Wars and Rumors of Wars | Mark 13:1-8
The return of Christ ought to be our blessed hope that strengthens and encourages all that we do, yet the key is that there is still work to do before that end comes. Indeed, we should long for Christ to find us diligent in His service when He returns rather than metaphorically (or even literally!) staring up at the clouds in anticipation. Christ may very well return in our lifetime, just as the temple was destroyed during the apostles’ generation, or His coming may be still a thousand years or more away. Regardless of the timing, He may easily call us to Himself through war, earthquake, famine, or (as we will observer next week) outright persecution before that day. Therefore, let us be faithful to serve our King with whatever time He allots to us.
And as he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!” And Jesus said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.”
And as he sat on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him privately, “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign when all these things are about to be accomplished?” And Jesus began to say to them, “See that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. And when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. This must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. These are but the beginning of the birth pains.
Mark 13:1-8 ESV
In regards to the end times, Christians can easily fall into two opposite reactions. The first is to become obsessed with the topic of eschatology. These Christians are always on the lookout for the “signs of the times” and are often absolutely positive that Jesus is coming soon. The summary of their argument is typically to appeal to how chaotic the world is becoming, which means that Jesus must be returning soon. The second is to avoid eschatology at nearly every opportunity, content to simply believe that Jesus is coming back at some point.
The one who obsesses over discerning the end can easily run into many problems. Indeed, like the disciples after Christ’s ascension, it can be all too easy to stare at the sky in wait for His return. Yet there are problems with the other stance as well. Treating the end as out-of-sight-out-of-mind is clearly not how the biblical authors expected us to live. Rather, the end of all things ought to be a matter of great comfort as well as sobriety.
I raise these viewpoints precisely because in chapter thirteen Mark records Jesus’ Olivet Discourse, which is the apocalyptic teaching found in the Synoptic Gospels. As we move through this chapter in the coming weeks, let us guard ourselves from both unhealthy stances.
Judgement Foretold // Verses 1-2
Our text begins with these important words: And as he came out of the temple… While it is right to see this teaching (the largest in Mark’s Gospel) as its own distinct section, it must not be divorced from the events of chapters eleven and twelve. Upon entering Jerusalem on a donkey, Jesus immediately went to the survey the temple. The next day He cleansed the temple of its moneychangers and merchants. The four questions from the religious leaders were all made in the temple, as well as the events that we studied last week. Thus, the setting of this chapter is Jesus exiting the temple following all those previous hostilities.
Along their way out, we are then told that one of Jesus’ disciples commented to Him: “Look, Teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!” This was certainly a true statement, for the temple of Jesus’ day was a wonder to behold. Throughout Israel’s history, there have been two temples. The first is often called Solomon’s temple because it was King Solomon who oversaw its construction and presided over its dedication. It was destroyed, however, by the Babylonians after Zedekiah rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar. The second temple was built by the exiles who were allowed to return under Cyrus of Persia. Its foundation was quickly laid but left unfinished for fifteen years because of threats from neighboring peoples. The prophets Haggai and Zechariah encouraged the people to finished building the temple, and they did so. Originally, the second temple was significantly smaller than Solomon’s, and Ezra records that when its foundation was laid many who remembered the first temple’s glory wept for their loss.
That changed whenever Herod the Great was given control over Judea by Rome. He began a lengthy building project that ended with the second temple being twice as large as Solomon’s temple. R. C. Sproul describes it for us:
The temple complex covered about thirty-five acres. The sanctuary stood one hundred and fifty feet high, as did the temple wall. The columns that held up the portico were so massive that three large men could barely encompass them by touching fingertip to fingertip. Josephus tells us that some of the stones that made up the temple were sixty feet long, eleven feet high, and eight feet deep, with each stone weighing more than a million pounds. Other historians of antiquity said Herod’s temple looked like a mountain of marble decorated with gold. The temple complex was architecturally stunning and must have looked strong enough to stand for a thousand years or more.[1]
Thus, it would seem that this disciple was struck with the wonder of this sight. Of course, perhaps the disciples also intended to sort of cheer Jesus up, almost as if to say, “Things inside the temple might be pretty bad, but isn’t the building beautiful!”
I can imagine Jesus’ response knocking the wind out of his disciples: “Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.” The temple, beautiful was it was, would be utterly destroyed because of the corruption that had taken root within its walls. J. C. Ryle makes this point:
Let us learn from this solemn saying, that the true glory of a church does not consist in its buildings for public worship, but in the faith and godliness of its members. The eyes of our Lord Jesus Christ could find no pleasure in looking at the very temple which contained the holy of holies, and the golden candlestick, and the altar of burnt offering. Much less, may we suppose, can he find pleasure in the most splendid of worship among professing Christians, if his Word and his Spirit are not honored in it.[2]
Of course, I do not think there is much danger of us reveling in the beauty of our church buildings today (at least among more Reformed-leaning Protestants). In fact, I think that the pendulum has swung too far and that churches might benefit from a valuing architecture again. Yet his point may best apply if we think of a church service’s production value or perhaps the splendor of a multitude of programs, activities, and outreaches. Just as the beauty of the temple’s design could not cover up the corruption within, these outward displays cannot make up for a lack of faith and godliness of a church’s members. We also see this principle in Jesus’ message to the church of Ephesus, where He commended their outward faithfulness but warned them to repent of their lovelessness or their lampstand would be removed.
These Things // Verses 3-4
Moving into verse 3, we are told that Jesus sat down on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple. The Kidron Valley lays between the Mount of Olives and Mount Zion upon which Jerusalem sits, yet the Mount of Olives is taller, making its view of the temple spectacular. Jesus will return to the Mount of Olives in chapter fourteen to pray in a garden upon its slope, Gethsemane. We call the teaching of Jesus that begins properly in verse 5 the Olivet Discourse because it was given to His disciples upon the Mount of Olives.
Jesus clearly brought them to this location for the purpose of teaching them more about the temple’s destruction. After all, how could they have thought about anything else once Jesus told them that the greatest religious, cultural, and political structure within their world would be utterly ruined? Indeed, His intent in verse 2 was certainly to have His disciples ask the questions that they asked in verse 4: “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign when all these things are about to be accomplished?”
This is the guiding question for understanding the Olivet Discourse because this is the question that Jesus is explicitly answering. And the question contains two distinct parts: when will these things happen and what will be the signs that these things are about to be fulfilled. Yet the question is centered upon ‘these things,’ which are throwing down of the buildings and stones of the temple that Jesus predicted in verse 2. This means that the Olivet Discourse here in chapter thirteen is primarily about the destruction of the temple.
Now this chapter certainly is apocalyptic, and there are parts that clearly describe Christ’s second coming, for which we are still waiting with eager anticipation. Yet what we are about to read is not primarily about some time of tribulation still come; instead, it is about a horrendous period of tribulation that has already come to pass whenever Jerusalem and the temple were razed to the ground in AD 70 under the command of Titus the Roman.
We will describe this event in more detail in the coming weeks, but it is to this destruction that most of Jesus’ words here point. Of course, this chapter is still apocalyptic because it is unveiling things that were yet to come. And there are still certainly points of application for us today to draw upon as we read this passage, for we know that all Scripture is profitable to us (2 Timothy 3:16). Yet it is important for us to understand going into this study that Jesus is not primarily speaking about the end of the world as we imagine it; rather, He is mainly teaching His disciples about the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple that would occur within their lifetime.
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Retrieving John Calvin on Job
Calvin repeatedly reminds his hearers that the aspiration of believers is both to fear (for the sake of discipline) and to love (for the sake of emulation) God’s revealed majesty by living out, with the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, his character and actions as demonstrated in the Lord Jesus. By contrast, the grave sin of believers, then, is to know that revelation and not respond by obediently, insistently, and persistently living in accordance with it. That failure Calvin calls ingratitude and declares it worthy of condemnation.
In his introduction to the new translation of John Calvin’s Sermons on Job (Banner of Truth Trust, 2022), Dr. Derek Thomas (author of Calvin’s Teaching on Job: Proclaiming the Incomprehensible God) points out that the then contemporary interest in Calvin’s work on Job was such that two French editions were published, both coinciding with the Civil Wars of Religion in France (1562-1598). There followed translations into German, Latin, and English. Three further editions of the English version appeared subsequently, making the Job sermons more popular than the Reformer’s Institutes of the Christian Religion! Latterly, however, Calvin’s work on Job has become a neglected part of his corpus, with no modern translations of his sermons available. Now, for the first time, Calvin’s 159 sermons on this enigmatic work of wisdom literature are available in modern English for the first time in a new edition published by Banner of Truth.
Dr. Thomas surmises that a study of Job’s trials must have seemed appropriate in the midst of the civil upheavals of the Wars of Religion. Calvin had access to earlier expositions on Job but does not seem to have been influenced by them. He “did not believe that the book of Job contained solutions to the great moral dilemmas of the universe,” but, considering the book as “a lengthy discourse about God… he sought to turn the congregation in Geneva, and his own soul, to the reality of God’s sovereignty and power in the contingencies of a seemingly disordered life. According to Calvin’s Institutes, ‘in The Book of Job is set forth a declaration of such sublimity as to humble our minds.’” Calvin, as Dr. Thomas points out, compares his role as a preacher expounding the Book of Job to medical doctors who “need to be sensitive to the radically different treatments that various diseases require. Likewise, ministers of the gospel need to be aware that trials that befall a Christian require different diagnosis and treatment.”
Dr. Thomas also extends a challenge to those who read these sermons:
“It is not only the content of the sermons that astonishes us today; it is the fact that they were weekday sermons, each one averaging just under an hour’s exposition of Scripture. It is hard to imagine such a thing in our own time. We live in an indifferent age, barely able to cope with one sermon a week. When we pray for revival (and surely we do!), what do we expect by way of an answer? For, should the sovereign Lord grant our request, our appetite for Scripture would change, our thirst for the Word of God would grow. It is earnestly to be hoped that, after reading these sermons, we shall be challenged to pray in such a manner that we might desire such a change to be wrought in us.”
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Will You Not Grieve Over This
Are you, as a Christian, complacent, laid back, and couldn’t care less about what is happening in both the world and the church? If so, you may well need to repent and ask God to share his broken heart with you. We should be grieving heavily over all that we find happening, especially in these increasingly dark days. Woe to us if we do not.
God’s people are meant to image God. We cannot resemble him in terms of things like omnipotence and omniscience, but we can and should resemble him in moral and spiritual ways. As we grow closer to God, his mind should be our mind, and his heart should be our heart.
That is, we should rejoice in what he rejoices in. We should love what he loves. We should hate what he hates. And we should grieve over what he grieves over. The things that concern God should concern us. That is one test to see if we are growing in grace and becoming more Christlike.
Thus if God hates certain things, we should hate them too. That does not at all sound like something most folks today – including most Christians – would ever countenance however. Such talk is totally foreign to them. ‘Christians hate? No way.’ ‘God hates? No way at all!’
But both are fully biblical. There are plenty of biblical passages to support both. But I speak to this matter in much more detail here: billmuehlenberg.com/2016/11/23/divine-love-hate-part-one/
And here: billmuehlenberg.com/2020/09/12/yes-we-should-hate-evil/
But in this article I want to look at another way in which we are to imitate, to mirror, God. God grieves over sin and evil and wickedness – and so should we. That God grieves is clearly taught in the Bible. Let me mention just a few passages here.
Way back in the early chapters of Genesis we read about how grieved God was over wayward and rebellious mankind: “The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain” (Genesis 6:6). Wow.
And God can be grieved over those he has chosen to use: “Then the word of the LORD came to Samuel: ‘I am grieved that I have made Saul king, because he has turned away from me and has not carried out my instructions’.” Samuel was troubled, and he cried out to the LORD all that night” (1 Samuel 15:10-11).
The Spirit of God can be grieved: “In all their distress he too was distressed, and the angel of his presence saved them. In his love and mercy he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old. Yet they rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit. So he turned and became their enemy and he himself fought against them” (Isaiah 63:9-10). And Paul quotes that passage in Ephesians 4:30: “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”
Jesus also was grieved by various things. In Mark 3:5 we read this: “And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.”
God’s people also grieve over the things that God grieves over. Just the other day I again read about this in Nehemiah. Consider what is found in Neh. 2:1-3.
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He was Transfigured Before Them | Mark 9:2-13
O brothers and sisters, do not pine after the experience of Peter, James, and John; instead, ascend the mountain of Scripture and beg the Spirit to enlighten the eyes of your heart to see the glory of Christ, to see the radiance of His goodness shining forth through His Word!
And he said to them, “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power.”
And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became radiant, intensely white, as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus. And Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.” For he did not know what to say, for they were terrified. And a cloud overshadowed them, and a voice came out of the cloud, “This is my beloved Son; listen to him.” And suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone with them but Jesus only.
And as they were coming down the mountain, he charged them to tell no one what they had seen, until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead might mean. And they asked him, “Why do the scribes say that first Elijah must come?” And he said to them, “Elijah does come first to restore all things. And how is it written of the Son of Man that he should suffer many things and be treated with contempt? But I tell you that Elijah has come, and they did to him whatever they pleased, as it is written of him.”
Mark 9:2-13 ESVAfter bringing His people out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, the LORD led the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob through the wilderness and to the foot of Mount Sinai, also called Horeb, the mountain of God. Once there, the LORD’s presence descended upon the mountain as a thick cloud of fire and darkness. From Sinai, God assembled His people together and spoke directly to them, declaring His Ten Commandments, yet the people begged the LORD to speak to Moses alone, fearing that God’s holy presence would burn them away like stubble. The LORD did so, but even when Moses descended after speaking with God, the Israelites needed to cover the prophet’s face since the light of God’s glory reflected from him too sharply for their eyes to bear.
Our present text is similar to the display of God’s glory upon Sinai, except in one critical manner, as Tim Keller says:
Moses had reflected the glory of God as the moon reflects the light of the sun. But Jesus produces the unsurpassable glory of God; it emanates from him. Jesus does not point to ‘the glory of God as Elijah, Moses, and every other prophet has done; Jesus is the glory of God in human form.[1]
May we behold His glory today in the light of His Word.
The Transfiguration// Verses 2-7
Our passage begins by telling us that these events took place six days after Peter’s confession and Jesus’ revelation to His disciples of His coming suffering, death, and resurrection. Now we are simply told that Jesus took three of His disciples with Him to the top of a high mountain. Jesus, of course, already pulled these three disciples apart to witness the raising of Jairus’ daughter back in chapter 5, and He will again do so at Gethsemane.
Upon the mountain, Jesus was transfigured before them, and his clothes became radiant, intensely white, as no one on earth could bleach them. We rightly call this event the transfiguration since Jesus was transfigured before His disciples. The Greek word is the source of our word metamorphosis; thus, we might also say that Jesus was metamorphosized before them. If you remember elementary science, butterflies have likely already popped up in your mind, for we call the process by which a caterpillar becomes a butterfly metamorphosis, which literally means changing form. Just as a butterfly, while being the same creature, has an entirely different form from when it was a caterpillar, so Jesus displayed an entirely different form upon the mountain. But what was that form?
In Philippians 2:6-8, the Apostle Paul beautifully describes the humbling of Jesus, and to do, he begins with Jesus’ normal, eternal state: “he was in the form of God.” The word that we translate as form is morphe, which means something like the essential nature of something. Thus, Jesus was of the same essential nature as God the Father, or as the Nicene Creed puts it: “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father.” Yet Jesus displayed His humility by not grasping onto His equality with the Father but rather by “taking the form [morphe] of a servant.” Thus, when Jesus descended to earth, taking on human flesh as an infant within Mary’s womb, Jesus’ form was changed. He certainly did not cease to be God, yet there was a very real emptying of Himself, a forsaking of His divine glory in order to tabernacle among the people that He Himself made.
The Transfiguration of Christ upon the mountain, therefore, appears to be a momentary lifting of that earthly veil, a brief glimpse, however small, of Jesus’ preincarnate glory. Indeed, the unearthly nature of this metamorphosis is described in radiance and intensity of His clothing. They were whiter than humanly possible. The subtly of this description reminds me of the stone that “was cut out by no human hand” in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream (Daniel 2:34, 44-45). Both objects are glaringly ordinary, clothing and a stone, yet there was something altogether extraordinary about them. They were beyond human production. Nothing short of the glory of God was emanating out of Jesus.
To make matters even more astounding two of the greatest Old Testament saints appeared with Jesus to speak with Him: Moses and Elijah. The only two men from the Old Testament who bear as high of a status as these two are Abraham and David, who were both within Jesus’ direct lineage. Oh, to be present as Peter, James, and John were as our Lord conversed with Moses and Elijah! What did they speak about? What deep and heavenly mysteries were unfolded in their conversation?
While we are not given direct dialogue (and given verse 6, I am sure that they forgot most of the details), Luke 9:31 does tell us the subject of their discussion: they “spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.” The ESV footnotes that departure in Greek is literally exodus. They spoke of Jesus’ exodus, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.
What a strange reversal! Upon Horeb, Moses was sent by God rather unhappily to Egypt to accomplish the exodus of God’s people from their bondage to Pharaoh, which would result in Moses being exalted in everyone’s sight. Now on this mountain, Moses was sent to encourage the Son of God as He was readying Himself for the greater exodus that He would accomplish, the liberation of God’s people, both Jew and Gentile, from their slavery to sin, which would result in Him being lifted up for all the world to look upon with scorn and contempt. An exodus that would require the Author of life to humble Himself even further “by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8).
R. C. Sproul writes:
Both Elijah, who represents the prophets, and Moses, who represents the law, clearly understood the vocation of the Messiah. They knew Jesus had to die, and they knew why. They came to the second person of the Trinity with their comfort and their encouragement, reminding Him of His destiny that they had foretold centuries before. Elijah, who had been carried up to heaven in a chariot of fire, set foot once more in the Holy Land. Moses, who had been denied entrance into the Promised Land, at last stood there after centuries.[2]
In response to all of this, Peter speaks, “Rabbi, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.” G. Campbell Morgan says that “This is surely what they were thinking on the mount. Lord, not that Cross to which Thou art going; let us stay here! Let us build three tabernacles here. Let us stay in this light, in this glory, in this holy conversation. Yet the conversation was of the exodus; and if they had stayed there, the exodus had never been accomplished!”[3]
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