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29 “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 30 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. 31 And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
32 “Now learn this parable from the fig tree: When its branch has already become tender and puts forth leaves, you know that summer is near. 33 So you also, when you see all these things, know that it is near—at the doors! 34 Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place. 35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away.
Matthew 24:29-35
Introduction
In the last few weeks we have been looking at what is called “the Olivet Discourse,” where Jesus explains to the apostles about how the destruction of the Old Covenant was going to take place. There is probably today no section of the Bible where both the historical context and the literary context (the context within the story Matthew is telling) is so totally neglected. From the start of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus has been re-living the history of Israel. The genealogy at the start shows that He is Israel’s true king, he descends down to Egypt like the patriarchs in Genesis, he comes up from Egypt, He crosses into the land at the Jordan, He spends 40 days in the wilderness like Israel’s 40 years, He gives them law in the Sermon on the Mount like Moses at Sinai, he tells proverbs and riddles like Solomon in His parables, He finally preaches like the prophets announcing the doom of an unbelieving Israel that has rejected her God and perverted His worship. Everything in the gospel is about Jesus coming to Israel and in Himself being the Israel that Israel was incapable of being. He came to them as a faithful Israel where they and their fathers were unfaithful. Everything was about ministering to these particular people. So much so that when Gentiles wanted Jesus to do something for them, He refused, and they had to beg Him to change His mind. So Jesus all of a sudden doesn’t go from ministering to and preaching to and prophetically condemning Israel, to randomly jump ahead thousands of years, and then jump right back into ministering to and preaching to and prophetically condemning Israel. Jesus is talking about the Israel he came to minister to. He is not talking about us or people 500 or 1000 years from now; what He says can be applied to us and those Christians 25 or 50 generations from now. But for now we have to look at it as best we can through the eyes of those who lived 2000 years ago in Judea.
