Last Sunday I was teaching the first lesson in the “Introduction to Christian Theology” class, and we talked about the difference between doctrine that Christians unite around and debatable issues that Christians agree to disagree on. The question obviously came up: How do you know the difference?
One way to think about the difference is what we could call a pyramid of belief. At the top, you would put “creed” or something like that, “dogma.” These are doctrines that Bible-believing Christians unite around. As you move down, “convictions.” These are firm beliefs that Christians have, but Bible-believing churches differ on. When you get down to “concepts,” you’re into a little bit of theological theory. And then “conjecture” is speculation.
Notice the higher you climb, the higher the certainty, the lower the uncertainty. There are four ways in which we assess any theological claim. The more of these four that are present, the higher the climb rises. So let me suggest these four.
One is exegetical certainty. What does that mean? How valid is this biblical interpretation? You can try to make the Bible say whatever you want it to say if you rip it out of the context and interpret it in your own private way. That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking, “How valid is this biblical interpretation?”
Second, theological significance. What is the doctrinal weightiness of this?
Third is historical agreement. Have Christian creeds generally agreed? We’re not making anything up, and we don’t want to be guilty of “chronological snobbery,” as C.S. Lewis says. So we are believing what Christians have believed.
Then number four, biblical emphasis. Is this something the Scripture underscores?
If you take, for example, the Trinity, the deity of Christ, the omniscience of God—we could go on—these all fall into top-tier creed. Christians unite around these. This doesn’t necessarily mean that, as we move down, they’re automatically unimportant, but it does mean that Christians of different denominations will differ as we move into “convictions” and below.
Did you get all that? Time for the quiz. Ready? Where would you put the gospel of Jesus? The gospel meaning, “by grace through faith in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.” Where would you put that? Creed. Woo! You sound sure. Exactly. Paul made that clear in passages like Galatians 1:8.
“But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed” (Galatians 1:8).
That doesn’t sound like “agree to disagree.” That’s creed. Okay, you ready for another one?
Question number two: life on other planets. Yep, conjecture. Good. Man, you guys are on it.
Believer’s baptism. Ah, some change of mind there. Vacillation. Yeah, I heard a lot of “conviction.” I would agree. Because we, as a church, are convinced that the Bible teaches believers’ baptism. We have brother-sister churches that baptize babies (pedobaptism). We would not say they’re going to hell because they baptized babies, right? Right? So, you see, I’m convinced, and I can sit down with my brothers and sisters and show you from Scripture that the Bible teaches believers’ baptism, but they might feel the same way.
As I look through those four and see that churches have differed on this throughout church history, you see a little humility, maybe no less conviction, but it’s not creed. It’s conviction. So that’s why you have denominations that differ on that, but still unite around the gospel. Really important.
Since we’re talking about baptism— Whoa, where did that come from? We do have a baptism coming up in November, so if you have trusted Christ and have not taken the plunge, we encourage you to sign up for one of these classes. There are kids and there are teen/adult classes. Be ready to be baptized. Huge step. We have that conviction.
To get closer to our current study, where would you put the return of Jesus? True. Where on the pyramid would you put the return of Jesus? Creed. Yeah, right. All Christians believe Jesus is coming back. Amen. If you deny that, you’re denying core Christian dogma/creed/belief.
Second question regarding that is, where would you put the timing of Jesus’ return in relation to other events? Are we talking pre-trib, mid-trib, post-trib, pre-mill, a-mill? Where would you put that? You guys are all over the place. Yeah, because it might—depending on the belief—fall in different areas.
I would generally say I would put my convictions under “conviction.” Because I have very strong convictions about some of those things, but I also am well aware that throughout church history—and the Scripture makes clear—you’re not going to know much about the specificity of his return. So humility brings us down. We can still have strong convictions, but recognize that our brothers and sisters are going to differ on those specifics.
Okay, one more: the date of Jesus’s return. Yeah, “conjecture.” Or possibly below conjecture, like heresy. Because Jesus specifically said, “Don’t. You’re not going to know.” So, yeah, I think that’s even a step below.
Let me give you a brief history of the future at North Hills, very brief. Brief, brief.
In 2008, our elders spent many months of concentrated discussion and debate on this topic. We differed with one another, and at times it was painful. But more often, I would say it was beautiful. To see people with strong convictions, opening their Bibles and discussing this while still loving one another is a beautiful thing. That discussion lasted throughout 2008 and into 2009. We did break for food.
Spring of 2009, we actually had two of us present debate, like present our convictions to the other elders and try to convince them of what we believe. It was so fun. Then that led to a lot of really healthy discussions, wrestling with the biblical text, and climaxed in what we would call four eschatology essentials.
So these are four doctrinal truths that we as a church unite around. You can go to our doctrinal statement online, and you’ll see these four under eschatology. Let me run through them.
1. Jesus is coming again.
Number one, as we’ve seen, Jesus is coming again. We need to be ready. We don’t know specifically when.
2. Believers and unbelievers will experience a future bodily resurrection.
Number two, believers and unbelievers will experience a future bodily resurrection. The Bible is clear on that.
3. Heaven and hell are real destinies.
Number three, heaven and hell are real destinies. The lake of fire is the second death. The new heaven and the new earth will emerge in fresh recreation. And God and his people will dwell together forever. Let me pause on this.
This is a heavy burden I have for God’s people, to be able to rejoice in what we know about eschatology. Because I think many of us are so focused on what we don’t know, or what we wish we knew, that we don’t rejoice in what we do know. When we begin to realize how clear God has made some of these core essentials, it becomes much more than a matter of debate to get people to agree with my chart. It becomes truths that we hold on to in life and death.
Let me give you an example.
A few months before my wife Karen went to be with Jesus this summer, we had been asked to share our marriage testimony. I said to her, “Would you be willing to do it on such and such a date?” And she just very matter-of-factly said, “If I’m alive, I’d love to do it.” There was no fatalism in that.
She was partially joking, partially— At that point, she was realizing it seemed like God was going to take her home soon. So I kind of—partially joking—said to her, “You can’t die. We haven’t been to Iceland.” She had wanted to go to Iceland. And she immediately said, “No problem. We’ll do that in the new heaven, the new earth.” And she wasn’t joking.
The reason this is so important is because some of us have such a vague sense of eternity that we think we’ll just be up there floating around in the clouds with some fat angels. The Bible makes clear that our ultimate destination is a recreation of where earth and heaven meet, this place where everything you most love and that is most beautiful and good in this life is remade and improved for all eternity.
The reason that’s so important is some of us live with this pressure that if we don’t get our bucket list done, or if we die too soon, we’re somehow going to miss out on something. Karen had no regrets. It’s like, “We’ll cover that in the new heaven, the new earth. Join me when we go to new/improved Iceland.”
She was accidentally giving us all a glimpse of the fact that when we know our eschatology, it’s more than a point to debate. It is our hope and joy of what Jesus has for us. It’s also a wake-up call: If you don’t know Jesus, you need to come to know him today. Because as good as it’s going to be for followers of Jesus, it’s going to be really bad apart from him. The Bible makes that so clear.
4. Jesus triumphs over all enemies.
Number four, here’s the climax: Jesus triumphs over all enemies and delivers the kingdom to his father. God reigns forever and ever. And as I said, you can find these four in our doctrinal statement online.
For today, I want us to focus in on those couple of verses in the middle of Jesus’s Olivet Discourse: the lesson from the fig tree, Matthew 24:32-35. It is a very short paragraph we’re going to cover today. There is one main command. I’m going to read it again. See if you pick up on the main command because that’s where we’re going to focus today. Matthew 24:32,
“From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see all these things, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Matthew 24:32-35).
So what’s the main command? That was lame. Learn. Yes, you’re probably like, “Listen.” No, learn. Learn. That verb is “manthano,” which simply means to increase in knowledge, to understand, to learn by practice.
The reason I mentioned the verb is because the verb is from the noun, “mathetes,” which is the word we get “disciple” from, a learner. The second time this verb appears in the New Testament is Jesus’s invitation, Matthew 11:29,
“Take my yoke upon you, and [manthano] learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:29).
Learning from Jesus not only stimulates our minds (it does), but it also breathes rest into our souls. Paul warned those who had become hard-hearted and had given themselves over to greed and to lust. Ephesians 4:20, this “is not the way you [manthano] Christ.” It’s not the way you learn Christ.
Everyone in this room is being discipled by someone or something, and therefore we are choosing to learn a way that leads to life or a way that leads to death. For example, Paul was deeply concerned that some of the young women in Ephesus were being drawn away from Christ. Why?
He said in 1 Timothy 5:13, they manthano, “they learn to be idlers.” What does that mean? Idlers: those who are idle, sluggish, workless, inactive. In other words, they are being discipled to evade their creative calling.
Back in verse 32 of chapter 24 of Matthew, learn—manthano—the lesson. That word “lesson” is parable, “parabole.” Learn the lesson, the parable. In a sense, Jesus is saying, “I’m calling you in this moment to be discipled by the fig tree.” In the middle of the spring, when the fig tree’s branches become tender and its buds become leaves, you know: summer is near. Verse 33,
“So also, when you see all these things, you know that he [or it] is near, at the very gates” (Matthew 24:33).
In the Greek, there’s no personal pronoun, so it could be translated “it” or “he.”
So what lesson is Jesus commanding us to learn from the fig tree? I think there are two parts to this lesson: a lesson of nearness and a lesson of sureness. Nearness and sureness, proximity and certainty. When you see these tender buds turning to leaves, you know something. You know that summer is near. And when you see all these things, you know he is near, or it is near! Verse 34,
“Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place” (Matthew 24:34).
Some of you know we’re in some of the most hotly contested territory in the New Testament, because the question comes up: What is “this generation?” A few options:
The first one is a really bad one, but many skeptics argue that Jesus was referring to “this generation” as the original disciples, and he just got it wrong. The disciples got it wrong. He didn’t come. He was a liar. That’s a bad option.
Second is “this generation” could refer to a kind of person, not a period of time. Like what Jesus says a few chapters earlier, in Matthew 17:17. He says, this “faithless and twisted generation.” He’s not talking about a period of time, he’s talking about a milieu or a cultural moment (as we would say today) where people are characterized. They’re kinds of people who are faithless, twisted. So maybe he’s talking about that, “this generation.”
Or he could be talking about a race. The word “generation,” “genea,” can refer to a kind of person, as in a racial kind of person. In this case, “the Jewish people will not pass away before all these things are fulfilled.”
There are other options. I believe he is talking about the disciples’ generation, but with a two-fold fulfillment. Their generation did not pass away before “all these things” were experienced in the siege and destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. But that fulfillment of “all these things” was a preview, or what we typically call “prophetic telescoping.”
Have you heard that expression? Prophetic telescoping. It’s all throughout the Bible. It’s like when you’re climbing a mountain (we’ve talked about this) and you see the peak. You finally get to the top of the peak, and what do you see from there? Another peak. And you realize the thing you thought was the top is not the top, but now that you’re at the top of that top, you can see the top.
That’s prophetic telescoping, and it’s all throughout the Bible. Where you think, “ah, that’s the fulfillment,” but that fulfillment is actually pointing us toward the ultimate fulfillment. I think you see that all throughout this sermon of Jesus’s. You’ll see it even in the original question. Look back at verse three of Matthew 24.
“As he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, ‘Tell us, when will these things be’” (Matthew 24:3a).
What things? In verse two, the verse right before, he was talking about the destruction of Jerusalem. The temple will be destroyed, down to the very rocks. They’re coming down. “When will these things be?” But then they go on:
“…and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” (Matthew 24:3b).
It seems this is pointing to this. That is the nearness lesson we learn from the fig tree. But there’s a sureness lesson. Look at verse 35:
“Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Matthew 24:35).
Jesus is saying, “My words are more sure than the tectonic plates that you’re standing on, you’re resting on, or the law of gravity that you are counting on. The universe will implode before my words will perish.”
Let’s go back to the main command and press into that. How do we respond to Jesus’s command to learn? It seems to me that learning requires three things: humility, audacity, and capacity. Think H.A.C., a little learning hack.
Humility, because you can’t learn if you won’t admit you don’t know. We have to humble our hearts to acknowledge we don’t know everything, or we’re not going to learn anything. This is why proud people stay stupid.
Second is audacity. We must be willing to risk learning something that might be surprising, or demanding, or might sweep away things we just assumed were true.
Learning requires courage to get into the ring and to be punched smack in the face by the fist of reality. People who aren’t willing to face reality won’t learn from it. We will choose delusion rather than the confrontation of truth and reality.
Learning, also as part of that, requires failing and suffering. I hate this about life, but I know it’s true. The things I learned most deeply have cost me something. So if we’re not courageous, we’re not going to learn.
Then finally, capacity. We have to have a certain amount of time and space to learn. Learning typically requires what we would call today “attention management.” That is, we’re saying no to this right now so that we can say yes. Focus not on that, but focus on this. Then the time piece is we need to be able to persevere long enough to begin to comprehend.
When Jesus commands us to learn, he is calling us into a life of humility, audacity, and capacity. Here’s the good news: When Jesus commands something, he always provides it. Like, he doesn’t issue threats and say, “Prove yourself to me.” He calls us to a new way of thinking and living. And he gives us all the grace (the energizing favor) to do what he’s called us to do. It’s beautiful.
What shuts it down?
What shuts down learning that will keep some of us from obeying what Jesus is commanding us to do today? You can flip those three and get the answer. If learning requires humility, audacity, and capacity— pride, fear, and flooding will shut down learning. I think you know what pride and fear are. Let me explain flooding.
“Flooding,” in the psychological world, can mean a number of different things. What I mean here is when we experience overwhelming (a flood of) emotions, that can tend to shut down rational thought and lead us into various evasive or defensive maneuvers that shut down learning. Let me give you an example:
Rachel Reiland has written a vivid account of her journey through and recovery from borderline personality disorder. We can debate whether that label is helpful or not at another time, but Rachel embodied the characteristics of a borderline person.
Usually, borderline people tend to exhibit behaviors that say, “I hate you, I need you.” “I hate you, don’t leave me.” “Get away from me, come near.” And so, for those who exhibit characteristics of borderline, it can be devastating to relationships.
I think of it almost like what an autoimmune disease is to the body, borderline is to relationships, because the very thing I crave, I’m allergic to. I crave relational intimacy, and I’m allergic to it. I pull people in, and shove them away. You’ll see a lot of very black-and-white thinking going on. Like, “You are an angel, now you’re a devil.” You can go from high up in my esteem down to the bottom.
Rachel exhibited all of this. She experienced explosive anger, manipulative behaviors, self-destructive habits (including episodes of substance abuse, sexual promiscuity, and anorexia)… In her second episode of anorexia, she knew what was happening, but she still continued to diet and exercise to the point of almost dying. Listen to the way she describes:
“My bedroom mirror was like the funhouse variety…My bony knees nearly as large in circumference as my thighs, two huge knobs connecting brittle sticks. When I would raise my arms, I could see every tendon twitch, the clear outlines of bone. My shoulder blades stuck out so sharply, it appeared they were on the verge of severing the skin like a knife. My face was hollow, and my eyes were underlined by dark circles. I was a vision of death.”
Now pause. So Rachel is getting accurate information from her mirror, and she’s actually receiving it. But look what happens next:
“Until suddenly, that same vision would transform. Those same calves and thighs would expand before my very eyes into cellulite-ridden obesity. My face blew up as if inflated, and I could see a second chin appearing. The knobby knees looked fat. Before I knew it, I was downstairs in the living room again, jumping and twisting to the instructions of Jane Fonda, the exhaustion of an hour ago replaced by hyperactivity.
“Then the evening would come. Tim couldn’t even stand to hold me in his arms anymore…He couldn’t bear to feel the sharpness of my bones. He’d try to be supportive by nagging, coaxing, or getting angry with me. But nothing worked. His wife was wasting away, and he couldn’t do anything about it.”
Now, praise God: Rachel, with the help of her doctor, was hospitalized shortly after this, and her life was spared. And I recognize that everyone’s experience with anorexia is different. I’m not trying to create a mold here. But did you see what happened there?
We as humans have the capacity to receive accurate information (in her case, from the mirror), and rather than learning, we have this filter within us that garbles, distorts, warps the information, and ends up pointing us in the opposite direction. We don’t just not learn, we actually go in the opposite direction of what the information is communicating.
Now I know here in Matthew 24, Jesus is talking about very different information, but the crisis of learning is similar. Look again at the text, verse 32.
“From the fig tree [here’s the command, learn] learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near” (Matthew 24:32).
The emergence of fig leaves informs us of a seasonal shift. In our day, we would probably use the illustration of “when the leaves start changing color and dropping to the ground, you know winter is not far.” We are in fall. He goes on, verse 33,
“So also, when you see all these things, you know that he is near, at the very gates” (Matthew 24:33).
What are “all these things”? We saw earlier: false messiahs/prophets, wars, rumors of wars, famines, earthquakes. “You know that he is near.” So Jesus is pleading with his disciples, “Don’t let pride or apathy or distraction or a craving to control or the assumption that ‘my life is going to go this way and nothing’s ever going to change’ blind you so that you don’t learn and you’re not prepared.”
Now, ultimately, Jesus makes clear that’s why he moves from nearness to sureness. Your confidence is not even in your own senses and your ability to figure it all out, but verse 35,
“Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Matthew 24:35).
That’s where we turn. But think about what learning this meant to the disciples. They’re going to have many opportunities to unlearn this lesson from the fig tree. But Jesus is commanding: humble your heart, be courageous, open up your capacity of time and space.
Most Jews of that day could not imagine Jesus destroying the temple. They didn’t have a category for that. But notice Jesus has been preparing us for this way back in chapter 12:6,
“I tell you, something greater than the temple is here” (Matthew 12:6).
So Jesus is placing himself above the temple. That doesn’t mean a lot to us. Blows the mind of his audience. And then he did what in chapter 21? Cleansed the temple! And then he said in chapter 24:2,
“…You see all these, do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down” (Matthew 24:2).
Remember, the Jews of his day mocked him for that. As he’s hanging on the cross, Matthew 27:39,
“And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, ‘You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross” (Matthew 27:39-40).
Most of those mockers saw the same miracles the disciples saw. They heard at least enough teaching to mock him, but they didn’t learn. Something warped the message. Something twisted it. So they came to the exact opposite conclusion it was supposed to communicate. They were like Rachel, looking in the mirror and coming to the opposite conclusion. But these predictions by Jesus did come true. Again, Jesus staked his authority, verse 35:
“Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Matthew 24:35).
We know, I mentioned this a few weeks ago: We have historical evidence that there were Christians who did learn the lesson. When the invasion of Jerusalem began, they fled, saving their lives. They learned the lesson from the fig tree.
But what about us? How do we learn from the fig tree today? We’re talking about a couple thousand years later. It just feels like we’re out here floating. Most of us don’t even know what a fig tree is. I would be in that category. Don’t have one in my yard. So how do we apply this? I’m going to suggest two ways: one very general and then one more specific, one immediate and one to come. Let’s start in general:
Are you a learner? Or are you a fool? You don’t have to answer that. Proverbs 1:7,
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction” (Proverbs 1:7).
The fool doesn’t learn. Why? Proverbs 12:15, because…
“The way of a fool is right in his own eyes [no humility], but a wise man listens to advice” (Proverbs 12:15).
I have no capacity! Because when my heart is so chock-full of me, I have no space for anything you want to tell me. Or God. Proverbs 18:2,
“A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion” (Proverbs 18:2).
I get way more excited about telling my own opinion than actually listening to yours. “I’m exciting, you’re boring,” so says the fool. A fool is so packed full of his or her own thoughts, there’s no humility. No capacity to receive.
I know we’re talking very generally right now. We’re not even talking about eschatology. We’re just talking in general. I think this is the primary message today: Will we learn? Because if we’re not in a posture of learning, we can cover all sorts of exciting truth, and it just bounces off or gets twisted and leads to the opposite conclusion. That’s what’s scary. So are you a learner?
The more specific application is actually going to come next week, because what Jesus is about to do is to move from the immediate to the ultimate and begin helping us know: What do we know when we don’t know?
You’re going to see in the next passage, if you read it over to the end of the chapter, lots of statements like “no one knows,” “unaware,” “do not know,” “do not expect,” “does not know.” But right in the middle of that, “but know this!” So Jesus is saying, during this time of waiting—and we’re going to talk about this for a number of weeks, this time delay—there’s a lot you don’t know, but you know some things. Are you willing to learn them? That’s the specific application. We’ll get that next week.
I would love, though, for us to respond in two ways to the command Jesus has given us. First, I’d love if someone here would be willing to lead us in prayer. I haven’t picked anybody, so be willing to come up. You can stay on the floor. And just pray that we, as a church, would be characterized by the humility to learn. It’s one of the most terrifying things to be blessed, as we are blessed in our nation, with so much to know, but we can easily be people who don’t learn.
So if somebody could pray for us, then after that, we’re going to have the privilege of remembering the Lord’s broken body and shed blood in the Lord’s Supper, which is the only way we can truly learn. Because again, he doesn’t just command us to do something, he’s giving us everything through his death, burial, and resurrection so that we can do what he’s called us to.
First, who will pray for us that we would be a people who learn? Come on down. Greg? Greg will do it. Thank you, guys. Boy, nobody and then ten. So if you could pray this for us, let’s pray together as Greg leads us.
God, I pray that you would fill us with the desire to learn and all that means. God, you alone hold all the knowledge that we need, and you give it to us in different ways. You give each of us different things that we learn from you, and you also give us one another, whom we can learn from.
God, I pray you would grant us humility. I pray that you would grant us the courage and the audacity to risk what learning can mean. But help us to realize that there is so much reward to be had in learning and gaining the things that you want us to have in our minds. I pray that we would learn from victories, and that we would learn from you, and from your Word, and from one another. Amen.
Thank you. If we could keep this posture of prayer… Shortly after Jesus taught this, he went right into—with his disciples—into a time of bread-breaking and cup sharing. So I want to read— Not from Matthew. I’m going to read from Luke 22:14.
“And when the hour came, he reclined at table, and the apostles with him. And he said to them, ‘I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.’ [And notice several times, he’s going to point us forward (eschatology).] And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he said, ‘Take this, and divide it among yourselves. For I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.’ And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, ‘This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood’” (Luke 22:14-20).
I’m going to invite some people to come up and pass out—they can come now—a cup and a piece of bread. If you’re a believer in Jesus, we encourage you to participate in this micro-meal of remembrance. Then I will come back in a few minutes, and we’ll partake together. If you’re not a follower of Jesus, just pass the plate and use this time to cry out to him. Let’s continue to worship.
