What to Do with Jesus & Judgment, Part 1: It Ain't About Being Left Behind

Last week I was wrapping up my journey through Jesus' questions in the book of Matthew. As Jesus gets nearer and nearer to his death, his stories and parables get more and more jarring. Lots of people cast out, judged, and lots of weeping and gnashing of teeth.

These are the passages that make me look quizzically at those who proclaim to love "nice Jesus" but who despise "mean Paul." Such people haven't actually read much of what Jesus said and did, I don't think.

Ever notice Jesus never once uses the word "grace?" Everything we know about grace comes from those who wrote after the "Jesus event" and who were his primary interpreters--Paul, most of all.

But I digress. The point is if we take Jesus seriously, we will run into some hard passages. Today I want to help us navigate the judgment passages. What are we to do with all this separation of sheep and goats and people cast out?

The first rule of any Bible interpretation is this: context, context and more context. Many of Jesus' judgment parables are in Israel and are specifically about Israel. Jesus has come as the last and final prophet of whom all the prophets spoke. They treated them poorly. They will treat Jesus poorly, too--in just a few days they will call for his execution.

Many of the judgment parables Jesus tells (wicked tenants, wedding banquet, ten bridesmaids all in chapters 21-24) are all happening in Jerusalem, after the triumphal entry, and are surrounded with weeping for Jerusalem and prophecy about the destruction of the temple. Which leads us to...

The destruction of the temple. This is was a cataclysmic event in the post-Jesus early church (and obviously as well for the Jews of the time), around 70 A.D. There's a war between Rome and the Jews, the Romans come through and flatten the temple.

This is what Jesus is what Jesus is talking about in all of this prophecy. Any early Christian reading the gospels in the first and second and even third generation of Christianity would have read and understood that the judgment being doled out is specifically talking about the destruction of the temple that actually happens within a generation of Jesus death. Jesus is not talking about being "Left Behind" at the end of all times.

Jesus pronounces judgment on Jerusalem, whose people are about to judge and destroy him. That judgment comes true shortly after his death with the destruction of the temple. Jesus asserts that the temple in Jerusalem will be destroyed and that he has come to replace it.

They'll destroy the temple, but they will not be able to destroy his body. Destroy the building, it will be many years before it is raised again. Destroy his body and in three days it will be raised up again.

Jesus is now the place where God meets people and where people meet God. It is the place of sacrifice, prayer, worship. In his body all these functions of the temple are completed. The temple was only a foreshadowing of what was to come--the true Temple was now here.

And the people were about to destroy him. And there is a consequence to their rebellion--they will be judged. And so they are.

And yes, that is a warning to all of us, 2,000 years later. But that's better left for tomorrow's post.