The Temple, Herod’s Temple, was built to make an impression.  When architects build to impress, they think about how best to do that.  Size is one factor, the scale.  The material is another.  Herod built with brilliant limestone.  The temple also boasted much gold.  Eye-catching, dazzling, brilliant—glorious, so far as the things of this world can convey glory.  The Temple complex communicated strength: like a fortress within the walled city.  The size, the sense of solidity, stability, gave a feeling of permanence: the closest we can get to eternity from this side.  The disciples, some of whom may never before have seen the Temple, wonder and wander in wide-eyed awe.  How wonderful, to be in the Temple!  The psalms sang it true.

Jesus was not impressed.  He’s a real party-pooper; have you noticed?  Jesus has a habit of calling his disciples away from the works of our hands.  We mean well, but . . .  He calls continually to the works of God’s hands.  It’s not that Jesus was not eager to go to the Temple, to spend time there, but he didn’t go to see the building.  He is the building.  When Jesus is at the Temple, God is truly in the house.  Where Jesus is, there is the Temple (see Rev. 21:22).

And when he leaves?  “‘Do you see all these great buildings?’ replied Jesus.  ‘Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down’” (13:2).  Like a latter-day Tower of Babel.  Confusion.  Discord.  It would have seemed inconceivable, but the Romans were very thorough.  People can rebuild, there’s always talk of it.  Paul reminds us, however, that the Temple is not a structure but a people: you are the temple, we are the temple, and “we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands” (2 Cor 5:1).  The Temple in Jerusalem was a building for God.  By grace through the Holy Spirit, we have a building from God.  Jesus again calls us away from what is external to what is within.

Astounded by what Jesus says, the disciples walk with him to the Mount of Olives, today a massive graveyard.  I don’t like to say that Jesus had an inner circle among the twelve, but it seems he did.  Peter and his brother Andrew, and the Sons of Thunder—James and John—the first four to follow—come and sit with him and ask him to tell them more (13:3-4).  When will the end come?  How will we know?  What should we do?

I’ve mentioned to some of you before how I spend some evenings surfing YouTube.  As I watch one video and another, that clever little algorithm begins making suggestions, just to be helpful, you know, as it gets to know me.  What else it does with the information it gathers I don’t know and probably don’t want to know.  I wasn’t aware that I was so interested in end time prophecies, but watch one pastor and another preaching, and soon enough YouTube figures out you must be a religious nut, so end-time prophecy videos it is!  We’re curious, understandably, especially in these fearful, torn times.  Angry and afraid—what a combination!  Fear welcomes authority: just make the fear go away!  If the fearful do not, cannot, or will not turn to divine authority, they will turn to whatever other authority is ready to hand.  Just make us safe; just tell us what to do: the power of law, the power of men.

The apostles know Jesus can tell them about what will be, and when.  They ask—are they afraid?  Yes—Jesus is always saying stunning things that make the future seem both wonderful and terrible.  Even in the company of Jesus, to be afraid.  Imagine!  They remember also, all too painfully, what Jesus has been telling them about what will happen to him, so, yes, they’re feeling fear, anxiety, sorrow—the sorrow of sin and the sorrow of death.  How can they face what’s to come without Jesus?  Sin, sorrow, and death—the three key problems facing us all, as Baptist preacher Adrian Rogers summed it up.  The answer to all three is one answer: Jesus Christ.

We want to know.  Jesus warns us not to be deceived (13:5).  He says many will be deceived.  I hope he means outside the church; I’m not as confident as I’d like to be.  Labor, vigilance, and diligence, beloved: we’re at work, here!  People come into the church from the world; consciously and unconsciously, people bring with them what they acquire out there.  They regard as good what they have learned to love, been taught to love, out there.  There is much deception in the world.  The church that holds to the Word of God, that stands firm in the Word of God, has Truth.  Get the Word of God in you.  Read your Bible, please; let it alarm you, let it make you angry, let it offend you, let it comfort you, let it open to you vistas of eternal love and infinite peace; let God’s Word transform you.

How we need that transformation in this world of woes and wars, sin, sickness, and sorrow.  We seek signs.  Is it beginning now?  Is he coming, now?  We so want Jesus to return.  Many times, Jesus was asked for signs, and what did he say?  We’ll make almost anything into a sign—1999, comets, 9/11, Trump, COVID—but what we’re seeing on every side is not the sign but the sin.  Wars, conflict, famines—the suffering we inflict upon one another in our vicious self-righteousness, our insistent, all-consuming sin.  What hurting people do to other hurting people.

And what does Jesus do?  First, he calls us to repent.  Those are the first words of his earthly ministry, taking up where John left off, cut off as he was by the powers and authorities of this world: repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.  The kingdom is here and is coming.  The kingdom is in our hearts, if God be enthroned there.  The kingdom is coming on that day and hour known to the Father only.  Not known to YouTube.  Not known to this one or that one.  To God alone.  Not to us because it is not for us to know.  What are we to know, then?  Christ, and him crucified—the pattern for our lives and the gateway to Life.

Fear, freedom, and faith.  Some live according to fear, though they long for freedom, fearfully.  Some live according to freedom, as they conceive it; such are always very alert to some outside group trying to take their freedom away.  Others live according neither to fear nor freedom but according to faith.  These are learning to overcome fear by the only one who can give true freedom, all other supposed freedom failing and fading in His holy light and powerful promise.

Jesus tells us what we are to do: live a life of preparedness, not buying up gold, guns, and MREs—do all that, if you need to.  Life is not in such things.  A good conscience, avoid sin, live into Christ, let him live into you.  Pray.  Expect difficulty, obstruction—all the temple’s toppled blocks—they have not crushed us and we are not killed, to the world’s great displeasure!  We will be persecuted: that’s nothing new!  The faithful always are: not always by the powers and authorities of this world, but always by the spiritual powers, our true Enemy, who seeks to harm us, dishearten and crush us under the collapse of all we had put our hearts into, all we had hoped and longed for that was not God.  When you put your heart into God, though, when you entrust your heart to God and guard it with the Word of God, the Enemy cannot crush you.  A mighty fortress is our God.

Jesus urges his faithful ones to be prepared to witness, to give testimony (3:10-11).  Let your lives speak; tell others the Good News.  This is our way of life and the way to life for us.  We may think it best just to live a Christian life and let that do all the talking, yet there is a time to tell.  Moses and Jeremiah were both eager to decline God’s call, eager to excuse themselves, saying they were no good at speaking.  Isaiah was made to confront his unclean lips and was sick at heart.  We do use our mouths for unworthy purposes, don’t we, beloved?  Only, take courage from Isaiah’s story: God’s angel touches Isaiah’s lips with holy fire, telling him he is forgiven and cleansed (Is 6:7).  Forgiven.  Cleansed.  Now he can go and tell in a good spirit, with a good conscience.  A good conscience is not, is never the conscience that we are perfect and perfectly clean.  A good conscience is that we have been touched by God’s holy fire, the remembrance that God is committed to finishing the work He began in us.  A good conscience is living, active faith.

The Spirit will give you the words, the Word (3:11).  Trust the Spirit and speak.  Let your actions speak of Jesus.  Let your words speak of Christ.  In an age of deceit and deceivers, be one who does not deceive.  Be one who brings the truth, who offers God’s forgiving, reconciling, purifying, restoring love.  In an age of fear and failure, be one who, by the Spirit, stands firm:  “Who stands firm to the end will be saved” (13:13).

And to Jesus Christ, who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests of his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.