What Is Prophecy Telling Us?

So the title for my sermon today is, What is Prophecy Telling Us? What is prophecy telling us? Okay, I see a few eye rolls. That's okay. But we will move forward in that. And I'm going to spend a little bit of time in today's sermon going through some thoughts both from Old and New Testament prophecy. And I'm going to ask a vital question. How can superglue help us to better understand Bible prophecy? Bet you didn't see that coming. So stay tuned, and we'll come back to that. In the meantime, take out a piece of paper or something to jot a note in, and take a moment and write down the first thing or two that comes to your mind as an answer to the question, What is Prophecy Telling Us?

I won't play the Jeopardy music, but I will encourage you to not just think about it, but actually jot a note or two down. Could be linked to things that are going on in your life that you might be reflecting on right now. Might be linked to some specific prophecies in the Bible that have perhaps caught your interest or your attention. Could be linked to things going on in the world around us today. But what do you capture in your mind? What's the first thing that comes to your mind as you think about what it is that prophecy is trying to tell us? All right. I think we've had enough time to write a thought or two down, and this is what I'd like to spend the time today reflecting on and thinking about. I'd like to actually tackle this topic in two dimensions. The first is to recognize some of the inherent tension that exists in prophecy. The inherent tension that exists in prophecy. You might ask what that is. I'm glad you asked that question. I will try to give you an answer. And second, to talk more specifically about how we already use prophecy as the powerful tool that it is as we think about what it is that it's telling us. And yes, we will get back to that superglue bit, too, but you'll have to wait a little while for that. So let's talk first about the inherent tension in prophecy. And what do I mean by tension? You know, we see often in the Bible that there are different things that are brought out, and they're seemingly contradictory in the way that they interact. And we have to examine them to really understand why it is that two things that at first seem like they might not fit completely together, might even pull in opposite directions, are actually completely coherent, exist for a reason, are there to teach us some very specific things. And prophecy is one of those things. And specifically, the tension that I'd like to talk for a few minutes about in prophecy is this. First of all, it's an incredible proof of God's power, especially as we looked at prophecies that have been fulfilled. An incredible proof of his power and his qualities. At the same time, the tension that's in there is that with the elements of prophecy that have yet to be fulfilled, prophecy has often been misunderstood, misused, and even just plain falsified.

And so how do we live with that tension in prophecy? How are we to understand it?

How are we to deal with it? I would maintain that we need to acknowledge that tension as one of the foundations for how it is that we approach prophecy and understand it and read about it.

So with that backdrop, let's jump into this first part of it and think and examine a little bit more this tension that's in there. The first element of it, like I mentioned a moment ago, that I'd like to talk about is the powerful incidence of fulfilled prophecy that exists in the Bible.

I did a little rummaging around to find statistics, people who studied the Bible and figured out how many verses apply to this and apply to that, and I decided to give up on that. We've probably all heard the general statistic that a quarter to a third of the Bible is prophecy, and a big chunk of that is actually fulfilled prophecy. A big chunk of it also has to do very specifically with Jesus Christ, his first coming, and his second coming. But there are powerful instances that are out there of prophecy that has been fulfilled, and I'd like to just go back and encourage us to reflect on a couple of those as we think through them.

We're not going to read this passage, but if you'd like to turn there, if we want to put it up on the video screen, Daniel 2, verses 31 through 45, is probably one that comes to many people's minds. We all know Daniel. I think we've all heard of Daniel. Daniel in the lion's den is one of my favorite stories, and it's an incredible story of faith. Daniel spent a lot of time interpreting dreams.

He was given a gift placed there, really divinely in the court of Nebuchadnezzar at first in the Babylonian Empire, and as there were dreams and visions, in this case that Nebuchadnezzar had, Daniel was there through the power of God, not through his own power as he was quick to point out, through the power of God to interpret those. And this image of Daniel we've probably heard about at some point as we've either studied prophecy ourselves or heard things about it. And actually, if you look to any general Christian source, there's pretty good consensus about what the image of Daniel means, because the vast majority of it is fulfilled prophecy.

And for people with a biblical Christian worldview, there's an astounding amount actually of agreement on what all of it stands for. It starts with the head of gold in verses 37 through 8, as this image is there that Nebuchadnezzar dreamed of, and most understand that to mean the Babylonian Empire under Nebuchadnezzar himself. And it works its way down through the chest and the arms of silver, as there was another empire that came afterwards, the Medo-Persian Empire, that overthrew Babylon and then ruled, again, the parts of the known world there in that geographic area. From there, it works its way down through the belly and the thighs of bronze, which again are broadly understood not just within our church, but within people who read Daniel and study it as the Greek Empire, the Greco-Macedonian Empire that was established through Alexander the Great.

And as God was showing how all of these empires in sequence would come and would rule across the world. Legs of iron, the Roman Empire, talked about again, that impacts that part of the world, the Roman Empire, which represented a fourth great kingdom, great military strength, conquest, its ability to crush the nations, and then finally working its way down to the feet and the toes of iron mixed with clay.

And that's probably the area where, if you read a variety of different sources, you'll probably see the biggest difference in terms of interpretation, and not surprisingly, because most people understand that to be something that's still going to come in the future. And that's because of the last element of that prophecy, which again is agreed on very broadly, which is the stone cut without hands that comes and strikes that image down at the toes. And so, for anyone who studies Bible prophecy and who looks at these things, this image aside, as I said, from the feet and toes of iron mixed with clay, we believe that that has to do with a future resurrection of the Roman Empire that's going to have some level of weakness like iron mixed with clay wood.

Others have other interpretations. That's something still to come in the future. And again, the reason we know that is the stone cut with hands represents God's kingdom. And this prophecy then lays out it's a great combination of certainty in terms of things that have already happened, things that were predicted quite a long time ago in the time of Daniel transpired as they were laid out with a future element that's still to come.

And the thing that we can take a great amount of hope and confidence in as we read something like that is, as we just got done rehearsing with the Feast of Tabernacles, the fact that God's kingdom is going to come. And no matter how we might feel or get frustrated by all of the governing things that go on around us, whether it's in our country or around other parts of the world, we have a great hope for that stone cut without hands, that kingdom of God that's going to come, and will ultimately replace all of the rulership of mankind on earth.

So that's one prophecy where we can look and we can quite clearly understand, and even within broad Christian communities, there is virtually no difference of opinion in terms of what this prophecy means and the fact that it has been quite powerfully and specifically fulfilled. You know, a lot of prophecies have to do with Jesus Christ as well. As we look through in the Old Testament, we heard a fantastic sermon last week talking about Jesus Christ, the divinity of Jesus Christ, and a lot of the proofs of that in the end went back to the Old Testament prophets and the things that they spoke about.

And if you look and do even a brief internet search, you're going to see numbers ranging from 200 to 400 instances of Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah that are fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

So huge amounts of prophecy that were in the Old Testament are about the coming of the Messiah, and those were then fulfilled in the coming of Jesus Christ. And this is a motif that works its way through the Gospels, but especially in Matthew. Matthew, as you might know, wrote his Gospel very heavily to a Jewish audience, and I didn't go back and count, but if you wanted to go back and wanted to do something during the week, going back to Matthew and seeing how many times Matthew says, as it was written. And as he's speaking to the audience that he's speaking to at that time, he's trying to, or writing to in this case, he is he's trying to point to them in his writings all of the ways that Jesus Christ fulfilled prophecies that were given in the Old Testament about the Messiah. Because obviously that was a big question at that point in time. Who was he, and was he really the Messiah? Let's look at just a couple of these again to see how prophecy was very specifically and very clearly fulfilled. One is the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. Isaiah 7, verse 14, is where we see that spoken about. Again, through the mouths of the prophets, in this case, Isaiah. Therefore, the Lord himself, in Isaiah 7, verse 14, will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and call his name Emmanuel. And if we read in Matthew 1, verses 22 and 23, this is one of the instances that I was talking about a minute ago where Matthew is laying out and telling his audience very specifically how things that happened in the life of Jesus Christ tied directly back to the Old Testament prophets. Matthew 12, I'm sorry, Matthew 1, verses 22 and 23. Matthew writes here, all this was done that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which is translated God with us. Very specific, very powerful fulfillment of that prophecy of Jesus Christ. We remember that Jesus was born in Bethlehem.

Why was that? One reason? Well, that's what was prophesied to happen. It was another proof of his messiahship. In this case, we turn to Micah 5, one of the minor prophets. Micah 5, let's read verse 2.

And let's see this prophecy that happened quite some time before the birth of Jesus Christ. Micah 5 in verse 2. Here Micah writes, But you, Bethlehem Ephrata, though you are little among thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth to me the one to be ruler in Israel, whose going forth are from of old and from everlasting. So speaking here about the coming of the messiah. And in Luke 2, in Luke 2, we read the fulfillment of this.

One of several places we could go for that. We'll read verses 4 through 7 of Luke 2. Joseph also went up from Galilee out of the city of Nazareth and into Judea to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and the lineage of David. And that itself is an interesting story because they were living in Galilee and Nazareth, an area that's quite a bit north of where Bethlehem is located.

And so it was a little bit out of the ordinary that they would actually be in Bethlehem. You might have heard this talked about before, but the whole reason they went down was because of a Roman census and the fact that you had to go back to the town of your lineage for purposes of this Roman census. And that's what the reference is here in verse 4, because he was of the house and the lineage of David to be registered with Mary, his betrothed wife, who was born with child. And so it was in verse 6, while they were there, the days were completed for her to be delivered, and she brought forth her firstborn son, wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the end.

So again, we see a very specific fulfillment of prophecy, and this is just a drop in the bucket. Like I said, hundreds of prophecies in the Old Testament that just point to Jesus Christ, that you can see that are fulfilled in his life and in what he did. And so when we read in the New Testament the fact that we are given a more sure word of prophecy, it harkens back to these types of things, because there is enough prophecy, even if we look back to the time of the Bible being written in the first century, enough prophecy that was very clearly fulfilled by that point in time, that's to give us confidence that the things that are prophesied can and will come to pass, because they did come from God.

So looking backward, it's clear that prophecies in the Bible, not all of them, but the ones that pertain to that point in time, have been fulfilled, and it's a tremendous proof of God's power. And one of the great things that it gives us is this assurance that when God promises something, we can count on Him doing it. Now at the same time that we see all of this fulfilled prophecy, like I mentioned a short time ago, the point of this section of the message is we have to recognize the tension that exists here, because the simple fact is that innocent misunderstanding of prophecy has happened throughout human history, misinterpretation of prophecy, and straight out deliberate falsification of prophecy has all happened.

And let's spend just a few minutes and we'll look at a few examples that bear that out within the Bible before we try to tie that together and reconcile this tension that's there between these two facts. So when trying to sort out the fulfillment of a specific prophecy, often the symbolic language that's used, the lack of specificity that's there in some cases, means it can be difficult to understand what it is that is going to happen and to interpret it correctly.

And we have to recognize the fact that maybe that's because we're not supposed to understand all those details, at least not at a certain point in time. So let's look at an example about lack of full understanding of prophecy. We'll go actually to the disciples on this one, and we'll turn first to John 6, those who were following Jesus Christ around, the multitudes that were following him.

This has been covered here in different sermons over the course of time, but I think it's a good one to go back to to look at the fact that even at the time of Jesus Christ, people recognized elements of the fact that he was fulfilling the prophecies, but they didn't understand while he was living what all of it was supposed to mean. John 6, we'll read in verse 14. This is after Jesus had fed the 5,000, and obviously the people were pretty excited. They were hungry, and they'd been filled. They'd seen a very powerful miracle as food was brought forth for them, and then food was collected up when nothing existed in the first place. And then verse 14, then those men, when they had seen the sign that Jesus did, they said, this is truly the prophet who is to come into the world. And this is a reference back to Deuteronomy 18 verse 15.

Deuteronomy 18 verse 15 is where Moses said that the Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren, and him you shall hear. Most commentators believe that the multitudes, when they were referring to this area, this prophecy in John 6, 14, more than likely we're speaking about that prophecy. And there are more things that tie to this together as John and John 6, where Jesus is talking about the bread of life, he's talking about manna from heaven, a lot of things that tie back directly to Moses. And then verse 15 is where the misunderstanding crops up. Therefore, when Jesus perceived they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he departed again to the mountain himself alone. So they started out of the gate well. They recognized the fact that Jesus Christ was the prophet, in this case, that was recognized by Moses that was to come, but his purpose was just not something they understood. There's nothing here to tell us that this was something devious, that they meant to circumvent what it was that God willed, or anything like that. They simply believed that Jesus was come to give them salvation, to free them from the Roman Empire, and to give them a nation back, not recognizing at that point in time that they didn't have the full story. They didn't understand all of what Jesus was prophesied to do in that first coming. Now, even beyond these broad multitudes that were following Jesus Christ, even his disciples displayed some of this lack of full understanding. Let's read one account that gives us clarity on that. We'll read in Luke 24. Again, this has been covered in sermons in the past over the last couple of years. We won't go deep into it, but this is the account of the road to Emmaus, as some of the disciples were walking down the road after the point in time that Jesus Christ had been crucified, and very shortly after he'd been resurrected. And so, if you remember the account, in this case, Jesus Christ joined some of the followers, some of his followers, that were walking down the road. They didn't recognize him, and he just started asking some simple questions to them, you know, where are you going? How come you seem so sad? What is it that's going on? And they said, you've been hiding under a rock someplace? You haven't heard about all this stuff that's going on? In verse 19, he said to them, what things? What things have been going on? And then, going on in verse 21, those followers said to him, we were hoping that he, Jesus, was the one who was going to redeem Israel. So they understood him, at that point, to be sent from God, but they didn't have a full understanding of what it was he was sent to do, just like the others in John 6, in order to fulfill the mission of his first coming. And in verse 25, it drives it home even further, as Jesus says to them, O foolish ones, and slow heart, to believe in all that the prophets have spoken.

So at this point in time, it was before the Holy Spirit had come, and for reasons that are probably beyond everything that we can understand, the disciples weren't given a full understanding of what it was that Jesus was prophesied to accomplish with his first coming. Now, it's clear, as we get to the book of Acts, and we see all of the additional things that happened, it's very clear that they understood, as the Holy Spirit came, and they went out, and they preached, and they spoke the word that Jesus Christ himself was the Son of God, their salvation through no other, and they spread the gospel like they were commissioned to do through the entire world.

But at this point in time, they just didn't understand everything. So that's a level of just innocent misunderstanding. Let's look at another prophecy, a fairly well-known section of prophecy in Jeremiah 29. Jeremiah 29. So we might remember the history of the nation of Israel. We had Ephraim and Manasseh, who were the inheritance of their father. And so what happened after King Solomon was that the two broke up into a northern and a southern kingdom, the northern kingdom that was known as Israel, and the southern kingdom was referred to as Judah.

And in Jeremiah 29, Jeremiah is then speaking to the last part of that nation, Judah, that's going into captivity in Babylon. And in verses 5 through 10, he's telling them specifically what it is that they need to do. And he's laying out the fact that God has actually willed them to go into captivity, as strange as that might sound. And it's not like a captivity where they're going to be left in cages or chained up or something like that. They're actually given land.

They're given a level of freedom and a level of ability to do what it is that they want to do and go on and live their lives. And from the context of this entire passage, and we'll get to that a little bit more later, it's clear that there was a conflict here. Because Jeremiah, as we'll read in the second, is saying, get settled.

Do productive things. Live your life. And there were others who were saying, you need to resist and you need to leave the land. And let's read what it is that is talked about here, both on the side of Jeremiah as a true prophet and the false prophets. Jeremiah 29 verse 5, he writes to them, build houses and dwell in them, plant gardens and eat their fruit, take wives, beget sons and daughters, take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands. So talking actually about generations, not only talking about what they should do, but what their children should do as this time goes on.

That you may be increased there and not diminished, seek the peace of the city where I've caused you to be carried away captive and pray to the Lord for it. Must have sounded strange to them that they would be told to do something like that, rather than continue to call them their enemies.

For in its peace you will have peace. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, do not let your prophets and your diviners who are in your midst deceive you, nor listen to their dreams which you cause to be dreamed. For they prophesy falsely to you in my name, I have not sent them, says the Lord. So we see here clearly that in the past, as it's prophesied in the future, and we'll see in a minute, there are people who prophesy falsely. There can be a variety of motives for that, whether it's just that they want to say things that people want to hear in order to be popular, or that they have some more devious motivation that's behind it.

But Jeremiah gave these prophecies specifically to say, this is what God is telling you to do, and don't listen to the people who are giving you opposite indications and telling you something else about what should happen. And he wraps up this thought in verse 10, saying, thus says the Lord, after 70 years are completed at Babylon, I will visit you, I will perform my good word toward you, and I will cause you to return to this place. So, great message of hope, a message to give perspective in a time when I'm sure they were wondering what in the world was going on.

You've got a whole group of people who were uprooted from their land and placed in a new place and trying to figure out what to do. And this prophecy was telling them several things that should and did give them hope in terms of what God would do for them. But amongst that was to watch out for people who were prophesying against that and going to tell them other things that went against the actual prophecies of God.

We'll look at one other section as we examine this second part of this tension between the sure word of prophecy, the clear fulfillment of prophecy that we can see, and also misinterpretations of prophecy that end up being laid out. And this is prophetic in Matthew 24. Prophecy about false prophets. How's that?

Matthew 24 and verse 23 hear Jesus Christ is talking to his disciples in response to questions that they asked about the end times. And he says to them, if anyone says to you, look, here's the Christ or there, do not believe it, for false Christ and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. And see, I've told you this beforehand. So as we kind of wrap up this section in terms of misunderstanding, misinterpretation, and even full-on deception trying to be put forward in the guise of prophecy, pretty much as long as prophecy has existed, the misuse of prophecy has existed. And so there's a tension here that we need to sort through and figure out, which is we know from seeing fulfilled prophecy in the Bible that God's true word of prophecy will be fulfilled. And we also know that we have to be wary of misinterpretations and misunderstandings of prophecy. So what in the world are we supposed to do about that? That's where I'd like to spend the rest of the message. You know, we're not going to turn there, but Hebrews 4 verse 12 tells us that God's word is powerful and sharp as a two-edged sword. A sword would have been a very common implement back in the time that this was written, and people would have understood what it takes to really learn to use a sharp two-edged sword so you don't slice your finger off when you're pulling it out of the scabbard.

It takes practice, and the whole idea here is if you're going to use a tool, a tool that's powerful, a tool that's sharp, you need to know exactly how to use it.

So maybe to digress for a second, if you had to carry one tool with you, what would it be?

Swiss Army Knife, I think I heard somebody say, a hammer, duct tape, duct tape. There's nothing like duct tape, right? Now this would be a great psychology experiment, right, to see who says hammer because they would just want to beat their way through everything, and who says duct tape because they want to try to fix everything and bind it back together. We can talk about that over some snacks and see what everyone thought. But the fact is, you know, we've heard the old saying, when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

And it recognizes this reality that no tool does everything. It kind of takes me back to when I was in high school, and I'm old enough, some of you remember this, I was required, like many of you, to take shop class in high school. And, you know, from where I stand today, this is like just a frightening thing when I think of a group of 16-year-olds being set loose in a room with band saws and other power tools. My high school had like a miniature forge. One of the projects that we did in one of my high school shop classes was actually make screwdrivers. And so we took pieces of metal, I don't remember what kind of metal, we stuck it in the forge and we were just beating on that thing with hammers to create a flat blade screwdriver.

And nobody got hurt. We used band saws, we used all that sort of thing. But what do you think the first lesson was that we were taught in that class? Safety. Know what the tool is for, right?

Do not use the tool for something it's not made for. Imagine what happened when we had our plane and we were planing wood and we saw a hammer and we tried to take the back end of that plane and try to hammer a nail in. You know, that would get you sent in the corner, out of class, into detention, whatever else, because you were taking a tool and using it for something it was never designed to do. I think that's something that we need to think about in terms of prophecy as a very important tool. What is it made for? How is it that we're supposed to use it? This is what will take us back to superglue. How many have ever tried to superglue plastic? Especially like the pliable kind of plastic, like a silicone? So somebody I know very well once tried the superglue pliable plastic and ended up understanding why you have to use a scalpel to sever a joint between fingers that's adhered with superglue. Now thankfully, I didn't have to go into the emergency room for it, but I can very clearly remember having something I was trying to superglue, and it wasn't holding. This was in the days before the 30-second dry or the 45-second dry superglue. I remember pouring it on there, and it wasn't holding, and so I'm squeezing it with my fingers. And thankfully, it was only a little bit, but my fingers were fully stuck together while this item that I was trying to superglue was not sticking in any way. And you've got this like fluid superglue. I didn't even know that could happen, and it's just sitting there between the two halves of this thing that I was trying to glue. And I kind of pulled my fingers apart. I could feel the skin pulling at itself, and if any of you had this happen, you walk around for what, two weeks, and you could feel sort of that rigid plastic-like film on your finger that sort of covers your fingerprint before it finally wears off or the skin flakes off or whatever it is that happens. For me, that was the consequence of using superglue to try to adhere something that superglue just doesn't adhere to chemically. It adheres to fingers really well, I promise you that. And I'd recommend you not try to reproduce that in an experiment, but as rudimentary as it sounds, we need to apply that lesson to prophecy. What's it made for? What are we supposed to use it for? And what are we potentially not supposed to use it for, because metaphorically it's just going to stick our fingers together and make a big mess. So let's look at that in terms of the overriding purpose of prophecy and how the tool works. And I'd like to look at this through the lens of two passages. One is 2 Peter 3, and the other passage is Matthew 24 and 25. And we're not going to have time to cover these in great detail, and the intention is not to go through them verse to verse, verse by verse. The intention is to get the broader understanding of what are we being told here about prophecy and how it is that we're supposed to use it. And what is it that's just actually not mentioned? And what should we learn from that?

My first pastor as an adult coming out of college was a man named Robin Weber, who some of you might have run into, and he had a favorite phrase, speak loudly where God speaks loudly and speak softly where God speaks softly, or don't speak where God doesn't speak at all. And that rings in my ears, as I think, through all of this. And as we approach prophecy, we have to think about that. There's some very clear things that are said in terms of how we use it. And there are things that actually remain mostly unsaid, and we have to respect that as well. Let's go to 2 Peter 3.

In terms of context, which is always important as we look at chapters like this, verses 1 and 2 make it clear that there's a question of fulfillment of prophecy that's being tackled here in 2 Peter 3.

We read here, Beloved, I write to you this second epistle, in both of which I stir up your pure minds by way of reminder, that you may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us, the apostles of the Lord and Savior. And it goes on, again, we're not going to read all of it, but verse 4 talks about scoffers questioning the return of Jesus Christ. And in the end, really, going back to this tension that we talked about, a misunderstanding of prophetic time frame. There were people at that point in time that said, you know, decades have passed since Jesus Christ passed from the scene. You've been talking to me for decades about the return of Jesus Christ, and it hasn't happened. This is probably just a lie, which is honestly what the scoffers were saying. This stuff is meaningless because of that. And of course, we read then in the passage a whole lot of things to refute that and why that's not the case. I'd like to go down to verses 10 through 14. I'm going to read this in the message, which is a little more of a contemporary view of language just so that we can get another look at it. I think some of us would probably recite in our minds the New King James as we read it. So it's good to get some different words just to think about this. Verses 10 through 14 of 2 Peter 3 in the message. When the day of God's judgment does come, it's going to be unannounced like a thief. The sky will collapse with a thunderous bang, everything disintegrating in a raging inferno, earth and all its works exposed to the scrutiny of judgment. Since everything here today might well be gone tomorrow, do you see how essential it is to live a holy life?

Daily expect the day of God, eager for its arrival. The galaxies will burn up, the elements melt down that day, but we'll hardly notice. We'll be looking the other way, ready for the promised new heavens and the promised new earth, all landscaped with righteousness. So, my dear friends, since this is what you have to look forward to, do your very best to be found living at your best in purity and peace. Interpret our master's patient restraint for what it is.

Salvation. So, he's taking what the scoffers were saying. The Lord delays his coming. You've been talking to me for decades and he hasn't shown up. You guys are full of it. And he's saying, interpret our master's patience for what it is, the opportunity for salvation. And he talks very clearly about the fact of what it is that we have to be doing because we understand that the return of Jesus Christ is prophesied. You know, he uses the example of a thief. Have any of you had thefts, like a wave of thefts that have gone through your neighborhood?

If you have. Our neighborhood—it's probably going back about two, three years ago now—we went through 18, 20 months of off-and-on thefts going on in our neighborhood and got to the point where the police came out and actually held a meeting with the entire community. And they talked about things we should do because there were thieves and things we should not do. And they talked about things like, you know, consider getting a camera system so that you could see who might be approaching your door. Look at your garage. A lot of people had windows in their garage and we would go for walks sometime in the evening. They would have the blinds up in their garage and the lights on so that anyone who wanted to see what was in the garage that might be worth stealing could simply walk up and have a look inside and see if there was anything worth taking.

Simple things like locking your door. We actually had a firearm in an unlocked car, along with valuables that were in our broader neighborhood, that got stolen. And the police talked about how opportunistically the thieves would just come along and they just kind of tried the door handles and see if it's open. If it's open, they just kind of jump in and rummage around. In this case, a person left a firearm in there. So now you've got a random firearm in the community because somebody left it in their car unlocked. They also told us some of the things we shouldn't do. Don't form a vigilante group that's going to roam the streets at night, looking for suspicious people that you think might be stealing from your house. Don't chase them.

Don't tackle them. Don't try to restrain them, but call the police. All things that make sense, right? A thief being prepared for the thief, knowing what it is that we should do and knowing the things that we shouldn't do. And if we take this pattern, what is it that's laid out in this passage if we talk about the fact that Jesus will come as a thief in the night? Living a holy life, being found living at our best, as the message puts it, in purity and peace. What is it that's not talked about? Trying to identify who the thief is. You know, the different personalities that we see that are described in biblical prophecy, whether it's the beast or the false prophet or the two witnesses. We don't see Peter talking about the need to identify those. What I find particularly instructive is a verse that we quote an awful lot to talk about what we should be doing as Christians appears right at the end of this chapter. And at 2 Peter 3 18, grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. As the reaction to what we should be doing as we see prophecy and we see the things that are predicted to happen. Let's go next to Matthew 24 and 25. Jesus tackled the same themes in this famous passage. In fact, it's no coincidence that Peter was talking about a thief in the night, because he heard Jesus use that very same analogy in this section on the Mount of Olives. Now, we've probably heard this section of Scripture often talked about as the Olivet prophecy, because in Matthew 24 Jesus Christ talks a lot and demonstrates, talks about the broad strokes of things that are going to happen preceding his return. Interestingly, if you read broader literature, you'll hear another name applied to this section in addition to chapter 25, and that is the Olivet discourse rather than the Olivet prophecy. And I don't want to make too much of this. At the same time, I think it's good to understand the difference between those two things. We look at this as a prophecy. We focus on Matthew 24. That's where the prophetic scenarios are talked about as Jesus Christ goes through those with the disciples. What we maybe forget when we do that is we stop reading at the end of chapter 24. And we lose track of the fact that Matthew 24 and 25 are one single discourse. They're all tied to this question that the disciples asked Jesus Christ of, tell us what are the signs of the coming, what's going to happen at the end of the age. Two chapters. Now, we know that chapter breaks in the Bible were not a thing when the original manuscripts were written. They were added in so that we can find scripture as we're doing something like this today, as we're reading through the Bible and reflecting on it so we can all find the same spot at the same time.

Matthew 25 is as much a part of the words of Jesus Christ to his disciples on the Mount of Olives as Matthew 24. So let's look through it briefly, viewing it as one single passage, and just see what comes home to us as we do that. Verses 4 through 31 provide an outline that we might be relatively familiar with about the things that are going to happen throughout the ages of human civilization, wars and rumors of wars and earthquakes and disasters and all these things. And we read, you know, the end is not yet. And then we read more specifics of things that will be precursors to the return of Jesus Christ. I'd like to focus on verses 36 through 34, because to me those are the pivot point of this dialogue, and it's where it shifts. It shifts from a discussion of prophetic things, and it makes a complete turn in what it talks about to the disciples and for a very good reason. In verse 36 it starts, of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but my Father only. Now some of us take that as a challenge.

I can figure it out. And others take it literally, yeah, we're not going to know, and probably we need to get on to something else in what we're looking at. He goes on in verse 42, watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming. But if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, back to the analogy of the thief, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into. Therefore, you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming in an hour that you do not expect. Now to me that therefore is the important point, because what he's doing here is he's wrapping up one thought. He's saying, look, I laid this stuff out to you. It's not even given to me as the Son of Man to know when it's going to happen. The angels in heaven don't know.

Therefore, be ready. And the rest of what happens in this discourse is, in my opinion, the most powerful parables that Jesus Christ lays out in terms of talking about how we as Christians have to live our lives. And when we view Matthew 24 and 25 as a single answer to this question at the beginning of the chapter, whether the signs, how do we know what we need to do, we see these things laid out. Matthew 24 verses 45 through 51 talks about the faithful and the evil servant. The differences in how they act based on vigilance knowing that their master is going to return. Matthew 25 verses 1 through 13 talks about the wise and the foolish virgins. We know that parable well, I think, those who have the oil in the lamp, those that don't, the preparedness, the need to tend to the Holy Spirit and make sure that we're watching our lives. The parable of the talents in Matthew 25 verses 14 through 29 talking about the fact that we're all given gifts and resources and abilities and things that we can do and put to productive use by God and that what we're supposed to do is to use them. And the wicked and the lazy servant was the one who didn't and did nothing with them. And then we have the judgment of the nations or the sheep and the goats in chapter 25 verses 31 through 46 which I think lay out in an incredibly poignant way how we need to have the heart of Jesus Christ within us expressing itself in our care for people who are in different areas of need in their lives. All given in the context of what's the end? When are you going to come? What are the signs we need to look for?

Do we see what Jesus Christ was doing here? He made this very important pivot when he said, watch and know what's going to happen. He's talking, watch ourselves. Watch our spiritual condition. If we take it back to the purpose of prophecy, what's the tool for and what's talked about here and what's not? What's clearly talked about is you can't know the day or the hour.

What's not talked about is can you figure out who's going to be what in the prophetic verses that we read? And then we see a lot written about what we need to do. The way that time and attention is spent has to be very instructive to us in terms of how we approach prophecy in our lives. It's supposed to produce a watchfulness in us that shows itself ultimately in living a diligent, a faithful, and a fruitful Christian life.

That's one way that we can know that we are always ready.

So we wrap up this section and conclude. And when we think about what is the overriding purpose of prophecy, 2 Peter 3 and Matthew 24 and 25 make it clear that prophecy is absolutely an important tool. It's meant to encourage the building of a converted heart within all of us.

That is ultimately, if we take it up to its ultimate level, that's what it's there for.

It's instructive, again, that some of the major prophetic passages that we looked at carry scriptures that we cite for very different reasons. 2 Peter 3 verse 9, in the middle of that section, 2 Peter, talks about the fact that the Lord desires that all come to repentance.

So the fact that God wants everyone to be reconciled to Him, right in the middle of a discussion about prophecy, we talked about 2 Peter 3, 18, grow in grace and knowledge, the punchline of that chapter, again, in that same context. Matthew 25, some of the most powerful parables that Jesus Christ spoke, coming off those pivotal verses in verses 42 and 44 of Matthew 24 that tell us to watch and be prepared, and the rest of that passage tells us how it is that we go about doing exactly that. You know, the more I think of this superglue analogy, the more I like it.

In what ways are we getting our fingers stuck together because we're using the tool in the wrong way, and we're just impairing ourselves, we're not fixing anything, we're not accomplishing anything, we're just getting ourselves stuck together by using the tool in a way that it's actually not really meant to be used. So as we wrap up, let me give you a bit of a homework and then conclusion. I would encourage for anyone who wants to spend more time on the topic, spend time in Matthew 24 and 25. Read through the whole thing. Read through it in one shot.

Ignore the chapter break in your head. If you need to, cut and paste it out of a Bible program and get rid of the chapter break altogether and read it as a single passage. Pray about it and ask God to show you what it's saying. Go back to 2 Peter 3 and read through it to, again, top to bottom, understanding that broad message that it lays out. Like any tool, prophecy has a variety of features that can and should be used to achieve its purpose. So what I'd like to suggest is, go back not only to those two passages, but if you've got the time and the interest, go back more broadly to prophecies that exist within the Bible. But I'd like to encourage us to go back and think about what are the broader and the recurring messages that we see across these prophecies. I grabbed a few to kind of prime the pomp. I guarantee you I did not do this with AI.

You could certainly put an AI prompt in. It might get some of this stuff. It might not.

But I wrote down a few things that I see as I reflect on prophecy across the Bible, some of the major themes that are there. The first one, very clear, the redemptive work of Jesus Christ and his will that everyone receives salvation. You know, again, for those who are into theological speak, Genesis 3, I believe it is, contains a scripture that's called the proto-evangelium. It's considered the first gospel. That's Greek for the first gospel. And it's where Satan is told, the serpent is told, he will bruise your head, you will bruise his heel. That's the first discussion of Jesus Christ and the fact that he will conquer Satan in Genesis 3. And that motif goes all the way down through Revelation, where Jesus Christ has talked about the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. All of prophecy revolves around that major theme. God's commitment to his covenant people. You know, we can read through the Old Testament prophets, the major prophets, the minor prophets. You're going to read over and over and over again that no matter how much God expresses his displeasure with his people and how they've broken the covenant, that if he comes back to them, he's going to take them and he's going to fulfill his promises to them repeatedly. That's the same God we committed our lives to in baptism. And those prophecies are meant to give us that certainty that everything that God does, everything that he commits himself to, are things that he will follow through. God's supremacy above human authority. You know, we all recognize we had an election here in the U.S. this past Tuesday. We all probably have different opinions about that. That's fine. That's not the purpose here of me mentioning it.

We get frustrated with our human governments. It doesn't matter what our political ideology is.

One of the big themes that cuts across all of prophecy is the fact that God will reign supreme.

We also see it laid out the fact that God is going to give it to man to lay out and do what they're going to do, and it's going to be pretty disastrous. So we look around ourselves, we see the state that the world is in, and we sometimes despair. Prophecy is also meant to say, yeah, I knew this was going to happen. That's what God's telling us. It's unfortunate. It has to happen. God promises He's going to come at the end of the day. He's going to set it right. He will draw His people to Him and care for them. It also lays out God's supremacy above all human authority.

You think about Nebuchadnezzar. It came up in a sermon, I think, within the last month or two, and how Nebuchadnezzar was up, pridefully saying, you know, is this not Babylon that I built? And he's struck down. He's turned into an animal. And he actually writes a chapter in the Bible at the end of the day when he's brought back to his senses to where he very directly tells us God is greater than everything. Nebuchadnezzar actually raises his hand and says, hey, that was me. You know, I was ruling the most powerful empire in the known world. God struck me down. I now recognize that He rules over everything. And that's a major theme that carries across Scripture. I'm not going to go on because we're running low on time. What I will encourage you to do is go back and keep a list of things. Go up a level. Let's not just think about who could this be or what country could that be or how could this push against that and cause that. But let's think about what is the God's telling us in all of this, about how He works with mankind, how He works with us, how it is that He's going to bring solutions to problems that human beings cannot solve. Those things are laid out with surety and with certainty. And that's something that prophecy is there as a tool for us really to learn from. You know, my younger self has, from time to time, ignored the directions that come with superglue, which has resulted in pieces of plastic not adhering and my fingers being stuck together. My younger self has made similar errors in reading prophecy and missing some of the most important messages that it carries from my own spiritual life.

So what is prophecy telling us? It's telling us that no matter what's going on around us, the most important thing we can do is have our hearts fully and completely directed to God and to His purpose in our lives, no matter what the distractions around us might be. His plan is sure. He will accomplish it in His wisdom and in His time. And our job is to turn our hearts daily to Him and to seek to fulfill His work in our lives.