Matthew-048

Now you will say, “What does discipleship mean?” By this we mean, first of all, that we must take a look at the world in which we are to be disciples. That is to say, we are not Christians or disciples without being concerned about the situation in the world today. And we want see what the Word of God has to say to us on this point. In order to put us in the picture, let us turn to a passage in Matthew16:1-4.

Spiritual blindness is: Not perceiving what is going on in the world

Now in this passage, the words I would like you to notice are in verse 3:

The Lord Jesus was saying to the Pharisees and the Sadducees, “You are clever people. You look at the sky in the evening and you say, “Ah! Tomorrow is going to be good weather. The sky is red.” And when you look at the red sky in the morning, you say, “Ah! It will be stormy today. You know how to tell the signs of the sky. You understand these things of the world, but don’t you understand the signs of the times?”

I was looking into the Rabbinical writings, that is, the writings of Jewish scholars, and it is amazing to see that there are whole sections on how to tell the weather among the Jewish scholars, but I am not quite sure what exactly this has got to do with spiritual things. To be able to discern the sky, to forecast the weather was a sign of learning, a sign of discernment, but sometimes, they were wrong. The Lord Jesus knew this and said to them, “You know how to tell the weather, but you can’t tell the signs of the times?”

What do you think is the meaning? What is significant about this? Why did the Pharisees and Sadducees not understand the signs of the times? What was wrong with the Pharisees and Sadducees? What did they lack?

Perhaps some people will say that they did not understand the real meaning. Why did they not understand when they knew the Bible very well? Why did they lack spiritual perception and understand­ing?

Some people may say they did not believe that Jesus was the Christ. Let us press the question further: Why didn’t they believe?

Let us ask simply then, they could not understand the signs of the times, but did they see the times or not? Yes, they saw them. Unless they are blind. The signs of the times are for everybody to see. It’s not for some exclusive company of people. It must be that everybody can see the signs of the times because these are the signs of the times. What are these signs of the times? What times are we talking about? It is the signs of the present time in which we now live.

So notice this, one mark of spiritual blindness is that one does not perceive what is going on in the world. Spiritual blindness is not only you don’t understand the Bible. When you open the Bible, it might just as well be written in Hebrew and Greek, because you don’t make head or tail of it.

Take a clever man, your professor, for example, if you are studying in the university or in an institute or whatever it is. Take the Bible and open a passage somewhere and say, “You are a very clever person, professor, and I’m sure your English is excellent. I don’t doubt your English is good, your knowledge of grammar is fine, would you kindly tell me what is meant here?” I think you will get a blank stare. I think he doesn’t have a clue. Why doesn’t he under­stand the Word of God? His English is very good. Is he stupid? No, after all, he managed to become a professor. He must have a little bit of intelligence. So what is wrong with him? Why doesn’t he understand the Word of God? Because it takes spiritual perception. When you lack spiritual perception, not only do you not understand the Word of God, but you also do not understand the present times. This is the point you must clearly grasp here. The Lord Jesus is testing them in another direction.

Why do they come to the Lord Jesus and say they want a sign from heaven? To prove that he is the Messiah, the one who God promised. They want a sign, not just a sign that he can heal the sick, that he can make the blind to see. That doesn’t seem to be good enough for them. No, they want Jesus to show them something more special, “to show them a sign from heaven.” (Mt. 16:1) They don’t want just any sign. What kind of sign has to come from heaven?

Some people might think the Pharisees want to hear God speaking to them. Do they want God to speak to them now? In the Old Testament, God spoke and the Jewish people did not want God to speak to them. They said, “If we hear his voice we will die. We dare not hear God speaking to us.” (cf. Exo. 20:19) They wanted to live. They wanted to see the sign and be able to tell that sign afterwards. To be able to see it and then that was the last thing that ever hap­pened to them in their life, was not good for them. The Jews had a great fear of God in the sense that they knew his power and majesty, at least in their mind. Well, they wanted a sign from heaven. What was a sign from heaven?

Think of something in the Old Testament. Some might think of Elijah, who was given a sign from heaven. Fire came down from heaven and consumed the sacrifice. On another occasion, fire came down and swallowed up all the guards who came to arrest him. The fire was the prophet’s sign from heaven. Assuming that the Lord Jesus treated them as Elijah had treated them, they would not have been around to tell the story anyway, the sign would come down and swallow them up! Imagine if this happened to the people who came to arrest Jesus!

What other sign can there be from heaven? Elijah asking God for fire from heaven was presumably the chief sign they were thinking of. They wanted a supernatural sign from the sky, not just that a blind person is healed, but something spectacular. But they did not specify how that fire was to come down. The Lord Jesus’ reply was this: “If you don’t understand the signs of the times, even if one more sign occurs, it would make no difference. You would be just as blind.” He says no sign will be shown. Why? “If I showed you another sign, you wouldn’t understand it anyway.”

To see something happening is still not to believe it. If you saw a streak of light rushing down and burn up something, you say that is lightning. I have heard the explanation that it was lightning when fire came down and consumed the sacrifice of Elijah. The whole thing caught fire and burned up even all the water in the trench, is this what lightning does? When you don’t have the perception, then no matter what miracle will happen, you still don’t believe. But to the person who perceives, he doesn’t need a miracle. He sees it all.

In chapter 15, the previous chapter, we find that there was this poor woman, who came from Syrophoenicia, and asked if Jesus would heal her daughter. The Lord Jesus did it for her. She never saw a sign. She was not even a Jew. But the Lord Jesus did a sign for her; he healed her daughter. Yet, the Jews who saw the miracles did not believe.

I am not going to go into great detail on this point. The Pharisees and the Sadducees not only failed to understand the meaning of the Bible, but they also failed to understand who Jesus was, and the signs of the times because of their spiritual blindness. My question is then: Do you understand the signs of the times? Do you see the signs of the times? Otherwise, in what way are you better off than the Pharisees and the Sadducees?

An effective disciple must know the times in which he lives

Let us look at another passage in Luke 12:54-56, which is very similar to Matthew 16:1-4, so, it shows you how important this aspect was in the Lord Jesus’ teaching.

Let us start with “Why don’t you know how to interpret the present time?” Don’t you know the time in which we are living? Has all this passed you by? Are you living with your eyes closed in this world? Do you live in a shuttered room? Don’t you understand the times in which we live? Then wake up! Look and see what’s happening. Look at the hour in world history in which we live. This is the context of discipleship. You cannot be an effective disciple if you are half asleep when it comes to what are the times in which we live.

The Lord Jesus said, “Don’t you understand the present time? Notice in verse 54, he is not speaking to the Pharisees and the Sadducees but “to the multitudes,” to everyone present. They did not under­stand the times. It was not only the Pharisees and the Sadducees were blind, you will notice if you look throughout the chapter, this multitude included all sorts of people, and some of them were his own disciples who did not understand the times. How could that be?!

The Bible is prophecy on:

1. God’s salvation and what course it will take

So what I propose to do today, is to look at some of these times together so that we can get our sights right. I have touched on some of these points long ago, but I have not touched on some others in detail as we are doing now.

The first thing you need to notice is that a large part of the Bible concerns prophecy. Have you ever thought why? Prophecy, in the strict sense of the word, means where God foretells what is going to happen. A large part of the Bible is concerned about that. Zechariah, Daniel, Isaiah, other books of the prophets, and a large part of the Lord Jesus’ own teaching concerns the future, especially these chapters, Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21 concern future events. Why is there prophecy in the Bible? Is it just so that we can satisfy our curiosity?

It’s true that prophecy prepares and warns us, but what more can we say about it? Does prophecy reveal to us something of God’s purpose? What purpose does it reveal to us? The purpose of prophe­cy is concerning what the course of salvation is going to take now. This whole Bible concerns salvation. It is the Book of salvation facts.

It is called history by many, but it’s not any kind of history; it’s concerned about the history of salvation, and of the people whom God is saving and will save. Now I said, “will save,” and that is prophetic. What is history, is the people whom God has saved or has purposed to save. What is the present, is the people who he is now saving by his grace, that is, you and me. And prophecy has to do with the outcome of the purpose of his salvation, how that salvation will be accomplished.

2. Forewarns the dangers and pitfalls along the path of salvation

Why is that being told to us? So that we can be forewarned to know what the pitfalls are. What is education all about? It is not only to learn certain skills which it is, of course, but it is also concerned to warn not to make such and such mistakes. When you know how to do a thing in the right way, you won’t do it the wrong way. If you do it in the wrong way, you are going to be hurt. What is a parent always concerned to tell the child about? He says, “If such and such a strange man comes and talks to you, don’t talk to him. If he gives you a sweet, don’t take it.” Part of the education is that you forewarn people so that they will not fall into danger, so that your children won’t be kidnapped by bad people. Now God’s purpose for giving us prophecy is for the same reason. It’s not so that we can be curious about what will happen and so on, but so that we will be forewarned, and we will walk in the path of salvation that he has marked out for us. That is why the Bible has a lot to say about the signs of the times.

What are “the signs of the times” designed to tell us? What can we learn from the signs? If you did not know the Word of God, if you did not know prophecy, would you understand the signs of the times? You don’t understand them. How do you understand the things that are happening in the world when you don’t know the Word of God? That is to say, you are therefore dependent on the Word of God and the prophetic words to understand the meaning of things that are happening so that when you see them you will say, “Oh yes, the Word of God has already told me about these.” That is why when this girl sees a stranger coming along with a sweet, she suddenly remembers, “Daddy and Mommy said that if a stranger comes to you in a nice big car, bringing sweets, don’t talk to him. No, I don’t want the sweet no matter how nicely he smiles and shows his beautiful teeth. No.” She has been forewarned to be prepared. So this is the reason for prophecy.

3. Prophecy helps us see what disasters sin will lead to

The other purpose of prophecy is so that we may be able to see where sin is leading mankind, what kind of disaster is overtaking mankind. In a few moments, we are going to see how precise is the Scriptural Word to us, and we will be able to marvel at the foreknow­ledge, at the wisdom of God.

The Bible is full of facts of salvation. It contains facts of history, as far as the past is concerned. It has never once been proved wrong. Never once! Science has been wrong again, and again, and again, but people still believe in science. I think you do. You wouldn’t be studying if you didn’t. Yet, the past predictions have been endlessly wrong on so many points, not to say that scientists are quite easy to fool.

Have you heard the standard joke of the prehistoric man, the Piltdown Man? Bone fragments were presented as the remains of a man who was supposed to be prehistoric, and Professor so and so was writing on this, and all the learned articles were coming out on this. Then forty years later, a man confessed that the prehistoric man was in fact, planted by him. The whole thing was a hoax. He fooled the entire scientific world, including many Ph.D.’s and learned professors. They looked like absolute fools! They had dated the skeleton as tens of thousands of years old. And he said, “No, the skeleton was planted by me.” And he proved it! That is why if you look now in the scientific textbooks, there is no mention of this.

However, if the Bible suffers one example of that kind, the Bible would have been torn to pieces long ago. The problem is all the enemies of the Bible could not find one incident that was false. How they would be delighted to fault the Word of God. They cannot find anything. Science has been wrong again, and again, and again, but people still believe in it. If the Bible were wrong once, that would be trouble!

The Bible has never been wrong. And I know for historical fact, for example, some of you may know that at the beginning of this century, some learned gentlemen, “scholars” they are called, declared that the Bible was wrong in the point that it says the first five books of the Bible, called the Pentateuch, were written by Moses. They said, “Rubbish! There was no writing in the time of Moses. People could not read and write. And there you are, the Bible is wrong!” They rubbed their hands. They felt really good. Then the archaeologists were working, and what did they find? The Babylonian Code of Hammurabi. You can see this in the Louvre in Paris today. The Code of Hammurabi was written hundreds of years before Moses, even before Abraham. So who says there was no writing in the days of Moses? Writing had been around for centuries. How the enemies of the gospel would have longed to be able to prove something false, but every time they were wrong!

As for prophecy in the Bible, we can look in hindsight now and see whether it was true. We have the advantage that we can look back at the things the prophets said. Their prophecy is open for examina­tion. When the people were listening to it at the time, they could not tell if it is true or not because the events had not taken place. But we can look back and check it out. We can check the prophecies of Isaiah and Daniel.

Are there any mistakes? No. They are so absolutely accurate that some people would desperately like to say that the book of Daniel was written after the event. They are saying that Daniel did not live in the days in which he was supposed to live, but they would like to transport Daniel a few hundred years later, so that he was actually writing history not prophecy. How desperate can you get! But they can’t do that with Isaiah because Isaiah is so firmly rooted in history that they cannot play that game. So it’s very frustrating.

I am not saying that all non-Christians are all trying to do this. We have many very outstanding scientists who are dedicated Christian professors. I am not by any means trying to say they are all trying to do a thing like this. It’s a small minority of people who are always trying to obstruct the work of God. But the Word of God has always proved to be absolutely true. Now that we see that the Word of God has been proved to be reliable, there is all the more reason why we need to be very cautious. When the Bible tells us something is going to happen, anyone who rejects it in the light of the prophetic record is too foolish, as he is taking a very big risk.

We are living in the dangerous last days

If we understand prophecy, we are going to understand the urgency of the situation, that is to say, we are going to realize that we are living, notice the words, “in the last days.” Why does the Lord Jesus say in Matthew 16:3 “Don’t you understand the signs of the times?”, and in Luke 12:56, “How is it you do not know how to interpret these times?” What is significant about our present time? These days that we live in are what the Bible describes as “the last days.”

There are so many references that I have to be rather selective about it. Let us look at Hebrews 1:2.

So we see that we are “in these last days.” We can take a look at another passage in 2 Timothy 3:1-5.

We will focus our lives when we understand the signs of the times

Let us summarize briefly on this particular point. We have prophecy in the Bible to forewarn us so that we stay in the path of salvation. Furthermore, why do we want to see the signs of the times? It is so that we, as disciples, can conduct our lives according to them. It has to do with our everyday living directly; it’s not for our intellectual curiosity.

Supposing you know that you are going to die next week, don’t you think you are going to arrange your life in such a way that you will say, “If I am going to die in seven days’ time, I have all these things to do, and I have to arrange my life in such a way”?

Or supposing a more pleasant thing happens such as getting married. The fact that you know this, means you have to take certain actions to prepare for it. And certainly, you don’t suddenly say on that day, “I’m going to get married today! I must rush out to buy my suit!” What would you do if the shop is closed? Dash off to another shop? No, you have to prepare your life for that particular happening.

Now we are going to leave for Canada in just over a month. It means that we have to direct and organize our lives in view of this situation.

So it means that if you are going to be a disciple, you orientate to the signs of the times, and organize your life. Many Christians, like these Pharisees and Sadducees and these multitudes, are blind to the signs of the times. How do they live? They live going around in circles. They are lost in the wilderness. They don’t know what direction they are going. That is why to understand the signs of the times is to give our lives direction, focus, so that we say, “These things are going to happen and we must prepare for them.” Of course, if you don’t believe these things, you are not going to take any notice of them, and you are going to head for disaster.

All the prophets one after the other, like Isaiah, Micah, warned Israel. They said, “Look, if you don’t change your course, if you don’t repent, you are going to go right into a spiritual Niagara Falls and crash right down at the bottom, and you’ll be finished! Did you understand the message?” No, they didn’t like to listen to it. What did they do to Jeremiah when he told them that? They locked him in the dungeon.

You must change course here and now! You must take the right course of action if you are going to be saved.

One sign of the times: Evil is bold and intensified

Let me turn to the subject on the last days. How are we going to prepare for the last days? What is one of the signs? Let us return to the passage in 2 Timothy 3:1-5. Look at this list. What are the signs of the times? There is something we can observe about our present time.

It is very true that people have always been arrogant, money-loving, and all that is mentioned above, but it is more daringly expressed now. There is no shame. Once upon a time, one dared not mention anyone having an abortion, because it was illegal. If anyone spoke about contraception, people’s faces would turn red. Today, go to any pharmacy, and the contraceptives are spread all over the shelves for you to pick out. How many do you want? Nobody asks you any ques­tions. Buy the whole lot if you like. It has become open, unashamed.

People would be embarrassed to be a lover of money before, but today, you would be proud! There is even a book by that name, How To Get Rich And How To Love Money. Unashamed! Unabashed!

Before, people would say to love yourself is bad. Today, people openly say that to love yourself is very good. If I don’t love myself who am I going to love? Of course I love myself!

It’s not that people never realized these evils previously, but today, we see one trend: the intensification of evil. This is one of the signs of the times. Evil is bold, unashamed, daring and universal. It is hap­pening all over the world. Before, there were these kinds of people in small pockets, such as Sodom and Gomorrah. Now, they have become universal. It’s the new morality: “Hate love,” it is called.

Everybody has a pretext. Scandinavia for example, has been leading the way. It’s the done thing. So is this in America. And more and more it is the done thing in England. Many girls will go all the way with fellows they happen to like, they will live together, and never mention a word about getting married. A boy may tell you how many girls he has had, or a girl may tell you how many boys she has had. Our generation is unabashed, shameless! This is what Matthew 16:3 says, “Don’t you see the signs of the times?” Have you ever seen a time in world history that is like ours? No! There have always been pockets of evil, but there has never been a time like the time in which we live!

Since there has never been such a time, how does the Bible know that evil would spread all over the world, that it would be like the days of Noah, only worse? 2 Timothy 3:16 says, “All Scripture is inspired by God.” The apostle Peter exhorts us, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” (Ac. 2:40) God so loved the world that not only did he give us prophecy in the Bible, but he also gave us his beloved Son, Jesus Christ to teach and to warn us. Hebrews 2:1 reminds us,

If we are neglectful, weeping and gnashing of teeth await us on that Day of Judgment. We must guard our heart to fear God. Only in this way can the teaching of Jesus Christ enter our hearts to give us wisdom to discern the signs of the time we are living in now.