We are studying our way through the book of Revelation.
So we've got a few more left to go.
We've been covering some large chunks at times.
Last week, Sam Rapp covered a few chapters.
Today we're going to cover a few chapters, so we're going to summarize our way through.
Now there are many views on the book of Revelation.
Maybe you have a particular view.
Maybe you have no view.
Maybe you're not even sure.
Maybe you've always thought this book is so strange you're never going to read it.
We are glad you're here.
We are taking the covenantal amillennial view.
We've been telling you that every week, so you know where we're coming from.
Big words, which means that we don't see all the language in the book of Revelation, all this strange language as literal, but we see a lot of it as symbolic and imagery.
That John is a pastor, and John, this writer of the book, is a poet.
And he's not describing a tribulation to come, but he's describing tribulation, pain, sorrow, difficulty of my world and your world right now.
In between the first coming of Jesus and the second coming of Jesus.
Right?
You still have pain, you have tribulation, you have sadness and disappointment.
So do I.
I have exhaustion, you have exhaustion, there's still wars, there's still school shootings, there's still famine, there's still earthquakes.
John's writing about this.
Last week, Sam Rapp taught us about the two beasts in Revelation 13.
Now, this is John's imagery of institutions, beast number one, and ideologies, worldly values, beast number two, that are in the world that are vying for our hearts.
So Sam unpacked that last week.
Now we're gonna jump in where we left off last week there in Revelation 14, 6.
So three different times during the sermon, I'm gonna read pretty big chunks of scripture, and I tried to like cut it down.
I just I couldn't cut it down.
We're just gonna read it, you're gonna hang tight, we'll get through it.
Revelation 14, 6 through 13.
Then I saw another angel flying directly overhead with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people.
And he said with a loud voice, Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come, and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of the water.
Another angel, a second, followed, saying, Fallen, fallen is Babylon the Great.
We're going to learn about that.
She who made all nations drink the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality.
And another angel, a third, followed them, saying with a loud voice, If anyone worships the beast in its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, time out.
If you remember last week, Sam Rat talked about this.
I won't repeat the sermon, but this is a way to say that your heart, the core of your being, belongs to the world, that you're finding your belonging there and not with God.
Verse 10 He also will drink the wine of God's wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulphur in the presence of the holy angels, in the presence of the Lamb, and the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshippers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name.
Okay.
Now you see why I didn't ask Michelle to read all this.
Now, verse twelve.
And here's where John's taking us as the church.
Verse 12.
Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus.
And I heard a voice from heaven saying, Write this: blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.
Blessed indeed, says the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them.
So John's writing to seven churches, if you remember, and these churches were exhausted.
These churches were hurting.
These churches were in fear of the oppression of Rome and of Nero.
And we don't have to do comparative suffering with them to know that we also have exhaustion and hurt and pain.
We all walk in here exhausted by something, in pain about something, hurt by someone, afraid of something.
So all of this speaks to us exactly where we're at in the context of our own pain.
And if you're not there today, I promise you'll be there later this week.
At some point, we come in contact with all this.
Point number one is this: in Christ's victory, we are called to endure through disappointment and hardship.
The Bible's painfully realistic about that.
That we're going to have disappointment and hardship.
We're called to endure, and we're called to endure because of Christ's victory.
Five years ago, we had an eight-year-old at the time, six-year-old at the time, and a toddler, and we were brainwashed by beast number two, the worldly values in the world to take our family to Disney World because we thought that would be a fun family adventure.
And we pull into the resort, and you know, you exit the expressway, the sign is there, Mickey is on the sign, a proclamation is made.
Welcome to Disney World.
You pull off the expressway, you pull into the resort, you are on the resort.
You are there.
You are on their property.
It has been proclaimed, and apparently they have interstates inside the resort.
So you're on another interstate inside the resort, but you are there, but you're not really there.
If you've been there, you know I'm talking about.
You're there.
The sign said it, and you're still on the highway.
That's interesting.
And then you get another sign.
Magic King.
Welcome to Magic Kingdom.
That's where we're going.
Another sign.
And you're like, we are, we're here.
We're here.
We're at Magic Kingdom.
You pull in to a parking lot the size of Cobb County.
We park.
We hike the 17 miles across that hot asphalt with our children to have this fun family adventure.
And we're smart, so we got there early.
We're going to be all ready to get in early.
We're going to start the back of the park or to do the right thing.
We got the right thing that we know everything to do here.
And I can see the castle.
We're here.
I can see the castle.
We're the front gate.
And then we go to scan our passes, and it's like, no, they're not scanning.
Other people are flying through.
Our passes won't scan because apparently there's special people in passes, and then there's normal people who come in later.
These people are crucial.
I'm giving everybody dirty looks.
I'm not happy.
You know, I'm it's bad.
And I I did discover in this moment what's worse than whiny, hot kids at 4 p.m.
inside of Disney World.
You know what's worse than that?
Kids at the front gate for 30 minutes before it opens.
And you're sitting there for 30 minutes.
So we're there.
We're already there.
Yet we're not really there.
Like we are, it's been proclaimed.
And yet we are not experiencing the fullness of the magic kingdom yet.
But we're on the property, but we're not yet really enjoying all of it.
See, this is this already but not yet that John is just pouring out on us.
These seven churches lived in this.
Already but not yet.
These churches already God's, yet suffering under Nera.
And you and I, the context of our lives, already God's beloved, yet still a mess.
Like you're still a little bit of a mess, or you're a big mess, and you don't have to raise your hand which one you are, but we know, we know.
We're all a mess a little bit.
We're already loved, fully, already fully forgiven, already fully righteous in Christ, already all of that, and yet, and yet we're not fully experiencing that.
We're already, but not yet.
We're redeemed, and yet we're not experiencing the restoration, the fullness of God's story for us yet.
And so we hope in the restoration.
We are at rest, yet we still have to endure beasts around us.
And because of this, John calls Rome in verse 8 a prostitute.
He gives the prostitute a name.
He says, Rome is Babylon the Great, prostitute.
And so then John turns his thinking toward God's justice, toward evil and hurt.
And this is where in Revelation 16 we get these seven bowls of God's judgment.
So if you've been with us through our study, this is our third time through because John is using this storytelling technique called recapsulation, where he is recapping over and over again a description of the world, first with seals, then with trumpets, now with bowls of judgment, poured out on injustice.
So that we can understand the finality of God reconciling all pain and all your pain.
And all the pain of the world, all the injustice of the world, all the stuff where we go, how can this even exist if God is love?
How could this even be here?
Well, it's hope to come and a restoration, and God will deal with all of it.
Remember the quote we read by Frederick Brunner a few weeks back to even think about, for us to even begin to think about the wrath of God.
Here's what Bruner said.
The wrath of God is not the irritability of God, it is the love of God in friction with injustice.
It is the warm, steady, patient, but absolutely fair grace of God in collision with manifest selfishness.
God's wrath does not contradict God's love.
It proves it.
A love that pampers injustice is not lovable.
Let's jump into Revelation 16, verse 12.
We're going to read down through 21.
So again, a bit of a read.
Hang with me.
The sixth angel poured out his bowl.
So we're into the sixth bowl at this point, on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the east.
And I saw coming out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet, three unclean spirits like frogs.
For they are demonic spirits, performing signs who go abroad to the kings of the whole world, to assemble them for battle on the great day of God the Almighty.
Behold, I am coming like a thief, blessed is the one who stays awake, keeping his garments on, so that he may not go about naked and be seen exposed.
And they assembled them in the place that a Hebrew is called Armageddon.
The seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and a loud voice came out of the temple from the throne, saying, It is done.
There were flashes of lightning, rumblings, spills of thunder, the great earthquake, such as there had never been since man was on earth.
So great was that earthquake.
The great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell, and God remembered Babylon the Great to make her drain the cup of the wine of the fury of his wrath.
Then every island fled away, and no mountains were to be found, and great hailstones, about one hundred pounds each, fell from heaven on people, and they cursed God for the plague of the hail, because the plague was so severe.
So lots of poetic language, right?
We have to get ourselves into this mode of reading apocalyptic poetic language when we read this.
Here's what we think is going on.
We think the dragon is the devil.
We think the first beast is the world.
We think the false prophet is maybe worldly values.
And then these kings in verse 14, scholars aren't really sure about this.
That's okay.
Sometimes we read the Bible, it's okay to not really be sure about everything.
And then John's doing something as we read through this passage where he's bringing it all together, like all this evil and oppression and worldliness and injustice.
He's kind of gathering it up, and he says, There's gonna be a battle, there's gonna be an end to this.
He says there's gonna be at a place called Armageddon, but it's not really a place per se.
This idea of Armageddon is taken from a battle site called Meghetto.
And Armageddon is not really a place, it's more of a battle, it's more of an understanding of victory.
That there will be victory, there will be restoration, there will be an end to injustice, that this fourth part of the story of God, creation, fall, redemption, restoration, it will happen.
So John's pouring out, I mean, this is where we have to pause and remember who he's writing to.
These people were oppressed under the boot of Rome, the oppression of Nero, fearing for their lives.
People were being persecuted, they were being killed, they're being tortured.
And to hear this kind of language poured out over Rome, their enemy, the idea of injustice, I mean, this would have just brought up incredible comfort and courage in them.
And all the mess and the hurt of their lives.
Because assured victory, assured victory, that proclamation of Revelation 14, 8, fallen, fallen is Babylon the Great.
When they heard that, assured victory brings comfort and courage.
It always does.
Point number two: Jesus brings us comfort and courage as he stands as our righteous judge.
Jesus is our righteous judge.
It's the reason why we have comfort and courage.
If we look at Revelation 14 as structure, it's like a sandwich.
It's like a really great gospel sandwich for us.
The first part, we see Jesus stands as the Lamb of God standing on Mount Zion, symbolizing the security of the redeemed.
And then the end of the chapter, we see Jesus seated on a cloud as the Son of Man, symbolizing him as a judge on the last day.
Now, if we only have the last image, but we don't have the first image, we could be sent into a lot of fear, a lot of anxiety.
How's my standing with God?
How good do I need to be?
But if we have Jesus as a Lamb of God, by knowing Christ that the judge is the Lamb, right, that all of our sin has been taken upon the cross.
And his fullness of forgiveness is given to us, and fullness of righteousness is given to us.
Now all of a sudden, all that fear has been taken away.
So we can understand Christ as judge, but because the judge is the Lamb, we have no fear.
Thirty years ago, I was in eighth grade.
I started on the J.E.
Richards Rams basketball team.
There it is.
An intimidating force of basketball right there.
Can't you imagine when I stepped on the court?
The amount of intimidation that the other team was feeling.
Now, what's crazy, looking at that picture, is I walked into every gym, every game that year, I walked in with comfort and courage every single game.
Because I had a teammate, Timmy.
And Timmy was a phenomenal athlete.
Timmy could shoot, Timmy had biceps, which clearly still, you know.
And Timmy could dunk in the eighth grade.
And I'm not talking like when he was warmed up and the wind was to his back, kind of dunked.
I'm talking about he could dunk anytime, anywhere, and every gym we went in, every single gym was packed, slammed.
Every seat, fire code is broken.
People are sitting along the court, people are standing up against the wall on the baseline, packed out.
And I'm on the court, loving it, but they're all there to see Timmy because he's gonna throw down at least twice.
Every game, he is going to dunk.
Eighth grade, he is gonna dunk at least twice, and the gym would erupt.
So awkward little 13-year-old me, just having the time of my life, just loving this.
I'm walking in every gym like I'm Larry Bird, like I'm actually this good, and it's because of Timmy.
Right?
Because not only would he dunk every game, we would win every game.
I mean, we won every game like 25 points.
I mean, we just blew people out just because of him.
Assured victory brings comfort and courage.
And this is what John is doing over and over and over again throughout Revelation.
He's just flooding these churches with language of how sure this victory is, how much this restoration for injustice outside of you and the injustice inside of you will be restored.
Last bit of reading, Revelation 17.
We're gonna read one through six and then jump and read 15 through 18.
Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, Come, I will show you the judgment of the great prostitute who's seated on many waters.
Remember this prostitute?
This is a description of Rome, which we can understand is a description of the highest level of thinking about injustice and worldly values and oppression and evil, with whom the kings of the earth have committed sexual immorality, and with the wine of whose sexual morality the dwellers on earth have become drunk.
And he carried me away in the spirit into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns.
The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abon abominations and the impurities of her sexual immorality.
And on her forehead was written a name of mystery, Babylon the Great, mother of prostitutes and the earth's abominations.
And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.
Right?
You you see the language here?
These martyrs of Jesus that Rome's been killing.
And the angel said to me, The waters that you saw, where the prostitute is seated, are peoples and multitude and nations and language.
And the ten horns that you saw, they and the beast will hate the prostitute.
They will make her desolate and naked, and devour her flesh, and burn her up with fire.
For God has put it into their hearts to carry out his purpose by being of one mind and handing over the royal power to the beast until the words of God are fulfilled.
And the woman that you saw is the great city that has dominion over the kings of the earth.
So all this language, lots of language, right?
All this language represents Rome and the worldly values that it stands on.
And then can you imagine that they're hearing all that in the context of 148?
Fallen, fallen as Babylon the Great.
Why?
Same thing for your life.
Assured victory brings comfort and courage.
Because John is working under the assumption that you are in a tribulation, that you are in pain, that you have some sort of exhaustion, some sort of hurt, some sort of worry, anxiety, sin, guilt, shame.
Yet we have victory in Jesus already, fully forgiven, fully righteous, hope for a restoration to come.
Point number three is this.
Long point.
We'll leave it up here for a second since it's a bit long point.
You may be afraid of a particular beast or frustrated with an injustice.
Yet we live in hope as restoration is assured in the victory of Christ.
You may be afraid of a particular beast, yet we live in hope as restoration is assured in the victory of Christ.
In 1992, street preacher Robert Roeburg moved to Nashville.
He first started to preach on the streets, and then he realized nobody was listening to him.
And we probably wouldn't even agree with all his preaching, but he started painting.
And here's a painting that he painted coming out of this passage today.
It's called Babylon the Great Is Fallen.
It hangs in the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
It has some beautiful imagery here.
Maybe not your taste of painting.
I don't know if it would be in your living room.
But when we see it, start looking at these different imageries.
You can see Revelation here, what we just read.
It's easy to feel the hurt and the condemnation of that beast.
Or the lure of the woman that's on the beast.
Because maybe you walk in here and you have your exhaustion.
Or hopelessness.
You're beat up or you're broken, you're pushed down.
Maybe you know the lure of that woman.
Temptation, like real temptation.
That's hurtful for your life.
Maybe you know the weight and the misery of condemnation that's getting shouted out of these beasts' mouths.
That you're never enough and you'll never be enough.
But if you keep looking at this, I love that all the castles are cracking.
Right?
All the castles of the world are already cracking, all the world's power.
All the shouts of condemnation.
They they have their limits.
And they will ultimately fail.
And then we have these two Jesus type Luke Skywalker angel y figures flying around fighting for you.
It's the imagery of Christ fighting for you.
That he's at work for you.
In your tribulation.
That your story's not over.
Your story's never over.
And then lastly, look at the top of the painting.
And it remembers it reminds me of a painting we looked at like maybe a month ago or so.
You remember at the very top there was a lamb at the top.
Again, in that painting at the very top, you had that bowl being poured out.
There's number seven on the bowl.
That number seven is always symbolic of wholeness and completion.
And then you see what's being poured out: a proclamation.
It's finished.
Right?
So from Christ's cross to the restoration of all of our brokenness and all the brokenness of the world is the proclamation.
It rests in the proclamation, the assurance that it is finished.
Your redemption and your restoration.
Finished.
It's handled.
It's complete.
Your security with God.
Finished, complete in Christ.
Hope and difficulty.
Restoration for all the hurt that you have.
And none of it is based in your work for God, but all of it is based in God's restorative work for you that is at work and will come to completion.
Let's pray together.
God, thank you for your story for us.
That it is not a story of us working for you as to cause redemption or as to cause restoration, but that you are at work and you are not finished.
The story's not over.
How easy it is for us to see the war in Ukraine or see a school shooting and for us to be so distraught, rightfully, rightfully distraught.
And how easy it is for us to forget that you are still at work and all of this will be restored.
Our hearts long for that, or else we would never be upset.
God, we get impatient with ourselves, with our own hearts, with the beasts that are within us, the injustice, the sin, the shame, the condemnation we hear.
Help us to rest more fully in the gift of your redemption for us that is secure and finished in Jesus, and we have a restoration to come that while we're in the already but not yet, we look forward to that final chapter of the story: restoration.
The hope of heaven, the hope of a life where all the fears are taken away and the tears are wiped away.
We thank you that you are a God of redemption and restoration.
Help us to rest more fully in you, to enjoy all the implications of the proclamation that it is finished.
In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.