The Birth Pains Are Worth It

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.