Matthew 24:6

Notice that our Lord gives two great moral warnings. First, they were to beware of a true hope wrongly applied. The Jews ought to be looking for Christ, and false Christs would exploit that by claiming to be Christ. Second, the enemy, who knows how to use such circumstances, might terrify them. So verse 6 guards them against alarm.

Matthew 24:6 and Mark 13:7 use "be troubled" in exactly the same sense as here: present troubles should not make them think the end is near, or the day of the Lord come. In neither case is it wrong expectation. It is trouble from present circumstances, alarming the mind and taking away its security, so that it fears as if the day of the Lord were already here. "When you hear of wars and rumours of wars, see that you are not troubled." The trouble plainly came from disturbing causes at work and felt at the time.

Besides the false Christs, political unrest, restlessness, real wars and rumours of them would draw attention and mark the state of things on earth. But the disciples were not to be troubled. All this would happen; these things were no signs of His coming; the end was not yet. So the Lord provides what would guide and strengthen His witnesses, keeping them calm and steady in their places... He gives them the kind of instruction that would keep them calm in service — not stirred up by circumstances or by false hopes, not saying, "Look, here!" or "Look, there!", not shaken by what shook the world. They might still serve quietly on.

The Greek word dei is the more general word. It points to any kind of necessity: what lies in the nature of the case, or, in particular, what comes about by God's appointment. That last sense gives it greater strength, and "must" is its most common translation... These passages, out of many, show the necessity established by the will and word of God: Matt. 16:21; Matt. 17:10; Matt. 24:6...

Moral improvement, truth winning the day, peace for mankind — these were still misleading dreams, and they were to be on their guard against them. His own rejection would open the door for many false claimants to lead many astray. Wars and their rumours would be heard. Only when He takes His great power and reigns could it be otherwise, as Isaiah predicts.

Notice that this chapter deals with a "beginning of sorrows" and the "time of the end." Wars and disasters are "the beginning of sorrows," "but the end is not yet" (vv. 6-8)... "The end" is not the end of the church period described in 1 Thess. 4:15-18 when the Lord comes for the church, but the end of the age when the Lord comes and appears to the world.

But the passage we are looking at does not speak of Christians. It speaks of the Jewish disciples as they were then, and as they will be... Do we ever find the apostles saying, "The end is not yet," about us? On the contrary, 1 Cor. 10 says of us that "the ends of the world have come upon us." But when the Lord speaks to the Jewish remnant, He says, "the end is not yet" — because many things must still happen before the Jews can come into their blessing.