Armageddon (Revelation 19:11-21)

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All right, you can go ahead, grab your Bibles, open up to Revelation 19. Revelation 19 starting in verse 11, we’ll finish up the chapter today. Revelation 1911 as you’re turning there, I just want to thank you guys for hanging in there the last couple of weeks. That was intense. I know it kind of had to be. The good news is we’re done with that. We slow down now. So for the rest of this series, we’re kind of like half a chapter at a time, which is a reasonable amount, and hopefully our sermons will have reasonable amounts as well. I make no promises there, you know that, but closer to it, we’re not gonna be hitting an hour anymore, which we did two weeks ago, which is shocking. I know it was hard, but necessary at the same time. Part of that’s because if we were to take a half chapter at a time, this is a 40 week series really quickly, we didn’t want to do that. But the other part is that in Revelation, it’s really easy to get bogged down in the details, and we wanted you guys to have the forest, and so that meant we had to move through it pretty quickly. So hopefully you got the forest. And if you’re like, I don’t remember what he said about that, that’s cool. Like, did you get the forest? Because otherwise, in Revelation, the temptation is always to, like, look at veins on the individual leaves. And that’s when we start to think ridiculous thoughts about Revelation. So thank you. We’re slowing down. Here we are. Revelation 19. Picture a skirmish, kind of at the end of World War Two, Allied forces defeat little squad of Nazi German soldiers. I know been using a lot of war analogies the last couple of weeks. I hope you understand why, because this is cosmic conflict like we’re talking about the battle of Armageddon today, specifically Now, if you’re talking about the end of World War Two with this little squad of German soldiers. I mean, most likely you’re talking about a group of teenage boys, 1718 year olds just no understanding probably what they’re doing, or the world as a whole still need to grow up. To draw from our announcement a moment ago, this is a group of confused and misled teens. And so you could almost feel a sense of pity for them that they were caught up in this, probably not a ton of pity, especially if they killed some of the members of your squadron. But you could see how you would get there at least again they were misled. So you’d feel one way about them, you would probably feel a different way about the people who misled them. Like what you think about that group of teenage boys is different than what you would think about the SS, the generals, the captains, all that stuff, who are leading this. Why do I mention this? Because the big question we’re at now in chapter 19 is Babylon has fallen, and Babylon is the humans, right? It’s all the people who have been misled by culture, Okay, what about the satanic powers behind Babylon, the ones who are misleading culture to draw individuals astray, and that’s where we’re turning today. You may remember last week we ended with a wedding supper. It’s a really abrupt shift to kind of a macabre scene this time out. And so we’ve got this tension again that we keep coming back to in Revelation. It’s almost like Jesus, you know, we’ve got the the wedding here, and so it’s like a groom saying, Hey, honey, my wedding present to you is the execution of your enemies. You’d be like, Okay, I was thinking more like the chicken dance or something. So like, that was not what I was expecting, but it will make some sense. Of course, we just got to talk about it, but that’s where we’re going. That’s the tension. I love the way Eugene Peterson expresses this tension. One of my favorite writers, he says, salvation is the intimacies and the festivities of marriage. Salvation is aggressive battle and the defeat of evil. Salvation is neither of these things by itself. It is the two energies or the embrace of love and the assault on evil in polar tension. And so we got to hold that intention, as we read today of the final battle Armageddon, where evil is once again, kind of ushered off stage again. Last week, Babylon taken off stage. This week, the beasts are taken off stage. You have to wait for till next week, for the dragon. So we’re gonna look at it. It’s three scenes Christ call and was it conflict or conquest? One of those conquest knew it started with a C. That’s the benefit of being a Baptist. Just so you know, up front, I’m gonna spend about half my time, maybe more, on this first point. So at the end of the first point, you’re like he said, it was me, shorter guys stick with me. I promise. I don’t promise, but I’m hoping revelation 19, 1116, as we look at Christ, our conqueror, I saw heaven standing open, and there before me was a white horse whose rider is called Faithful and True with justice. He judges and wages war. His eyes are like a blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows, but he himself. He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and His name is the Word of God. The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. Coming out of his mouth is a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. He will rule them with an iron scepter He treads the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty, on his robe and on His thigh, he has this name written, KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS. So John sees heaven open yet again. This introduces a new vision cycle. That’s what that means. In fact, every time we see something open in Revelation. It means we’re gonna get a new picture of what the Lord is doing. It started back in chapter four, when John saw a door open in heaven, and we got to see God on His throne, Jesus there alongside him, and we saw God’s purpose and Providence in history play out with the seven seals and the seven trumpets. In chapter 11, he sees the temple open, and that really starts the visions exposing this cosmic conflict that we’ve been talking about. And then in chapter 15, it’s not just the temple, but like the Holy of Holies, that gets open because we see the Ark of the Covenant, and that’s when we see the completion of God’s wrath and the bowls and the plagues. Well, now we see heaven open and we see Christ, our conquering king. And he’s given four names in this section, and that’s what we’re really going to look at here. But before we get to those names, notice that he’s riding on a white horse. We came across a white horse earlier the four horses of the Apocalypse, right? And at that time, I mentioned that some people think that that first rider on the white horse is Jesus, because here he is on a white horse here. I think it’s the other way around, though. I think Jesus is riding on a white horse here because of what that white horse represented back then, if you remember all the way back then, the white horse represents conquest, because that’s what the general would get to ride in his military triumph, if he won the battle, if Caesar conquered the Gauls, or whatever it was. But so think of what that means then, that we’ve got a white horse here with Jesus on top. Before John’s eyes even get up to Jesus, when he’s still just looking at the horse’s haunch, we already know who’s won. It’s over. He’s the Conqueror because he’s on the white horse. He triumphed. This is terrible writing, isn’t it? This is like reading a mystery novel that you find so engrossing in all these different clues, and you’re trying to piece them together, and you’re like, it might have been the dad, it might have been the mom, it might have been the brother, it might have been the fiance, might have been that pesky neighbor. And you flip over the page, and it’s all going to come together, and the title The chapter is the butler. Did it well. It’s not gonna be as tense as I was expecting here at the end. All right, so that’s what we have here. Jesus wins. It’s over, okay? Before we even get to the battle, Jesus wins. And then we get introduced to this man, this God, man who wins, his first name that he has given is faithful and true. Not the first time he’s been called Faithful and True in Revelation. All the way back in chapter one, verse five, like the introduction to the book, he is called that. And there, in particular, he was a faithful and true witness to what God is doing to God’s truth. He’s called it again in Revelation three, verse 14, this is in one of the seven letters to the seven churches. And there he was faithful and true, in contrast to some who were being tempted to be unfaithful and untrue. So he set in contrast to the complacent compromisers in this church. There’s this little reminder, right? We should be like Jesus, we should be faithful and true to God. Also, these words, though Faithful and True, are almost synonymous, because in Hebrew, thought true doesn’t mean so much. Propositionally accurate, factually correct, true has more to do with the person. Like, you’re true to your word. The way we would use it today, of course, is, you know, like a woman saying to her husband, or something like that, be true to me. And you’re saying, don’t just say accurate statements to me, actually, honey, I’m kind of tired of you at this point, like that’s not the true we’re looking for there. We’re looking for commitment, faithfulness, and that’s what’s being talked about here. So like in Jeremiah, For example, when Jeremiah refers to God as the God of truth, it’s because he keeps his word, because he keeps his covenant. You. And again, this has been a huge theme in Revelation, right? All his words are fulfilled, even at the end of our chapter or end of our section. Last week, 99 he added, these are the true words of God, true. Why? Because they are going to be fulfilled. So that’s what it means that he is faithful and true, and we then are called to be faithful and true witnesses to him, one of the major themes in Revelation, but there’s this problem that we keep coming across in Revelation, which is that those who are faithful and true witnesses to Christ keep getting killed as a result. So remember, in Greek, the word witness is actually the word martyr. And the reason why martyr means, what it means for us today is because faithful witnesses kept ended up, kept getting murdered and ended up being martyrs. And so that’s the problem, which makes sense of where we go, right? Because the writer is called Faithful and True with justice. He judges and wages war. And maybe that doesn’t make sense, right? We kind of go faithful and true. It’s this, like warm, cuddly idea, and now he’s making war. What’s going on there? Well, it’s that exactly because the faithful and true witnesses keep getting killed for his sake. What we have here is a fulfillment of Isaiah, chapter 11. We’ve come across a couple times in Revelation already, one of the great Christmas texts and all of that. So this is the the shoot from the stump of Jesse. Jesse is David’s father. So this is the the righteous branch in David’s family tree. And the seven fold Spirit is given to him, the spirit of knowledge and understanding of wisdom, all of these things. He’s the Lord’s anointed, the true son of David, the Messiah. What does it say at the end of this little section that describes him? It says, This Isaiah, 11, verse four, with righteousness, He will judge the needy with justice. He will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth with the breath of his lips, he will slay the wicked. So you can see, part of what this son of David comes to do is to offer right verdicts and just judgments. And here we get that tension again, because we all want justice. It’s one of our deepest longings as humans, one of the ways we know that we’re created in God’s image. But the tension is that in order to enact justice, Jesus must make war. Because, as we’ve seen in the end, at least at the end of time, diplomacy fails. There are those who will stubbornly resist God forever, and so at that point we need to wage war. We’ll come back to that in a little bit. But you know that he can make just judgments look. We trust Jesus to make these judgments. Why? Because his eyes are like fire. That means that he sees all. He can actually see the thoughts and intentions of our hearts, and he has the authority to make these judgments, the authority to rule as the rightful king, because he is given many crowns. Remember, the dragon got seven crowns and the Beast got 10 crowns. Well, Jesus gets more crowns than we can count. He gets many. He surpasses them in power and authority. Then we get his second name, so he’s faithful and true, but then he also has a name written on him that no one knows, but he himself. So it’s this unknown, mysterious name reminds us that there are aspects of Christ’s divinity, of who he is as God that are beyond us. Fact, it’s one of the reasons why the Lord, when He reveals Himself to Moses and gives his name, he gives it as I am, who I am, because any other name would narrow our conception of God. If we only knew him as faithful and true, we might not understand that he’s the Holy One of Israel, or whatever it is. And so we get this idea here, again, he’s beyond us. But I think there’s more to it than that, because again, in Hebrew thought to know someone’s name is to gain a certain power over them. You see this in some of the encounters that Jesus has with demons in the gospels, and he’ll often ask, What’s your name? And that shows his authority over them doesn’t just have to be there, though. I think of Jacob wrestling with the angel. Now, the angel of the Lord, possibly even the pre Incarnate Christ himself. He’s wrestling, and Jacob says, Tell me your name, and what does the angel say? Why do you ask me my name, considering it’s too wonderful for you again, it’s beyond you. We can’t understand it all. So there’s kind of these two ideas going on simultaneously. We can’t get a handle on JESUS TO KNOW HIM exhaustively, and then we also can’t get a handhold on Jesus to. Throw him to gain mastery or power over him, of course. Third name then that we’re given is the word of God. This is a favorite of John’s, of course. Now, what does the word of God mean? It is the word from God. Of course. This is the word that God, the Father, speaks. Jesus is the message God has for us, which means, of course, the word is also about Jesus, and this is the word to which we witness as faithful and true witnesses. But there is this reminder, in light of the fact that it’s a name, and what we get in John, chapter one, and the gospel in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And so we know we’re talking about God here. And then all of a sudden we read in John 114 and the Word became flesh. And so we’re talking about Jesus. And so there’s this reminder that the word of God, again, it isn’t just a fact, but it is a person. And so we owe more than just intellectual ascent, yes, yes, that’s true. Now we owe personal allegiance to him, and so there’s this beautiful truth in the Word of God. Again, this is God, good news proclaimed to us, but this gracious name, the word of God, is introduced with this grotesque image. Once again, we get the tension there because he’s dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and His name is the Word of God. So there’s this tension, and the tension here shows us the connection between salvation and judgment, the connection between salvation and judgment, which we see in the the Old Testament passage that’s referenced here. So it’s Isaiah, 63 verses, three and four. Isaiah says this, God says, through his prophet, I trampled them in my anger and trod them down in my wrath. Their blood spattered my garments and I stained all my clothing. It was for me listen to this, the day of vengeance, the year for me to redeem had come. Isn’t that interesting, right? It’s a day of vengeance. That’s why there’s blood spattering the robe and stuff. But it is also time for redemption. Now, this can be hard for us to hear. I get it. We prefer, you know, not these, these Old Testament wrath passages. You know, we really prefer the the New Testament God, the loving God. Of course, this is in the New Testament. So that shoots that to pieces. But still, okay, it it’s feels unattractive to us today, like we prefer a squishy tolerance, absolutely, but we cannot have mercy or redemption, salvation without justice and judgment. We understand how this works, like you can’t show mercy to victims of human trafficking unless you’re willing to make war on human traffickers. That’s the connection, right there, and so seeing that connection is also what frees us to show mercy and love. So like we don’t carry out the vengeance. We show mercy, we love our enemies, we pray for those who persecute us. Why? Because we have this knowledge, this hope, that in the end, the Lord will make war on wickedness. So there’s this idea today that we shouldn’t retaliate. We should be all for peace. Why? Because our God is a God of this sort of squishy love very popular in the West, like we’ve got a God who just pinches our cheeks? He’s a kindly old grandfather, isn’t he? And so if we’re like him, and we just go around pinching each other’s cheeks enough, then eventually we’ll all be in a great big circle, holding hands, seeing kumbaya till the cows come home. All available evidence to the contrary, by the way, like we know that’s an absurd belief, because how’s that going for us? Good or not good? Not good. It doesn’t work. And so I’m gonna quote here a Croatian theologian, Miroslav Volf. Quoted him before this exact passage many times, because it’s so important to our understanding. Why is it important that he’s a Croatian theologian, because it means he lived through the wars in the Balkans like he experienced these wars of genocide and ethnic cleansing and some of the the worst atrocities the last century committed there. And he writes this, if God were not angry at injustice and deception and did not make a final end to violence that God would not be worthy of worship. He writes like a theologian. I gotta apologize to that up front. Okay, so he uses a lot of big words, but I’m gonna read it slowly. The only means of prohibiting all recourse to violence by ourselves, the only way to keep us from taking vengeance is to insist that violence is. Legitimate only when it comes from God. He says, My thesis that the practice of non violence requires a belief in divine vengeance will be unpopular with many in the West. And he writes this, and this is like if you were responding to this tweet, you just do those three little fire emojis. That’s what’s happening here. It takes the quiet of a suburban home for the birth of the thesis that human non violence corresponds to God’s refusal to judge in a scorched land soaked in the blood of the innocents, it will invariably die with other pleasant captivities of the liberal mind. He goes on to say, like, if you’ve seen your father and your brothers killed and your sister raped and you’re being told, just forgive and forget, good luck. No, that’s when you go, well, then we should kill all of them in retaliation. And that is the history of humanity. Unless, unless we know that God will judge in the end, offer just judgments, write verdicts that he will make war on wickedness. And by the way, John’s revelation is not written to 21st century American suburbanites. It is written to those who are in danger of ethnic cleansing. He is writing to a persecuted church, some of them have already been killed. This is information that they need to know. Vengeance is the Lord’s so we can lay our violence down. In fact, it’s interesting even in this scene, right? And certainly next week, we’ll see this more. So we march in his army, but we actually never fight, as we’ll see in a moment, but the armies do go out with Jesus, yes, and they follow Him exactly. Do you notice they’re riding the same kind of horse? They’re wearing the same clothes? Why? Because we’re meant to be like little Christ. And here we are as he goes out to war, and we see that he’s got a sharp sword coming out of his mouth. By now, of course, you know when things come out of your mouth, they mean words. They’re words, okay, which is interesting, of course. Now this is also taken from Isaiah, 11, four. I already read this, but here it is again. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, with the breath of his lips. He will slay the wicked, wicked. So Jesus wins victory by the power of His word alone. It’s almost like a reverse creation. God says, Let there be light, and there is light, and God says, Put an end to darkness, and there is an end to darkness. Now, why is it his word? Because, of course, these are the true judgments that he is speaking, and when he speaks them, no one will be able to make reply. That is a truth we have to have in mind. When Jesus speaks his true judgments at the end of time, no one will stand up and say, That’s not fair. We will all understand who he is, who we are, what we deserve, and that helps us with the shocking imagery, of course, charting the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. The point here is his unquestioned rule, this king who has come to laugh at the raging nations, the true son of David, the Lord’s anointed, the Messiah of Isaiah 11 and Psalm two. And then we get his last title here, his last name, King of Kings and Lord of lords, titles again given to people like Nebuchadnezzar in the Old Testament, king of Babylon and Caesar, who is ruling at this time when this is written. The only difference here is that KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS is actually true of Jesus, fully and forever. So once again, we see His infinite authority. This is an important reminder, though, because if the church knows Jesus as faithful and true, the church knows that he is the word of God, that He is beyond our knowledge. The world will know Him as King of kings and Lord of lords. Jesus came first as suffering servant. Right? He was the Lamb who was slain. But when He comes again, He will come as the conquering king the lion from the tribe of Judah. He came in mercy. He will come next in judgment to speak the last word, which is the true word. But this last word precipitates a last stand which will vindicate his judgment, by the way, and that’s where we turn next. So Christ, scene one. Scene two, the call just verses 17 and 18, and I saw an angel standing in the sun who cried in a loud voice to all the birds flying in midair, come gather together for the great supper of God, so that you may eat the flesh of kings, generals and the mighty of horses and their riders and the flesh of all people, free and slave, great and so. Small So John, next sees an angel in the sun, meaning he’s got all the glorious splendor of God himself. And he calls the birds we’re picturing like vultures in particular, right? And he issues this invitation to them. And remember, we just had a wedding, so like, it feels like a wedding invitation,
like, come to the wedding supper of the Lamb, right? And then it turns grotesque, because we realize this is an invitation to a feast after a battle. And so these are vultures you’re just going to pick at the carrion, the dead men who are there on the battlefield. This comes from Ezekiel 39 here’s verses 17 to 20. Call out to every kind of bird and all the wild animals assemble and come together from all around to the sacrifice I am preparing for you, the great sacrifice on the mountains of Israel. There you will eat flesh and drink blood. You will eat the flesh of mighty men and drink the blood of the princes of the Earth as if they were rams and lambs, goats and bowls, the sacrifice I am preparing for you. You will eat fat till you are glutted and drink blood till you are drunk at my table, you will eat your fill of horses and riders, mighty men and soldiers of every kind. Now Ezekiel 39 is important, like the context is key here, because what do we get in Ezekiel 36 and 37 we have the restoration of God’s people. Ezekiel 36 has got that great promise of the new covenant where we’re going to take a heart of stone, give us a heart of flesh. He’s going to put His Spirit on us. He’s going to sprinkle us with clean water. Ezekiel 37 he’s given the vision of the dry bones, like this idea that right those who are spiritually dead can actually be raised to new life. And then we get Ezekiel, 38 and 39 which are judgment on the wicked. And so it’s this exact same, you know, chronology that we’re following. And by the way, after that, he sees the vision of the new temple, which is where we’re going to be going next as well. And it makes sense like that. It happens for for God to restore his people into the new heavens and the new earth. There’s something else that needs to happen if he’s going to bring heaven and earth together, as we keep talking about. Then there has to come that moment when he kicks hell out and he removes injustice and immorality forever. And that’s what happens here. Notice that this falls on all people who will not submit to Christ, great and small, the army and the crowds. Why? As I mentioned last week, because there are no neutrals in the end. Again, like living in Nazi Germany at a certain point where you’re either going to become a Nazi through and through, or you’re going to get run over by the Nazi war machine or somehow seek to resist it. And it’s even truer spiritually speaking. So the call goes out with this invitation to this horrifying parody of the Lamb’s wedding supper. The invitation is saying the battle is coming. So get ready. Here’s the battle. Next scene, conquest. Rest of the chapter, 19 to 21 then I saw the beasts and the kings of the earth and their armies gathered together to wage war against the rider on the horse and his army. The beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who had performed the signs on his behalf. With These Signs, He had deluded those who had received the mark of the beast and worshiped its image. The two of them were thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur. The rest were killed with a sword coming out of the mouth of the rider on the horse, and all the birds gorge themselves on their flesh. So the battle’s coming. Better get ready, except it’s not much of a battle. It’s like downright anticlimactic, terrible writing. Once again, it’s like you open up that chapter The Butler Did It, and you’re waiting for, you know, Poirot, or whoever, to pull all the pieces together, at least for you can figure out why I was the butler and not someone else. And instead, the opening scene is, Butler goes, I did it. And you’re like, This is just awful. Like, this is not the novel I wanted, except it is good in terms of how history unfolds. But what’s interesting here, because there isn’t a battle, is remember how powerful the beast is. Like, we keep seeing this beast, and he’s big and strong, like he’s part leopard, part bowl part like he’s got claws and fangs, like he should have put up a fight. And then he joins with the Kings, these 10 kings that we met in the last chapter, all these other kings, right? In other words, he’s got a full force. He’s ready to take on anyone, and the trumpet sounds. And, you know, the commander does that thing where he puts his sword down and then boom, like the cavalry start charging and stuff like that. He Yeah, it’s over. It’s done in the blink of an eye. There isn’t even a battle like no swords even Clang, if you saw, or better yet, read, Lord of the Rings, you remember the battle of polonor fields, kind of the final battle before the White City. And it looks like a stalemate for a time, right? Like the dragons there, and he’s eating some of the good guys and stuff like that. And they even maybe kind of look like they’re losing. And then all of a sudden, the green ghosts show up. Just eat everyone. That’s bad. That’s kind of what we got here, except that the battle didn’t even have a chance to be a stalemate, and the Lord speaks, and the battle’s over. The breath of His mouth is enough to capture the beast and the false prophet, and they are thrown into hell, whereas the people are killed, by the way, that’s important. It shows us that the beast and the false prophet. These are not individuals, okay, this is not some future president of Romania who turns out to be a really bad guy or something like that. These are symbols of sinful structures of power and deception in particular, and they are utterly vanquished here, whereas the individuals who are involved in rebellion against God suffer here, the first death, physical death. You’re thinking, if there’s a First, there must be a second. Yes, we’ll talk about that next week, in fact. But thank God that the beast and the false prophet are utterly vanquished here, because remember what they’ve done. We see it written here, right? They have deceived and deluded and ultimately devoured and destroyed so many image bearers. That’s it. But what do we do with it? What does the battle of Armageddon on that future day have to do with us now. How would God have us respond today to what’ll happen then? And here’s our big idea, by the way, I’ll give it to you now, and we’ll kind of unpack what it looks like. Live like Christ. Our conquering king is coming. Live like Christ, our conquering king is coming. Because he is, of course, he came first in mercy. When he comes again, He will come in judgment the faithful and true with his penetrating gaze, trampling God’s enemies in Wrath, that knowledge should terrify us. And that it should produce in us the fear of the Lord, the fear of the Lord, a right understanding again, of who God is and who we are, and all the implications the fact that he is perfect and we are not, should produce the fear of the Lord in us, all of us, even here today the church. Why? Because we also have rebelled against Him, haven’t we? And all too often and all too recently, I think of Psalm two again. Robert read it for us earlier, 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. I mean, look at that verse. Have you served the Lord with fear always? Do you always celebrate his rule? Or are there those times when you’re sinning, when you’re going I’m not so sure about this command, and we put a little asterisk next to it, yes, present company excluded, because he wouldn’t want me to do that. He would want me to pursue my own happiness, or whatever it is. Have we always kissed his son as a sign of our love and devotion and submission to Him? Surely not that as we see the true king, and yet, too often, we enslave ourselves to the many false kings who falsely promise us what only Jesus can deliver, the power and the pleasure, especially that we’ve looked at so many times in recent weeks. I mean, we’ve given in to all the seductions of Babylon that we talked about last week. So what hope do we have? Then the only hope that we have is that Jesus is actually faithful and true, that Jesus is a God who keeps his covenant word that the Father would send the Son of David to redeem his own. Our only hope is that Jesus is the Word of God, the message that God speaks to us, offering us grace and mercy, the forgiveness of sins in Christ by His blood alone. So the hope that we have is also the choice that we have, and it’s painted for us vividly here in this passage, we can either wash our robes in the blood of the Lamb, as we’ve seen in earlier chapters, take away every stain of sin washed as white as snow, or our blood will splatter his robe. We can either eat with Christ at the wedding supper of the Lamb, where we can be eaten as our bodies decay on the battlefield, that the conquering king would come first to conquer sin in us. That the conquering king would come first to be conquered by death for us and so ironically, to conquer death. That’s what should compel us to submit to the true king, not to the beast or the False Prophet. That’s what would compel us to be joyful servants of the suffering servant. That’s what compels us to live like Christ, our conquering king is coming. And again, the key is to live now like he’s coming then. I don’t know about you, but for me, sometimes when I think about that, the trouble is that I like big I want to be part of an epic story, and this is certainly an epic story. And so I read this, and I go, yes, like as for me and my house on that day in the end, we will be on the right side. But God calls us to live this out, not just in the big, but in the little, in the daily, in the mundane. So it looks more like as for me and my house, today, I’ll submit in the little things. I will live for him in mundane circumstances. Longing for Christ’s appearing should produce in us living for His appearing, living like it’s true that he will come again. What does that look like? Let me just give you some like practical, concrete ways this might look. It certainly would look like quiet, oftentimes unnoticed, service of the sort we talked about, even in the announcement a moment ago, it looks like stepping up and saying, Yeah, I will do my part in this grand story. It might look like a commitment to truth. After all, he’s faithful and true. He is the Word of God, which we know is true. So it looks like a commitment to truth 100% not shading the story just a little bit so that I look a little better and the other person looks a little worse. Certainly it looks like selfless sacrifice. And again, some of us are like, right? Yes, I will die on the battlefield if I need to, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about selfless sacrifice. You know, in traffic, you can go in front that one’s harder than dying on the battlefield. At the end of time, for most of us, it looks like generous living. And can I just say too, you guys are an exceptionally generous church. We talk about this a lot, with money in particular, but I think generous living also includes being generous with our time and energy. And that one’s harder, that one’s harder for me, yeah, it’s harder for pretty much anyone who lives in the suburbs, because it’s costlier, so much easier to write a check than to sign up on a volunteer slot. But generous living. Why? Because he was generous toward us. Though he was rich for our sakes, he became poor. I mean, what this looks like, I think, is a willingness to be inconvenienced by other people. Why? Because when I look at Jesus’s life, I’m pretty sure he was pretty inconvenienced by me and my sin, and yet he did it willingly. And of course, this would look like, as we’ve talked throughout this book, this series, it looks like winsome and bold evangelism, that we would be faithful and true witnesses to the faithful and true, and that we would gladly speak the word about the Word of God. So I want to leave with this then, even as you leave today, like as we get ready to exit here in just a few moments, what is one step that the spirit is prompting you to take right now today to live like Christ, our conquering king is coming.