Tonight we will continue our journey through Mark 13, Jesus’ longest discourse of Mark’s gospel. This chapter, while being completely prophetic, can only be properly interpreted if we remember that it is not a sermon, it is not a lesson, it is not even a declaration, this is Jesus’ conversation with four of His apostles in which He is answering two very specific questions. When leaving the temple one of the disciples said to Jesus, “Teacher, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here!” Jesus responded to this man’s excited statement with one that changed everything that the group was currently feeling and raised enormous questions. He said “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone shall be left upon another, that shall not be thrown down.” The disciples were amazed by the size, strength and beauty of the temple and Jesus responds to them by telling them that a day was coming in which the temple itself would be completely destroyed. The unasked question this had to raise in their minds was “How can Jesus restore the kingdom if the central focus of the kingdom (the temple as the house of God and place of worship) was going to be destroyed? The disciples had come to believe fully in Jesus’ identity as the Messiah so they trusted that what He said was true but they still did not understand His mission as the Messiah and so this had to be a very difficult promise or prophesy to accept. When they got Jesus alone, his first four disciples: Peter and Andrew, James and John simply asked Him two questions: “When will these things be?” and “What will be the sign when these things are fulfilled?” Basically they were saying “We trust you so we have no argument with you, the temple will be destroyed, what we want to know is when and what will happen leading up to this so we will be prepared? How are we to live in light of this?” The rest of the chapter is Jesus answering those two questions. The entire passage is prophetic but it is not all prophetic for us, meaning this is not a discourse on the “end of the age” or the “Day of the Lord”, this is a discourse about the destruction of the temple, when the last symbols of the old covenant would be removed so that the new covenant could be fully seen, received and lived in. It was not the destruction of the people of Israel, they are God’s people forever, God’s promises to Israel will never fade or fail, no one else inherits them or replaces them, but the sacrificial system, the atoning for our sin with blood sacrifices that had to be destroyed because Jesus had not only fulfilled the law He had become the final sacrifice. As Hebrews taught Jewish believers wrestling with this very issue, the death of Jesus was a sacrifice given once for all, to continue making their own sacrifices would be to diminish or show distrust in His. There is a moment in this discourse in which Jesus’ prophesy becomes for us, in which it reveals His return but truthfully, it is only a moment and it is very specific. My hope and prayer is that we can discern what was for the apostles and that first church in Jerusalem and what is for us so that we can look rightly for the return of Christ rather than fearfully for events that have already taken place and now always remain as a part of this world until it is fully redeemed.