The Calm Before the Storm

Before you start todays devotional, ask the Lord to use it to grow you up in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

The Gospel of Mark is full of action, but today is the calm before the storm. For three years, Jesus and the religious rules have engaged in periodic, fierce skirmishes. Now Jesus takes His strategy to its height with the most pointed, direct parable—the vineyard.

Through the parable, the Lord reveals the rulers’ plot to murder Him. He charges them with the crime before they actually kill Him and predicts their judgment.

The religious rulers would have captured and executed the Lord Jesus on the spot but they were afraid of the crowds. They fired back with their own verbal war, next trying to trap Him with questions, first about taxes. But again, Jesus brilliantly flipped the table on them. Then the Sadducees drill Him, but He easily revealed their ignorance of Scriptures and of God’s power. The enemy could not trap Him.

From the temple, Jesus moved His conversation and teaching to a hilltop overlooking Jerusalem. Here Jesus told His disciples about future events that will end this age. He describes God’s power at work in the Great Tribulation and His second coming.

“When will this happen? What will be the signs?” they asked Jesus.

Jesus then warns them—and us—about false teachers and people claiming to be Messiah. He told them about rumors of war, then earthquakes and famines and troubles. These things will characterize the end of the age.

People will hear, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” In other words, “He is coming.” In that day, the warning signals the Great Tribulation.

The first three and a half years of the Tribulation are comparatively quiet; it is the false peace of the Antichrist. Then, the “abomination of desolation” that the prophet Daniel wrote about will take place in the Holy Place. It’ll happen so fast, that Jesus says you won’t have time to pack—you should just run.

This is the beginning of the Great Tribulation. Those will be terrible days—so terrible that God needed to put a time limit on it so that all of life is not wiped out. Empowered by Satan, false Christs and false prophets will perform genuine wonders.

But then the whole universe will darken and a sober, magnificent display of heavenly fireworks will fill the sky when the stars all fall from the heavens. At this grand demonstration of power, Jesus, the Son of Man, will enter, coming again on glory clouds, the shekinah glory, radiating from Jesus Himself. He’ll dispatch angels to pull in His chosen from the four winds, from pole to pole.

All this describes the events which will take place after the Tribulation when Jesus Christ will return to the earth in glory and judgment.

Jesus concluded this teaching with this challenge for God’s people in all ages: Watch and pray, for you don’t know God’s timetable. We can watch with anxiety or with joyful anticipation. If you are God’s child, look for that blessed hope and His glorious appearing.

1. What was Jesus’ purpose in telling the parable of the vineyard? What does it tell us about God’s plans and people’s actions?

2. What are some ways we can apply the lesson about giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and giving to God what is God’s?

3. The ultimate culmination of what Jesus had to say about the end times is that He will come again. Is His return something you think about? What can you do to keep the return of Christ at the forefront of your mind?

Additional Resources

Listen to Dr. J. Vernon McGee’s complete teachings on Mark 12 and Mark 13.