Instead of reaching for ‘how much…’ questions, we are better asking, ‘what does Jesus deserve from me?’ We should take the focus off what we will do for Jesus, as though we are paying him back, and instead ask ourselves what Jesus deserves from us. Again, any answer that falls short of our whole selves is simply wrong.

If your wife tells you she loves you, if you value your features, I’d suggest you don’t respond to her declaration with, ‘how much do I need to love you in return?’ As far as love for your wife goes, most questions beginning with ‘how much do I need to…’ will not end well. And, let’s be honest, rightly so.
There are certain relationships where ‘how much’ is a perfectly valid question, of course. The relationship I have with every shopkeeper I try to engage in business pretty much starts and ends with that question. ‘How much does it cost?’ is about the only valid question in that scenario. But then, neither me nor any local shopkeepers are claiming to love one another. It is a mere business transaction and literally nothing more.
Which of these scenarios, do you think, more closely represents your relationship with Christ? Which, do you think, more closely mirrors your relationship to the local church? I am sure few of us would seriously argue for the latter. Jesus calls the church the apple of his eye and his bride. There is no doubt that Jesus is saying, ‘I love you’. If we wouldn’t ask our wife, ‘and exactly how much affection, and how much evidence of me loving you, will suffice, y’know, to have done my duty?’ I’m not sure what makes any of us think that is an appropriate thing to say to the Lord.
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When I say that the second coming occurred during the same time described in the book of Acts, I am sure to provoke a few knee-jerk reactions. Today, we have been conditioned to believe the second coming happens in the future when Jesus raptures away the Church from the world. This event, as the left behind novels describe it, will leave the pagan world to sort through millions of piles of clothing, surgical implants, and dentures from the vaporized saints Jesus took away to heaven in their birthday suits. This is not what the Bible teaches and can only be described as an insane and laughable reading of the text.

A Metaphor for NT Eschatology
When constructing an eschatology of the New Testament, you will need to do so in layers, kind of like a house begins with a proper foundation, then successive levels get added, one on top of the next, until finally you can put the chimney and shingles on and live in it. 
The Foundation: Old Testament Eschatology
In that sense, the foundation of New Testament eschatology, the critical understanding that lies under the surface of the New Testament text, is the manifold witness of the Old Testament. If we do not get our eschatological underpinnings from the men of old, or if we do not understand what they were saying rightly, we could waste a lot of energy and effort constructing an eschatological edifice that will not stand. And while many Old Testament passages have been appealed to in our study so far, a fuller Old Testament eschatology is still forthcoming. 
As a reminder, however, of what we have covered so far, the eschaton (the final age of man) was already defined by God in the first age of man. God defined man’s purpose in creation as filling the world with joyful working worshippers (Genesis 1:28). While the first man fell in that task, the rest of the Old Testament is about how a coming man will succeed and have that global Kingdom. While more could be said, that is the point of eschatology in the Old Testament. 
The First Floor: The Eschatology of Jesus
On top of that foundation, however, is the next level of New Testament eschatology developed by Jesus within the Gospels. There, you may have been surprised to learn that Jesus’ teaching on the topic did not concern events long into the future but events that would take place soon after His ascension. This is demonstrated most perfectly in Christ’s Olivet discourse (Matthew 24; Mark 13; Luke 21) and the chapters leading up to it (Matthew 21-23), where Jesus predicts 2 significant events will happen. The first will be that great woes will fall upon the Jewish people for not correctly stewarding the Old Covenant’s mysteries. The apostate Jews will be removed from their station to make way for Jesus’ new bride, the Church, which is made up of Jews and Gentiles who follow Christ. 
The second cataclysmic event Jesus prophesied was the end of the Old Covenant order. This means with His coming, the Jerusalem temple would be destroyed, the Levitical priesthood would be severed, the sacrificial system ended, the festivals repealed, and everything existing within the Old Covenant that served as a type and shadow for the coming of Jesus would be moved from the mantle to the museum. All of this would be done to make way for Jesus’ end-time Kingdom, manifesting on earth through the Church as He reigns over it at the right hand of God in heaven. This Kingdom, unlike the one of old, would conquer the world that Adam lost and, through the true and better Adam, deliver back to God a world that is finally and fully filled with worshippers. Jesus predicted this Kingdom would be taken away from the apostate Jews and given to the bride of Christ (Matthew 21:43). He indicated that these earth-shattering events would happen within a single generation (Matthew 24:34). And all throughout that forty-year window of time, as the downfall of the Old Kingdom and the rise of the New is happening, Jesus would provide incredible evidentiary signs and wonders to showcase the truthfulness of His claims.
In previous episodes and blogs, we outlined those Olivet signs and wonders and demonstrated how they do not prove a future eschaton but confirm to His disciples what He said. Again, these were near-term events that actually happened in the disciple’s lifetime and would have been a source of incredible comfort and assurance to them as they walked through these events. The signs Jesus gave them to be on the lookout for were the rise of false messiahs in Judah, the uptick in wars and rumors of wars in the ordinarily peaceful Roman Empire (Pax Romana), a marked increase in large earthquakes and famines, a blistering period of persecutions that Jesus called “tribulations,” “signs of the times” (which included a moral collapse of the Judean people, a period of great evangelism throughout the Roman world, and a great apostasy from increased tortures and persecution), an abomination of desolation in the Jerusalem temple before it was destroyed, a period of great tribulations for the Christians just before Jerusalem was destroyed, a judgment coming of Christ to bring God’s wrath upon the apostate city and temple through the Roman armies (Part 1 and Part 2), and apocalyptic signs and wonders in the heavens to confirm what Jesus was saying. These teachings from Christ in the Gospels encapsulate the first level of New Testament Eschatology that is built upon the witness of Moses and the Prophets. 
The Second Floor: The Eschatology of Acts
After constructing a foundation for eschatology from the Old Testament and the first story that was given to us by Christ in the Gospels, we have now made our way up the staircase to the second story of our end-times building, which is provided by Luke in the book of Acts. While many do not think of Acts as an eschatological book, it is the only book in the New Testament that details the earliest days of the Christian Church. And in that sense, it is critical to confirm whether we have understood the Old Testament passages and Jesus rightly. 
Think about it like this, a derelict builder may construct a shoddy foundation, with a piss-poor, jerry-rigged first floor, without too many people noticing. The building stands, its flaws can be covered up a bit, and many uninformed consumers will jump on the discounted price, being none-the-wiser. But, the higher a building goes, the more exacerbated foundation-level issues will become. An inconspicuous error on the ground floor of a building, every cockeyed brick or wonky beam, will become a catastrophe on a higher level (as anyone who has ever played Jinga can attest). In this way, the higher floors confirm a foundation’s trustworthiness and faithfulness. This is precisely what the book of Acts does for the eschatology we have been teaching. It proves that we have understood the Old Testament correctly and that Jesus’ prophecies were coming true in the time frame that He has given. 
For instance, when it comes to Acts confirming the eschatology of the Old Testament, the book gives several fascinating details. It begins with Jesus going up to heaven with the clouds, fulfilling Daniel 7. Jesus also tells His disciples that He has all authority in fulfillment of Psalm 2 and that His disciples are to take His Kingdom to the ends of the earth, fulfilling Daniel 2, Isaiah 9, and Zechariah 7. We also saw how the coming of the Holy Spirit mirrored God’s coming on Sinai, how speaking in tongues reverses the curse of Babel, and how prophecies like Joel 2 were fulfilled before the onlooking Jerusalem crowd’s eyes at Pentecost. This is a brief sketch, but it does demonstrate how the book confirms a near-term first-century inauguration of the final eschaton. 
In the same way, the book of Acts confirms many of the details that Jesus prophesied in the Olivet Discourse and the Gospels.
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The Lord is with you, mighty warrior? Now that is a shocking statement. It is shocking because Gideon was not a mighty warrior. He was threshing wheat, a common and necessary practice, but the usual practice of threshing wheat was to cut the stalks and then beat them with a rod. You would then discard the straw and then toss the mixture up into the air. The wind would catch the chaff and blow it away and the heavier grains would fall to the ground. But Gideon was so afraid of the Midianites that he was doing an “outside activity” while hiding in a sheltered vat that was used for pressing grapes. Mighty warrior indeed.

Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and for seven years he gave them into the hands of the Midianites. Because the power of Midian was so oppressive, the Israelites prepared shelters for themselves in mountain clefts, caves and strongholds. Whenever the Israelites planted their crops, the Midianites, Amalekites and other eastern peoples invaded the country. They camped on the land and ruined the crops all the way to Gaza and did not spare a living thing for Israel, neither sheep nor cattle nor donkeys. They came up with their livestock and their tents like swarms of locusts. It was impossible to count the men and their camels; they invaded the land to ravage it. Midian so impoverished the Israelites that they cried out to the Lord for help (Judges 6:1-6).
I’ve never known what it was like to live in fear. Not really.
I’m not familiar with the feeling of waking up on a daily basis and immediately looking over my shoulder or wondering what violence I’d have to run from. I’ve not experienced the anxiety that comes with raising children in a truly dangerous environment and worrying whether or not they will be safe playing outside. But those were the times for the children of Israel in Judges 6.
And what a terrible time it must have been. The Midianites were actually distant relatives of the Jews; they were the descendants of Abraham and his second wife. They had grown into a semi-nomadic people in western Arabia and became part of a confederation of desert peoples who periodically would cross over the Jordan to pillage and wreak havoc on the Israelites. Just when the freshly seeded crops were sprouting, they would invade and destroy. They were so fierce that the Israelites lived looking over their shoulders, knowing that they might look across the river and see the Midianites coming. They were so afraid that they actually hollowed out caves in the mountainside to hide in.
This was life for Israel for seven years. For seven years their crops and animals were destroyed. For seven years invading peoples oppressed them and caused them to run. And you can imagine the effect both economically and psychologically.
Verse 6 expresses it best because the word there for “impoverished” is literally translated “made small.”
The Midianites made the Israelites small in emotion, courage and prosperity, so much so that they finally cried out to the Lord for help.
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