Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: “Wrath to the Uttermost”
## 1 Thessalonians 2:13-16

Sermon scripture is 1 Thessalonians 2:13-16. The topic is wrath to the uttermost.

1 Thessalonians chapter 2, verses 13-16:

“For this cause also, thank God, without ceasing, because when you receive the word of God, which you heard of us, you received it not as the word of men. But as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe. For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God, which in Judea are in Christ Jesus.

For ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews, who both killed the Lord Jesus and their own prophets, and have persecuted us. And they please not God and are contrary to all men, forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins always. For the wrath has come upon them to the uttermost.”

Okay. The younger children may be dismissed to go to their Sabbath schools if their parents desire that for them.

It might be good to remind ourselves where we’re at. The book of Thessalonians—at this point in time going through this book verse by verse—we originally gave an overall outline for the entire book. If you remember correctly, the second section was Paul’s thanksgiving for the Thessalonian church beginning at verse one of chapter 1, verse two and going through verse 16 of the second chapter, which we just read through. Verse 17 really starts a new section, so to speak, of events leading up to the sending of the epistle.

It kind of blurs over and I’ll talk about that in a little bit here in the third point of our outline this afternoon. But essentially, 2:16 wraps up this central section of almost two entire chapters where Paul is giving thanks for the Thessalonian church and he concludes with thanking them for their acknowledge—thanking God rather—that he brought them to acknowledge God’s word for what it was: his word in their lives, not man’s word.

And so this is really one section and really there’s some interrelationship to the verses we just read back earlier to chapter 1. In verse five of chapter 1, we read that Paul says, “Our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also empowered in the Holy Ghost and in much assurance. As you know what manner of men we were among you for your sake.” And remember what we said: the first 12 verses of chapter 2 explains what manner of men indeed they were.

So verse 5 of chapter 1 kind of telescopes out into 12 verses of chapter 2. In like fashion, verse 6 then of chapter 1, we read, “You became followers of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction with joy of the Holy Ghost”—telescopes out to verses 13-16, or actually down to the end of the chapter where we read about the joy, Paul’s joy in the Thessalonian church. So really, he’s kind of expanding in chapter 2 some things he referenced very briefly in chapter 1.

In fact, the first verse—verse 13 of this section—he says that, or actually in verse 14 that we just read, he says, “You became followers of the churches of God.” That’s the same word “followers.” As in verse 6, “you became followers of us.” It’s that word that is the base for the word mimic—to imitate. And so they were imitators, as it were, of the church of Christ in Judea, the churches in Judea. And he says specifically, you were imitators or followers and that you suffered things in the church. And he actually references that back in verse 6 of chapter 1 as well: “You became followers having received the word in much affliction.”

So what he’s—what we’re going to—the theme that we’re going to kind of structure this section verses 13-16 on is wrath to the uttermost.

And the first point that we want to make is that wrath to the uttermost is preceded by persecution to the utmost—by persecution or sin to the uttermost. And so most of the section we read is a recounting of the sufferings first that the Thessalonians suffered. And then secondly, a much more detailed list of the sufferings of the churches of Christ in Judea at the hands of the Jews.

And so that’s the first section and it leads up to that last clause: that because of all these things, wrath has come upon them to the uttermost. So we’ll look at most of the verses first in terms of what that is preceded by. Then we’ll look to wrath at the uttermost and see why I think it has a reference here, a primary reference out of this text, to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 and events leading up to and following that.

And then we’ll look at the end of all that—really something that’s implied in the text, particularly as we go down verses 17-20 of chapter 2. And that is that the wrath to the uttermost is followed then by the establishment of the church of Christ. So essentially what you’ve got here is in verse 13, you have them being conformed to the image of Christ, as it were, receiving the word of God as what it is: the word of God, not the word of man. Then you have opposition talked about against them. Then you’ve got retribution from God to those who are opposing the church. But that isn’t the end of the story really. It’s to the end that the church is established in full kingdom grace before God.

And so that’s the pattern we’re going to lay out here: conversion, opposition or persecution, retribution, and then finally establishment.

So what precedes the wrath to the uttermost clause in verse 16 is the persecution to the uttermost that’s described in verses 13 through 16. And first of all, there are sufferings of the church.

**Sufferings of the Church**

You became imitators because you suffered the same things which the churches in Judea have suffered. Suffered like things. The word “suffered” there, the basic word is the same word that is the root for “pascal.” When we sing downstairs sometimes the song just before communion, the paschal lamb—that’s the same word here. The Greek word here is pasco. Pasco, rather, which has reference to that idea of suffering. When we speak of Christ’s passion, we speak of his suffering. His passion is rooted in that same word, pasco. And so this word first—that they suffered of these various people in Judea—the way that the other churches, or they suffered rather of those in Thessalonica, with other churches had in Judea.

The word means to experience a sensation or impression and usually it means quite painfully. And so for instance in Matthew 17:12, we read that John the Baptist—well, Jesus says that as Elias or John the Baptist as he suffered, so also the son of man must suffer of them—talking of Christ’s passion. In Acts 1:3, we read that Jesus showed himself alive after his passion. And so when we talk about Christ’s passions, we’re talking about his suffering. And I think in the prayer we read a little earlier, it talked about how we’re relieved of our sins through the passion and death of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And there is a distinction there. His passions and sufferings—according to the epistle, one of the early creeds that we use occasionally, the Apostles Creed—has to do with his suffering, the torments of hell, and his death. Then is related to that but it is a separate event. So Jesus suffered and then was killed. Well, in like manner now, the church that represents Jesus Christ—the church, Christ’s body—suffers persecution.

Now the Thessalonians of course suffered persecution as we read in Acts 17, various persecutions from their own people in their own district. But it was also keyed to the Jewish people, the Jews that had rejected Christ and refused to come to obedience. If you remember correctly, well, we’ll get to that in a couple of minutes. I want to get ahead of myself.

Okay. So, they suffered like things as the churches in Judea. Now, out of the references in the scriptures to suffering, about half of them refer to Jesus Christ. And so really, there’s a relationship in the suffering of the church to Christ’s sufferings, which are pointed out throughout scripture.

I might add here that the Thessalonian church didn’t suffer just for a short while. Six years later in another epistle, Paul wrote that they were still enduring a severe test and affliction and that poverty had apparently overtaken them as well. That poverty that he refers to later in the life of the Thessalonians may well have been the result of some of the sufferings and plunderings that they went through from persecutors.

The book of Hebrews, in Hebrews 10:32, tells us of the joyful acceptance of believers of the plundering of their property in light of their exceeding great reward in heaven. And so part of the persecution and sufferings of the church described here that led up to the wrath to the uttermost include the actual plundering of possessions.

**Killing of Jesus and the Prophets**

But beyond that, there’s the murdering of Jesus himself. So he says that you suffered like fashion as the churches in Judea. And then he says the churches in Judea themselves were suffering of the Jews. And then he begins a long recitation of what the Jews had done. They had persecuted the churches in Judea, but beyond that, they had actually killed the Lord Jesus Christ. And we have references in here in the direct charges against the Jewish people.

They killed the Lord Jesus and their own prophets and they drove out us. So he looks at Jesus as the center of their persecutions. Then he has a past-time reference to the prophets that preceded Jesus and then a forward-time reference. Us—the apostles—were driven out as well by these same Jews. And so he begins to list here a long indictment of the Jewish nation. That is, that part of it that rejected Christ, which is the majority part.

When he says here that they killed the Lord Jesus, as it reads in the King James version, really the “Lord” and “Jesus” are separated by another word stuck in between them. So it’s really saying the Lord they killed, Jesus himself. And there’s a real emphasis on that as we’ll see in several other words throughout this list of what they had done and the audaciousness and the reprehensibleness of the sins they entered into.

They killed the Lord and they killed Jesus. Same person, but he brings them both out with emphases. The Lord—in his divine character, they owed worship to but instead they killed him. And in his human character, they owed both gratitude and love and yet they slayed him on the cross. So this puts very squarely from the scriptures the charge against the Jewish nation who lived at this particular time of killing the Lord Jesus Christ.

Some in the last 30 or 40 years, it’s been somewhat favorable to say that Jesus was really killed by the Gentiles, by Pilate. And after all, it was the Romans who put him to death. But the scriptures here by way of inspiration tell us quite explicitly that the death of Jesus Christ is laid in terms of its utmost responsibility at the feet of the Jewish nation, not upon the Gentiles. Certainly they’re the ones who actually pierced him and actually put him on the cross.

But the Jewish nation are the ones who had stirred up Pilate and the Romans to accomplish this thing. So there’s an explicit statement here that the Jews killed Jesus. The only other place where we have a specific reference to those who put Christ to death and to his crucifixion is in 1 Corinthians 2:8. And it has some very interesting wording there. We read in 1 Corinthians 2:8 that the rulers of this age don’t understand God’s wisdom. Uh, for if they had understood it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

So in 1 Corinthians 2:8, we read that it’s the rulers of this age who have crucified the Lord of glory. And I think that’s very appropriate to keep in mind when we consider the extent to which the Jewish people, being given the great promises of God’s word and the temple worship that was to prefigure the coming of Jesus Christ—how they really were seen in some respects as the rulers of that particular age.

And so later when we look at language that talks about that age going down to destruction, we’ll see some tremendous things happening using prophetic language. But that’s the only other occurrence of who actually crucified the Lord of glory. And here we have very explicitly it’s tied to the Jewish nation.

Now this was not a one kind of single sort of shot. As this makes clear, it says he killed the Lord Jesus. But they also killed the prophets. “Who both killed the Lord Jesus and their own prophets.”

Turn to 2 Chronicles 36. We’ll go way back in history. Now before the Intertestamental period and just at the end of the book of 2 Chronicles where we read about them going into the Babylonian captivity. And just so we won’t miss this long history, those we could go through a lot of verses, we won’t, but in 2 Chronicles chapter 36, beginning at verse 15:

Well, let’s start at verse 14. “Moreover, all the chief of the priests and the people transgressed very much after all the abominations of the heathen, polluted the house of the Lord, which he had hallowed in Jerusalem. And the Lord God of their fathers sent to them by his messengers rising up at times and sending because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place. But they mocked the messengers of God and despised his words and misused his prophets until the wrath of the Lord arose against this people till there was no remedy.”

See, so what we have here is language very similar to what had happened before the Babylonian captivity. They had a long history according to 2 Chronicles 36 of rejecting the messengers, the prophets that God had sent to them. They killed them. Some of the accounts say that Isaiah was sawed in two under the reign of Manasseh. Jeremiah was apparently forced into captivity by the Jewish people that were being sent into captivity by God. And there they stoned him to death. There’s various accounts, some of which we can verify, some which we can’t. But the point is this scripture clearly tells us that the Jewish nation had a long history of killing those whom God had sent to them to bring them to obedience and to repentance.

And again here, their sins were finally filled up. Back in the time of 2 Chronicles 36, there was no remedy anymore and they were taken into captivity. We’ll go back to that in a couple of minutes as well. That basic concept of the wrath being filled up. But it’s important that we recognize here the great persecution that is leading up to this statement that wrath will come upon them to the uttermost.

They killed the Lord Jesus Christ. They killed the prophets. They killed the messengers. They hounded and they persecuted the church. And third, they hounded the apostles.

**Persecution of the Apostles**

Says they drove us out. The word “persecuted” there at the end of that of verse 15 means actually to drive out. It is like the utmost in persecution—to actually physically drive a person out of the territory. He’s got to leave if he wants to stay alive. So this side of death, it’s the worst thing you can do to a person is to drive them out.

Now the only other occurrence of this particular word—to drive out in terms of persecution—is Luke 11:49. In Luke 11:49, we read that God said, “I shall send them prophets and apostles and some of them they shall slay and persecute and drive out.” Basically the same sort of wording that Paul refers to here.

And of course, we know that in Thessalonica—and when they came to the mission at Thessalonica, this is exactly what happened to Paul and Timothy and Silas. If you remember from Acts 17, we read in verse 5: “But the Jews becoming jealous and taking along some wicked men from the marketplace formed a mob and set the city in an uproar. This is in Thessalonica. And coming upon the house of Jason, they were seeking to bring them out to the people.”

Now, it’s very important that phrase—that they were jealous at this point in time. Keep that in your head. We’ll talk about that later as well. The Jews were jealous because of the conversions going on. And they then hauled these guys up to court. And remember what they had to do? They had to send Paul and the other missionaries out of town secretly to get them out of there. And they went up to Berea then to another city to evangelize. And the gospel was spreading through this.

Still the point is they were being driven out. And in Berea, when the Jews found out that they were in Berea, then they went up to Berea and stirred up those country people against them.

So as I said, that even though there is a distinction in the verse—that your countrymen persecuted to do the way the Jews did the churches in Judea—their countrymen were being self-consciously motivated to persecute them by these same Jewish groups. So the Jews are the real focus here in terms of their sin against God.

**Hindering the Gospel**

They so they persecuted the churches, made them suffer. They killed the Lord Jesus and prophets. They drove out the apostles and then finally they fill up their sin with hindering the gospel itself. He says: “They please not God and are contrary to all men, forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved to fill up their sins always.”

So he tells us that the central portion of that clause—they don’t please God and are contrary to all men—because they forbid us to speak to the Gentiles. Not only do they refuse to hear the word themselves, they then go all over the world wherever the gospel is being preached to hinder the preaching that gospel.

It’s interesting that in Matthew 23, which we’ll turn to a little later in the outline, we have a series of woes spoken against the Pharisees by our Lord. And he says in those woes: one of the woes he issues to them is because not only do you not enter in, he says, you don’t permit others to enter in as well because you don’t open the word of God to them. And this is the specific thing that Paul is saying: they hindered the preaching of the gospel, the preaching of the pure word. And Jesus pronounced a woe against them, a curse against them for that activity.

And that curse is going to come to pass. It is being worked out as Paul writes. Bad enough that a person would refuse to submit to the correcting and health that God’s word brings. But how terrible when they actually go out of their way to prevent other people from getting the only cure that will prevent them from going to eternal damnation and perpetual suffering in the fires of hell.

Now, that’s a real thing. And when these people not only refuse that for themselves, but make sure that you can’t get to heaven either, that is a damnable offense in the sight of God in his word. And the Apostle Paul is well within bounds here making these strong statements about the incredible heinousness of this sinful action on the part of the Jewish nation.

**Filling Up Their Sins**

This term filling up their sins—to fill up their sins always—that is a. As we read from 2 Chronicles 36, there are other references to various nations where God lets them go for a while until their sin is filled up to the brim and then God brings forth judgment upon them. And that’s what’s going on here. He said they’re filling up their sins. It is time for the judgment of God to be poured out against them.

In addition, however, the filling up, in the particular construction in the Greek, has the idea of purpose to it as well. It has the idea of a result of the Jewish sin, but there’s purpose behind—implied in the construction of the actual Greek phrase. That’s important because behind the scene, behind the motivation that the Jews have, we have God’s motivation. He is bringing this to pass.

So, as one commentator said, the obstinacy of the Jews is viewed as an element in the divine plan. This is part of God’s divine plan to bring them to their fruition of their sins, as it were. Okay?

They please not God. Obvious understatement. They’re an abomination to God. They’re contrary to all men because the gospel is supposed to be preached to all men. And when they hold the gospel back, then they’re acting contrary to all men.

Okay, one other point I wanted to make about this, and I guess it’s obvious, but it’s good to point it out: that really behind all of these actions—the killing of the prophets, the persecution of the church, the driving out of the apostles, and then the hindering of the preaching of the gospel—ultimately, behind that, they are still persecuting Jesus Christ.

Saul did these things. We’ll talk about that later, too. Saul did these very things that he’s talking about here. But you remember what Jesus said to him when he appeared to him on the road to Damascus. He says, “Why do you persecute me?” Didn’t say “those who are mine.” It is Jesus.

The book of Acts—in which most of these occurrences are recorded of the Jews persecuting the church—it is very akin to the book of Joshua in the Old Testament. Deliverance comes, the gospel of Jesus comes, the fulfillment of all the Old Testament pictures including the deliverance from Egypt. And Jesus comes to bring his people into the land and to conquer the land. In the book of Acts is the gospel. It’s Jesus Christ—essentially Joshua, Jesus—leading his people forth in the spirit to preach the gospel and conquer the world.

And so really when they stop the gospel from being preached, they’re trying to stop Jesus Christ himself. In Matthew 12:18, God says, “Behold my beloved in whom I am well pleased. I shall put my spirit upon him and he shall show judgment to the Gentiles.” He will go to the Gentiles, in other words, in the person of the apostles, particularly the Apostle Paul of course. And so they’re really trying to still kick at and persecute Jesus Christ.

Well, we could go through a lot of verses, but the point of all this is that the Jewish nation here is seen as being involved in horrendous and damnable actions. And as a result of this, Paul says that wrath has come upon them to the uttermost because their sins have become to the uttermost. Their sins have been filled up. And this is a practical warning to us, by the way, just by way of application here.

You may have sins in your life that you let sit there. But remember that God may be filling up those sins in your life for the purpose of bringing judgment or damnation upon you and strong severe correction. Don’t let sins pile up in your life. Don’t let your cup fill up, as it were. Keep short accounts with God and with your neighbor. Be pleasing to all men by serving one another in the power of the Holy Spirit. Very important.

In any event, one other point by way of application before we move on to the wrath itself: and I want to be careful here. You know, I know that antisemitism is a charge that is frequently made. And believe me, if anybody today wrote what we just read from the Apostle Paul, and probably if anybody read it on TV, that quote from the scriptures, they’re going to be charged of being antisemitic in this nation.

So we want to be careful. Antisemitism is not a good thing. Hating Jews just because of their Jewish culture. The scriptures are quite clear that God’s law applies to all people and the church has in times past in the last 2,000 years at times taken this stuff we’re talking about and applied it in such a way as to bring judgment upon them not justly and not to administer equal justice to Jews in the context of nations.

Having said that though, we’re at an interesting point of history. Lensky talking about this particular passage talks about how these things have happened and they have no nation. They’re driven out. No nation will absorb them in. They’re under God’s wrath and judgment perpetually until the end of time because they don’t have a nation.

Well, we now live after a remarkable event that happened in the ’40s, which was the establishment of the Jewish nation again—or a Jewish nation in any event, the nation of Israel. And we have Lensky was a bit ahead, you know. He didn’t know what was going to come down the pike in a couple of years. But the interesting thing about this to me, as much as the evangelicals and the dispensationalists seem to be enamored of the nation of Israel, is that they do the same thing that the nation of Israel was doing then that suffered and filled up their sin to the brim and brought God’s wrath on them.

What am I talking about? It is against the law to proselytize a Jew in Israel. They are hindering the preaching of the gospel to this very day in the nation of Israel. Now, there are other nations as well—Saudi Arabia and other countries over there. They’re Islamic and they also hinder the preaching of the gospel and they are in like fashion with the Jews. Then this doesn’t refer just to the Jews, but it’s interesting to me that we can see what a damnable thing that is in the part of Saudi Arabia. And yet so many Christians today look at Israel as if there’s some kind of big brother, I guess, to the church. They’re not. They’re doing the same thing that they did before, hindering the gospel of Jesus Christ. They are doing the same damnable actions according to God’s word, actions that bring his damnation and judgment upon them.

Well, that’s what the word of God says. And if they don’t turn, then they’re going to suffer wrath the way that the early nation of Israel did in AD 70.

One other way of point of application: any group that fills up their sins in this manner, any nation—as I said, the Saudi Arabians for instance, Iraq, whoever it is—are under light condemnation. And any agency today that does such a thing is under light condemnation.

And that means that we have a civil state here in Oregon that essentially hinders the preaching of the gospel in foster care homes who don’t allow Christian parents to minister to children who are being placed in foster homes and to preach the gospel to them through taking them to church, through showing them God’s corrective judgments in terms of corporal punishment. These things are outlawed if you’re a foster care provider in this state. If you’re under CSD’s jurisdiction in that state, then by asserting their word against the word of God—that’s the thing laid out by Paul in verse 13. And by hindering the preaching of the gospel also begins to fill up its sins. And so God’s judgment will come upon it as well.

Well, let’s look at that judgment in terms of the direct application in Paul’s writing to the Thessalonians.

**The Wrath to the Uttermost**

I believe that the wrath to the uttermost that is spoken of here was accomplished in the events leading up to and in the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. We read: “The wrath has come upon them to the uttermost.”

This is the normal word for wrath—for God’s anger—and God is obviously here. That he doesn’t have to insert the word “God is.” God’s wrath is clearly being talked about here. It says “the wrath is come.” The word means—well, there was a story told to explain this word. Of a man who was a tourist who was trying to get a waiter to bring him a cup of coffee. Asked for a cup of coffee and the waiter replied with this same Greek word. And the word has the implication: “I’m already there with your cup of coffee. It’s going to happen. In fact, it’s already happened. That’s how quick I’m going to get it to you. I’ll beat you to the punch.” That’s the idea here. It’s on the verge, but it’s actually spoken of as having happened.

Wrath is come upon them to the uttermost. And “uttermost” means that the wrath has reached its extreme bound and would at once pass over into judgments against the people being spoken of.

Now, at the end of chapter 1, He talked about how Jesus delivers us from the wrath to come, the approaching wrath. And at the end of two, he’s talking about how the wrath is already upon them. Now, remember that we said from Romans 1, when we gave our talks on lust, that really the obstinacy that they’re now doing—persecuting the church, hindering the preaching of the gospel, driving out the apostles, et cetera—that very obstinacy is a sign of God’s wrath upon them for their original sin of rejecting him and not giving thanks. It’s being worked out. But Paul is saying that it’s going to come to the uttermost now. It’s going to take full-fledged, full course against the Jewish people.

As Denny said, and as I just basically alluded to: he said in his commentary, “The vehement condemnation by a man in what we have here in this passage is the vehement condemnation by a man in thorough sympathy with the mind and spirit of God for the principles on which the Jews as a nation had acted at every period in their history.”

So it’s again—it’s not just limited to this period of time. Throughout their history they had acted this way. Just 3 or 4 hundred years earlier we have the recitation that they had done that we read from 2 Chronicles 36.

Now some people think that the wrath to come that Paul speaks of—this epistle was written about 49 or 50 AD. There was in the year 49 AD a massacre in the temple courts at the Passover of AD 49 in which about 30,000 people are said to have been killed. Others think that the expulsion of Jews from Rome, which also happened in that same year, is the event that Paul is speaking of here.

Another commentator writes that at the time that First Thessalonians was written, the coincidence of troubles for the Jews in so many parts of the world might have been thought to presage the end-time judgment. So, it wasn’t as if there was just one or two things happening. There were lots of things happening like that along this period of time. And indeed, I believe that’s what’s being talked about: the end-time judgment that is talked of in terms of the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.

We’ll look at some passages now about that. First, let’s see. Luke 19. Get your Bibles out. We’re going to go through a survey here of various texts.

Luke 19:41 and following. When he came near—this is talking of Jesus, of course—when he came near, he beheld the city and wept over it, saying, “If thou hast known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace, but now they are hid from thine eyes.”

Then in verse 43: “For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee around, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee, and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another, because thou knowest not the time of thy visitation.”

And he went into the temple, and began to cast out of them that sold therein, and they that bought, saying unto them, “It is written, my house is the house of prayer, but ye have made a den of thieves.”

So here, our savior tells us specifically what’s going to happen to Jerusalem. This is what happened. They were camped about. They were laid siege by the Roman troops for a number of months before the end actually came. And that is true. Not one stone was left upon another. You know, the temple stones—and we’ll read various references to that later. He is talking here definitively about the coming judgment of God in AD 70 upon Jerusalem. Clear historical indicators tell us that. And it’s what’s interesting about this text is he goes from there and he goes in and he cleans out their house, the temple. He drives out those who are selling there.

Now in Matthew 12:41 and following, he talks about how the men of Nineveh—and that is also important. Keep that in mind: Nineveh and jealousy. The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation and shall condemn it because they repented of the preaching of Jonas. And behold, a greater than Jonas is here. The queen of the south shall rise up against judgment with this generation and shall condemn it. For she came from the uttermost parts of the earth through the wisdom of Solomon. Behold, a greater than Solomon is here.

And here’s what he says next. “When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places seeking rest and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out. And when he has come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there. And the last state of the man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also to this wicked generation.”

This wicked generation. He is saying that he was going to go in and cleanse the temple, the house, which he did, drove out the evil spirits, so to speak. But they refused to take that. They refused to fill the house with the proper reverence and piety toward God and to submission to his Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ. Instead, they end up with a temple filled, as it were, with seven times as much wickedness as before.

And leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem AD 70, the temple was the scene of many a battle. And there were various groups in there. At one time, we read Psalm 83 a couple of minutes ago about the Edomites, for instance, toward the beginning of the end, so to speak, when the siege was beginning to have effect. And the other—there were other groups that were there. The Edomites brought an army to Jerusalem. They were let into the temple by the Zealots, believe it or not. Quite an alliance between the Zealots of that time and the Edomites, and they began hacking and slicing throats and rivers of blood ran through the outer court of the temple. Blood was all over the place.

Later that temple was the scene of big lakes of blood from so many people being slaughtered by the Romans themselves. It was a bad deal. And Jesus is saying that’s what happens to you guys, and it’s to this wicked generation that these things are coming.

Remember we said last week that Malachi 4 ends with “to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the children to the fathers, lest I come and smite the nation with a curse.” And that’s what happened. The nation of Israel didn’t return to their father in heaven. He sent their son to the vineyard now and they killed the son too. “Lest I come and smite the nation with the curse.” And so God then came and smote the nation—the curse—in AD 70. Five million Jews are said to have been killed in one day by the Roman emperor when he finally conquered the city. It was terrible.

Okay, next scripture we’re going to look at—and we’re going now go to the outline, Point A—and that was kind of introduction. Point A and the outline: John the Baptist.

**Matthew 3:7-12**

Matthew 3:7-12. John the Baptist. So we might turn to Matthew 3:7-12. And John, the scene here is John is baptizing in the wilderness. And in verse 7 of Matthew 3, he sees many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism. And he says to them, “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”

The wrath to come. That’s what Paul is talking about in 1 Thessalonians. Wrath to the uttermost has come upon you. Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

And then he goes on to this section of scripture which you which you are familiar with, I’m sure. He says, “Don’t think you have Abraham for your father. God can raise up from stones children of Abraham. The axe is already laid at the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that doesn’t bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Verse 12: His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will thoroughly clean his threshing floor. He will gather his wheat into the barn. He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. Burn it with unquenchable fire.”

And indeed, the temple was burned. Even though the Roman emperor didn’t want it burned, it turned out God in his providence had it burned and eventually not one stone is left upon another. John the Baptist is warning the Pharisees, that nation—the leaders of the nation, representatives of it—that wrath is going to come upon them to the uttermost.

**Matthew 21:33-46 — The Vineyard Parable**

Then in the vineyard parable, Matthew 21. Turn to Matthew 21:33-46, and you probably are real familiar with this, but in Matthew 21:33-46 we read the parable of the vineyard. And a man—as of the vineyard—obviously speaking of Israel. And verse 35: “The vine growers took his slaves and beat one and killed another and stoned a third.”

Obvious reference to the stoning and killing and beating and the chastisement of the prophets in the Old Testament times. “He sent another group of slaves larger than the first and they did the same thing to them. But afterward he sent his son to them saying, ‘They will respect my son.’”

But indeed, of course, what do they do? They kill the son as well. Verse 41: “Then said to him… they said to him, ‘He’ll bring those wretches to a wretched end and will cut the vineyard to other vineyard vine growers who will pay him the proceeds at the proper season.’”

And then in verse 43: “Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and be given unto a nation producing the fruit of it. And he who falls on the stone will be broken into pieces, but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust.”

And so the parable of the vineyard is what’s being related to here very directly by Paul, I think, in terms of what the Jews had done. And he’s saying the wrath to the uttermost is the removal of the kingdom from the Jewish nation, which it was accomplished definitively with the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.

And then the reference in verse 44 to the stone—that of course should remind us of the reference from Daniel 2:44-45 that talks about the four kingdoms being set up and the fifth kingdom comes along, a stone cut without human hands, and it grinds to dust the other four kingdoms and the stone then grows to fill the whole earth. The fourth kingdom is the Roman Empire and the fifth kingdom that comes along is Jesus Christ.

And so that stone is the stone that crushes first the Jewish nation and then crushes the fourth kingdom of man, the Roman Empire, and it establishes itself as the kingdom for all time. Then there is no other fifth kingdom. We are in the time of the fifth kingdom now and that’ll go on perpetually.

So the vineyard parable points to the rapid coming destruction, the removal of the kingdom from the Jewish nation. With great wrath and fervor, he’s going to send those wretched men to a wretched end. And now the woes that I referenced earlier:

**Matthew 23:13-39 — The Woes**

Turn to Matthew 23:13-39. And I’ve listed a couple of other references there. There are some there’s a parallel passage in Luke 11. We’ll look at the seven woes in Matthew. And again here, this is where in verse 13, he begins the woes by talking about how they shut off the kingdom of heaven from men. Which Paul refers to, as I said.

Then in the next one, he says, “Woe to you scribes and Pharisees in verse 14. You devour widows houses and then their house is going to be left to them desolate.”

He says at the end of the woes in verse 38, “Your house is going to be left to you desolate.” And that word “desolate” ties back to the concept of widows houses back in verse 14. But any event, in the context of this, he gets down to verse 32.

Well, let’s see, verse 29. “Woe to you scribes and Pharisees hypocrites, for you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, and saying, if we had been living in the days of our fathers, we wouldn’t have been partners with them in shedding the blood of the prophets. Consequently, you bear witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murder the prophets. Fill up then the measure of the guilt of your fathers, you serpents, you brood of vipers, how shall you escape the sentence of hell?

Therefore, behold, I’m sending you prophets and wise men and scribes. Some of them you will kill and crucify. Some you will scourge in your synagogues, persecute from city to city, that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zachariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Truly I say to you, all these things shall come upon this generation.

Very emphatic: this generation. “Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her. How often I wanted to gather your children together the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you are unwilling. Behold, your house is being left you desolate. For I say to you, from now on, you shall not see me until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

Our Savior tells in this final benediction, or malediction rather—this pronouncement of woe and cursing upon the Pharisees. He tells them that they’re going to fill up the guilt of their forefathers who killed the prophets. And as a result of that, all judgment for the blood that’s been shed by all the Jewish people for 4,000 years is going to come upon their head. That’s what he tells us here. They’re going to fill up the sin and all that blood will be upon their heads then. And indeed, in Matthew 27:25, incredible as it may seem, when Pilate is talking to the people about crucifying Jesus and he wants to wash his hands of what’s going on, the people—the Jewish nation—answers to Pilate and said, “His blood be on us and on our children.”

In confirmation of this very statement of woe by Jesus, the blood for Jesus. And you know, if you’ll go through this period here when he says in verse 34, “I’m sending you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of them you will kill and cruel and crucify.” If you go through that list, that’s just what happens in the book of Acts. They kill some. They drive others out. They’re filling up their cup, having killed the Lord Jesus as their preeminent action, but continuing to persecute the church.

And this particular list of woes immediately precedes Matthew 24, which we’ll now turn to, where the temple destruction itself is foretold specifically by our savior.

Now, there are parallel responses to this as well and it would be good to look at each of them, but we don’t have the time. But suffice it to say that in Luke 21—rather, don’t turn there—turn to the Matthew 24 passage. Stay there. But in Luke 21, the question asked of him. They say, “Teacher, when will these things be and what will be the sign when these things are about to take place?” And what he’s talking about—he says, “You’re looking at the temple. One stone will not be left upon another.” And they say, “When will these things happen? When’ll be the time when these things occur?”

And then he goes into the same essential discourse as we read in Matthew 24. Well, the importance of that is that he’s answering the question to them of when is this temple going to be destroyed? And his entire answer is an answer to that question of the destruction of the temple. Okay.

Now, in Matthew 24, the question is stated a little bit differently. In Matthew 24:3, they ask: “Tell us when will these things be and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” Remember we said—keep in mind “the rulers of the age”—of the one who crucified Jesus Christ—when will the end of this age be? Same concept. When will what will be the sign of your coming? We’ll talk about that in a couple of minutes. But it’s essentially the same question. These two accounts put in parallel—version one to the other—shows I think that the presupposition is that what’s being asked here is the same thing that’s being asked over in Luke.

The question is not about something way off in the future. It’s about when is this temple going to be brought down? When will wrath to the uttermost come upon this Jewish nation? And he proceeds to answer them then. And he tells them in verse 9: “They’ll deliver you up to tribulation and shall kill you and you’ll be hated by all nations on account of my name.”

Well, that’s what we’re talking about—persecution of the church. That’s what Paul relates to the coming of the wrath of the uttermost. He pronounces some woes and then in verse 21: “There’ll be a great tribulation such as not occurred until the beginning of the world and now or ever shall be.” But again, he’s answering the question of when are these things going to happen.

Then he says—he goes on to talk about the coming of the son of man in verse 27. Verse 29: “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun shall be darkened, the moon shall not give it’s light and the stars shall fall from the sky.”

And we’ll go back to that in just a couple of minutes, but that’s some verses that could be somewhat troubling for some of you. I want to go back to that in a couple of minutes. Verses 28-31. But then 33 says, “Even as you know, when you see all these things, recognize he is near, right at the door. Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.”

Lot of verbal gymnastics or linguistic gymnastics trying to make a generation something other than what it clearly is here and is throughout the scriptures. In the New Testament, a generation means somebody alive right now.