Deuteronomy 6 – Moses delivers to them the Great
Commandment: “Israel, remember this! The
Lord – and the Lord along – is our God. Love the Lord your God with all your
heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength” (6:4). As He
promised your ancestors, the Lord will give you a land with great cities that
you did not build, houses full of things you did not put in them and wells you
did not dig (6:10-13). I]m not sure this sounds as cool today as it may have
once sounded -taking things they did not build or buy??
We must obey
the laws God gave us because “We were
slaves . . .and the Lord rescued us by his great power. With our own eyes we
saw him work miracles and do terrifying things to the Egyptians and to their
king . . . .He freed us from Egypt to bring us here and give us this land. . .
.The Lord . . .commanded us to obey all these laws and to honor our nation and
keep it prosperous” (6:21-24). We want him to be pleased with us.
Matthew 24:29-51 - Jesus goes on to cite from Isaiah 9 and Amos 13 about the "end times" - the sun will be darkened and the moon no longer shine. Then “the sign of the Son of Man will appear
in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see
‘the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven’ with power and great glory” (24:30)
See Daniel 7. Angels will gather up the elect.
Learn to tell the signs in the same way you
read signs of the seasons in the fig tree. “Truly
I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have
taken place” (24:34). No one knows the day or hour. As in the days of Noah, people will be living life normally until the
moment comes. “Keep awake
therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming” (24:42).
Who is the faithful and wise servant? Blessed that servant whom the master
finds ready and at work when he comes (24:46).
Jesus’ words gave a reasonable expectation to the first generation
of Christians that the end of the “age” or the end of the world would soon come.
And this despite the fact that he does say in 24:36 that even the Son does not
know the “day and hour,” How are we to view this? Did we – as T.S.Eliot asks in his great poem Four Quartets – “hear the words but miss
the meaning?” Was he speaking in
concrete terms or of spiritual realities only? Or was he limited in his own
humanity more than we typically believe? Jesus’ intention seems to be to create
a level of heightened expectation and readiness for whatever may come. “Stay
awake!”
Eschatological
discourses in Other NT Books: Two possible
applications of the eschatological language here are 1) the destruction of
Jerusalem in 70 AD and b) the end of world scenario. Here in Matthew [as also
in Mark 13 and Luke 21], no clear distinction is drawn between the two. Though
separated in time, the first is the inevitable pre-figuration and forerunner of
the second. The destruction of Jerusalem is seen as the end of the Old
Covenant.
In Mark
13, Jesus tells his disciples that “not a single stone [of the Temple] will
be left on another.” He then sees same scenario as Matthew describes – the
coming of multiple false messiahs, terrible persecutions and troubles that will
precede the Son of Man’s coming. All way too mysterious for me to grasp. It is
no wonder that the young Church struggled with this all so much over the next
century.
In Luke
17 and 21, he takes a different approach when the Pharisees ask him about
the coming Kingdom of God. Jesus says, “The Kingdom of God does not come in
such a way as to be seen. But then he goes on to describe pretty much the same
kind of confusion. Again, the coming of the Son of Man follows destruction of
the Temple and Jerusalem generally.
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