Scary Stories in Scripture: Revelation Week 2

Revelation 12-14 presents a cosmic battle between the dragon (Satan), the beast (anti-God empires), and the Lamb (Jesus). The woman clothed with the sun represents Israel and the church, while the dragon's fury explains why bad things happen to good people. The beast symbolizes any system demanding loyalty at the cost of faith, whether ancient Rome or modern consumerism and nationalism. In contrast, the Lamb conquers through humility and self-sacrifice, not force. These chapters call us to examine whose jersey we're wearing and whose song we're singing, challenging us to live as worship becomes resistance against fear and empire.

Transcript

Alright, Church, if you have your Bibles today, I'm going to invite you to pull them out and open up to the book of Revelation. We're going to start this morning in chapter 12 and it's going to be fun. Today we're going to do chapters 12, 13 and 14 and we're just going to do kind of a brief travel through three chapters because there's so much there, it's a lot. So if you have your Bibles, you can go ahead and pull those open. 12, we're going to start in verse one and we'll skip around a little bit, but if you don't have your Bible with you this morning, you can follow along on on the screen.

And again, we're working through the book of Revelation and I hope that today you hear God's hope for us in the words that we read. So let's start reading. We're going to start in one through nine and we're going to skip over 17. Hear now the word of the Lord. A great sign appeared in heaven.

A woman was clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of 12 stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven, an enormous dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its head. Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon might devour her child the moment he was born.

She gave birth to a son, a male child who will rule all the nations.

The woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days. Then Michael and his angels, the dragon and the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was not strong enough. In heaven, the great dragon was hurled down that ancient serpent called the devil or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth and his angels with him. We're going to Skip over to 13.

It says, when the dragon saw that he had been hurled to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. The woman was given the two wings of a great eagle so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the wilderness, where she would be taken care and half a time out of the serpent's reach. Then from his mouth, the serpent spewed water like a river to overtake the woman and sweep her away with the torrent. But the earth helped the woman by opening its mouth and swallowing the river that the dragon had spewed out of its mouth. And the dragon was enraged at the to wage war against the rest of her offspring.

Those who keep God's commands and hold fast to their testimony about Jesus.

Amen. Hallelujah. Right, so you guys, I know that we don't often talk through the Book of Revelation in here. We don't do a whole lot of in depth prophecy and work towards the end time stuff. Because I feel like we have a lot of stuff that we need to get right now.

A lot of stuff that a lot of preachers tell you you have to worry about right now while ignoring our neighbors is not the way you want to be. So we want to be a church that focuses on the here and now and how we can do our best to bring about the kingdom of God through our love of neighborhood. But I also think it's important that we're informed. And so this morning I want to start out with a confession. I, when I was a young person, was absolutely terrified of the Book of Revelation.

Anybody else, can I get an amen? Right, so I mean, think about it. Dragons and beasts, lakes of fire, plagues, horsemen, which we talked about last week and you know, not being able to buy groceries unless you have the right tattoo on your forehead or your wrist. When I was a teenager, it felt a lot like the book of Revelation was equivalent to like a scary movie or a horror story. And depending on who you ask, Revelation can be seen as either a coded map of the end times.

It could be a political allegory. Maybe it speaks about the cosmic battle between good and evil, or it might just be like somebody's really weird dream after too much pizza. But here's the truth, right? Things written about in the Book of Revelation aren't really the problem. I think the problem sometimes is in been taught to read and understand the Book of Revelation, that becomes a problem for us.

Did you know that we read all scripture through a lens? I think we've talked about it in passing before. But our scriptural lenses, the things through, are kind of colored by our upbringing, by the denomination of churches that we grew up in, maybe our culture, our childhood trauma that we faced as young people, it could be affected by our privilege or lack thereof. And it's definitely affecting how we view political parties in our world. So we started this morning in chapter 12 because I believe that the lenses through which we interpret Scripture can be exposed a little deeper by reading Revelation 12 through 14.

So this morning I want us to be focused on the question Hear me when I say this. Are we scripture to reinforce our own worldview or to be transformed by gods?

The Book of Revelation should not be viewed as dangerous, but our assumptions and our interpretations can be dangerous. So we started in chapter, because if we skip this chapter, we kind of missed the setup in the backstory. As we work to interpret some of what John has to say, we're going to look at the lens through which John viewed it. And we're also going to see how our lenses affect it. And if you hear one thing from me today, one thing at all, I want you to remember this.

Everything that we read in the Book of Revelation has a deeper meaning. We can never just do a surface only reading of the Book of Revelation because it's going to leave us a little empty.

Book of Revelation says as self revelatory, because everything has to be viewed in the light of the rest. Scripture, God's history, the church. We cannot ravel the mysteries of the Book of Revelation without knowing the rest of God's story as a foundation. Okay, so if you look at Revelation 12, we can see kind of figurative history of the church start to unfold. This becomes the lens in which we view what's happening in the Book of Revelation.

So as we read through it, we're going to use knowledge of history, we're going to look back at Scripture, we're going to see the social and political context of what's happening when John was writing the Book of Revelation so that we can work towards a good and solid interpretation and explanation of what's going to happen. So let's dive in this morning. Mind you, I do not have all the answers. I do have most of them. Okay, so just.

But I don't have them all this morning. We're not going to figure all of Revelation out. I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time interpreting scripture for you. I simply want us to get started on better and more faithfully. So we start out this morning as John is talking about a woman who is clothed with the sun.

What do you know about the sun?

It's hot. This lady is hot. Oh, that's not what we're. What other things do you know about the sun? It's big, it's bright, it provides light in darkness.

Right? It provides energy. We rely on the sun to grow our crops like that. The sun gives life. Also, the sun is sometimes used as a descriptor of God in the Bible.

And the vision gets a little deeper. It says she was crowned with 12 stars in her crown. What do we know about the number 12? There are 12 tribes in Israel. That's good.

We also know that stars are a minor light in the sky, right? Like the sun is the greatest of all lights. Then there's the moon, then there's the stars. And she was crying out in labor as she was about to give birth to a child who it says in scripture will rule the with an iron scepter. And this language that John is using here in the book of Revelation, it's not something we're going to get right.

Do you know kings that rule today with an iron scepter? No, that doesn't happen. But back in John's time, he would have heard that language. The people who heard him preach this or speak this, or read his scriptures, they would have recognized this as a fulfillment of something that happens in the book of the Psalms. In Psalm chapter two, there's a royal prophetic word that declares God's power over rebellious nations and rulers.

So let's read this together In Psalm chapter 2, verses through 6 and then 10 through 12 it says nations conspire and the people's plot in vain. The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord and against his anointed saying, let us break their chain, throw off their shadow. The one enthroned in heaven laughs. The Lord scoffs at them, he rebukes them in his anger and terrifies rat saying, I have installed my king on Zion, on my holy mountain. Therefore in verse 10, you Kings, be wise, be warned, you rulers of the earth, serve the Lord with fear and celebrate his rule with trembling.

Kiss his Son or he will be angry and your way will lead to your destruction. For his can flare up in a moment. Blessed are all who take refuge in him. So here in the scripture book of Psalms, it actually talks about this particular ruler ruling with an iron scepter. God also here gives a title King to his Son and demands that as he rules direct quote of the same scripture we just read in Revelation 12.

5. The Son that is mentioned in Revelation 12 is the same that God is talking about here in Psalm 2. It's the Son of the man, or sorry, it's the son of the woman who is clothed with the sun. We know this child is Christ. In his birth, his ascension, his authority is framed in the book.

The dragon in Revelation 12 mirrors these rebellious kings. In Psalm chapter 2, both the dragon and the kings are seeking to loose the people from what Consider the bonds of slavery to their God talks about loosing their chains and no, kings really want to loose other people, keeping them controlled and under authority and power. But here, the kings of these ancient tribes and these ancient nations, they don't want the Hebrew people to serve their God. They see the rules under, they're punitive, they keep them trapped. And so these kings are like, no, no, no, don't worship that God.

You can see how awful that is instead, right? These kings have a desire rule over the Hebrew people, much like this proud dragon does in the book of Revelation.

So while Revelation 12 depicts cosmic conflict, Psalm 2 reminds us that the outcome is and those who take refuge in him. It says those who go their own way will not be quite so lucky. So this woman in John's vision is Israel and she gives birth to the whole history like people, right? Those 12 crowns or, sorry, those 12 stars in her crown, they represent the tribes of Israel. They represent Jesus, who comes to us from these tribes.

It represents the church. We see that through this prophetic vision that this woman also has the moon under her feet. What do you know about the moon?

It's also big. It's what? Holy. Holy craters, okay, Craters. That's not holy.

I think Swiss cheese, right? Like that's. It is in fact made of cheese. We know that for a fact. What it is cold, right?

But think about what the moon does. The moon has no light of its own, right? The moon reflects the light of the sun, just like this woman. If she's standing on the moon, right, it's at her feet. It's meaning that she, her people, reflects God's light to the rest of the world.

So now let's look at this dragon, right? The dragon in Greece, Drakon, right? That's pretty, pretty easy. It's not just supposed to be a scary image for us, but we see in verse nine, it's actually named. This is not just a dragon.

This is the.

He's literally personified as evil. He's the accuser, the adversary, the devil, right?

So the word dracon in Greek to a different Greek verb called der komai. And that means to see, to see clearly, to watch out for, to be ready for something, which kind of implies that the dragon is ready. He's sitting there in wait for an opportune time to attack. And this dragon has seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns. He's powerful, he's ancient.

Remember when I said everything in the book of Revelation has a deeper meaning? Well, this goes back to something pretty ancient. This dragon, not just a mythical beast, it's the devil. And the dragon represents rebellion against God.

We can read some things into what the scripture says about the dragon. What do we know about the number seven? Anybody done any biblical numerology in here? It's perfection. It's the number of God.

It means holiness or completeness. How in the world does the dragon have something that looks holy? Right.

The thing is, we believe that seven is perfect number here, with these seven heads and ten crowns and seven horns, it's going to seem like it's of God, but it's not. There's this sense of holiness. And the head of the dragon represents authority, intelligence, or a power to rule. And this is like different kings or nations that took over Israel during its lifespan. Later on, actually, in the book of revelation, in chapter 17, verses 9 and 10, we get an actual interpretation of what's going on.

The angel that is revealed to John says that these heaven, sorry, these seven heads are seven hills and seven kings. You know anything about seven hills? Rome, right? We so often want to take something that is ancient and say, ah, it's also for us today in a very strange kind of prophetic way. But John talking about the rule of Rome over the Israelite people.

So the seven heads represent this completeness, but it also represents the successive empires, right? We know that the Israelites were owned and ruled over by the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, made up of two different groups of Greeks. They had the Ptolemaic Greeks, which were Egyptian, and then the Seleucids, which were the Syrian Greeks. So we also had the Romans.

This vision is talking about over the Israelite people. The ten horns can represent all kinds of different things. I don't want to go too deeply into it, but the one thing I want to point out to you from the scripture is that this is the personified understanding of the devil, and he is already defeated, right? The devil says. It says the devil was cast by Michael and his angels to where?

Where was he sent? Earth. Right. When I was growing up, I had this huge misconception that the devil reigned in hell. No, no, no, friends.

The devil reigns here. And if we dive into scripture, we know this, right? Because in Luke chapter four, when Jesus is out in the wilderness being by the devil, it says this in verses five through seven, it says, the devil him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And. And he said to him, I will give you all their authority and splendor.

It has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone. I want to. If you worship me, it will all be yours.

The devil, the one that's called the dragon, or Satan, given dominion over the earth and all the things in it. And we wonder why there's so much hate and violence and evil here on Earth.

But no matter how much we think that he brings pain and hurt to the earth, we recognize that according to ancient scripture, that his time here is short. Just a quick aside, I want to share this with you. I fully believe that there are spiritual forces of good and evil at work in and around us. And we will be judged by. We align ourselves with goodness or evil, Christ or Satan.

Let's continue on. So scripture goes on, dragon tries to devour the child, but the child is snatched up to God, right? So the dragon turns his fury on the woman and her offspring. And it says, those who keep God's command and hold fast to their testimonies. It's us, it's the church.

This book of Revelation is giving us a very condensed explanation of why bad things happen to good people. It's because the dragon already knows the results of his heavenly insurrection. And so there's nothing better for him to do while he's biding his time than to take it out on the rest of us. So what we're reading this morning, it's poetry, it's theology. The story is telling us that there is a real battle.

It's not just political or cultural, it's also spiritual. There are deeper things at work. If we're reading this through the eyes of John's readers, we're going to be able to recognize much easier the symbol. Christians were living through a literal hell at the hands of the Romans. The Romans, the emperors, were waging war on the church.

And those who believed in Jesus, early believers in Christ, faced terrible future of persecution. They faced punishment, torture and deaths. And the dragon, very personification of evil, was seeking to kill the offspring of God.

And out of the devil's work arises another spirit of great evil that was born of the dragon. This power that we know as the Beast of the sea is also called the Antichrist. And we're going to read about that in chapter 13. So we start off with the dragon. We're going to move to the beast, see what happens at the end.

I want to remind you the beast doesn't arise out of a vacuum. The beast is empowered by right. And so we know that the dragon is desperate because the dragon knows his time is short. Revelation 12 reminds us that persecution, pressure and propaganda God is absent. He's not here in the world.

These are all signs that evil is desperate.

Think about this for a minute. If you really took to heart the fact that the enemy lost, how does that change the way that you read the news at night? If you know is going to be vanquished, how does that change the way that we face pressure at work? How does that change the way that we worship on Sunday mornings? Does it impact us or affect us to know that God wins in the end?

I don't think we remember that enough. So when we get to the beast in chapter 13, we're not starting from scratch. We're stepping into a battle that's already been decided. The question isn't whether the wins or not is who do we worship while the dust is settling? So if you've got your Bibles, you can open up to 13, Revelation 13:9 again, it'll be on the screen.

Here's what it says. It says, the dragon stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had 10 horns and seven heads, 10 crowns on its horns, and each one had a blasphemous name. The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had the feet like a bear and a mouth like that of a lion.

The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority. One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was followed. The beast people worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast. And they also worshiped the beast and asked, who is like the beast who can wage war against it?

The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and to exercise its authority for 42 months. It opened its mouth to blaspheme God and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live in heaven. It was given power to wage war against God's holy people and to conquer them. And it was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation. All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast.

All whose names and have not been written in the Lamb's book of Life. The lamb who was slain from the creation of the world. Whoever has ears, let them hear. So let's talk about the beast. Greek word to describe the beast is called therion, and it means a wild, savage animal.

It's not a house cat. It is something severe. The use of the word therion is meant to be figurative. This is not a real vision. This is something that is supposed to be read differently than how we read it today.

It's important to know that there's other Old Testament prophet uses language very similar to this. And we can learn about this in the Book of Daniel. Daniel is another apocalyptic book that talks about the end times. And there's a lot of things in Revelation that can be understood by reading some of Daniel and vice versa. 71 7.

It says this. In the first year of Belshazzar, king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream and visions passed through his mind. As he was laying in bed, he wrote down the substance of his dream. Daniel said, in my vision at night, I looked, and there before me were the four great winds of heaven churning up the sea. Four great beasts, each different from the others, came out of the sea.

The first was like a lion. It had the wings of an eagle. I watched until its wings were torn off and it was lifted from the ground so that on two feet, like a human being, and given to it was a second beast which looked like a bear. It was raised up on one of its sides in its mouth, between its teeth. It was told flesh.

After that I looked, and there before me was another beast on that. Sorry. One that looked like a leopard, and on its back had four wings like those of a bird. The beast had four heads, and it was given authority to rule after that. In my vision at night, I looked, and there before me was a fourth beast, terrifying and frightening and very powerful.

It had large iron teeth, and it crushed and devoured its victims and trampled underfoot whatever was left. It was different from all the former beast. And it had 10 horns, right? Seven heads, 10 horns. We're seeing this in Daniel, in Revelation, beasts portray powerful kingdoms or empires that defy God's dominion.

Yeah, right, Jimmy. He fell asleep. Sorry, guys. What we see in Daniel 7 as four distinct kingdoms to impose evil over the Jewish people become fused into John's one vision of this culmination of all empires that are all anti God. This beast from the sea that we read about in 13 becomes personified in the book of Revelation as what we call the Antichrist.

And a lot of people say it's one person. We don't know who it is, but I don't think that's true. I think Antichrist is like a. A movement of things against God and God's people.

We had a conversation last week about who wrote the Book of Revelation. We talked about it being John, the possible author of the Gospel of John and the. On John 1, 2, and 3. And that's kind of backed up in John. Sorry.

In First John, chapter two, 18 through 23, it says, Dear children, this last hour, as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming. Even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us.

But they're going showed that none of them belong to us. But you have an anointing Holy One. And all of you know that the truth. Sorry, all of you know the truth. I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it, and because no lie comes, it is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ.

Such a person. Such a person is the Antichrist. Denying the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever acknowledges the Son has also.

So it's clear that the first time we ever see the word antichrist in scripture comes from the same author who we think did the Gospel of John, all three letters, and the book of Revelation.

Word is antichristos. It's pretty easy to interpret that one. It means the adversary of the Messiah or someone who is acting opposite of Jesus against Jesus or actually acts in place of Christ. The word beast is definitely meant for us to be used metaphorically and express brutality. It's just.

None of this sounds great, but as we hear where this beast comes from, do you remember what scripture says? Where did it come from? Out of the. Out of the sea. What do you know about the sea?

Salty. Salty. Okay.

Right. It's what? Huge. Huge. Guys, think about what we know about the sea.

Remember, our earth is a globe. Their earth was flat. Remember this. Our worldview is vastly different than the worldview of the time that this was written. Some of you may still believe it's a.

It's okay. We don't need to go that far. But the things that we know about the earth now are.

For many people, the sea represented chaos. Do you know what happens in the sea? Like shipwrecks? There are all kinds of. Like the Kraken, obviously, and sirens lure sailors their songs.

People back in this particular knew nothing of the sea and they saw it as a place of chaos.

Sometimes if you scroll through social media, as I do, you might come across video on TikTok of something that they found at the bottom of the ocean. And every time we find something new, it scares me. We know virtually more about outer space than we do about what lies underneath our ocean. Still have gps, have water penetrating radar. We can tell you how deep the Sea is in every area of the earth, but we still don't know what lives down there sometimes.

There's still a lot to learn about the sea. And that's why John chose to use the sea as this descriptor. Where the beast comes from. It's a place of uncertainty, a place of chaos, a place of fear.

Even the Hebrew people believed in ancient sea monsters, right? There were Mesopotamian graphics that were drawn up in the year 3000 BCE that talk about merpeople of merpeople from 3000 BC in ancient Jewish mythology, there was a sea serpent called Leviathan. You ever heard that name before?

To have impenetrable scales and have the ability to breathe fire like a dragon. Right. The sea was full of mystery and things that induced fear. And when scripture tells us that the beast comes from the sea, it's saying you should be fearful of what's about to happen.

Has moist skin. There's a lot to be afraid of coming out of the sea. For this beast wasn't like Godzilla rolling up the tide, coming ashore to wreak havoc on the Japan. Here. Revelation tells us that there is no telling exactly where the beast comes from.

But we can sure the beast comes from a place of confusion.

Then the beast was empowered by the dragon and demands worship. Now in John's world, this wasn't an abstract thing. His readers would have recognized a parallel to Rome and its emperors. The Emperor Domitian, who ruled from the year 81 to 96 CE, demanded to be called Dominus et Deus, Lord and God.

Cities built temples to Caesar. Coins bore Caesar's image. And you've heard about Pax Romana, this idea of the peace of Rome. The irony is that the peace of Rome was enforced through military might and economic control. Peace was a faux peace.

What was considered peace of freedom. If you refused to bow, you didn't just risk your reputation, you risked your station, you risked your family, your well being and even your life if you did not serve and praise the emperor. So when Revelation 13:17 says no one could buy they had the mark, it wasn't about microchips or barcodes. It was literally about allegiance, if you had to guess. What do you think the beast like today, if you could imagine that required devotion and allegiance, what do you think it would look like?

Would it be consumerism, nationalism, political manipulation, fear based religion? Or would it be something else? Whatever it looks like, I want to remind you that while it's depicted as a beast in scripture, the beast isn't always a monster. It's a Mindset. It's any system that demands your loyalty at the cost of your or your belief.

Now, I know that all of us probably had or friends who knew exactly what the Beast was, right? They all knew that the Beast or this Antichrist was going to be some guy who ran the United nations, who spoke fluent Russian. Maybe some throughout history thought that the Beast or this false prophet, this was going to be a figure like Mohammed or Martin Luther or Napoleon.

Have heard it was the Pope or Barack Obama or maybe Elon Musk. Somewhere along the way, Oprah Winfrey got kind of rounded up into this and she at one point was called the Antichrist.

But I want to say this to you. Maybe the Beast is something more subtle than that. Maybe the Beast is any empire, political, cultural or spiritual thing that wants your worship, your well being.

Although Scripture paints it this way, the Beast isn't a figure that just always has horns and is scary. Sometimes the Beast wears a flag or a logo or some other sign of allegiance outside of Jesus. Think of a time that fear ruled your choices. Maybe it was political, economic fear, fear of being different. The Beast thrives on fear.

But revelation calls us to something higher. The great news is that the Beast, if it represents control or fear, revelation introduces to us the opposite. The Lamb. So in Revelation 14:1 5, it says, then I looked. Before me was the Ion, and with him who had his written on their foreheads, right?

This is an opposite picture. And I heard a sound from heaven like the roar of rushing waters and like a loud peel of thunder. The sound I heard was like that of Harpus playing their harps. And they sang a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and the elders. No one could learn the song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth.

These are those who did not defile themselves with women, for they remained virgins. They followed the Lamb wherever he goes. They were purchased from among mankind and offered as first fruits to God. And the Lamb. No lie was found in their mouths.

They are blameless.

So the Lamb stands on Mount Zion. And the word Lamb here in Greek is. And it literally means lambkin. You ever heard that word before? Lambkin.

It's a weird word. I've never heard it before. Lambkin means literally little.

This would be a term of endearment for, like a child. You call somebody, like a cute little baby, little lambkin. It's this idea that whoever the Lamb is, he's pure and innocent, vulnerable, gentle, humble, sacrificial. Not the image you expect when you think about a cosmic war, right?

The only difference here is it's not just calling him Lambkin like a little lamb. This is the name of this person. V, capital V, Lamb. It's his top, but a title that has a deep meaning. This ruler is standing on Mount It's God's holy place, and he's going to rule.

Out of humility and self sacrifice, the followers of the Lamb are sealed. They're not branded, they're sealed. There's a Greek word that's here, it's called. It's a weird word and hard to pronounce. And it really means a signant.

Like, you know, back in the day when you had a signet ring, when you placed a sign, a seal on a letter or something like that, you would use your signet ring to talk about who sent you the letter, who owned what the property was. It's a mark of ownership or protection. And it echoes ancient scripture from the book of Ezekiel, where God marks the faithful. These people don't belong to an empire. These people who are sealed, they belong to Christ's love.

And it says they sing a new song. Not the anthem of the emperor, not a chant of fear, a song of grace. Picture a stadium full of fans, jerseys, chants, songs. You know who they belong to, right? You can tell who loves a team by the clothes they wear.

The Book of Revelation asks us whose jersey it is that we're wearing. Whose song are we singing?

What do you think it means to be marked by the Lamb today? Is it our baptism? Is it the communion we celebrate every week? Is it acts of love or service? Is it standing against injustice?

Or is it simply just refusing to bow to fear? Because to be marked by the Lamb is to live differently. It requires us to live gently in a world that we're a world that wants us not to live faithfully to God. It's a world obsessed with winning.

This is the difference between the things of God and the things of false gods. The Lamb doesn't conquer by clawing his way to the top. He doesn't reign through fear or terror. The Lamb lays himself down. If the beast demands fear and the Lamb invites grace, what do you think that the world looks like when it's caught between the two friends?

Our faithfulness has looked like worship. Our task, followers of the true Lamb, is to give our glory to God, to fear God alone. And the difference between the fear of the beast and the fear of the Lamb is that one is an emotion caused of anticipation of danger. Fear of the Danger that awaits us other is a sense of awe, reverence and holy respect. It's the difference between feeling a feeling you get when your life is being threatened.

You realize you're standing before the Creator of the universe. It's not of awe that draws you in.

Worship today doesn't often look like resistance. It far too often looks like complacence. If we in America want worship to look authentic Creator again, we're going to have to come together with honesty. We have to face to God. That is dependent on how we feel we get up on Sunday morning.

It doesn't have to be by how we think other people are looking at us while we power in what we do in this room and that that resistance has to follow us outside of these doors on Sunday morning. Today, worship as resistance might mean that we refuse to dehumanize people who have different political affiliations than we do. It might mean we choose truth over tribalism. It means we say no to fear based religion. It might mean that we refuse to let media shape our soul.

Worship of God should look radically cheering at a concert or representing who we love through wearing of jerseys that I mentioned before. God calls us to look different from those who are around us. And we cannot conform to what our world, what political leaders, what unchristian friends or anyone else thinks that we should look like. It is only through resistance that we can truly make a difference for the kingdom of God. God here and now.

Do you know the name Bonhoeffer? Okay. Dietrich Bonhoeffer understands this. He was a German pastor, a theologian, and an anti Nazi dissident whose life should be an example for us all. In Nazi Germany, he led the Confessing Church, resisting the regime's control over Christianity.

His worship just singing hymns. It was defiance. He opposed the idea that the church should serve the state or remain silent in the face of injustice. He wrote a book called the Cost of Discipleship. And he contrasts the idea of cheap grace, which means grace without obedience, with the idea of costly grace, the grace that calls us to follow Christ even into suffering and death.

In the face of the beast of the empire of his day, Bonhoeffer stood defiant, and that led to his death in 1945. And friends, we are called to the same kind of defiance today. Every song we sing, every prayer we pray, every act of obedience whispers to the spirit of the Antichrist. You don't own us.

So now let's get back to this idea of the interpretive lens. No matter how any of us view the Book of Revelation, we need to Better understand it. We have to understand the book of Revelation and the context that God's Word provides, no matter how scary some of the moments within its pages are. The book of Revelation wasn't meant to scare us into belief. It's written to shape us into followers of Jesus.

It doesn't invite speculation or guesses as to what it might infer. It invites to transformation. So what lens do we bring to Scripture? Is it the lens of fear? The lens that says God's words are found in Scripture are a threat?

Is it the lens that says Revelation is a secret code, a book for end time panic? Is it the lens that magnifies the beast and minimizes the worship of the true Lamb? Or do we see Scripture through the lens of empire, the lens where Scripture is read through the lens of your own personal political, national identity? Are we thinking that the world comes at the hands of the Democrats, Republicans? The lens where the beast is projected onto our political world leaders who disagree with us?

Do you see Scripture through the lens of literalism, where revelation becomes a blueprint and a timeline where we can count down the moments to when Jesus comes again and all things end? Where every symbol must have a one to one correlation that points to the end of time? Or do you see Scripture through the lens worship and hope is a call to allegiance to himself by loving the who are around you. Where our lives become more oriented in the life of Christ than our own desires. Where Scripture is read as a promise of restoration even in the face of struggle.

No matter where our lens is, it's important recognize who we look at. God's Word. How we look at God's word. Sorry. Nice.

Our lenses, we cannot see clearly. Friends, I want to remind you, Scripture doesn't always affirm what we believe. Sometimes it erupts, it interrupts it.

And as a reminder, every age has feared the end. Every age has seen a beast and Antichrist, this feeling of anti Jesus arise. But every generation has also had the opportunity to hear the Lamb's song. And friends, my hope and my prayer is that through us the Lamb song is getting louder and not quieter. We are not marked by fear, but by grace.

We are not by empire, but by Jesus. So this weekend, ways stand by the Lamb, sing his song and live in victory.

Friends, we have because the Lamb has already won. So let's live like the Lamb has already won. Let's pray.