By Your Endurance You Will Gain Your Lives

as a Christian. And part of the reason we need our faith to be strengthened is because it's difficult to live as a Christian. There are things that are just simply hard. There are things that are discouraging. Our burdens get heavy, can be scary at times. And we understand that what we need is faith to trust God in the midst of these difficulties, these trials, these burdens that we're carrying, if it's his will not to remove them from us in this time. And so then the question becomes not, does our faith need to be strengthened, but how do we go about strengthening our faith? How do we seek it? Or rather, how do we think that God will strengthen our faith? Do we think that he's just going to leave us out to struggle and fumble around and fall down and fail? Or do we think that he actually will give us grace and increase our faith to those of us who ask so that we can bear up under every burden that we have in this life?

How do we expect God to do that? How has he revealed that he will do that? Well, this morning we're going to be looking at that question and answering it. And I want to tell you from the very beginning, our faith is strengthened the same way that our body is strengthened. So if you wanted to get stronger, what would you do? You'd exercise. And there's all kinds of different exercises you could do. But if we boil it down, exercising and strengthening your bodies down to its very essence, what you're doing is you're struggling against resistance. That's what running is. That's what lifting weights is. That's what swimming is. You're struggling. You're making your body do things, and there's a bit of resistance that you're having to deal with. And as you get used to dealing with that resistance, you're able to do that process with more resistance. That's how you get stronger. And so the way that we strengthen our faith, the way that God strengthens our faith, is in this same way. And so in our text this morning, Jesus is in conversation, talking to his disciples. He hears them talking about something, and he interjects.

For the sake of strengthening their faith, preparing them for what's coming ahead. Now, there's this weird paradox when it comes to strengthening faith. Because I said already, I said, you know, the way we strengthen our faith is the same way we strengthen our bodies. And we go, that makes, I suppose that makes sense. But when the rubber meets the road and we come into our actual lives, and we're talking about our faith actually being strengthened, realizing that we're struggling or we're weak or we have an area we need to grow in, we don't often want... more resistance than what we've been facing. Or we don't want to struggle against the resistance we're already facing. What we want is to be able to back off, recoil, circle the wagons of our lives, so to speak, and hope that we will be strengthened by doing that, by hunkering down. And in our text this morning, what we're going to see is that Jesus, in preparing his people, he tells them of what difficulty they're going to face. And it's terrible the difficulty they're going to face.

The sort of mistreatment that they're going to endure and even be put to death. But he tells them at the very end of it, that through all of their struggles and all of their burdens and all of the trials and even the death that some of them are going to face, that it's in this way that they're going to receive eternal life. This is what's going to bring them to their happy end. The end that we all want. So that's the goal this morning. That's what we're going to be discussing. I'd like to read to you now. our scripture passage, would you please stand for the reading of God's word? We're going to be studying Luke chapter 21, verses 5 through 19. This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. And while some were talking about the temple, that it was adorned with beautiful stones and votive gifts, he said, as for these things which you are looking at, the days will come in which there will not be left one stone upon another which will not be torn down. They questioned him, saying, teacher, when therefore will these things happen?

And what will be the sign when these things are about to take place? And he said, And there will be great earthquakes and in various places plagues and famines. And there will be terror and great signs from heaven. But before all these things, they will lay their hands on you and will persecute you, delivering you to the synagogues and prisons, bringing you before kings and governors for my namesake. It will lead to an opportunity for your testimony. So make up your minds not to prepare beforehand to defend yourselves. For I will give you utterance and wisdom which none of your opponents will be able to resist or refute. But you will be betrayed even by parents and brothers and relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death. And you will be hated by all because of my name. Yet not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance, you will gain your lives. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. So we cut into our text.

where the disciples are discussing the temple. They're looking at it, they're around it, and they're admiring the beauty of it and the glory of it. And the temple was the place that God had commanded to be built where he would dwell at among his people. It was the high place. It was the place where God interacted with and did business with his people. And they loved it and they delighted in it. And it wasn't a tent or a shack. It was this glorious building. And so this is what the disciples are commenting on, how beautiful it is, how much wealth there is in it. And Jesus interjects and he inserts himself. While they were talking about the temple and how it was ordained with beautiful stones and votive gifts, Jesus said, as for these things which you are looking at, this building, this temple, the days will come when there will not be left one stone upon another which will not be torn down. Now this would be quite a shock to them.

Because this temple represents the power and the glory of their God that he's commanded them to build. And in their minds, that temple cannot, would not be destroyed until the world was done, until it was over. This is why they ask him, what's going to be the sign? How are we going to know when the end is near? Because they couldn't conceive of this temple being destroyed, this temple being torn down. Now this was quite a shock to their system. Quite a shock to their system. And I want to note to you something that I've said already. This was his disciples that he was talking to. And the reason we know it's his disciples is because of how they responded to what he said. He told them the temple is going to be torn down. It's going to be destroyed in such a way that there's not going to be one stone sitting on top of each other. And what was their response? There was no questioning of what he said. They simply accepted that that was going to happen and said, tell us what to be on the lookout for. Tell us how to prepare.

And this is how God's people respond to what God has to say. When will these things happen? And what will the sign be when these things are about to take place? And what you would expect with this sort of question is Jesus to enter into saying, okay, here's what's going to happen. This terrible calamity is about to come. Here's what's going to happen first. But note the first thing he says to them. In answer to their question, he says to them, see to it that you are not misled. Now, who's going to snooker them? Who's going to trick them? Who's going to mislead them? Well, it's going to be men who are saying, I am he. Who is he? What's that? Well, the Messiah. The one who's going to reconcile all things to himself.

I want to give you an analogy to help understand what's going on here because I think it'll make more sense after I explain the analogy to you. Have you ever looked down a fence row? A row of fence posts and all you see is one post? Now, is there only one post? No, there's lots of posts. Now, why can't you see all the rest of them? Well, it's because they're behind the other post, right? If you were to take a big step to the side and look, all of a sudden you'd see all the posts. But when you stand right in line with them, Your perspective is such that you see everything all at once because you don't see the time or the space in between them. And so what's going on in this text is there's a lot of things in history that all seem to be right on top of each other, all seem to be as one. And we're going to go into this a little bit more next week when Jesus opens this up a little more. But for now, what I want you to see is that there's lots of things going on in here. So one of the things that's going on,

that the disciples are aware of is that God was always going to send a Messiah to earth. And this Messiah was going to save his people. He was going to set them free from bondage. He was going to reconcile everything. And so the disciples, and then after all of that happened, it was all going to be over. Everything was going to be done. And so the disciples have misunderstood Jesus coming to earth. You've now come to earth. You are the Messiah. Everything that's ever been promised is going to happen while you're here. They see everything in one line, in one event. But as we step to the side and we can look back on history, they're looking forward. As we look back on history, we can see that there were a number of things that were going on that were going to happen at different times. When Jesus came to earth here, what he came to do was inaugurate or begin.

or establish his kingdom on earth. And then he goes away. He goes back to heaven, right? And his kingdom, he leaves his disciples with work to do, go and make disciples of all the nations and cause the gospel to go to every corner of the earth. That's your work to do while I'm away. And when I come back, then everything's going to be consummated. Everything's going to be tied up. Everything's going to be finished. And so there's this interim time between Jesus' first coming, and Jesus' second coming. And yet Jesus tells the disciples that this temple that God has commanded them to build, that he's promised to dwell in, is about to be destroyed. And so when I said to you at the beginning, they understood this to mean that it was going to be the end of the world. It's because they didn't see the space or the time. They didn't understand what was to happen in the interim. And yet we know, looking back, that the temple was destroyed a few short decades after this.

The Romans laid it to waste. They destroyed it when they sacked Jerusalem in 70 AD. Jesus died in 33 AD. So just 47 years later, if I did my math right, the Romans who were occupying Jerusalem, they came in and they razed the city. And what that means is they came in and they destroyed it. They wiped everything out. There was nothing left. And that's when the temple was destroyed. And so that's yet another thing between Jesus' birth and his second coming. there's a point at which the temple is destroyed. And Jesus says to the people, these things have to happen first. They must take place, but the end does not follow immediately. And so he, in a veiled way, in an immature way, in a way that they would be able to understand, he says to them, everything's not going to happen the way that you think it is. But he doesn't sit down and get out a chart and say, well, it's going to be like this, and it's going to be this long, and these are the things that are going to happen. He doesn't foretell the future history.

Of the development of the kingdom. He simply tells them, these things have to happen first, but the end's not coming immediately. And what he's telling them is, you're going to be alive, you're going to live in a time between my first coming, after the temple's destroyed, and before I return. And then he goes on to tell them what that time is going to be like. He starts off with physical things and what is going to go on in the world. And he says that there's going to be wars, there's going to be rumors of wars, there's going to be... Kingdoms rising up against kingdoms. There's going to be famines. There's going to be plagues. None of this is good, right? Do you want to live in a war-torn, plagued famine land? Nobody wants to live in that. That would be a very difficult time and place to live. And so what he's telling them is there are very difficult times coming. Very difficult times coming. And those times came. And in some senses, we're still seeing those times. We're still seeing the wars and the plagues and the famines. These things are still being...

still being worked out. Now, if you lived in a time like that, what would you want? What would you want to happen? If you're like me, what you'd want to happen is for it to end. You'd want the difficulty and the hardship to stop, to go away. You'd want there to be peace. And this is why Jesus tells them, don't be misled. Don't be misled by these men who are going to come and claim to be the Messiah, who are going to bring everything to its end. Don't be misled by them. What he's dealing with is the desire of his people to want out of the conflict, to want out of the difficulty, to want out of having to live by faith. So were there men who did this, who came along and tried to take away disciples after them? Yeah, there were. There were guys that came before Jesus was born who claimed. And there are guys who came afterwards and said, I'm he. And the message to them and to us is to be discerning.

Now, we could look back and we could say, well, they were a bunch of idiots. They didn't understand. They weren't sure about this sort of stuff the way we are. And so I want to ask you, do we still have people coming around today saying, I am he. I can tell you when it's all going to end. Oh, yeah. How many of you guys have heard of Harold Camping? Anyone know who Harold Camping is? You probably have to be, I was going to say over 40, but he passed away a couple of years ago. But he was a... A man who made his life predicting when the end was coming. Wrote books, had a radio broadcast, and he was dead set that the world was going to end in 1994. Wrote a book about it. 1994 came, 1994 went. Nothing happened. And he says, well, I misunderstood the revelation to me. I got a new date. It's going to happen May 2011.

And everyone was preparing and everybody was getting ready. All these people were following him. He had a huge following. He had a radio show. Everyone's following him. May 21st, 2011 comes. And then came May 22nd, 2011, you know. And he's wrong again. And so then he comes out and he says, well, there was a spiritual end of all things. But the real end of all things, that's coming in six months. And so he's just stringing this out. I mean, I'm looking at it saying he's just stringing this thing out. He is a fool. He is misled. He says all of his timelines and all of this stuff comes from Scripture. It's all hidden in Daniel and Revelations and all of this apocalyptic portions of Scripture. He's worked out this whole timeline. Well, October 21st came and October 21st went. No end of the world. And he's just one example. If you read about him, you would see what he was like.

He was absolutely opposed to the church. He was not a member of a church, refused to it, said that all churches are going to apostatize, so you should have nothing to do with them. You should just read your Bible by yourself, which is how he got to where he was. Now, am I telling you you shouldn't read your Bibles? No, but I'm telling you you shouldn't do it alone. You should realize that you don't have all of the wisdom and some special gift that nobody else has. Plenty of men have been raised up by God to... to understand and to teach us what scripture says. And when we have questions, we ask them. We don't go about reinventing the wheel. And so you ought to read scripture, but with an understanding of your own limitations. This is what Harold Camping lacked. Do we still have men today whose whole ministry, if you will, is based on when the end's going to come and what you need to do to prepare and how much money you need to send them along the way? Oh yeah.

There's huge swaths of Christianity that still are obsessed with when is the end coming and what are the signs going to be? And we're trying to map it all out. And I'm here to tell you simply, that's not what you're supposed to be doing as a Christian. That is not your concern. Not primarily. If that was our concern, Jesus could have made it very clear to us what it was that we were supposed to look for and watch out. He could have been as specific as he needed to be. And what he did in his wisdom was tell us, Be on guard not to be misled. And effectively what he's telling us is you're weak and your desire to get out of the difficulty and the hardship that's in this world is going to arise. Be on guard not to be misled away from me and your desire to be free from the pain, from the difficulty, from the hardship. So he starts off, you'll remember I said that in his answer to his question, the first thing he does is he warns them, don't be misled. Then he tells them about the difficulties that are going to be

going on in the world. Wars, rumors of wars, famines, plagues, and all the rest. Then he comes to them and he says, and here's what life is going to be like for you. In verse 10, it says, he continued saying to them, nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. There'll be great earthquakes and in various places, plagues and famines, and there will be terrors and great signs from heaven. And then in 12, he says, but before all of these things, these terrible things, these catastrophic things, before all of these things, they will lay their hands on you. and persecute you, delivering you to the synagogues and prisons, bringing you before kings and governors for my namesake. And so what is he telling his people about what's going to happen to them? In one sense, you could say he's telling them, you're going to have it the worst of all. You're not going to be the ones in power. You're not going to be the ones calling the shots. You're going to be the weak, the oppressed, the persecuted. Some of you are going to be put to death for my namesake. They're going to haul you in before kings and before governors.

Because of me, that's what's going to come to you. Now, why would Jesus tell them this? Who wants to, I mean, which of us wants to be told, you know, we all kind of want to know the future, but we all presume it's going to be good. We don't want to know the future if it's going to be bad. If you said, well, when am I going to die? And I said, if you could be told, you're going to die in two weeks. Who's ever happy about that news? No one ever wants to know that. We'd love to be told, you're going to live a good long life and you're going to die in 70 years.

Okay, I can, yeah, that's a great promise. That's a good thing. But when it's bad news, we'd rather stay in the dark. We'd rather not be told. And yet the temple is torn down just a few decades after Jesus says this. And before that, there was a great persecution in Jerusalem, carried out by the Jews against the Christians, such that the Christians were all chased out of the city, scattered out of Jerusalem. Have you ever seen a grease fire with water thrown on it? And how it just is everywhere. If you could think of Jerusalem as the grease fire, the pan, that persecution is like the water that hit it. And the Christians went, and they got out of the city. Now, was that a good thing or a bad thing? And the answer is yes, right? Abram knows, been around long enough. The answer is yes. It was a bad thing in that many of them were put to death. And many of them endured exactly what Jesus told them they were going to endure. But what did they avoid?

They avoided when Rome was sacked, when it was destroyed. And we're going to look at that next week. When Jesus says things like, woe to those who are pregnant and nursing babes in those days. Because the Romans didn't discriminate. They simply leveled the city and the people that were in it. And what that persecution did, while many Christians were put to death, what it did was get the rest of them out of there before God finally unleashed his wrath and his fury on their wickedness and their disobedience. He got his people out of there. And so it was a difficult thing, a hard thing, and it was a good thing, and it was a kindness. And it's what initially started the spread of the gospel outside of that area. They were chased out of that area and chased far away, and so they had to go live other places. Well, they took the gospel with them. And then you start seeing the gospel growing and planting and coming to life in new lands because they were fleeing persecution. Now, there's a really interesting thing coming up in our text.

Verse 13 tells us that, is it verse 12 or 13? It tells us that we're going to, when we get dragged in before the, when they get dragged in before these kings and these governors, he tells them that they're going to have what? An opportunity. He's teaching them what they're, how they're supposed to view this hardship. Because if we were in their shoes being told, listen, it's going to get bad. I mean, to the point of death bad. What Jesus says to them is, yes, that's going to happen, and it's going to serve as an opportunity for you, for your testimony. It will lead to an opportunity. To do what? To give glory to God. To speak to men in high places about who God is and what he's done. That's what they were going to do. Now, if you were told that you were going to go through all of this, and you were going to be drug in before the ruling elite who could put you to death,

Would you not want to prepare what you were going to say and what you were going to do? Did you catch when I read this what he says in the next verse? So make up your minds not to prepare beforehand. It's one of these sentences where one word completely changes the meaning. And when I read it, what I want to do is just skip over that word not. So make sure to prepare beforehand. That's what I want to think. That's what I think we should do. And what he says is, So make up your minds not to prepare beforehand. Not to prepare for what? Not to prepare for this persecution. Not to prepare what you're going to say. Not to try to get out of it. Because isn't that what our preparation would amount to? How do I get out of it? How can I avoid it? I will have prepared sufficiently when I can rest assured that I'll never face those sorts of consequences.

And this is what Jesus is telling them not to do. Decide now beforehand that you're not going to prepare to avoid persecution. For I will give you utterance and wisdom, which none of your opponents will be able to resist or refute. In that very hour, when I've brought you to the place that I'm telling you about, I'll be with you and I'll provide for you. everything you need, and in such a way that those who hate you and those who end up killing you won't do it because you couldn't give a good answer. He doesn't say they won't kill them, but he says they won't be able to resist or refute. They won't be able to deny. Even as they pursue their wicked ends, they won't be able to deny the truth of who you are and what you've said. So are we supposed to look out into the future, see difficult times coming, position ourselves in such a way that it all just goes right on by us without us being affected by it? The answer is no. To do that is to put your light under a bushel. It's a natural desire to avoid conflict, to avoid persecution, difficulty, pain. These are natural things that we have. And so Jesus cautions his disciples and us not to make our lives, not to make the orderly principle of our lives, to avoid suffering for his namesake.

And if this all was not difficult enough pill to swallow, he comes further and he says, you will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, relatives and friends. They'll put some of you to death and you will be hated by all because of my name. So even the people who are closest to you, your family, your friends, your spouse, your children, these are the people who will betray them. This is what he's telling them. There's no way around it. The people, you know, who can you trust? Can you trust the people that have your blood? In their veins, can you trust them? Is the goal to isolate you and to get you to not trust anybody? No, the goal is to get you to trust God. The goal is to get you to trust God in the most difficult of situations that you face. So what is the purpose of all of these warnings, these difficult warnings, these scary warnings? Well, it's meant to prepare his people for what lies ahead. Proverbs 9, 9 and 10 says, give instruction to a wise man and he will be still wiser.

Teach a righteous man and he will increase his learning. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. And so as difficult as what Jesus has to say to his disciples is at this point, he's doing it out of love to prepare them for what's coming so that they wouldn't be caught flat-footed not knowing what it meant to follow him. We're told all through Scripture to count the cost and to see the hardship and the difficulty that God's people have endured in this world. And it would be a disservice if I were not to tell you that you're going to face these same things in some capacity, some of you greater, some of you lesser. But all of you who desire to live godly lives in Christ Jesus will be persecuted in some manner, in some fashion, and some of you are being already. And I would do you a disservice to tell you otherwise.

I would do you a disservice to not tell you that it can get much worse than it is right now. And that for some of you, it will get much worse than it is right now. And are not these difficulties and these persecutions and these trials that we live under and that we endure the things that we need to grow in faith about? Are these not the very things? And so the kindness of Jesus in coming to us and telling us, here's what the road ahead looks like. Here's what it may look like for you. He's done it out of his mercy and his love and his compassion for you so that you wouldn't be put off when the hard times come. So there's been lots and lots of difficulty, lots of hardship in the text thus far. Now, when you read things or when you write things, where do you put the most important point when you're writing something? You leave it at the end because you want them to remember it. And so I want you to pay attention, very close attention to verse 18 and 19.

This is the end. This is what Jesus ends with after he's told them all of this pain and all of this difficulty and all of this hardship, even unto death. This is what he ends with. Not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance, you will gain your lives. While we suffer, and some will be called to give their lives, he tells his disciples that even in all of that, they will be the victors. They will be the ones who come out on top. They will be the ones who are satisfied and who are happy. in the end, and who will receive their reward. You have to ask, why did they follow Jesus? Why did all of these people follow him? What did they want? What was in it for them? Undoubtedly, some people came after Jesus because they were simply sick and they wanted to be healed. And many people that we have no indication ended up becoming Christians, he did heal them. He was merciful to them. But what did the people want?

who followed Jesus, what did the disciples expect? Why would there be any reason to endure the sort of mistreatment that he was laying out for them? Well, their hope was not in this world. And they were willing to endure whatever came their way in this world by faith so that they would receive something far greater and far better. And this is what Jesus ends with. Not a hair on your head will perish, though your head may be separated from your body. That's the implication here. By your endurance, you will gain your lives. By your endurance and faith, by your continual growth and pursuit of holiness, you'll gain your life. You'll gain eternal life. It's not something that happens like that. To be a Christian means to live by faith, and it means to live by faith in every circumstance that you end up in. There is no circumstance that the Lord will bring you into or allow into your life where it is not possible or appropriate for you to live by faith. That there is a reward great enough and joy big enough to endure it. There's nothing that can happen to you in this world that outweighs the reward of eternal life. And that is the message that Jesus is telling his people. Now, if I had skipped all of the hardship and all of the difficulty and I had just said to you, heaven's worth it.

Whatever you're going to go through, whatever hardships you face, heaven's going to be worth it. We'd all be like, yeah, that's good. Okay, I'm glad. But it would not be nearly as helpful to you as being told, here's the hardships that you can face. And at those points, it's still worth it. That's what it means to be a Christian. I want to read to you two verses from Mark, where Jesus is talking to his disciples. And he's telling them about persecution and what it's going to be like and their reward and what it's going to be like. And so he says to them in Mark 10, 29 and 30, he says, truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brother or sister or mother or father or children or farms for my sake and for the gospel's sake, but that he will receive a hundred times as much now in the present age. So what's he telling us? Well, those of you who've sacrificed for my sake are going to receive in this life back all the things that you've given up, like Job did.

but that he will receive 100 times as much now in the present age, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms, along with persecutions. Thrown in the list of all the good stuff. Along with persecutions. And in the age to come, eternal life. And so Jesus' goal and his purpose with us is to be honest with us. To be helpful to us. To tell us how it actually is. And how it's all going to end. So that we would be able to prepare. In an appropriate way, I suppose I should say. But prepare in such a way that's not to avoid the conflict, but prepare for faithfulness in the conflict. That's the kind of preparation that's appropriate. And so if your faith needs to be strengthened and you go, life's hard and I need to grow in faith about the things that are going on in my life and I don't know that it's worth it, I want to tell you it is worth it. And if you decide in your heart that it's not worth it, you're giving up far more than you anticipate. Don't do it.

fixing your minds ahead of time to live by faith and to process that whatever comes to you in your life, wherever it comes from, from the people who are closest to you, to strangers, that you will live by faith, that you will trust God, and that you will not make it your life's goal to save your life, but rather that you'll lose it for the sake of Jesus. Because he tells us that those are the ones who will receive life, who will have life. By your endurance, you'll gain your lives. We ought to live that way and not shy away from the difficulties and the hardships that come our way. Let's pray.