Matlock | 19/04/26 | The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse | Dave Watmore

Matlock

Podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/354059/episodes/19039037-matlock-19-04-26-the-four-horsemen-of-the-apocalypse-dave-watmore.mp3

Dave continued our series looking at Revelation 6 and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Transcript

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Welcome to the Church in the Peak podcast. We hope you enjoy this message. For more information, visit churchinthepeak.org or come and join us at 10 a.m. every Sunday.

SPEAKER_01 0:11

Okay, can you all hear me? Yes, I think I'm on. We have been we've had a little rest from the Book of Revelation over the last few weeks, months. However, I'm back with the book of Revelation, and we're gonna look at Revelation 6. Let me just do a little recap on some things. Or first three chapters, Revelation of Jesus and what he said to the seven churches around that time. And that was really, I hope, encouraging because it showed us the good side of church and also the realistic bad side of church and God's and Jesus' exhortation to follow Him and to be more dependent upon Him. And then we and then we got to chapters four and five, which is the revelation of the throne room. So we see the joy of what is going on in heaven, the power of God, the power of Jesus' resurrection, and what was happening. And that should encourage us greatly to think wow, this is fantastic. This is our home ultimately. Now I'm going to chapter six. Now, very often people will read the first five chapters of the book of Revelation, and then they'll skip on to chapter 20, 21, where the New Jerusalem comes down and it's all about heaven and it's fantastic. But they miss out this big important part in the middle because it's quite mysterious, dare I say, a bit weird. But it is important that we grasp this. So as elders, we thought, should we just skip on? But no, we can't do that. We have to address the parts that are difficult because otherwise, what's the point in listening to us? I remember somebody said to me some months ago when we said that we were doing the book of Revelation, they said, Oh, it'd be really interesting to know uh what you what you come up with and and help us to understand about the book of Revelation. So uh I hope I shall do something of that uh this morning, at least make a a decent start on it, but uh you you can you can complain to me later if you if you wish. I've taken my a lot of my sort of studies from a guy called John Hosier, his book, uh Phil Moore, his book on Revelation, and N T Wright, as well as the Bible. So there we are. If you want to cross-check what I've said and done, um you can look at those. Um so chapter six of Revelation is quite well known for uh what is known as the the uh four horses of the apocalypse. I used to think it was the four horses of the Acropolis, but it was all Greek to me. Boom boom. I thought we'd start with a joke, because it doesn't it there's gonna be some ups and downs. Julia don't have to laugh that much, but honestly, it was a terrible joke. It wasn't one of them, yeah, but I cooked it up well. Um let me just say uh before we read this passage, um again back to the uh summary of what we've seen, we saw uh in those first five chapters that there is utter m utter certainty about God, but there is also complete mystery about things. And we have to, as we read the next few chapters, not just chapter six, but the next few chapters, we have to grab hold of the certainty because the mysteries and the weirdness and life's difficulties will come, but we have to hold on to the certainties of what Jesus has done, and that is a key message of what we're going to say. Uh I I was saying to Peter uh this morning, it's a bit like I don't know how many of you watch a race across the world. Is that what it's called? I I don't I've watched it once or twice, but they have their passports, they've got kind of authority to go in certain places, but how they get there, the route that they take, can be a mystery. And who's gonna get there first? Okay, it's a race. There is a race that we are going through, but there is no, yeah, you got there first. There's not that part of it. It is in the end we will all get to that point, but in the end, it is that journey and what we learn on the way, and how we interact with God, and how we've try to put our trust in Him that is the key key part. So, should we can we have chapter six? I'm gonna read all of it. Um let's let's read this. So, as I watched, the Lamb broke the first seven seals on the scroll, and when I heard one of the four living beings say in a in a voice like thunder, Come, I looked up and I saw a white horse standing there. Its rider carried a bow and a crown was placed on his head, and he rode out to win many battles and gained a victory. And when the the lamb broke the second seal, I s I heard the second living being say, Come! Then another horse appeared, a red one. Its rider was given a mighty sword and the authority to take peace from the earth. And there was war and slaughter everywhere. And when the lamb broke the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, Come! I looked up and I saw a black horse, and its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard a voice from among the four living beings say, A loaf of bread, a loaf of wheat, bread, or three loaves of barley will cost a day's pay, and don't waste the olive oil and wine. And when the lamb broke the fourth seal, I heard the fourth living being saying, Come! I looked up and I saw a horse whose colour was pale green, its rider was named Death, and his companion was the grave. These two were given authority over one fourth of the earth to kill with the sword, and famine and disease and wild animals. When the lamb broke the fifth seal, I saw the altar, the souls of all who had been martyred for the word of God, and for being faithful in their testimony. And they shouted to the Lord and said, O sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you judge the people who belong to this world and avenge our blood for what they have done to us. And then a white robe was given to each of them, and they were told to rest a little longer, until the full number of their brothers and sisters, their fellow servants of Jesus, who were who were to be martyred, had joined them. I watched as the lamb broke the sick seal, and there was a great earthquake. The sun became as dark as black cloth, and the moon became as red as blood, and then the stars of the sky fell to the earth like green figs falling from a tree, shaken by a strong wind. The sky was rolled up like a scroll, and all of the mountains and islands were moved from their places. Then everyone, the kings of the earth, the rulers, the generals, the wealthy, the powerful, and every slave and free person all hid themselves in the caves among the rocks of the mountains. And they cried to the mountains and the rocks, Fall on us and hide us from the face of the one who sits on the throne, from the wrath of the Lamb. For the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to survive? So you needed my joke, didn't you, at the beginning? Uh because it's it's it's it's sobering stuff. So I want to go through and just do a little bit of I'm not a great teacher, but I want to kind of speak into these first things. So we see on that first passage we talk about the white horse. Now, the white horse, some people will say, oh, it's it's Jesus. But it isn't. Uh in short, it's it's it is the Antichrist. It is somebody who is coming to deceive people with their power, with their perhaps narcissistic uh attitude of worship me. Now, uh I let me say from the from the start, my my view of this, and it may be different to some of you, but have an open mind about these things. But my view is that these seals have been opened already. These are not yet to be opened, these have been opened already. So we will have seen these figures throughout history of the Antichrist. I do believe that it will get more intense and more difficult, but there are these people throughout history who are like that. Now you may disagree, but we we can uh discuss that. Have an open mind about these things. So that's the white horse. So this white horse is to deceive us. Uh then the next one, this is where I need my glasses. Oh, let me just say um thing that we have to be careful about are the conspiracy theories. When I said that I looked at these various books, I also looked at many videos on the internet. And there are many weird things on the internet, as I'm sure you know, and especially if you bring in the book of Revelation, it gets even weirder. There is also some good stuff, let's let's also be clear about this. Uh but there are no it these are mysteries. There are certainties, as I said, but there are these mysteries of when are these things happening. Who are these people? And I don't know, and I don't think anybody should claim to know clearly. So let us avoid those kind of thoughts that that this is this is it. What we do need to know and consider is that we are in the end times. We are getting, I mean, we're closer to the end of history than we've ever been, just by the fact of it's longer. Is it going to be another thousand years? Is it going to be a hundred years? Is it going to be ten years or ten months? I just don't know. But I think we are drawing ever closer to a conclusion to the world. And that is why understanding this is so important, that we should understand the certainty of Christ, but also understand that we are walking through the mysteries of what is going on. So we've done the white horse. Now we we look at the the red horse. Um this it says it he takes away the peace from the earth. Um it was um if you go back, let's take um I was reading things like when people were working together and then suddenly they change and they fight against each other. If you took the um uh Pakistan and India were working together with with the Allies to fight against Nazi Germany, and then partition came and in 1947 they started fighting each other. One minute they were they were united, the next minute they were killing each other. That is a symbol of where the peace has been taken away from people, and I think we can also see that with with personal relationships. Sometimes people have friends, and suddenly, for no good reason, that friendship has has changed, and there's animosity between people. I will put that down to the the spirit that is released with the red horse taking away the peace that you have between you and bringing animosity. Then we get to the black horse, and this is nothing to do with Lloyd's Bank. This symbolizes economic chaos and famine. As I said, it's really great stuff. This um we can see this in everyday life in where we are, but there are parts of the world that are in even greater famine. If you go to Sudan, I'm sure, you would you would your mind would be blown by the poverty there. Uh Leslie and I were on on holiday and we were talking to uh he was an Australian, wasn't he? Uh we were we were in um on a cable car going up Table Mountain in in South Africa. And uh he was saying that he was a mining engineer, and uh we were saying, you know, it's it's so nice and cheap in in uh South Africa. He said, if you go to where I work in Zambia, in the copper mines, things are people just live off nothing, they live out of the dirt. So we can fly over these things in our great wealth, but there is poverty that is also very much in this world, and I'm sure Sandra, wherever she is, yes, has seen that in in Uganda. So that is also what is going on. So I I think that we can be quite clear that this is what is happening, and then we get the pale or the green horse. This is for death and Hades. Power to bring death to 25% of the earth. This is what is going to happen. Yeah, it's it's sobering. Um let me just go back to the point I made and and I I skipped over the skip the scripture I wanted to use, to be honest, which is about why it is happening now. Can we have a look at uh Mark 13, please, Sarah? This is the this is what Jesus is saying when he's being challenged about what is going on. When are these things going to happen? And Jesus began to say to them, see that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name, saying, I am He, and they will lead many astray. There's the white horse. And then you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. Do not be alarmed, this must take place. But the end is not yet. That's the red horse. For nations will rise up against nations and kingdoms against kingdoms, there will be earthquakes in various places, and there will be famines. These are the beginnings of the birth pains. But be on your guard, for they will deliver you over to the councils, and you will be beaten in synagogues, and you will stand before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them. And the gospel must first be proclaimed to all nations, and then they will bring you to trial and deliver you over. But do not be anxious beforehand that you that what you are to say, but say whatever is given you in that hour, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit. And brother will deliver brother over to death, and Father his child, and child will rise against parents and have them put to death, and you will be hated by all for my name's sake, but the one who endures to the end will be saved. Can you do the next? Is that the final? Two verses. It is, okay, thank you. So then we have the the last two seals. Where where there will be uh the seals will be released and there will be people who are martyred. And the the sixth seal is where there will be um there will be catastrophic earth events, whether that is an earthquake, or it is a tsunami, or it is 9-11. All of these seals have been opened and we see what is happening. And Jesus spoke those words, and you have to be very careful with that passage, because sometimes Jesus is speaking to the distant future, but he's also speaking to the more immediate future for those people in in um in Israel, because it will talk, there's a part I'd missed out, which talks about people being uh the the temple being destroyed. So he's talking to both, but he's saying this is this is what is going to come. So it shouldn't be a surprise to us that we have suffering, and really that is what uh I'm talking about this morning. How do we handle suffering? Um I was talking to a friend uh some some months ago, uh, somebody you don't know, and uh he was telling me that he went to uh he had a couple of things wrong with him. I think it was a a skin problem and uh and an earache or something like that. So he went he had an appointment to go to the doctor, and he went to see the doctor and uh sat down and said, Well, you know, I've got this skin problem on my leg and I've got this ear problem, and the doctor said, Oh, it's great, yes, I can I think this is this, here's a prescription. And at that point he started to leave. But the thing that was really behind his doctor's appointment was the fact that he was getting up in the middle of the night and peeing more often than he should, and sometimes there was blood in his urine. And so he went to the doctor as he got up and going out the door, he says, Oh, by the way, um I'm getting up a little bit more often and peeing in the night two or three times, and sometimes there's a bit of blood in it. So the doctor says, Come back and sit down again. We need to, we need to address this. And long story short, he had um he thought, uh, maybe it just a maybe a couple of pills would deal with that. But no, it was a it was a cancer in his bladder. So he had to have an operation, and he had to then have uh what's called immunotherapy, which isn't as invasive and and debilitating as things like chemotherapy, but it still knocked him out for days. And this went on for this treatment went on for three years. He's now healed and having a perfectly normal life, you wouldn't know. I don't check on how many times he goes to the loo, because that's a little bit weird, isn't it? But the point of this story is sometimes there are things in our lives that are that we want to address, and God has allowed. These things to happen so that we address these issues. And if we address them early, we can be healed spiritually or physically, emotionally, quickly. We can deal with the sin. Cancer is like sin. I'm not saying if you've got cancer you have sinned. That's not what I'm saying. That is clearly not what I'm saying. However, sin is like a cancer. If you don't deal with it, it will become more difficult. If my friend had not stopped himself in the doctor's surgery and said, oh, by the way, and the doctor dealt with it straight away, it would have been a lot more serious. He would have probably had to have his bladder removed, more chemotherapy, and the end would have been much more doubtful. So I think these are days we are living in where God is allowing these difficult things, but we are to address them. When we see the sins that are going on in the world, we need to address them. We need to look at what is going on in our close environment, in our families, or in our country, or in the world, and look back and see how do these things affect, how are they coming from the seals that have been released into the world? Is it a family dispute? It needs to be dealt with. Sin needs to be confronted, and you need to have wisdom to do that, you need to have grace to deal with these things. Where people are in need, we need to help them. Because it may not be something that they have done, their fault, and we can help them. But what we need to do is look to Jesus, look to him and see what he is saying about these things. There's that in the end, there is that one very um powerful part at the end of that that scripture I read from Revelation, where it says, or two parts. One is about the martyrs, and it says there very quite clearly that Jesus will come back when the number of martyrs has been fulfilled and the number of souls that have been saved have been fulfilled. The challenge for us is you know, we don't like suffering, do we? Anyone likes suffering? Yeah, if there'd been some hands up, I think we would have carried you off outside. But what do we do with it? How do we how do we address this challenge? Because it is so vital to understand it. It is what when people come to Alpha, they ask, you know, what about the suffering? I've had many conversations with with uh my family, uh, my father particularly. You know, if there's a God, he wouldn't have allowed this to happen. It's a hard one. And we have to have this balance of what is what is true. Why is this going on? Now you don't it's probably poor to say, yeah, well, God's going to wait until everybody has sinned, uh finished sinning and then he's going to come back. But we do need to be wise about how we address it and see what is going on. Um if you if you say, Why don't you just come back, Lord? Because those there are those passages there. Every time the seal is released, the living creatures say, Come. They're crying out for Jesus to come back. We should be crying out for Jesus to come back. He may come back in ten months' time, ten years or a hundred years. I don't know. But that cry from our heart should be, come back, Lord Jesus. And we should be prepared for that. But if if he came back, let's say he came back tomorrow, how many of the people that you know and love are saved? Probably many are unsaved. This God is still providing time for people to turn to Him and come back to Him. And that is why sometimes we have to wrestle with this challenge of why don't you do this, God? He has a better plan. There's the mystery of we don't understand it, why don't you do it? It makes sense to us to do it. I've said that many times. But in God's plan, He we have to understand and trust His plan is perfect and good. Even when we think it's a really rubbish plan, we have to repent of that. So Yvonne, bless you for being brave to repent. I think we all need to repent of when we think, oh God, why don't you just come back? It would solve so many problems. It might solve the immediate problems, but Jesus is playing a longer game. I'll give you one last analogy. Um, how many of you play chess? There's a few of you. I'm sure all of you have played chess at one time. So there are three ways that you can end a game. One, most obvious one, or three games, how do they go on? One is checkmate. Somebody clearly wins. The other is that you have a stalemate where you both go, you know, this is getting nowhere, we're just going backwards and forwards in the same position, let's call it a day and start again. And the third is where someone just gets very frustrated with the game, kicks the board over, and that's it. I'm sure if you've had children, there have been certain games where that has happened. It's not checkmate yet. There isn't a stalemate, and God will not kick over the board. He is still waiting, he is still playing that game, he is still playing the long game, and we are to press in to understand who he is and what he is doing, so that we can be good witnesses, as good a witness as we can possibly be. It's not that you've got to be this perfect witness to everybody, but do your best to wrestle with these problems. Why is it like this? But in the end, we have to go back to what I started off with: absolute certainty of God's faithfulness, his love for us, and that he has a plan. And that this world is not in a random state of chaos that he doesn't understand. He understands it. We can see it and go, this is absolute chaos in the Middle East. This is absolute chaos in my family. But actually, Jesus, you know what's going on. What is the plan out of this? What is our race across the world to solve this and go forward? So these things, as we as things get more difficult, we are to press in to understand him more. That is what he is doing. Um I think, Julia, can we I'm not ready yet, but can you kind of think if you want me to tell you which one, I'd go for the first song we started with, but you can we can do that. Can we look at 2 Peter 3? Because I think this I hope sums up all the blatherings that you've heard from me this morning. And comes to, and I'll come to a conclusion after that. Uh do not overlook the fact, sorry, but do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfil his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of hop what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn. But according to his promise we are waiting for a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish and at peace. Let me just uh read you one final thing. It's a mystery, and I don't have the answers for you. But what I do know is that Jesus is faithful, he can be relied on to do what is good and loving. He is not one to strike out suddenly in anger in an unpredictable way. He has a plan and it will come to fruition. And the next few chapters we will re-emphasize that message. I've explained, but in the end, he wears uh he in the end triumph and he wears a real crown, one that will rid the world of evil once and for all eternity. There is no other way but his way, and we must be patient to serve him, deal with the sin in our lives, and speak up when people ask us why do we have a reason for hope? Shall we just stab? I think Leslie wants to, or do you want to bring something without people's standing? Peter's got the mic.

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It's all right. I think about the right thing. I I didn't have anything when we came, but I was sitting there and I thought, God say, read Ezekiel 22. So I did and thought, oh my goodness, this is horrible. What's that about? And it's all about the sin of Jerusalem and how God is going to come and he's going to absolutely destroy it and take the people away into exile. And he lists a whole lot of things, and I thought before I got to the end, this isn't nice. But it's a bit like our society now. Um, the worship of idols, what people have made, the destroying of families, the destroying uh sexual immorality, even the church at that time, the priests were doing things that they weren't supposed to be doing, and we look at some church these days. But you know, just the poor is being trampled on, there is no justice, and I just felt, you know, we look at our society in our countries now, and there's so much in here that is common to what we're seeing now. But at the end of the chapter, it says that God looks for a man or a woman who would amongst all his people, who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land, so that I would not have to destroy it. But I found none. He didn't find anybody who would stand on behalf of the country that they lived in and their people to stand in that gap and pray and ask forgiveness and ask for the Lord to come and be merciful. And I feel like God is saying in these days, He needs a people who will stand in that gap and pray on behalf of the country and the nations for people to be saved, to come and by a spirit of truth and revelation to come into these places so that many, many will be saved and come back to the Lord. We need that revelation and we need the church to start standing in the gap on behalf of the nation. Our nation is in trouble, it has lost the foundations of Christianity, it has lost the foundations of the truth of Jesus Christ, and we cannot stand back. We need to stand in this gap on behalf of our nation, on behalf of the world.

SPEAKER_01 37:15

Shall we stand? And let's pray that first whilst the band are getting ready.