Not the Main Character (A sermon Excerpt)

I am currently reading and studying through the Gospel according to Matthew. Here is an excerpt from my Sermon, which is still a work in progress.   

The reason Matthew 24 can be difficult to interpret is that it is eschatological in nature. The word eschatology comes from Greek and literally means “the study of last things.” Éschatos is the Greek word meaning 'last' or 'final,' as in a chronological sequence. What do we mean by last things? 

Let me give you an analogy. Who doesn't like stories? Stories come in all forms. They come in the form of books and movies. Some stories are true, and some stories are fiction. And they're written for different purposes. Jesus' primary method of teaching the crowds was through stories. Now, think about fictional stories. When you read fictional books such as The Lord of the Rings trilogy, you, in a sense, are in the mind of JRR Tolkein because Middle-earth is the creation of Tolkien's mind. He wrote the beginning and the end with all the different characters, but we are not in Tolkien's story when we read the books or watch the movies. We're merely spectators. You may say, "But we can identify with certain characters." True, but identifying with a character doesn't mean we're in the story. 

God, too, is an author. He wrote a story. It's the story of the world, and God has revealed to us the beginning and the end. Unlike Tolkien's world, the Bible isn't fiction, and we are not spectators when we read it. We're very real characters that God created. When you read God's story, your name may not appear in the Bible, but you are a very real character in the story of this world. The story continues as we live our lives. 

This reality is incredibly humbling. How so? When you start reading the Bible and taking in the big picture, it won't be long before you figure out that you are not the main character. Life isn't about you. You're not the hero. In fact, you start as a bad guy. You're introduced to the story as an enemy of God whom God desires to win over.    

Herein lies a mystery between God, the author, and you, the character. Although God has written the beginning and the end, God has afforded us a measure of human agency, which means that we can make very real choices so that we end up on the right side of history when it all comes to an end. And so that is what we mean when we speak of eschatology. Eschatology concerns the events that signal the end of this present age. 

The disciples asked Jesus about when the events Jesus spoke of would happen. Before we even ask when, we need to ask what events the disciples have in mind. 

Jesus expressed woes towards Israel's leadership, the Scribes and the Pharisees (Matthew 23). They sat on Moses' seat, which meant they were supposed to carry out the same responsibilities Moses had. The Bible tells us that Moses was a humble and faithful representative of God. As a prophet, Moses made God's will known to God's people, and as a judge, he faithfully enforced God's law through the judicial system, but the Scribes and Pharisees set aside God's law for the sake of their own tradition. They were proud, hypocritical, loveless, and mean-spirited towards God's people. They were not about God's name or glory, but about their own. The reason they were especially evil was that they committed these sins under the cloak of godliness and had hijacked God's house of prayer, the temple, and had turned it into a den of robbers. They saw themselves as heroes, but they're actually the villains in God's story.