Revelation, last week we did
some Q&A and we are in Revelation chapter 8 tonight and we're going
to go through pretty much the whole chapter. We're in verse
6 and we're going to go down through the vault and we're going
to hit the first verse or two in chapter 9. What we've got
is we're continuing with these pictures. We're continuing to
look at what is being revealed to John so that we can see the
image of what God has done, is doing, and is going to do. Of
what has taken place, what is taking place, and what will take
place in the future. We understand that the pictures,
the seven sevens, we've talked about those over the last few
weeks. We know that they're pictures of what God has done in eternity
past. and what God is currently doing
and what is going to happen at the Day of Judgment. And we've
seen that now from the earthly point of view, we've seen that
from a heavenly point of view, and now we're going to see these
angels that have been given these trumpets by Jesus Christ to command,
they're going to bring something upon the earth in preparation
for judgment. And I'm going to stop short tonight
because there's just not enough time to get into some explanation
of the locusts and why that's important. So I'm going to make
next week the whole time about locusts and everything else.
They're Apache helicopters. Making a joke about that has
burned me. in people's relationships have
been burned because I laughed at that one time. I mean, this
person just looked at me like I had called her baby ugly, and
I did, I guess. But anyway, chapter 8, verse
6. Now the seven angels who had
the seven trumpets prepared to blow them. The first angel blew
his trumpet, and there followed hail and fire mixed with blood,
and these were thrown upon the earth. And a third of the earth
was burned up, and a third of the trees were burned up, and
all green grass was burned up. The second angel blew his trumpet,
and something like, important word, a great mountain, burning
with fire, was thrown into the sea, and a third of the sea became
blood. A third of the living creatures
in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.
The third angel blew his trumpet and a great star fell from heaven,
blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers
and on the waters of the springs of water. The name of the star
is Wormwood. A third of the waters became
Wormwood and many people died from the water because it had
been made bitter. The fourth angel blew his trumpet,
and a third of the sun was struck, and a third of the moon, and
a third of the stars, so that a third of their light might
be darkened, and a third of the day might be kept from shining,
and likewise a third of the night. Then I looked, and I heard an
eagle cry with a loud voice as it flew directly overhead, Woe,
woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth. at the blast of the
other trumpets that the three angels are about to blow. Look at verse 1 of chapter 9.
And the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star fallen
from heaven to the earth, and he was given the key to the shaft
of the bottomless pit. He opened the shaft of the bottomless
pit, and from the shaft rose smoke like the smoke of a great
furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke
from the shaft. And then from the smoke came
locusts on the earth, and they were given power like the power
of scorpions of the earth, and they were told not to harm the
grass of the earth or any green plant or any tree, but only those
people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. They
were allowed to torment them for five months, but not to kill
them. And their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when
it stings someone. And in those days, people will
seek death, and they will not find it. They will long to die,
but death will flee from them." And we'll stop there. Now, we're
probably not even going to get completely through those six
verses in chapter 9, but I wanted you to sort of get the picture
here, because that's what we are. We're reading Revelation,
and Revelation is a big letter full of pictures. Well, I made
emphasis on the word like because when we see the word like and
as, that is called, back to our first three sessions together,
a simile. That means it is similar, it's
like, or it's being used to expressly describe something. That means
very clearly that it is not a mountain, but it's like a mountain. What
is a mountain? We can describe the characteristics
of a mountain. I'm just giving you some application of some
of that stuff as it comes to pass. We also know as we've seen
the seals that were opened up, as we see now these seven seals
and what they stood for and what they meant. We know that there
are the seven seals that are showing God's plan of history. Now we see these seven angels
given seven trumpets to make judgment, and to bring war, and
to bring announcement. And now we've seen five of these
trumpets and what they do. The first four do something,
and then the fifth one says something, and then the fifth, excuse me,
fifth, sixth, and seventh teach us something. And we'll look
at all of those next week. But in these seven trumpets,
I want you to think about linking the comparisons that we've had
already in this reading. The four seals as they opened,
the first four seals were four horsemen. And these are similar
in grouping as are the first four trumpets. What do the first
four horsemen do? They bring what? Pestilence,
destruction, war. They bring in some type of calamity
where? On the earth. So the first four
trumpets then are a picture of things happening on the earth.
So we just want to see that. The fifth seal shows the saints
crying out for what? Judgment. Why? because they're
of how the world has lived so wickedly and how the world has
come against the church and everything else and they're called martyrs. And in this fifth seal, these
saints are crying out for justice with the fifth trumpet shows
this same scene from heaven rather than from earth. So if we think
about the people under the altar crying out to the Lord like we
talked about several weeks ago, these are those who are the children
of God who are experiencing what? Calamity and pain and suffering
and persecution and tribulation. Now all of a sudden we see this
fifth trumpet blowing and it is the scene from heaven. looking
at down onto the earth. The seal shows the saints under
the altar looking into heaven and the trumpet shows the saints
in heaven looking down to earth. So now when we start to see these
pictures, think about it. Here is the seal, the saints
under the altar. Where's the altar? It's in the
Holy of Holies, it's symbolic. We see this looking up to what? Looking up to the altar of God
going, when Lord, when Lord, when Lord? The prayers of the
saints. Remember? And we saw the sensor
a week before last of how God is effectually moving in the
mindset of how our prayers are always being worked on and answered,
even when they're in some respects delayed, just like the prayer
for judgment, it is going to be delayed until the one day. And then from this seal, as we'll
see, it starts looking down and seeing what the answer to this
prayer is going to look like, and back and forth and back and
forth. And of course we know that it's not always just the
saints on the earth, though we are the ones who pray, but there
are saints in heaven crying out, win, win, win. These are the
prayers. But I wanted to make something
sort of clear a couple of weeks back that I didn't because of
time and I got distracted. I don't know that there's necessarily
a reason to pray in heaven, is there? It doesn't make any sense. We don't see any prescription
for it. Do we know? No, we don't. But we do see that
this picture of what heaven is like is worship. The picture
of what earth is like is praying. So these different views are
now revealed. The seals show the perspective
of the sealed as they are redeemed. Remember, who shall stand? And
then I heard the number, the number of every tribe of the
Judah, 12,000 for every tribe, 144,000. I heard the number.
Then I looked and I saw a multitude, myriads of myriads, thousands
of thousands. The word myriad means number
that can't be counted. So there's myriads and myriads
and thousands and thousands of people. We heard the number,
the perfection, the seal, the completion of God's people has
come in. And we see this seal show the
perspective of the sealed as they're redeemed by God and His
purpose. The trumpets then do what? Show the alternative of that.
The trumpets now are going to show the perspective of the unsealed. This view from the unsealed as
they are judged by God and His purpose. So when we think about
the seals, these are more or less, and this is a reminder,
the decrees of God that Jesus Christ is the God over, He is
the Lord over, He sends angels, not just angels as we see in
the trumpets, but He sends fallen angels as we see in the seals
to do the work of calamity in the earth. Now see, if we take
all of this literally, as there's an angel riding on a horse coming
down here to start earthquakes. He's got a little earthquake
stick. then we fall prey to wooden literal meanings that aren't
necessarily within the genre of the writing. In other words,
we're not seeing the picture and we could actually fall prey
into being sort of like Greek mythology. Well, this is how
the oceans came about, because Zeus cried, or not Zeus, but
Pelagius, of the sea. And we know that the Greek mythology
and Roman gods and all are artificial, they're man-made, they're the
answers of how we get these things. So we want to be careful that
we don't ascribe to the work of God, that one true God, as
if he were this mythological God who were doing certain little
things upon the natural world that caused other things to happen
in such a wooden sense. What we do see is the reality
that the theology and the doctrine of this, of God, is teaching
us that God is the author of all things. God is the master
of all things. God is the Lord of all things
and Jesus Christ, He sends all that there is to have happen
to the earth by His command. The fallen angels work for Him
and the Glorified angels work for him. They do that which he
has called them to do. In these trumpets, Think about
trumpets for a minute. And I don't know if I went over
this a couple of weeks ago, but I want us just to get it in our
minds. What are trumpets for? Trumpets, believe it or not,
are not for marching bands. They're not for drum and bugle
corps. They're not even for military wake-up revelries. They're not
for that at all. If we look at scripture and we
look at history, you didn't find people really playing trumpets
from a context of musical composition. Trumpets were used for war. Trumpets were used as an announcement
of attack. Announcement of judgment. And
I know you've probably never seen anyone in real life use
like a shofar, but that's the ram's horn. Those, that, you
probably have. Yeah, you went to, yep, yep,
yep. I've got a friend who goes to a Pentecostal church, and
she brought a shofar into our homeschool group just a couple
of months back, and she was trying to blow it, trying to blow it,
and she She says, I just can't get this thing so I'll wipe it
off my... She goes, oh, you got to come and blow it from a church.
I said, I'm not going to go blow this from a church. So she took
it back to church the next week and got it to blow, and the pastor
had to tell her to put it away because she was interrupting
service, but she was excited about it. But that is a distinct
sound. And for the Israelites, that sound was a sound of attention,
a sound of warning, but also not just of war and attention
and attack, but it was also a sound of welcome. Trumpets are used
to welcome. Here is the king, or here is
the day of jubilee, or here is the festival of life, or here
is the festival of booths. Let's blow this trumpet that
everybody might know that this has begun. And so in the trumpets
of this revelation, we see these angels blowing these trumpets
in both ways. It is a trumpet of warning and
a trumpet of war for those who are on the earth. And it is a
trumpet of beginning and a trumpet of Maranatha of of praise for
those who are sealed in heaven because it is the culmination
of the gospel. And it is not only the culmination
of the gospel, it is the recompense of God and His judgment on all
wickedness. So for us, the church, the trumpet
is great. For the unsealed, for the lost,
it is a picture of horror. As we've already seen that when
the Lord brings His judgment, if it were to lay out in a linear
sense in time, the people of the earth as they watch it unfold
would cry for the mountains to fall upon them that they may
not suffer the wrath of God. But no one could hide and no
one could escape the question then, who shall stand? The beloved
of Christ shall stand. Those who are sealed by the Spirit
of God. So trumpets are for war, for an announcement of judgment
and attack. We saw that in the writings of the Old Testament
when Joshua was given the task by God to go to Jericho and to
defeat it. Jericho was a place that was
fortified by a great wall, and it had a great military, and
it was not something that you could just walk up to and knock
on the door and say, yo, dude, can we come in? We just want
to chill, and you get in there and you can fight. You could
not penetrate the fortress of Jericho. And so God told Joshua
to get seven trumpeters to have trumpets and to march around
the city, how many times? Seven times for how many days?
Seven days! You know, so seven days, seven
times a day, marching around the city, and at the end of every
time, what? They blow the trumpets at the
end of it all. and the walls fall down. Those
trumpets were a sound not only of war and attack, and not only
of welcome, of victory, but it was a sound of what? Who said
that? Oh, I thought you knew what I
was going to say. It was a sound of victory, but it was also a sound
of destruction for people like Jericho. It wasn't even the beginning
of things, it was their destruction. The very blow of the trumpets
of God is a signal that the destruction is here and it is over and it
is done. For sort of like Gideon, Gideon
had a very massive army. If you all know the story of
Gideon in the Old Testament, and Gideon's army was almost undefeatable
and just God came to him and said, you
got too many men. You got too many men. One time, two times,
three times. And he put God to the test, and God's like, look,
you still got too many men. So he ended up with just a couple, a handful
of guys, and he told them to put down their swords, and to
put down their shields, and to get some jars, and to get some
trumpets, and to get some torches. And so to put the torches under
the jars to hide the lamb, get the trumpets, to go up there,
break the jars, reveal the torches and then to blow the trumpets
and to say, victory for Gideon, victory for the Lord. And all
chaos broke loose in that area and they defeated themselves.
And Gideon and his armies went and cleaned up the trumpets. And that was Midian, I think
is who Gideon fought against. The trumpets. is bad news for
God's enemies and good news for God's children. So the trumpet
blasts sound the alert for war, for welcome, for new starts,
for the coming of the king as he takes full mastery over his
judgments. And so the recap then, as we look at these trumpets,
would be these six seals and these six trumpets reveal things
that are happening continually, presently. As we'll see in these
trumpets, they mirror the seals. Until that final day, until that
final day of judgment, which we call the Day of the Lord,
which we call Judgment Day. So now let's look at these trumpets
as they come. Verse 6. We see the trumpet Verse
7, rather. The first trumpet is blown and
there followed hail and fire mixed with blood. Now, picture
this for a second. Hail, you know what hail is?
It rains down ice from heaven from the sky. A hail storm can
destroy a piece of property in just a quick second. I remember
the last big hail storm we lived through, we lived in Savannah
and it just came up and I mean golf balls were falling and it
annihilated like five or six car dealerships. It annihilated
their entire inventory. It was a complete loss. that
day, just in like five minutes, broke all the windshields, put
dings in there. You can't restore that stuff. It's just like, okay,
insurance check, let's salvage these things. Imagine if they're
on fire. I mean, hail is bad enough, burning
hail, and this is to add insult to injury, let's put some blood
in it. Why? I don't know, it's ominous. And
that sounds like a good horror movie. I mean, can you imagine?
Imagine everybody standing outside the picnic and there's some hail.
Oh, it's a hailstorm. Get out of the shelter. Oh, gosh,
it's on fire. Crap, there's blood. What's happening
here? This is not something you ignore
when it's all over. Oh, I'm glad that's over. Let's
go back to our ball game. I mean, no. That's an attention
getter. Something's wrong with blood.
Fiery, bloody ice, which is almost non-existent, is falling from
the sky. That was the first one. What
happens? What happens in this flowery,
bloody ice? Mixed with blood, and they were thrown upon the
earth, and the earth, one third was burned up, and a third of
the trees were burned up, and all the green grass was burned
up. No more mowing. I mean, that's almost a blessing.
Anyway, and here we are, this first trumpet is showing us that
there is something happening to the creative world, the created
world. This trumpet is showing us that
there is a suffering but not a destruction that's taking place
on the earth. Where do you get that? One third,
not all of it. Is that not happening today?
Is there not calamity? I mean, did not some guy who
was bored in Carolina just burn down billions of dollars worth
of property? They arrested him, and the question was, Sir, why
did you start this fire? He said, I was bored. I was bored. I mean, here's this guy, and
he's burning stuff up. And it's incredible. Why would
he do that? Because this is what the Lord
has put in motion. This is what the Lord has brought.
Yes, is there fire coming from the sky? No. Is there bloody
hail coming? No. But what is coming? Calamity, continually. I mean,
if this building sets on fire and we all perish, it's not going
to protect the trees outside. It's not like everything happens
to just the people of the earth and man's creation. And Paul
in Romans 8, as we'll go to many times tonight, it says it's subjected
to the futility of sin. Not willingly, but unwillingly.
That's why we believe as Baptists that God will restore creation.
It's not sinful. It's a product of sin in the
context of its fall and demise. But this is what we see there.
We see that it's a third That's how many times? Thirteen times
we see one-third in this text. Why such an emphasis? Because
this one-third reveals that it's not a complete destruction, but
it is a massive suffering. And this is just, there's no
people involved here. A second angel blew his trumpet.
Something like a great mountain, burning with fire, was thrown
into the sea. A third of the sea became blood. A third of
the living creatures in the sea died. And a third of the ships
were destroyed. I mean, there was a plane that fell out of
the sky not two weeks ago. The whole Brazilian soccer team
died. Five people lived. Have you seen
the pictures of the crash site? Who lives in that? Whoever God
deems He wants to live. Whoever God decides to spare. Why did they die? It's the result
of the fall. It's the result of God's decree
to bring destruction. Did the airplane do something
bad to God? How about the forest where they landed and it burned
everything up? Did that do something to God? Was it worthy of destruction?
No. What about the pilot? The pilot
might have been a pretty good guy. What about the five that
lived? Is it because they were so righteous?
Maybe they're the most wicked people on there. Who knows? Maybe they were all together
in some place they shouldn't be. We don't know. God is no respecter
of persons. Everything is subject to the
judgments of God, even if it's not worthy of judgment. Are trees,
is the earth worthy of judgment? No. But it will be subject to
the judgment of God because man has sinned and the wages of sin
is death. So therefore, animals and trees
and birds, the sky, the suns, the planets, all of it must go.
These judgments When we start to see them, the earth, the sea,
the sky, what is this picture showing us? What's left? What other segment of creation
is left? Animals and man, that's it. There's the earth, Terra, the
sky, the space in the sky, the sky is not a And what? The seas. There's nothing left. The earth
in itself, in all of itself, is subject to the judgment of
God, subject to the suffering that comes through God's judgment.
And that's what these pictures are showing us, especially this
chapter 8, verse 7. Well, what about the second trumpet?
What is this great mountain? What does it mean? And why only
a third again? Well, why not? Why is God judging things partially? Well, do we die in our flesh? I don't know, never thought about
it. Might be. Could be. I haven't made that
comparison. But when we look at this, why the emphasis again,
13 times of 1 third? Because this is not the judgment. It's just precursor to judgment. This is just a natural order
and all of the natural order is experiencing suffering. Romans
8. All things experience suffering because of the sin of Adam. This
suffering, however, is not the final blast. It's not the seventh
trumpet. It's not the seventh seal. It's
not the day of judgment. But these are small, short, tiny
precursor tremors of the grand finale. And it's not going to
be any comparison to the grand judgment of God. When we think
about earthquakes and fire. Like I have friends in Oakland
who knew some victims of the fire in that building this past
week. Thirty-six people perished in
this rat hole of Hoarderville. I mean, this is a terrible situation.
And, oh gosh, what was God doing? That was judgment. That wasn't
judgment, it was just a precursor to judgment. There were probably
some decent people in that building. There might have even been some
people who were Christians in that building. It wasn't what
they want you to believe that it was, complete debauchery. There might have been, I don't
know. But we don't know. And what if that thing had done like
the last fire that happened in Oakland and burned down 3,000
houses? 3,000 houses. Would it be that
everyone who lost their house? No. Good men and bad men, Christian
and lost men, all people alike would suffer. Because we live
in a fallen world. Christians get cancer and die.
While sometimes non-Christians don't get sick at all and live
to be a hundred. And vice versa. Some good Christians live forever,
seemingly. And then some terrible people
die young and are like, yeah, deserved it. No, we all deserved
it. This temporary continual judgments are provisional. Meaning that they are present.
but they are not final. They have a purpose, but they
are not the judgment of God. Even 9-11, many people began
to preach that day, and that was the fullest that our church
in Brunswick had ever been in attendance on a Sunday. It was
so full, people were standing outside in the parking lots,
waiting for the next service so they could come in. I thought, wow. So what do I say? I pray that all of you are not
having a temporary revival. I pray that next Sunday, when
all things are settled down, your zeal for finding Christ
and truth would still be there and that you would still be in
these seats next week. Was it? Nah. Two weeks later,
back to normal. Back to normal, especially down
here. You know, friends that live in New York, it took them
a year to get back to normal. Some of them aren't normal now,
but I mean, just as a way of life. Once they cleaned it all up and Back
to normal. We forget what happens yesterday.
We forget the pains of last week. We forget the suffering of our
neighbor because we don't live there. People would say, well, that's
the judgment of God. No, it's not the judgment of God. It's
part of the natural consequences of the fall. And in some ways,
the judgments that we see, these precursor judgments, these these
temporary provisional judgments are really pictures of grace.
People know that the wages of sin is death. People know that
God is sovereign over these things. People know that calamity usually
unites a people rather than divides a people. A wise pastor, an older
man in the faith, told me one time when I was sharing my heart
with him that I just felt so disconnected from so many people
in the congregation. They did not really trust me.
at this particular time I felt, it's all feelings. And he puts
his hand around my shoulders and he stands there and he looks
at me, a little too close, but he looks at me, you know. And
he said, son, he said, you look at these people. Go ahead, look
at them. And I'm looking at them and everybody's just sort of
fellowshipping out. He says, one of these people soon will
lose a loved one. One of them may even die. He
said, when you're there during that, I'm like, that's sort of my car,
dude. Let's hope somebody dies so I
can feel more intact with the church. But the point he was
making is that when we go through suffering together, there's an
intimacy there that's absolutely, undeniably bonding. It is. Why? Because when we know that
we all suffer together, the church, we what? Weep with those who
weep? We rejoice with those who rejoice. And would you imagine,
some of the things I like about the fact we don't do a lot of
programs. Could you imagine if we had a big program and we had
some clowns coming in and juggling and we had some fiery acrobats
coming in for this thing and somebody's kid dies. The last thing I want to do is
hear, and see this guy come in and try to pretend like we're
not all hurting. Friends, when we suffer as Christians,
it is because we are still in this world. These people who
read this letter were suffering greatly. And friends, when God
brings this type of suffering in this world, even the trees
experience the precursors of judgment. They're not guilty
or worthy, they're of. But it is not judgment. Judgment
is complete. And that was my argument at 9-11.
This is not the judgment of God. This is a gift. Oh, you are weird
and wacky. This is awful that you would
say, I said that from the pulpit. You should not have said that.
It's not a gift. It is a gift to us. It is a gift to us because
we now are thinking about mortality. It is a gift to us because we've
all lost friends and loved ones. It is a gift to us because our
way of life have been encroached upon. Our idolatry is now in
check. Our materialism is now not important. Now that's another thing about
suffering. What is it that Peter says? The
one who suffers in the flesh is free from all sin. That's
a paraphrase. What does that mean? Listen guys,
when we are suffering, we are not. We are not really caring
about satisfying and gratifying our flesh. We're not worried
how many gold nuggets we're going to find today, or whether our
pecan harvest is picked up, or whether the weeds out of the
flower beds are done, or whether we've touched up the crown molding
in the living room. We don't care when suffering.
When somebody's got a funeral to plan, they don't even care
if they go back to work. It's not important. We're just consumed
by the suffering. And as Christians, we are not
consumed by the hopelessness of it, but rather by the giftedness
of it, knowing that it is all for something greater. But for
the lost, they have nothing greater. This light momentary affliction
for us prepares us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. But this light momentary affliction
for the lost is nothing but a small short commercial that is going
to seem like a circus and an entertainment tonight, rather
in comparison to the judgment of eternal God. And that's the
picture we're seeing. Hail with fire and blood, the
earth, the trees, the grass is subject to it. Verse 8, this
great mountain all ablaze. Verse 9, the sea. Verse 10, the
great star, the sky, the rivers, the spring of water. These judgments, if you think
about it, what do they really remind you of? They remind me
specifically and almost parallel with the plagues of Egypt. that
God poured out His judgment through plagues on the people of Egypt.
Why? Well, let's look at it for a
second. I'm not going to go through all these things in Exodus, but
the first plague was hail and fire from heaven. The Nile turning to blood. Locusts. Darkness, then locusts. And that's
exactly what we see there. Hail coming from the sky. The
Nile turning to blood. Or the waters turning to blood.
The sea turning to blood. Darkness. The sun is taken out.
And now locusts. You think God's showing us something?
You think the people would remember? Wow. This is the plagues of Egypt.
This is what God is doing. This is what's happening here.
These plagues, why are they important? Because when we see them here,
when we see this destruction, we see this temporary provisional
judgment of God on the earth today, presently, we're not writhing
our hands going, oh, what's next? When is it going to get better?
It's not going to get better. It's going to maintain its course.
There are seasons that seem better. There's great, maybe, opportunities
of peace. There could be, by the Lord's
grace and mercy, and I pray that He does it now. I pray that there
will be revival. I pray that many would come to
the gospel, that preachers would stop playing games and get on
their knees and pray for God to bring life to their souls,
that they may throw the library of humanism and pragmatism in
the fire and get the word of God out. But if the Lord doesn't
do it, it will not take place. And these plagues remind us of
the purpose behind them, just as we see today in this world,
the same purpose God had in the days of Egypt. when things happen. Well, we could talk about the
absolute physical rebellion of God's people and the continued
paganism of the Egyptians, but ultimately we know this is the
narrative of scripture. God created the world and it
was good and God created man and woman and it was good and
then they sinned and it was not good. But God purposed that,
that he might do what was good in redeeming them through the
seed of woman. So that's the first picture of
history, isn't it? The seed of woman. Who is the
seed of woman? That's a virgin birth. Matter
of fact, if we know anything about our biology, it should
be, say, egg of woman, seed of God. The seed of woman in Genesis
chapter three is Jesus Christ, the one, the God-man who came
and was conceived by the Holy Spirit. This is the first seed
of creation. And this seed of woman is Jesus
Christ in the incarnation, his advent into this world. And the
second point of the culmination of this world is what? This seed
of woman who is the Christ glorified, who comes back as king. His kingdom
shall come. He shall put all things under
His feet. What specifically? How does that
look? Are we under the feet of Jesus
as Christians? Are we under the feet of Jesus
as our King? No. We are His body. Matter of fact, if we understand
the imagery of that, some of us are His feet. We shall stand
upon the enemies of God. They shall be under us forever.
These pictures are important, church. These pictures of Revelation
are important. This is the point that God created
in these judgments. That He would show that His redemption
is necessary. And He would show that His righteousness
succeeds in the judgment of wickedness. God's judgment against evil in
the physical world is happening right now. But it is only a small
picture. Because the final day of judgment
issues in, as we'll see when we get on in this letter, an
eternal torment, an eternal destruction, an eternal smoke that rises up
forever against all those who are not in Christ, all those
who cannot stand sealed by the Lord. The gods of Egypt are nothing,
and God showed them that. The people of Egypt worshipped
their gods, and their gods could not help them. And God, the God
of the world, the God of heaven, the God of earth, brought plagues
upon Egypt. And he taught them that their
gods were nothing. God taught in those plagues that
the God of this world is nothing. Though we see clearly in Job
and here and in other places that God, that Jesus Christ commands
the angels of darkness and everything they do is by his power and for
his purpose. Yet, in their ignorance and in
their unbelief, they continually think that they are actually
working autonomously. How stupid. We know that that
was Satan's heart to begin with. He knew he was not a divine being.
He knew that he was not God, but he felt like he should point
the finger of acceptance in the face of his Creator and say,
you should make me as equal, as glorious as you are, because
I look so good. The judgments against Egypt and
the judgments against this physical world are the judgments against
the God of men. And the gods of men are nothing.
Their kingdoms are nothing. Their power is nothing. All of
their possessions are nothing. The only thing that is something
in this world are the nothings of this world. And the nothings
of this world, according to Paul in 1 Corinthians 1, are those
who are in Christ, in whom God works, with whom God has fellowship. Judgment. that we see in this
nature is a precursor. Nature, however, is not the object
of judgment. Man is the object of judgment. If we look here and we see all
of these things, this mountain burning with fire, what does
it mean? Well, all throughout the Old
Testament, mountains are symbolic of kingdoms. So if God has shown
us in this picture that this first angel brings judgment and
calamity and suffering upon the physical world, the second angel
in some sense blew his trumpet and something like a great mountain
burning with fire was thrown into the sea. He's showing that
there is nothing that is mighty, nothing that is majestic, nothing
that stands that God cannot hurl like a pebble anywhere He wants
it. And in a symbolic way, we can
understand that mountains, yes, will fall physically, but also
shall kingdoms. All kingdoms shall fall. All
governments shall fall. Our theonomists, brothers and
sisters, they believe that God is going to restore some type
of theometrical, let me just make up a new word here, government. that everything's gonna just
come to a peaceability and everybody's gonna come to salvation and you're
gonna have these kingdoms of Christians and these kingdoms
of pagans and they're gonna be separated by this great chasm
of water, I guess, and shoot bows and arrows toward each other
for the rest of... It's not gonna happen. All kingdoms will fail. There is no king but Christ.
There is no kingdom but the Kingdom of Heaven. And it comes down
at the Day of Judgment when God recreates all that there is with
the power of His Word. Judgment. The darkness we cannot
see. The Bible talks about darkness.
Jesus in John chapter 3 talks about darkness. We see this star
falling from heaven in verse 10, blazing like a torch. What
is this star? Who is this star? Well, we'll
see as we get on over. I think it's chapter 12. Yep,
where we get into chapter 12, we'll see very specifically who
this star is. But ultimately, the star symbolically
is Satan being thrown out of heaven. And Jesus commands him
out of heaven. He throws him out of heaven and
he does the bidding of God wherever God places him. And he is bringing
calamity upon the earth. But I want us to close tonight
looking at chapter 8, verse 13, moving into chapter 9 because
I want us to get this picture on our minds as we begin to see
some of this incredibly difficult, mysterious language. It says
there in verse 13, then I looked and I heard an
eagle crying with a loud voice as it flew directly overhead.
Now think about this for a second. an eagle crying, saying. Is this a picture of a literal
eagle or is this a picture of an announcement coming? What
did we just see in these trumpets? We saw God bringing suffering
to the creation. But it wasn't judgment, not complete. We saw God bringing suffering
and judgment to the instruments of man, to kingdoms, to mighty
obstacles, to mountains, whatever we might say there. We see this
third angel blow his trumpet and we see the devil coming in
and causing havoc. And we see this fourth angel
blow his trumpet and the sun was struck and darkness comes. Because God's judgment is going
to be poured out on the unsealed. What does Jesus even say in John
3? This is the judgment. The light has come into the world,
but people love the darkness rather than the light. 2 Corinthians
4 teaches that those who cannot see the gospel, it is because
the star, Wormwood, who is thrown from heaven, Paul calls him the
God of this world. What? What does he do effectually?
He blinds the eyes of unbelievers in order that they cannot see
the light of the glory of God in Christ. He blinds them. So this darkness
is happening here. We live in a dark world. The
abundance of darkness is way greater than the measure of light
in this world, y'all. This world belongs to the devil.
God has given it to him. He rules it by the will of God,
by the power of God. That God allows him to blind
people. Why? We don't know, but it is
right. We know that it's right. What's
not right is that God would dare shine in our hearts the light
of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
So that we might see. What was not right is that Saul
and his murderous hatred of God and Christ, that God would blind
his physical eyes so that his spirit could see. This is the present darkness.
And now there's this eagle. Whoa, whoa, whoa. What do we learn about three
things in scripture that they're of utmost importance? That they're
of the highest thing, friends. We don't know what this really
means as far as the symbol of the eagle. I mean, I've looked
in the Old Testament and there's places where we saw eagle. We
see the imagery of God coming down like an eagle and screaming
like an eagle. Maybe it's the heralding of the
gospel. Maybe it's the church. Maybe it's preachers. Maybe it's
Romans chapter 9. Maybe it's Paul and the apostles.
Stop! Repent! Maybe it's John the Baptist.
Does it matter? Does it matter at all? No! We
know now that God has cried out, woe, woe, woe! And what is He
saying there? To those who dwell on earth,
at the blast of the other trumpets that these three angels are about
to blow, you are about to see something. You know what they're
seeing now? Suffering and calamity and persecution and all of this,
and they're thinking, wow, is life going to get better? And
then God is crying out and saying, woe to you, you have not seen
anything yet. You think this is bad? Behold
my judgment. I mean, that's what He's saying.
That's what He's saying. This fifth trumpet shows us the
judged, shows us the unsealed. As the fifth seal showed us the
sealed who cry out and God in one sense is preparing to answer
their prayers. Here is the answer of their prayers.
You people on the earth, you are going to experience a mighty
righteous judgment. And now we see the star. Now
we start to understand. Fallen from where? From heaven.
Satan, given the key to the shaft of the bottle. What is this bottle
and pit? We don't know, but we know that there's not symbolism
here. A star falling from heaven, and it's symbolic of this, and
this bottle and pit is real. See, that doesn't work. If we've
got play food, if we've got the, you know, the Fisher-Price kitchen
set, and we've got the little plastic or the cloth-covered
pancakes, we don't put real syrup on them. We don't take the little Tycho
lawnmower and really put gas in it instead of bubbles. You
see what I'm saying? So we don't put the image of
Satan as a star falling from heaven and put a real pit there.
But what's in the pit? Calamity. the angels that have
been kicked out, the one third of the multitude of the heavenly
host who were thrown out of heaven. Why are they in a pit? It's not
the point. What's in a bottomless pit? Gloom. What's in there? Destruction. Who has authority
over it? Satan. Who has authority over
him? Jesus Christ. He gives him the key. What does
that mean? Same way Jesus was talking about the key to heaven
and the key of eternal life and the key and the gates and all
these things with Peter. Peter didn't have a key. Christ
is the key. And Christ decreed that the devil
would have the ability to command fallen angels to bring destruction. And to bring blindness. But these locusts, these angels,
these instruments of destruction were like the power of scorpions
were like locusts. And these locusts came and they
had, as you'll see later, faces of men and women of hair of women
and all this kind of stuff. So we know they're not locusts.
But it says there. that they came on the earth and
they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth.
In verse 4 of chapter 9, they were told not to harm the grass
of the earth or the green plants or any tree, but only to harm
those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads.
They were allowed, see that? They were given power and they
were allowed to torment them for five months. What's five
months? Well, go on Google today and look up locust and look at
their lifespan. It's five months. So as long
as these things alive, as long as they are free to do their
work, God has given the authority of fallen angels, the authority
to the devil to bring calamity upon the world. And we don't
know exactly how this is going to work until next week. So just
sit on it and just wait and rest. But what we do know is that these
angels are announcing the judgment. of God. They have the power to
command, Satan does, and this power is given for them to harm
the unsealed but not to harm the world. So see, the angels
of darkness, the angels, the fallen angels will not bring
judgment. God's glorified angels will bring
judgment. Fallen angels just bring calamity until the day
of judgment. Now I want to say this What was it that hardened Pharaoh's
heart? What was it? In our psychological circles
today, we can read studies and case studies after case studies
and case studies about why pastors' kids are often the hardest and
the hateful and the rebellious. You were a pastor's kid. You
know what it's like. Always got to have that perfect look and
sound and smell. And psychologists would tell
us, and psychiatrists would tell us that this overbearing expectation
can put somebody in a place of hardening. It could or it couldn't. I mean, I grew up sort of like
a pastor's kid, pastor's grandson, and the Lord was gracious to
save me. It was not the judgment of God
that hardened Pharaoh's heart, was it? No, because every time God brought
judgment against Egypt, Pharaoh did what? What's the Bible say?
He relented. He repented. Plague? No. It started not with
a plague. It started with a command. My God said to let his people
go. Are you greater than my magicians? Yeah. OK, have it your way. Moses, Aaron. Their God would
bring fire and burn Egypt. And the burning of Egypt brought
repentance in the heart of Pharaoh. That's a softening of a heart,
not a hardening. And Pharaoh go, OK, OK, OK, you
can leave. Just please don't burn my stuff
anymore. What is that? Worldly sorrow. And what caused
Pharaoh's heart to harden was that God gave him mercy. He took
away, he took away the pressing. He took away the judgment. He
took away the plague. And his heart, when he had his
way again, hate God. Not I love God. He is mighty
and powerful. He could bring me to ruin, but
he gave me mercy. See, that's what we do. I hate
God. How dare He put me in a place
where I have to submit to Him. Okay? You're not leaving. Okay. I'm going to make all your water
blood. Okay, you can leave. Mercy. I hate you. You see? And
each time Pharaoh's heart was hardened because the Lord intended
to do it that way. When we hate God, we hate His
mercy. As long as we can spit in His
face, as long as we cower in the corner under His judgment,
we're okay in our own minds because what king can overcome such greatness? But when things are good, it's
time for revenge. And God is showing here, He's
allowing the torment of the unsealed, but not for them to be killed.
And in verse six, and this is the last thing I'll say, in those
days, people will seek death and they will not find it. They
will long to die, but death will flee from them. People want mercy and when they
get it, they hate it. What is it that Paul argues in
chapter 1 of Romans? What's the crux of Romans 1,
2, and 3? That God is just in His judgment. God is just in His wrath because
man is wicked. But in the mercy of God, God
is just in His kindness because His wrath has been poured out
on Jesus. to be received by faith. That's
Romans 1, 2, and 3 in a nutshell. There's a lot more there, but
that's in a nutshell. That's the argument Paul's going to want
to make. So in the temporary provisional, you might say, well,
what is the point of having... I know when we suffer in this
life, it prepares us for glory. We recognize that. But what really
is it? The people of this world, they
do crazy things. They burn people, they hurt people,
they rape people, they murder, they steal, they lie. What is
God doing there? It is His judgment. As it says
in Romans 1, that the wrath of God will be poured out on all
what? Ungodliness. All ungodliness. And all those
ungodly who by what? By their unrighteous works suppress
the truth. Though they know God, they do
not thank Him. They do not honor Him. They do
not worship Him. But they worship what? The creation. They worship their bodies, they
worship the image of their bodies, they worship creatures, they
worship pets, they worship the moon, they worship creation,
they worship all these man-made or created things, they worship
the creation rather than the creator, and therefore God turns
them over to a reprobate mind that they may do that which is
unnatural, that they may fall into a continued wickedness,
that they may start to sin over sin, and even in their best days,
they're wicked. And that's the judgment of God,
so that when they refuse the truth and God turns them over
to reprobation, there is no more opportunity for salvation, for
they have refused the only lamb who would propitiate for their
wickedness. This is what we're waiting on
as a church. That God will stomp out evil
and forever bring it under judgment so that I can be made new. So
that you can be restored. So that there will never be another
temptation to go through my mind. Nor even the recollection of
what it felt like to be tempted in the first place. Praise God. Thank the Lord He doesn't give
us the option. You want to stay here and work or you want to
come on to heaven? I don't know very many Christians who would
stay here. Paul did. I don't know, I'm so torn. The Lord is sovereign in it.
So it is part of God's judgment that he allows people to continue
stacking up wickedness so that when he pours his wrath out on
them, it is clear. Think of this for a minute. What
are we supposed to get from this? I think there's two things that
we ought to get from this latter part of 8 and first few verses
of 9. But I'll boil them down to just
two tonight. And I've already said them, just so that we can
be succinct. We should be in this number. We should be in the number of
judged. We should be in the number counted as objects of wrath. But we're not. Why? Because God
is merciful toward us. He gave us eternal life through
Jesus Christ. He sent the gospel. We heard it. We believed. God
is the author and the finisher of our faith. He has brought
us all to where He is. And He is going to continue to
keep us there. That's the first thing. Number
two, I think what ought to really stir in our hearts because of
this, that's important and that's good, but the outcome of knowing
that as truth is we ought to have a list of people running
through our mind like credits at the end of a movie, who we know are still counted
as objects of wrath. The problem is we like the Hollywood
version of Revelation much better because it gives three and a
half years for people to get right with God. Friends, we may not
have three and a half seconds. I think reading this not only
is glorious for us, but it ought to be a burden on us. It ought
to be a burden that we share the faith. We share the gospel.
We pray for those who persecute us. We pray that God would use
us. We'd open our mouths and we preach truth at every opportunity
we have. Every opportunity. I hate compliments. I hate compliments. They make
me feel bad because they make me feel good. Does that make
sense? And then that makes me feel bad.
And just tonight, an 81-year-old woman walked up and she says,
it's been probably, and then she mentions a man's name, and
I think it's been over 40 years since this man existed in this
town. since I've seen a preacher be involved in the lives of so
many people. And I'm like, this is not comfortable
for me. And I thought about it. Why am
I the odd guy? I shouldn't be the anomaly. As
Christians, we ought not to be the anomaly. Oh, that's a radical
Christian. But in her mind and her experience
in 80 years, 81 years, all of her life, she's seen pastors
hide behind their profession. She's seeing church leaders,
whereas she thinks that it's great that if I'm buying batteries
that ace hardware, that I might stand there for 30 minutes and
share the faith. Or we might get into a conversation at Hoodies
and Houston won't throw us out. You know, that life is lived
for the sake of the gospel, that it's more important than getting
my oil changed, is that the guy here, the FEMA guy today that
I got to talk to, share the gospel. The ATF guy that came and talked
with me last week, get to share the gospel. Why? Human beings are going to suffer
the wrath of God, and if we believe it, we'll share the gospel. See,
that's One of the things that I think should come out of reading
what the judgment of God is going to be like. They will beg to
die and they will not find death. I've begged to die before. Have
you? It was just this January I begged to die. Really? The pain in my body was so bad
for six days. that I cried because I hadn't
walked over 60,000 steps in three nights because I could not stop
moving for the pain in my body and I could not sleep. It is
a very, very tough thing. And I said, God, please, in all
of your mercy, take my life. I cannot endure this. And it's
just a matter of moments when God goes, yes, you can. And you're
like, OK, I don't want to endure this. Let's get it correctly.
And that's just nerve damage and arthritis. What's it going
to be like when God pours His attention through judgment on
a human being? It's going to make that feel
like a back rub in comparison. So I pray, I pray church, that
we would keep that mindset when we think of the judgment. Not
just celebrate it. that we escaped it, which is
good. But embrace the reality that we are the instruments of
grace. We are those who are supposed to herald the gospel. And we're
going to do, we're going to all have our own personalities. We're
not all going to be alike and speak alike and talk alike and
go out and be as zealous as each other in appearance. But we all
have conversations. We all have opportunities to
pray. We're all open to people every day that we can engage. You don't know how? Then pray
for God to do it. He will do it. Pray for the Lord
to open your mouth, and He will. Let's pray. Lord, I hate to stop, but we've
got time. Time is not our enemy, though it seems to be, because
it is a gift from You. You've given us parameters in
which we live for Your glory. And there will come a day Whether
day will never end and time will be no more. And until then, Lord,
let us live each day to the fullest in Christ as we do what we do
as stewards of our home, of our resources, of our jobs, of our
calling, of our of our education, of our relationships. Lord, let
us always be light that shines so amazingly bright. In the darkness
of this world. And while this is even mysterious,
even though I seem to grasp exactly the point that you're making
in this text, Lord, it is mysterious. And there are a lot of pictures
here that I really don't understand. Help us to be okay with that
and to understand the fullness of what you have revealed to
us and that we can trust in you. Lord, we pray for those who are
lost in our lives. We pray for those who we know
this very moment, their faces are in our minds, that if they
were to slip from this life today, they would stand in pending judgment
before you. Lord, it is not our fault that
they do not believe, but Lord, please help it not be our fault
that they have not heard. And we pray these things in the
name of Christ, amen.