10.27.24 Mark 13:5–11 (EHV)
5 Jesus began by telling them, “Be careful that no one deceives you. 6 Many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am he,’ and will deceive many. . . . These are the beginning of birth pains. 9 But be on your guard! People will hand you over to councils, and you will be beaten in synagogues. You will stand in the presence of rulers and kings for my sake as a witness to them. 10 And the gospel must first be preached to all the nations. 11 Whenever they arrest you and hand you over, do not worry beforehand what you should say. Say whatever is given to you in that hour, because you will not be the ones speaking; instead it will be the Holy Spirit.
Chapter 13 of Mark starts out by the disciples mentioning to Jesus how marvelous the buildings were in Jerusalem, having been built by Herod the Great. When I was in Jerusalem I was definitely impressed by the sheer size of the foundation stones. Some of them weighed more than a 737 jet, but they were precisely cut, transported, and put in place thousands of years ago! There are still modern marvels made yet today. Take a walk in downtown New York and you can’t help but stand in awe of the sheer size of the structures that are being built. When the World Trade Center was built, the twin towers were the tallest ever made. The architect was a man by the name of Minoru Yamasaki. He said, “The World Trade Center is a living symbol of man's dedication to world peace... a representation of man's belief in humanity, his need for individual dignity, his beliefs in the cooperation of men, and, through cooperation, his ability to find greatness.”
But what happened to the Twin Towers? And what happened to the buildings of Jesus’ day? They were torn down by men. When humanity likes to glow in her accomplishments, it is humanity that ends up tearing her accomplishments back down to earth. And that’s what Jesus said would happen, all as precursors to the time that God Himself tears the world down and burns it up on Judgment Day. It’s coming, people! And God wants you to be ready for it! Jesus didn’t tell the disciples and He doesn’t tell us WHEN. But He did give us certain markers and signs along the road that would tell us that the end was nearer every day. They would be painful signs, like the pain a woman feels when she knows she’s going to give birth. They become more frequent and painful as the time grows nearer. But in the end,
The Birth Pains Are Worth It
There are so many painful signs that you can find through Mark 13, and it would be nice to cover all of them in depth, but we just can’t. Let’s at least look at the first one today. Be careful that no one deceives you. Many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am he,’ and will deceive many. That’s quite the bold thing to say, to claim to be Jesus, the great I AM. Yet that is what Luther was dealing with hundreds of years ago. One of the most prominent deceptions was the teaching that you could buy an indulgence so that you wouldn’t have to suffer so much in purgatory. As Luther started to challenge this teaching, he was basically told to submit and be quiet to what his superiors said, which led ultimately to the Pope himself. He couldn’t help but notice how much power that was being given to the Pope, and how that power was being abused.
According to the Catholic Catechism it says, “The Pope enjoys, by divine institution, "supreme, full, immediate, and universal power in the care of souls." That’s a lot of power for one man to be given, to be told that he stands in the place of Christ, as if he himself were Jesus on earth. Isn’t that claiming “I am He?” It was scary for Luther to think that his own Pope was leading him astray, but he was so conscience bound by the abuses in the church and the false teachings that he had to speak up.
It hasn’t gotten any better. Did you see that just last month Pope Francis said, "All religions are paths to reach God. They are, to make a comparison, like different languages, different dialects, to get there. But God is God for everyone. If you start to fight saying 'my religion is more important than yours, mine is true and yours isn't, where will this lead us? There is only one God, and each of us has a language to arrive at God. Some are Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, Christians; they are different ways to God." Muslims openly reject that Jesus is God or that He even died on the cross. How can you say such teachings lead to God, without Jesus? Yet the Pope said that doesn’t ultimately matter. I wonder sadly how many Catholics are being led astray by their own Pope? Thankfully there are some Catholics who are rightfully speaking out against their own head of their church who is deceiving his own people with this blatantly false teaching.
Now as Lutherans most of us don’t follow what the Pope is saying and we don’t really care. More dangerous to us is the pope we have within. In modern day Christianity it is common for people to despise authority and listen to no one. So what happens? Everyone becomes a pope to himself. They seek the answer within themselves, but the answer usually ends up being what feels right and what isn’t painful or difficult. Sometimes God calls on you to do difficult things. Withhold from sex outside of marriage. Budget your spending so you can give properly. Take time and effort to spend time with your spouse. Be forgiving and patient with them. Pray for those who are being mean to you. But the pope within makes excuses to sin and whitewashes these demands with God talk. It says, “God wants me to be happy.” Or it says, “I can’t do that. It’s not practical. I prayed about it. You just don’t understand. It’s complicated.” The pope within is full of self serving lies.
When Luther protested some of the teachings and practices in the church, people said to him, “These things have been taught and practiced in the Catholic Church for hundreds of years. Are you smarter than the Church? Who do you think you are?” And Luther worried about that. He didn’t want to be his own pope, so to speak. But when he studied Church history he noticed that there were contradictions in what the church said at one time versus what they said a hundred years later. For instance, it used to be perfectly fine for priests to marry. Peter himself, who was supposed to be the first pope, was married. But in his time they had said that priests couldn’t marry. Why did it become wrong when it wasn’t always wrong? How could church councils be trusted if they contradicted themselves?
The major thing that led Luther to nail the 95 Theses was his study of Scriptures. He had been assigned to be a professor of theology at the University of Wittenberg. This enabled him to dig into the Bible like never before. It wasn’t about what HE had to say, but what GOD had to say. Luther taught books like the Psalms and Romans, and what he noticed was how Christ centered they were. They didn’t direct us to pray to saints. They didn’t point to what kind of works and sacrifices we had to make in order to be saved. They pointed to Christ crucified for sins. They stated how we are saved through faith in Jesus, not by works. It was very clear, especially in the book of Romans. Think of Romans 3, for instance. It says, “But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” Yet Catholicism was pushing purgatory and prayers to saints and laying out works and offerings and prayers for Catholics to make in order to get right with God. It just wasn’t adding up. It wasn’t found anywhere in the Bible.
His 55th Theses states: It is certainly the pope's sentiment that if indulgences, which are a very insignificant thing, are celebrated with one bell, one procession, and one ceremony, then the gospel, which is the very greatest thing, should be preached with a hundred bells, a hundred processions, a hundred ceremonies.
His 82nd Theses states: `Why doesn’t the pope empty purgatory for the sake of holy love and the dire need of the souls that are there if he redeems an infinite number of souls for the sake of miserable money with which to build a church?'' The former reason would be most just; the latter is most trivial.
He then concluded the last two Theses 94 and 95 with this -
Christians should be exhorted to be diligent in following Christ, their Head, through penalties, death and hell.
And thus be confident of entering into heaven through many tribulations rather than through the false security of peace (Acts 14:22).
As time went on Luther exhorted the people to go back to the Bible where they would see Christ crucified for forgiveness and mercy. That was his ultimate goal, the same as Paul. As followers of Christ, they wanted to lead people to Jesus, not away from Him. Paul said to the Ephesians in Ephesians 4:11–15, “It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, 12 to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. 14 Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. 15 Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.” Notice how Christ is the goal! This is the role of pastors and teachers, to help you know your Bible better, so that you can know JESUS better. This is what you called your pastor to do. The Lutheran Catechism and our confessions of faith use the Bible to point you to Jesus.
So when Jesus says, Be careful that no one deceives you, what does that mean to you? When they train people to detect real money from fake money, you know what they do? They don’t have them study the fake money. They have them study the REAL money - so they know what it is like. Then it is easier to see the fake. It is vitally important for YOU to KNOW the Word of God so you know what God really says about your sin and your Savior. That means that you need to put forth time and effort to read it on your own. It means you send your children to Trinity School and confirmation classes so that they can be taught the Bible and know it well. It means that you also come to church and Bible class and take time to learn more of the Bible from your pastors. That doesn’t mean you just swallow everything we tell you either. Luke praised the Bereans because they didn’t just accept everything that Paul told them. He wrote in Acts 17:11, Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.
It is amazing to me either the arrogance or the laziness you can have to think that just because you made it through a fifteen week Bible information course, or just because you went through catechism years ago that you are somehow insulated from any type of false doctrine, as if you could never be led astray by the false teachers without or the little pope within. The FIRST thing that Jesus did was to warn against false doctrine. Have you made any serious attempts to grow in your knowledge? Some of you admit that you don’t know the Bible very well, and you’re kind of embarrassed about it. Yet do you use that as an excuse NOT to come to Bible class, instead of dedicating yourself to learn more? Jesus didn’t say, “Don’t worry about being deceived. Only a few will fall for the lies. Once you’re saved, once you’re baptized, the devil will never be able to deceive you. You can never fall.” Jesus said MANY would be deceived. Look at what happened to Judas, who had the greatest teacher of all! Look at how many within Christianity have given in to the agenda of our sinful world when it comes to sexuality and gender roles.
Have you been lazy? Arrogant? Indifferent? The good news is that Jesus hasn’t given up on you. He still wants you. He is speaking tenderly to you in His Word, promising that He still loves you and has died for you. Your sins are still paid for. Repentantly clinging to Christ, you still can have confidence that you are under God’s grace through faith in Jesus. If you’ve been lazy and lackadaisical with your growth, you still can find forgiveness in your baptism and in the Supper. Jesus still loves you and died for you. The good news is that it’s not too late to hear the Word and GROW in faith. The good news is that the Holy Spirit is able to keep you aware of false doctrines and actions so that you don’t have to fall for the lies. You have the truth and you can know the truth all the more through your study of the Word.
But you have to be careful! When you own a gun, you have to be careful with it. You have to know how to use it. You have to be careful in how you store it. You don’t want anyone to steal it and use it to kill someone. The same thing rings true with the truth. The devil hates the truth. He does anything he can to suppress it or to steal it away. The disciples were about to be put through the fire for their faith. All of them would die a martyr's death, other than Judas who killed himself, and John who was exiled to the island of Patmos. They were going to be put on trial before Roman governors and maybe even the emperor himself. But God promised to give them the words to speak, and speak they did! If God did it for them, He can do it for you too.
We are living in times where the truth is constantly under attack, just as it was in Luther’s day. As Luther studied the Word, the Holy Spirit revealed how he and we are saved, by grace alone, faith alone, Scripture alone, Christ alone. Luther was declared an outlaw and had to run for his life because of it. This pain will continue as time goes on and people know their Bible less and less. More and more people will go astray. Led astray by false teachers without, and the false teacher within. How important it is for us to know the Word of God and cling to it all the more on the pathway of life. It’s not going to be easy to stand up for the truth. It’s going to be painful. So be careful! Be on guard!
But don’t forget WHY we are doing this either. Jesus compared these pains to childbirth. Through all of the pain there’s always the hope of giving birth to a baby at the end. This isn’t only a gloom and doom warning. It’s also filled with a promise! Isaiah 26:19 compares the earth to a pregnant woman. He writes, “your dead will live; their bodies will rise. You who dwell in the dust, wake up and shout for joy. Your dew is like the dew of the morning; the earth will give birth to her dead.” What a glorious promise! Jesus says, “Whoever believes in me will LIVE, even though he dies.” Be careful of the dangers of false teachings, trying to rip away your confidence in Jesus and His salvation. Be on your guard for the attacks to come against you and the truth. But don’t forget that with a promise of life eternal through faith in Jesus, it’s worth suffering for, just as Peter, Paul, Luther, and many other saints have done. Amen.
