The Certainty of the End (of the Age) Text: Matthew 24:32-35
Introduction: Reading the Signs
We live in an age that prides itself on being unable to read. I do not mean simple literacy, though that is certainly in a sorry state. I mean the ability to read the world, to understand signs, to connect cause and effect. Our secularist soothsayers stare blankly at the chaos they have cultivated, the moral ruin, the societal breakdown, and like men who have chopped off the branch they are sitting on, they profess to be baffled by the sudden nearness of the ground. They cannot read the signs.
This is nothing new. The Pharisees and Sadducees came to Jesus, demanding a sign from heaven. And Jesus rebuked them, saying, "You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times" (Matt. 16:3). They could tell if a storm was coming by looking at the clouds, but they could not see the storm of God's judgment gathering right over their heads. They were expert meteorologists and amateur theologians, and it was a fatal combination.
The modern church, particularly the evangelical wing, has often fallen into a similar trap, but with a different twist. When it comes to this passage, the Olivet Discourse, many have become obsessive sky-watchers of a different sort. They have treated Matthew 24 as a cryptic codebook for predicting the end of the space-time continuum, looking for signs in newspaper headlines, international politics, and the formation of the European Union. In doing so, they have missed the plain, thundering meaning of the text. They have looked for signs of the end of the world, when Jesus was giving them clear, unmistakable signs of the end of an age, the end of the Jewish world, the end of the temple-centric system that had run its course.
Jesus is not teaching his disciples to be frantic eschatological speculators. He is teaching them to be faithful covenant observers. He is teaching them how to read the season they are in, not so they can draft complex charts, but so they can stand firm in the faith when the whole world around them begins to shake apart. And make no mistake, it did shake apart, right on schedule. This passage is about the certainty of Christ's word and the absolute necessity of heeding it.
The Text
"Now learn the parable from the fig tree: when its branch has already become tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near; so, you too, when you see all these things, recognize that He is near, right at the door. Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away."
(Matthew 24:32-35 LSB)
The Lesson from Nature (v. 32-33)
Jesus begins with a simple illustration from the created order.
"Now learn the parable from the fig tree: when its branch has already become tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near; so, you too, when you see all these things, recognize that He is near, right at the door." (Matthew 24:32-33)
The lesson is one of basic, agrarian common sense. When you see a fig tree, which goes dormant in the winter, begin to show life again, when the branch softens and leaves begin to bud, you do not need a special prophetic gift to know that a change of seasons is upon you. Summer is coming. The budding leaves are not the summer, but they are the sure sign of the summer. It is an observable, predictable pattern that God has woven into the fabric of creation.
Jesus then applies this directly: "so, you too, when you see all these things, recognize that He is near, right at the door." What things? All the things He has just spent the majority of this chapter describing. The wars and rumors of wars, the famines and earthquakes, the persecution of the disciples, the preaching of the gospel to the nations (which Paul tells us in Colossians 1:23 had happened), the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place, and the great tribulation upon Judea. These are the budding leaves. And when the disciples see them, they are to know that "He is near."
The "He" here is Christ, and the nearness is His coming in judgment upon Jerusalem. This is not a secret rapture. This is a public, historical, terrifying visitation. Just a few verses earlier, He described it as the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory (v. 30). This is apocalyptic language, drawn straight from the Old Testament, which always uses such "collapsing cosmos" imagery to describe the fall of a nation or the judgment of a city (see Isaiah 13:10 on Babylon; Isaiah 34:4 on Edom). The disciples were to see the political and military turmoil as signs that Christ, enthroned in heaven, was directing history to bring about the promised judgment. The Roman armies were His instrument, just as Assyria was His rod of anger against Israel centuries before (Isaiah 10:5).
He is "right at the door." The judgment is not some far-off, distant event. It is imminent. The signs mean something, and they mean something for them. This is a practical, urgent warning, not an abstract theological puzzle.
The Unmistakable Time Stamp (v. 34)
If there were any doubt about the timing, Jesus removes it with one of the clearest, most emphatic statements He ever makes.
"Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place." (Matthew 24:34 LSB)
This verse is the anchor for the entire discourse. It is the exegetical rock upon which all dispensationalist systems are dashed to pieces. Atheists like Bertrand Russell and Christopher Hitchens have pointed to this verse to argue that Jesus was a failed prophet, because they, like the dispensationalists, assume He was talking about the end of the world. But He was not. He was talking about the end of the temple and the old covenant age.
The phrase "this generation" is not ambiguous. In every other instance where Jesus uses it in the gospels, it refers to His contemporaries, the Jewish people living at that time (e.g., Matt. 11:16, 12:41, 23:36). To suggest that it suddenly means "the Jewish race" or "the generation that sees the signs" two thousand years in the future is to abandon all responsible principles of interpretation. It is to force the text into a preconceived system, rather than letting the text shape the system.
A generation in the Bible is typically about forty years. Jesus spoke these words around A.D. 30. Forty years later, in A.D. 70, the Roman legions under Titus surrounded Jerusalem, crucified thousands, broke down the walls, entered the city, and burned the temple to the ground, leaving not one stone upon another. Every single thing Jesus predicted, from the great tribulation to the flight from Judea, came to pass within that forty-year window. "This generation" saw it all. Jesus was not a failed prophet; He was a terrifyingly accurate one.
The Indestructible Word (v. 35)
Jesus concludes this section by contrasting the stability of His own words with the apparent stability of the cosmos itself.
"Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away." (Matthew 24:35 LSB)
Here again, we must read with Old Testament eyes. The phrase "heaven and earth" is often used in Scripture to refer to a covenantal world order. When God established His covenant with Israel at Sinai, He created a "heaven and earth", a religious and political cosmos with the tabernacle, and later the temple, at its center. The writer to the Hebrews speaks of this first covenant as something that was "growing old and ready to vanish away" (Heb. 8:13). Its heaven (the religious authority) and its earth (the land of Israel) were about to be shaken and removed (Heb. 12:26-27).
So, when Jesus says "heaven and earth will pass away," He is referring to the cataclysmic end of that old covenant world. The temple, the priesthood, the sacrifices, the entire symbolic universe that had governed Israel for fifteen hundred years, was about to be dismantled. That world, which seemed so permanent to the disciples as they admired the massive stones of the temple, was going to dissolve. But His words, the words of the new covenant, would stand forever.
This is a staggering claim of divinity. Jesus places His own words on a higher plane of reality than the created order. The sun, moon, and stars are less permanent than a promise from His lips. The old covenant world would be deconstructed, but the new covenant kingdom He was inaugurating would be a kingdom that cannot be shaken. His authority is ultimate, and His word is final.
Conclusion: Our Unshakable Kingdom
So what does this mean for us, two thousand years removed from the smoke and fire of A.D. 70? It means everything. It means that our Lord keeps His promises. The fulfillment of this prophecy is a concrete, historical anchor for our faith. He said it would happen, and it happened, precisely as He said. This gives us unshakable confidence that all His other words will also prove true.
The judgment that fell on Jerusalem was a pattern, a template for all of God's judgments in history. Nations that reject the Son, that persecute His people, that build their foundations on rebellion, will eventually face their own A.D. 70. The leaves will bud, the signs will appear, and the Judge will stand at the door. We should therefore learn to read the signs of our own times, not to predict the final day, but to be wise and faithful in our generation.
But the greatest comfort is this: because that first "heaven and earth" has passed away, we now live in the age of the new covenant. We are citizens of "a kingdom that cannot be shaken" (Heb. 12:28). The world around us may rage, empires may rise and fall, and cultures may crumble into dust, but the Word of our King stands. His kingdom is advancing, irresistibly, like leaven through a lump of dough. The old world of types and shadows is gone. The reality is here. Christ has come, Christ has judged, and Christ is reigning now.
Therefore, we do not live in fear, trying to decode the future. We live in faith, standing on the indestructible Word of the one who has already proven that His promises are more solid than the ground beneath our feet and more enduring than the stars above our heads. His word of judgment was true, and so His word of grace is true. His word of warning was true, and so His word of salvation is true. Heaven and earth have passed away; His kingdom remains. And in that, we have a sure and certain hope.