Light on the Hill

James Kaddis: The encapsulation of all that we need in order to obtain salvation and live eternally is found in the person of Jesus Christ. Once that becomes established, everything else becomes something that adds utility to the primary message, which becomes the very crux of all of our existence.

Song Lyrics: I have found that peace only comes from You. I have found the joy only comes from You, because all I need is You. All I need is You.

Guest (Female): We're so glad you've joined us today for Light on the Hill as we get back to our study of Mark's Gospel and the first four verses of chapter 13. Here, Jesus says the temple will one day be destroyed, which eventually happened in 70 AD. This is significant because it points to the fact that salvation is found in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the one who has done the work on our behalf. Here's Pastor James Kaddis to elaborate.

James Kaddis: Let's jump in here. This is verse one of chapter 13. It says, "And as He went out of the temple, one of His disciples saith unto Him, 'Master, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here!'" Imagine the scene. The scene is pretty remarkable. I would probably say the same thing if I was one of Jesus's disciples.

I had the opportunity last week to be at the White House. The only other time I was at the White House before that time was when I was in this tour bus where I got to see the White House from a thousand feet away or a couple thousand feet away. I drove on Pennsylvania Avenue right between this little area where you can see the monument and everything else. But it was very surreal going to the White House.

I was sitting in the Rose Garden, watching the posthumous award for Charlie being given to his precious wife and just being in the midst of all of that. It was very interesting because I had the opportunity to talk to many people, people that you just don't normally talk to. As a matter of fact, I had a moment where while I was waiting to go into the Oval, I was in the West Wing and I was talking to this very special man. I can't get into the details about who it was, but he was talking to me about how just amazing of a work that God is doing in his heart and there's a lot of people in the White House that love the Lord. It was just a very good conversation and the guy was a pretty remarkable guy.

I got to talk to lots of people, including the Vice President for several minutes, which was awesome. It was just a one-on-one conversation, but I was overwhelmed because I'm sitting in the people's house. I'm looking around, I'm seeing paintings that are 300 years old. I'm looking at so much history and it is a very humbling moment. You approach the White House, you're in the White House, you're interacting with people that you only see on TV, and in your mind, you just think, "Wow, how majestic."

It's quite an experience. I'm not going to tell everybody, "Yeah, I was at the White House, no big deal." Baloney. Anybody who tells you that is either messed up in the head, doesn't really love our country, or maybe is just a little arrogant. It was an awe-inspiring time. Honestly, it was a bucket list item. I never thought in a million years it would come the way it did. It was a terrible circumstance to be there, but it was a remarkable moment.

I can relate to the disciples as they are walking away from this incredible structure. This is the temple, guys. You're going to get an opportunity to do this if you go to Israel with us next year. There's an area that we get to go to in the Temple Mount area, just below it, where you get to walk in these tunnels and you get to see just how majestic the original stones from Herod's structure were. It's amazing. It's awe-inspiring. Even when you walk further down and you get to see some of the remains of Solomon's stones, it's shocking and majestic.

You have to understand these apostles are still blown away at the structure that they are beholding. By the way, I should probably note this because it is important: this is the Herodian temple. This is the temple that was built by Herod, and very likely the mothers and the fathers of these apostles never saw the structure. As a matter of fact, the grandmothers and grandfathers of the apostles never did see it. They never saw anything like it. Herod was the one that built it.

To think about how majestic it was, it wasn't like it was something that had been sitting around for thousands of years. It was a sight to behold and it was a rare privilege that they never had the opportunity to be able to have. They're coming in, they're looking at this. Yes, they had to go in there two times a year, but keep in mind, it was their generation that was the first generation that was able to behold something so majestic. It is very important to understand that.

When they're going to Jesus and they're looking at Him and they're saying, "Wow, this is incredible, take a look at this, take a look at these massive stones," you would expect that Jesus would respond by simply saying, "Yeah, you're right, this is incredible. Wow." That's what you would think. I would think that. I don't even fault these guys for saying it. It's a remarkable moment. But look what happens, because Jesus's response is very telling.

Jesus responds in verse two: "And Jesus answering said unto him, 'Seest thou these great buildings? There shall not be left one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down.'" We should probably note this for a quick second: to hear words like that coming from a person who has such a credible level of authority must have been shocking to these men. Do you understand?

That would be like me going into the White House like I described to you and being in the Rose Garden. I do want to point this out, this is pretty hilarious. When you're going down the hallway that is on the side of the Rose Garden there, it's this beautiful hallway that connects you from where the state room is to the West Wing. This hallway has the pictures of every president that served. President Trump put it up there. It's beautiful, with beautiful frames and everything, and you see all these presidents.

Then you get to one photo. It's the most hilarious thing in the world. You'll see President Obama. President Obama's right there. Then you see President Trump, 45. You see that, and then you see the picture of where Joe Biden is supposed to be, and it's actually a little lower than all the other pictures and it's not even a picture of Joe Biden. It's a picture of his actual auto-pen machine. No joke. It says "President Auto-Pen" like that and then it's President 47. It's just very hilarious. Anybody who understands the internal politics of all that will really appreciate the humor in what he's doing here. But it's just interesting. It's awe-inspiring.

Imagine the President of the United States coming out at that Rose Garden while the whole world is watching him. Everybody's getting ready to see this award being issued and a guest says, "This is breathtaking, this is beautiful." I'm sure he hears it every day. "This is so beautiful. What a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful place. It's incredible, it's amazing." And it was. It was just an absolutely beautiful place, absolutely incredible.

I couldn't imagine what it would be like if the President then said, "I have it on good authority this place is going to be torn down and nothing is going to be left standing here." Can you imagine? Can you imagine how the media would react? Can you imagine how the world would react if something like that was actually said? Now imagine you've got the King of kings, the Lord of lords. You've got Christ Jesus. He will be the one who will take the earth back. He will be the one who will eventually stand as King of the world.

He's telling everybody the temple's going to be destroyed, and not one stone will be left upon the other. By the way, there is an interesting historical note you should probably note: when Titus goes into Jerusalem in 70 AD, there's a unique moment of time where Titus instructs his men. He says to his men, "Be careful with how you enter into the city and take over control, and whatever you do, be careful not to use fire. We want to preserve this structure."

The reason why Titus saw it important to preserve the structure was because he knew perhaps the intention of Caesar to enter into the temple and set himself up to demand to be worshipped. That was part of the thought process behind what he did. The way the history books say it, and there's some debate as to what exactly happened in this current moment, there was a fiery dart that was actually fired when it should not have been fired, outside of the order of Titus. That fiery dart created what became an inferno.

That extreme heat burned down all the gold that had been overlaid in all of the temple stones and all of the pieces. All the gold melted through all of the cracks of the stones. As the gold melted, it went in all the cracks. So it was ordered by the general to literally pick up every single block and take it off the other in order to be able to grab the gold from the infrastructure. That's a fulfillment of what Jesus said when He said not one brick would be left upon the other.

But I'm going to venture to say that the prophecy which, by the way, was fulfilled here and is a remarkable prophecy, I'm going to venture to say that this is not the most significant component of this prophecy. I am not going to make the assertion that many people do that says that this is the crux of what was being spoken about by Jesus when this happened. As a matter of fact, what I'm going to actually say is the more significant portion is the fact that the temple would be destroyed altogether and what that actually meant for the future, not only of Israel, but what it meant for the world.

The focus by most people when they hear things like this has nothing to do with why it's so significant. The focus of people when they hear things like this oftentimes happens to deal with superficial issues. What do I mean when I say that? Well, we've got a great example given to us right here. Look what it says in verse three. "And as He sat upon the Mount of Olives over against the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked Him privately." So they say, "Jesus, come on, we've got to talk to you."

It's an interesting group of guys, by the way: Peter, James, John, and Andrew. The four of them say, "Jesus, come here. We've got to talk to you. We've just got to get at you for a minute. Okay, what is it?" Here's the question. By the way, if you have Christ's unmitigated attention and there's no attenuation between your conversation, nothing stopping you, what would you do with it? I have to ask myself that question all the time. Look at what happens in verse four: "Tell us, when shall these things be? And what shall be the sign when all these things shall be fulfilled?"

This is the problem with mankind. This is the problem with human nature. We've been given, just like these disciples were, incredible insight about the future of humanity. We've been told very consequential information about what is going to happen. And what does mankind get caught up on? The dates. I could put out a video right now on YouTube and I could say, "Let's talk about the significance biblically of what the rapture means to the average believer." Because it's got the word "rapture" in it, I might get 100,000 views on my account. That's a pretty good number.

If I were to make a video that says, "I know the date of the rapture," I guarantee you in the first hour I'll get 10 million. Guaranteed. Why? The condition of fallen man seeks after the issues that are peripheral rather than primary. Let me say that again. Mankind in his fallen condition seeks out the issues that are secondary, not primary. Why? Because in our fallen state, we do not understand the consequence of those things which are primary, which is why we tend not to focus on them.

Let me just explain something to you because this is really, really important. If Jesus had gone on to tell these men that the destruction of the temple as I describe it to you will happen in 70 AD on the 9th of Av, to be specific, because we have the exact date when the temple was destroyed by Titus. It was destroyed on the 9th of Av, 70 AD, which by the way, the first temple, Solomon's temple, was destroyed on the 9th of Av, 586 BC. That's a very interesting date.

Let's say that Jesus went to His disciples and said exactly that. It would not bear the same consequence as the answer that Jesus is about to give His disciples because the timing never matters. Oh sure, is the timing important in that it substantiates the validity of the predictions that God makes? Certainly. God says something's going to happen. If it happens, then it adds to His credibility. And of course, the Bible has never gotten anything wrong, which means God's word is accurate and we can trust it undoubtedly.

But the bigger issue that needed to be discussed here, which is why we're going to stop here when I bring this to your attention, is why is it that God would see fit to allow the destruction of the temple to take place during or around the lifetime of Jesus? Why? If you understood the consequence of the existence of the temple or the tabernacle, this would be deeply puzzling to you. Why? Because the temple was the tool by which God had established the redemption for sins.

Forgiveness in the Hebrew word, *kaphar*, means the covering. If the very tool that is used to provide salvation for mankind is now destroyed, what consequence does that bear for mankind in the future? If you took the time to explore that issue rather than the "Tell me when it's going to happen," then maybe perhaps the deeper message would be more thoroughly understood and the greater victory would be had.

The fact that the disciples asked the question about when this was going to happen was a distinct and powerful demonstration of mankind not understanding the more major picture. The real conversation that probably could have ensued in that moment, which I'm sure happened at some point between Jesus and His disciples because His disciples were the men that later on shared these principles with us, but perhaps the more consequential discussion that should have been had—and by the way, when I teach this, I make sure it's had—is the significance of the temple no longer being what was necessary in order to provide a covering for man in order to be absolved of the consequence of sin.

You don't have to go through all the ruckus. You don't have to do the location-specific journeys. You don't have to go through all the things that you had to go through in order to get a partial covering. The temple would be destroyed as a tool to show everybody that the perfect Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world would be the one who would now do the work. I should probably note this right off the bat when we have the discussion of the temple, and it wouldn't be anything that would be strange to you because it's something we talk about quite a bit.

If you explore carefully enough—and we'll actually show this to you visually when we go to Israel next year—this principle in terms of the geography associated with the city of Jerusalem, it becomes astounding. Here's one thing that's always puzzled me until about 25 years ago when I really began to think it through. It always puzzled me that the location of the temple in the city of Yerushalayim, Jerusalem, the holy city, was actually not at the highest point of the city. Most people don't know that.

People assume it's the highest point of the city because you've got the valley that surrounds the area and the general assumption is this would be the high point of the city. It actually wasn't. The highest point of the city was elsewhere. Before I move on to that specific point, that would be a unique and important thing to be thinking about because when you read through the Old Testament, you will read that the kings destroyed the high places. What does it mean when it says the kings destroyed the high places?

What it means in destroying the high places was they went to the highest point of every area in which they ruled and they destroyed the temples and the structures that were made to their false gods because the custom of ancient cultures was to put the area in which they worshipped these false gods at the highest point of the city. It's puzzling to me to think about this because if that's the case and they made these structures for all of the pagan gods at the highest point of every city, why is it that they would not put the temple, the true temple to the true and living God, at the highest point of Jerusalem?

Well, I think it was divinely designed that way. Why? Because you know where the highest place of Jerusalem actually was? The highest point of Jerusalem was an area slightly outside the city where Christ was actually crucified. That is literally the highest point of the city. And if you think about it, Jesus referred to a temple being destroyed and resurrected, built and rebuilt, or destroyed and rebuilt in three days, and the Bible says the temple in which He spoke about was that of His body.

Even Jesus when He spoke about the occurrences that we read about in the book of Leviticus and then we think about the discussion that He has with people like Nicodemus in John chapter three, you recognize very quickly that Jesus, just like Moses, raised up that symbol in the wilderness to provide salvation for those that had been poisoned, Jesus would be lifted up so that as people looked upon Him, they would find salvation from their sin.

The consequence of the destruction of the temple was designed to show us that the true temple would be Christ who would be resurrected after being crucified at the highest point of the city and we would find our redemption permanently from Him. It causes the focus to completely change. The depth of analysis that we bring to the table when we look at this particular infrastructure and this telling means something. But you know what a lot of people will do with this passage?

A lot of people will spend a lot of time ignoring this. This is like the first 30 seconds of their Bible study and they'll start getting into nation rising against nation. All cool stuff and we're going to get into it in the next few weeks, but none of it means anything if the context of the overall discussion is not established. And the context of the overall discussion fundamentally centers in the fact that the encapsulation of all that we need in order to obtain salvation and live eternally is found in the person of Jesus Christ. Once that becomes established, everything else becomes something that adds utility to the primary message, which becomes the very crux of all of our existence. You guys get it? I don't want this to be forgotten.