You noticed in the sermon this
morning that the times of Christ were turbulent. You could sense
in what Brother Bill spoke of that conflict that was built
into the time and place. The intersection of religion
and politics and ethnic hatred and all kinds of things. Extremely
turbulent period of time. And so is today. You know, we went at the end
of last year through an ugly period of national elections. And because some people We're
not happy about the way the election went. We're still going through
an ugly period. And built into all of that are
arguments about secular government and religion, and we don't need
to mix the two, and don't press your morality on me. I don't
want to hear it. Well, your government is against
my religion. And the battle goes on and on
and on. We find ourselves saying, my
goodness, can it get any worse? Well, that's what they were saying
in the time of Christ as well. We as God's people should have
understanding, even in the worst of times, because we have the
very word of God that we can draw from and the spirit of Christ
leading us into all good things. And that's what we count on today
as we look at some things and go forward with it. My topic
today is about Christians and the false hope of government.
And like I say, it does parallel with what we saw this morning
in a bunch of the sermon. Because there was that turbulent
period of Roman imperialism and Jewish independence, and a hope
for a Messiah. It was a political and a religious
conflict. And truthfully, we have the same
thing today. So there are parallels, there
are principles we can draw from the scripture. As two kind of
guiding scriptures, I'd like to present to you John chapter
18, verse 36. When asked, Jesus said, My kingdom
does not belong to this world. If my kingdom belonged to this
world, my servants would fight to keep me from being handed
over to the Jews. But now my kingdom is not from
here. Then we go to Matthew chapter
seven, verse six, and this one may seem out of place, but it'll
tie in later in the discussion. And there, We're told never give
what is holy to dogs or throw your pearls before pigs. Otherwise,
they will trample them with their feet and then turn around and
attack you. Now, the biggest bunch of scripture
we'll draw from today, I won't read or we'll just, that's all
we'll do this sermon period. But please note these passages
and this is where we'll draw from. from the book of Revelation,
chapter 12, verses one through six. This is a section of the
scripture that in a lot of Bibles is titled the woman and the dragon.
Then we've got chapter 12, 13 through 17, which is more on
the subject. Then chapter 13, verses one through
18, and this is about the beasts. Then we've got chapter 17, verses
1 through 18, and this is about the prostitute and the beast. And that's what we'll look at.
And I think you'll see some parallels to what we heard this morning
in principle. And you'll see some parallels,
some truths that we can draw from these passages and see even
in our day. Now let me say, most people are
scared of the book of Revelation. A lot of preachers don't even
like to speak from it because it can be very controversial
and depending on your end time view, it gets really hairy. I
am not speaking today looking at the book of Revelation as
a prophetic guide. I'm not going to sit up here
and tell you this is the end times and this is what's going
to happen and this is how it's going to happen. We're looking
at the symbolism in the book and drawing some principle from
it. And I think you'll find that
the principle is timeless. It's timeless. Whether we want
to call this the end times or not, the principles guiding are
timeless. This is a book of symbols. The book of Revelation is a book
of symbols. And today, as you look at those
passages that I referenced earlier, and as we skip through them here
in just a few minutes, you'll see that it's all symbolism.
It's all symbolism. And the main symbols that we
will look at today are a woman, a dragon, the offspring of a
woman, a male child, a prostitute, a beast, actually two beasts,
one from the sea and one from the land. All of these symbols, as you
look at them, are drawn from the Old Testament. The book of
Revelation presented really nothing new at the time. The symbols
were there, they were used by the prophets of old, and in most
instances, if you go to the Old Testament and look at the original
references, they're explained in the Old Testament, so we don't
have to do a lot of guesswork as to what they mean. Now, the
application is where we have interpretational issues, but
the definitions themselves are pretty well explained in the
Old Testament. The woman, as a symbol, a woman
in the Old Testament is used for the people of faith. God's people are presented in
the Old Testament as a woman, a young woman. And a woman also has a context. There is a good woman. This is
God's people as they obey God, as they seek after God, as they
strive to do God's will. Then you'll notice an adulterous
woman. And this is the people of God
as they stray from the truth. Then you have a prostitute. And a prostitute are God's people
not just straying from the truth, but actively seeking after the
world and the things of the world. They're forsaking their faith,
and they are seeking after the world. Now, we have in the book
of Revelation a pregnant woman. And this is more specific to
the coming of the Messiah. This is Judaism waiting for the
Messiah. The time of Christ is coming. Judaism is ready and waiting. the Messiah. This is the pregnant
woman. Then we have the son of the woman,
the male child. This is the Messiah. This is the promised child. We have the offspring of the
woman. These are the people of faith. These are the followers of the
true faith. In context, in the book of Revelation,
these are the followers of Jesus Christ. Then we have the dragon. The
dragon is identified as the devil. the force in this world, the
person in this world who is actively seeking to accuse and take away
from God's people. He's identified as the dragon.
We note here that in the book of Revelation, the dragon has
seven heads, 10 horns, and seven diadems. This is a picture of the devil
working through the power structure of this world. This is a picture of the devil
working through the power structure of this world. We have a beast. And the beast, as identified
in the Old Testament, are worldly kingdoms, earthly kingdoms. They're
identified in the Old Testament as the Medo-Persians in those
empires. We see in the book of Revelation,
again, another beast, another beast. And you note that the
beast is scarlet and has all the trappings, authority, and
power of this world. The beast represents power. A
powerful government, an aggressive government, and at times, as
we'll see in the book of Revelation, a violent government. You'll
notice again that the beast, this beast, has seven heads,
ten horns, which means that this beast, this concept of a world
power, is working through multiple governments. Multiple governments. And we
see that happening all the time. Nation after nation will sign
treaty alliances with all kinds of nations, and they'll come
together at times and at places to achieve their will. That can
be good, that can be bad. We saw that in World War I. We
saw it again in World War II. You saw the evil alliance, we
call them the Axis Powers in World War II, and then you saw
the forces of good, which included us, England, France, those governments
that united to fight fascism, Nazism, the Japanese. So alliances are not necessarily
bad things, but in this instance, as we see in the book of Revelation
and throughout the Old Testament, that these are alliances that
are bad. They are bad. Now, there's two
different beasts mentioned in the book of Revelation. One is
the beast from the sea, and the other is the beast from the land.
and both of them are significant. Oftentimes, as people discuss
the book of Revelation, they discuss the beast, and it's one
beast, but there are actually two beasts in the book of Revelation,
and both of them are significant. The beast from the sea represents
the governments of this world. It comes out of the sea of humanity,
across the scope of humanity. And this is basically pagan government. secular government. Then we have
another beast that makes its appearance, and you'll note it
comes from the land. And that's significant itself.
Whenever the Bible in symbolism refers to the land, it's talking
about Israel or God's people. This is the land of promise. These are the people of promise.
So this beast is of the lamb. This is a religious beast. That's
important, and we'll see that again as we skip through the
rest of this. But you'll notice that this beast appears like
a lamb. This again is another symbol
for the religious nature of this beast. It appears like a lamb. The lamb is the sacrifice offered
to God. So this beast, this government,
this authority, has the appearance of the lamb. But notice, it only
has the appearance. It appears like a lamb. But the
second thing that's attached to this is that it speaks like
the dragon. It has this beast. This lamb has the appearance
of a lamb. It speaks like the dragon. It
has an authority of its own, but it yields its authority to
the first beast. So this represents the forces
of religion working in conjunction with the
secular government. It's all a very interesting picture,
and I think this morning, as Brother Bill spoke, you could
see those forces coming together. The Jews had their desires concerning
Christ, but they in and of themselves couldn't bring their desires,
for one reason or another, to pass. So they worked closely
with the secular government to make sure they accomplished their
will. And that's what we're seeing
here. That's exactly what we're seeing here. We go to the book of Revelation chapter
12. This is where we'll put our track shoes on and run through.
We don't have the time to do a verse by verse exposition of
this, but we can pick up the highlights. We see in verse one
of chapter 12, that we have the woman. The woman clothed in the
sun with the moon under her feet and on her head a crown of 12
stars. This is Judaism. This is Judaism. This is the woman. This represents
the people of faith clothed in the sun with the moon under her
feet crowned 12 stars. This represents Judaism, and
I think you can see the symbolism here, especially in the 12 stars. Notice in verse 2 she's pregnant. She's expecting the Messiah.
Now let me back up here. I should have said this earlier.
I'll bring it back to mind. A lot of people interpret the
book of Revelation as a timetable. They look at it as a chronology.
This event happens, then this one happens in sequence, then
this one happens in sequence, this one, and so forth, and you
go right to the end, and there we are. We're at the end. But
the book of Revelation, if you read it and notice the natural
breaks in the text, it's actually a series of multiple visions. Each one of them representing
some other aspect of God's world, the Jews, the Messiah, and Christians. It all is the same picture, but
it's like a diamond. I've heard this said before.
And you look at a diamond this way and it's beautiful. You turn
it, you get a different facet. It's the same diamond, but it's
a different view and it's beautiful. Turn it this way. Same thing,
a different facet, a different face, but it's beautiful. That's
what the book of Revelation is. The text has natural breaks in
it, and each one of them is a little bit different view as to the
world of God, the things that God is doing. And here, we're
at a point in the history of Israel where the nation of Israel,
Judaism, is expecting the Messiah. He's expecting the Messiah. And
notice there's pain and agony as the Messiah approaches. Can
we not see from what we heard this morning that that exactly
describes the time of Christ? Exactly. But Anywhere that Christ
will move, the devil will move. And we see that again in verse
3, that as times are right for the Messiah, the devil moves. Things get ugly,
real ugly. And you see that as the Christ
is to come, All is ready and waiting to destroy
him. Did we not see that in the life
of Christ? Herod killed all the children
in Bethlehem to try and do away with the Christ.
But regardless of all the turbulence of the time, we see in verse
5, that she, the woman, gave birth to the male child. There's
our Christ. There's our Christ. And Christ
does what he does, and it says he is caught up to God, to his
throne. And then the woman, Judaism,
flees into the wilderness. It's a picture of a time in history
a turbulent time in history around Christ. We go to 12 again, and
we're in chapter 12, 13 through 17, and we'll skip through some
stuff here, but then you notice that in verse 17, the dragon
is furious with the woman and goes off to make war with the
woman and the rest of her offspring. And we know this to be the case.
The Jews were a thorn in the flesh of the Romans. You got
a sense of that this morning as Pilate tried to defuse an
incredibly difficult situation. I don't know if you've ever thought
about the politics of the day, but Pontius Pilate was in a terrible
place. He really was. He was a lesser
politician. Judea was a dumping ground. It's
where they sent you when your career was over. And he was basically
waiting for his retirement. And the last thing that man needed
as he approached his retirement was for that whole part of the
world to blow up into a war. He was in a real bad place. And I think we sensed that this
morning. He had an innocent man before him, and he didn't want to create
a problem himself by condemning an innocent man, but then he
had these obnoxious Jews over here pressing him, pressing him,
pressing him to kill this guy. Very turbulent, very turbulent.
And then after Christ was crucified, it only got worse. The zealots
became more of a warring sect, even more so. And by the time
of the 60s AD, that whole part of the world was just ready to
explode. And it says here that the dragon is furious and makes war. We saw that happen. Ultimately,
it resulted in the destruction of God's nation of Israel and
the persecutions of the Christians. We go on into chapter 13, verses
1 through 18, and we have a little parentheses in the narrative
here. And it explains the beasts a little bit. We see a beast
rising out of the sea. And in symbolism, this is a government
system rising out of the mass of humanity. The mass of humanity. In its immediate context, it
represents the Roman government. at the time of Christ, it would
have been the Roman government. Again, it has ten horns, seven
heads, and ten diadems. This is an overriding, overarching
beast, but it's working through the various regional governments,
and that is exactly what the Roman government was doing. They
had established as they conquered nations took over peoples and
set up puppet governments. Herod himself was a puppet king. And that's what you see in this
picture, the beast rising out of the sea. It's a big, massive
beast, government, but it's working through local governments to
accomplish its purpose. Then you notice that this beast
is described as these various animals, leopards, bears, lions. What are these? These are unclean
animals. They are vicious and carnivorous,
unclean animals. We are not picturing, we are
not looking at a friendly government here in this picture. And it
has power and authority. Now it's a power it claims for
itself and exercises for itself. And it's made up, it's vicious,
it's aggressive, it's powerful. And we go on in verses three
and following, you see the arrogance of this beast. It's bold to proclaim
its might and strength and power. It is bold to say that it's not
accountable to anybody, not even any God you may perceive. And it makes war on any who will
oppose it. If you play their game, you're
okay. If you oppose it, you're on the
wrong side and they will crush you. They will crush you. And they demand complete obedience
and allegiance. Scripture says here that they
cause all the people, tribes, people, languages, nations to
worship this beast. And what that is is a statement
that they demand complete alliance and obedience. Then we see in verse 11, the
second beast rising out of the land. has the appearance of a lamb,
but it speaks like a dragon. And it has an authority of its
own, but it yields it to the other beast. It works in league
with the other beast. And in the process, as we read
down to 14, we see that it itself in yielding its authority to
the first beast becomes like that beast. It loses its distinction
as a good religious government, and it just becomes another layer
of the bureaucracy, if you will. And you'll notice that it's in
league at this point with the secular government. And it says
in verse 15 that this beast, this one that has the appearance
of the lamb, is allowed to speak for the beast, the other beast,
give breath to the image of the beast. They're working together. They're working together like
this. In the process, the beasts working
together mark all their people. A lot of controversy about this,
but the important principle to gather here is that these beasts cause all great and small to
take their mark. Free or slave, rich or poor,
and they're marked on their right hand and their forehead. Important symbolism. Important
symbolism. People have speculated and made
great cause over the years that this is a tattoo. We're all going
to be marked with the number 666. This is all symbolism. But the idea of being marked
on the hand and the forehead is Old Testament. And what it
means, right hand, this represents the things I do. These are the
acts I do. This is the things I do. Marked
on the forehead, these are my thoughts. These are my thoughts. What this is telling me is that
at a point in time as I've given over to the world, to these beasts,
I begin to act and do and think like they do. Their message is you play the
game my way or you don't play at all. And the attitude oftentimes,
and I have found myself doing this at times, I become very
pragmatic. And I tell myself, business is
business. This is the way we do it. So
that's the way I'm going to do it. And sometimes that's okay,
and sometimes that's not. In the context in the book of
Revelation, that's not okay. That's not okay. But that's what
we're looking at. The beast, the two beasts working
together. The secular government, the religious
government now melded together, working together. Tell us, this
is the way it's done. This is the way it's done. You'll
play the game my way or you won't. We go to Revelation chapter 17. This is the prostitute and the
beast. This is where it all comes to
an ugly end. We've got the prostitute, and
remember the symbol. Prostitute is God's people who
have now completely given over to the world. They may still
claim to be God's people, but they are chasing after the world. And the picture here is that
we see this woman, this prostitute, riding on the back of the beast. This is a big beast. The woman
is riding on the back of the beast. Now, you ride a horse.
What are you doing? You're controlling that horse.
You're using it for your benefit. And at this point, this woman
is riding on the back of the beast. So we at least have the
appearance that this woman is in control of the beast. And
this woman has now taken on for herself all the trappings of
power and glory in the world. She's clothed in purple and scarlet. She's adorned with jewelry, gold,
jewels, and pearls. And she's holding in her hand
a cup of abominations and her immoralities. She's toasting herself for all
that she's accomplished. And in the cup is the blood of
those martyrs that she dealt harshly with to get where she
wanted to get. It doesn't end well. It doesn't
end well. The woman at a point is thrown
down by the beast. She is disgraced and she's left
desolate and killed. The alliance of religion and
secular government involves trade-offs, mostly on the part of religion,
and it ultimately ends up with the destruction of religion.
That's the principle that we see here presented. Ultimately, the secular government
wins out. It's an ugly picture. But let
us remember that Christ said, my kingdom is not of this world. The government of God is never,
is never left vacant. But so far as the world sees,
it is. And that's what we see here.
Now how all this ties in with what we saw this morning. We're
talking about an alliance here of the two beasts. Didn't we
see that this morning? As the Jews went to the Romans,
their sworn enemies, they chafed. under the weight of the Roman
Empire. They didn't like it a bit. But at a point, they felt like
they needed the Roman government to accomplish their will, and
they went to them. And they told the government
what they wanted to hear. This man Jesus says he's a king,
he's a threat to Caesar. We see it pictured here. And
at that point, they get what they want, and they see, we see
at that point, the woman riding on the back of the beast. The
Jews felt like they got what they wanted, they were riding
high. 40 some odd years later, we saw
the other side of it, when the woman was cast down, trampled
and destroyed by the beast. What's the significance of all
of this? The mentalities that demand religious government don't
go away. We've got, in Christian circles,
groups that are saying we need a theocratic state again. We
need to return to some kind of religious government. Now, I
am not one to advocate taking morality away from government.
I'm not. but I don't know that a theocratic
state is gonna work. It didn't work in ancient Israel,
and that was God's people, and that was the nation set out specifically
for that purpose. Now, we don't know the eternal
purpose of God in all things, so we can't understand why it
failed other than the depravity of man, which was a constant
then and is a constant now. If a theocratic state didn't
work for Israel, it's not going to work for us. But we have a picture here, and
it's an interesting picture. And given the nature of our politics
today, we hear all kinds of answers. And we as God's people should
seek God for wisdom. Scripture says that if we ask,
he'll give it to us. He'll give it to us. And we need
to understand what's going on. We may not have all the answers,
but you know, there's a certain amount of peace in just knowing
and understanding what's happening and why it's happening. Because
then we can better understand maybe what God's doing. And we can certainly understand
from the scripture that if he carried his people through such
times in the past, he'll do it for us in the present. And that's
important. We look on the news today. And
things are a mess. Things are turbulent. Regardless
of whether you like the election or didn't like the election.
We look at the news and riots in the streets are not good. I don't care what side of the
election you stood on. Riots in the streets and killing
people and abusing people like that, that's not good. That's
not good. So we, as God's people, should
strive for an understanding of the times and we should strive
for an understanding of how we should live individually. I,
myself, will not change the world. There are a handful of people
in human history that have actually, as an individual, changed the
world. But I think at this stage in my life, I can pretty much
say it's probably not going to be me. As we fellowship together, we
can work to come to an understanding. We can help each other. I can
go home to my neighborhood. I can help my neighbors. That's
the world that I'll change. And that's the world that we
should seek understanding for. What is our actual sphere of
influence? And may God grant us the wisdom
to understand what we can do in our time and our place. to
affect positive change. And that's a good message because
as God's people, we have hope. We have hope. We have answers.
I can't solve the economic problems of the world, but I can help
my neighbor have peace with God. And that's a good thing. The
picture that we see in the book of Revelation about human government
is not a pretty picture. It's not a pretty picture. The
depravity of mankind guarantees that in any day and in any age
it will be an ugly picture. Sorry to tell you that. But the
good thing about the book of Revelation and why I am not afraid
to read it or to speak from it is because it's a picture ultimately
of the victorious Christ. Regardless of your interpretation
of the book of Revelation, it is a picture of the victorious
Christ. And for you and I, that is the
hope of all things, is Jesus Christ, Him crucified, buried,
and resurrected, and bringing through the grace of God new
life to each one of us. And that's the hope in all this.
The picture of government is an odd picture. It's an ugly
picture. Left to itself, it's scary, but
it's not left to itself. We have the message of Jesus
Christ, and he is overcome the world. And we shall, too, in
Jesus Christ's good name and by his grace. When we leave here,
take time to read through the book of Revelation. This was
a hurried trip, and it focused very narrowly. The message is
fabulous. The book itself promises a blessing
to all who hear and read it. Ask God to bless you with the
book of Revelation. Thank you.