 1, verse 14. Now, after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God and saying, The time is fulfilled. He's saying, look, the time is fulfilled. The last days announced by the prophet, those days are upon us. The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. It's just around the corner.

Starting point is 00:04:24 Repent and believe in the gospel. Jesus clearly believed that he was living in the end times, which should leave. us to ask a question, was he wrong? I mean, there was no rapture, and as far as I can tell, the world wasn't destroyed, and the human population is still here. That actually gets us to the crux of the issue. What did Jesus think of as the end times? Because what Jesus thought of as the end times is not what we think of as the end times. His idea about the end times, it came from the Hebrew Bible, not from Christian pop culture. There's a threat of prophetic hope that runs through Moses into Isaiah and Daniel and others. And this threat of hope is that God would do something

Starting point is 00:05:09 in what the prophets called the latter days. God was going to do something in the quote unquote latter days. In fact, when the New Testament talks about the end times, it almost always uses the exact phrase in Greek, which could be translated as the latter days or the last days. This is a throwback. It's a hyperlink to all of those Old Testament prophecies about the latter days. The hope, by the way, in the Old Testament is remarkably consistent. In Deuteronomy, Moses foretold a day, the latter days, when God would end Israel's punishment for disobedience. And that punishment was being exiled. So he's telling of a latter day when the exile would end and their subjugation to the Gentile nations would end. In a very similar fashion, Isaiah, he said that

Starting point is 00:05:55 God would do something new in the latter days. He said that He himself, God himself, would return to a rule over his people and to establish his kingdom of love, justice, and mercy on earth as in heaven. He said that in the latter days, it would mark the renewal of God's creation, and even the Gentiles would come to know God and to worship him and to learn his ways. Again, the prophet Daniel talked about the latter days, and he offered up the same kind of ideas, except in some really crazy images. He saw the Gentile empires like a succession of beasts, like these crazy super beasts that come up out of the water, and each successive beast destroys the beast that came before it, until finally, God does something to end their animalistic subhuman rampage. What he does is he sends a true

Starting point is 00:06:43 image of himself, one who is called the Son of Man. And this Son of Man comes to establish God's kingdom on earth as in heaven. You see, to Jesus, the end times, they weren't about raptures. It was about the return of God's reign. Isn't about people escaping and going off to heaven? heaven. It was about heaven coming down to earth. It wasn't about the destruction of the world. It was about the renewal of all creation. But Jesus, even though he clearly sees himself announcing and heralding the beginning of the latter days, the end times, and he does it in a way that people expected from the Old Testament. He also actually subverts some of the expectations about what the end times might include. Many Jews, they expected God's judgment to happen all at once, like this big slam dunk moment

Starting point is 00:07:29 where God makes everything right. They expected the immediate political overthrow of their political enemies. They expected to take power over the world. But Jesus presents the latter days not as a singular moment, but as a period in history. For example, he tells a parable about the kingdom of God in Mark 4. And in this parable, he talks about a master who sows good wheat and a good field. But apparently his enemies come along and they sow a bunch of weeds in that exact same field. As time goes on, his servants see what's happening.

Starting point is 00:08:01 The wheat is growing up with the weeds. And they say, hey, should we pull up the weeds so that the wheat can grow? But the master says, no, no, no, no, no, don't do that. Because if you pull up the weeds, you might pull up the wheat. Instead, we need to let both the weeds and the wheat grow up together for a full period of time. And then at the end, we'll pull them all up, and the weeds will be burned, and the wheat will be kept. Now, Jesus's point is that people expected the end times to happen all at once. But he's saying that's not how the end times really work. The time of God's kingdom coming,

Starting point is 00:08:32 it's going to be a period of time. And God is going to actually withhold his judgment during that time. Why? So that people could get a chance to grow and to actually come into his kingdom. That's not the only place that Jesus talks about the end times. Jesus was clear that his followers would undergo what he called the test or the tribulation or the temptation in the end times. In Mark 13, Jesus uses what the end times. In Mark 13, Jesus uses what's called apocalyptic imagery. It's kind of like bombastic, end-of-the-worldish imagery, but it really is just imagery to describe the time that he and his disciples would live in. And he tells them, look, you guys can't expect to be in power. God's not setting everything right

Starting point is 00:09:11 right away. Instead, you should expect to suffer in my name, but know that during these latter days, that suffering will ultimately lead to victory. And then when you look at what Jesus did to inaugurate these latter days, he didn't overthrow the political powers of his time. Instead, he overthrew the powers behind those powers. He overthrew the powers of sin, death, and the devil that hide behind every empire. He destroyed the deeper powers by dying on the cross, by taking their worst weapons straight in the chest, by dying, and thereby leaving them disarmed of their weapon death. His resurrection is actually the first flower on a long dormant tree. It points forward to the fact that all creation, just like him, is going to bloom into resurrection. And in the latter days, that

Starting point is 00:09:57 resurrection life, which Jesus is the first person to experience, that resurrection life is actually coming into the present. In these latter days, in this and times that Jesus lived in, that we live in, that resurrection power is already bringing people to life. Man, there's just so much more that I can keep on going, but we don't have a ton of time. So let me try to summarize. Jesus believed that he lived in the latter days. And those are the days when God's kingdom came to earth, confronted evil, and began the renewal of all creation. Now, these latter days, they don't happen in one big climactic singular event. There's a time period that extends from Jesus to today and beyond. And this time is going to be characterized both by tribulation and new resurrection life.

Starting point is 00:10:41 We'll suffer, but will also be made new. The hope which stands still in our future is for the final return of Jesus when he will finally and absolutely renew all things. But until then, we're called to live our life like we really are living in the end times because guess what, we are. You don't know when Jesus will return, so you've got to be ready for it. Fight for purity. Fight to bring the kingdom of love and justice and mercy into your family and into your community. Fight against the powers of death and sin that want to enslave you. Live knowing that God's kingdom has already been inaugurated by King Jesus. Your hope is sure.

Starting point is 00:11:21 The war is won. All that's left are the last skirmishes. Resurrection life, it's not just a future reality. It's a present promise that we can enjoy right now in the latter days. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps other people find this podcast more easily. Also, ask yourself, who could you share this podcast with?

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Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Did Jesus Think He Was Living in the End Times? | Who Is Jesus? | Mark 1.14-15

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