1 As Jesus was leaving the Temple, one of his followers said to him, “Look, Teacher! How beautiful the buildings are! How big the stones are!” 2 Jesus said, “Do you see all these great buildings? Not one stone will be left on another. Every stone will be thrown down to the ground.” 3 Later, as Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, opposite the Temple, he was alone with Peter, James, John, and Andrew. They asked Jesus, 4 “Tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are going to happen?” 5 Jesus began to answer them, “Be careful that no one fools you." (Mark 13:1-5)
Today, we transition into Mark 13 where the main theme is the teaching of the Lord Jesus on the End Times. This chapter begins with the temple. You see, I find it very interesting to discover that the Lord Jesus Himself never entered the temple itself. He only went into the outer court. Only selected priests were allowed into the temple sanctuary. And only the High Priest, once a year on the Day of Atonement, could go into the Holy of Holies in the inner sanctuary of the temple.
The temple that existed when the Lord Jesus walked this earth was called the "second temple" because the "first temple," which had been built by Solomon, was completely destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC when they overthrew the kingdom of Judah and took the remaining Jews captive. After almost 60 years in captivity the Persian Emperor Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple, led by a man named Zerubbabel. For this reason the second temple was also sometimes called “Zerubbabel’s Temple” because he was the one who began its construction.
In v.1 of today's passage we read, "As Jesus was leaving the Temple, one of his followers said to him, 'Look, Teacher! How beautiful the buildings are! How big the stones are!'"
Mark 13 is the longest section in Mark where the Lord Jesus preached a sermon. We call it the Olivet Discourse. The whole chapter is the message of the Lord Jesus on the Mount of Olives speaking about the End Times.
One of the disciples, as they were leaving the temple, spoke of how big and beautiful the temple was. Right was that disciple about the temple for the temple complex was one-fifth of the total landmass of the city of ancient Jerusalem. The temple of their day covered thirty-six acres. It took eighty thousand laborers over eighty years to build the temple. The pinnacle of the temple or the southeast corner down to the Kidron Valley was 158 feet tall. It was huge.
In v.2 of today's passage we read, "Jesus said, “Do you see all these great buildings? Not one stone will be left on another. Every stone will be thrown down to the ground."
In response to the disciples statement about the temple, the Lord Jesus weaved together a near prediction of the destruction of the temple that happened in 70 AD, and, a far off prediction about the end of the world, the coming of the Antichrist, the great tribulation, all of the happenings on earth written in the book of Revelation. The Lord Jesus did this because these disciples were not thinking in terms of 2,000 years later, they were thinking in terms of like a week or a month from then. But, it is obvious that the Lord Jesus anticipated and knew there was going to be quite a length of time between the now at that time and the then that would come at the end of the world.
The Jews believed that the existence of the temple in Jerusalem was the evidence of God's blessing upon the nation. But, the Lord Jesus said these stones, as great as they were, will be cast down, and the temple would be destroyed. His answer bothered Peter, James, John and Andrew, who later went to Him inquiring when will be the sign of these End Times.
In v.3-4 of today's passage we read, "3 Later, as Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, opposite the Temple, he was alone with Peter, James, John, and Andrew. They asked Jesus, 4 “Tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are going to happen?"
The disciples had been with the Lord Jesus for three Passovers, and, for them to think that the dwelling place of God, the temple, was no longer going to be, it was difficult for them to believe and accept. In order to understand this passage, here in Mark 13, we must read Matthew 24-25 and Luke 21. God determined that each of the gospel writers would select certain things he wanted to emphasize. This was the Lord's way of giving us a more complete understanding of what the Lord Jesus taught that day.
Matthew makes a great deal over what happened to Israel. Luke is the only one who tells us of the fall of Jerusalem, and the subsequent captivity of the Jews and domination of the city by the Gentiles. Mark is the one who emphasizes the danger to faith which is going to arise in the age which follows the crucifixion and resurrection of the Lord.
In v.5 of today's passage we read, "Jesus began to answer them, “Be careful that no one fools you."
The phrase "be careful" is the Greek means to see or to be very aware of or literally "stay awake." The word the Lord Jesus used for "fools" means to deceive or to cause to wander away from. The Lord Jesus was saying, "Deception will mark history, beware of it."
As I am sure that you know, there is the law of motion that says, "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction." There's also that same law in the spiritual realm: every divine action brings an opposite satanic reaction. If there's truth, there's going to be lies. If there's veracity, there's going to be deception.
We must be so attentive to the word of God that the deceptive powers of the enemy, which are increasingly great, must not distract us from the Lord Himself. In today's passage, the Lord Jesus was training the disciples to think like He. This is always the beginning point of every believer's sanctification. You will remember that justification is a one time event. It is when we were made right with God by believing that His Son's death on the cross paid the penalty for our sin. Sanctification, on the other hand, is the process whereby God is changing us from the inside out, and He starts this process by correcting the way we think. It is through the process of sanctification that God imparts to us His culture and wisdom which enables us to recognize the deception of the enemy.
The disciples had long been taught wrongly to value the wrong thing, in this case the temple. You see, the value of the temple was who was inside it, the LORD Himself. He is to be our first love. He is to be our first God before all others. So, today, we do well to lay down our lives before Him, and, in so doing we do well to value nothing more than we do Him for that which we value the most will define us.
