The Seven Trumpets (Revelation 8:2-9:21)

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Well, good morning. Go ahead and grab your Bibles and turn to page 995, we’re going to be in Revelation eight. The words We sang, we trust you. We trust you. Your ways are higher than our ways. I need to pray again. If you guys would pray with me,
Lord, in these moments ahead, we come to your word because it is the solid rock in which we stand. Lord, I need your grace in this moment, we all do, and we know you have something for us this morning from Your Word, something we had to hear even before the news that we got. So Lord, we pray that you would use it today to change us. And Lord, I pray for all of us to just lean in to the fact that this hurts. Lord, that it hurts you, that the pain that we feel is because of the brokenness in this world. And sometimes when we think about hope, there’s moments like this where it just really gets in the very depths of who we are, and we’re crying out for that hope this morning that we can only find in you. So Holy Spirit, help us in these moments to hear from you. We love you, and we pray this in Jesus name. Amen, as we begin just thinking through the questions that I had written earlier this week for this morning. I know they are probably even more fresh for us, and the Lord knows we needed to ask them today. Question is, when was the last time that you prayed for justice to be done? When was the last time you prayed for God to destroy evil? When was the last time you prayed for God to make everything right? And for some of us, we haven’t prayed that for a long time, until this morning. When was the last time you cried out? How long Lord will there be suffering and evil and sickness and death? And when you think about those prayers. How many times have you walked away and been discouraged and thought God isn’t listening, or walked away and said It feels like my prayers are just hitting the ceiling and bouncing right off, that there’s no connection there. I felt that way. I’m pretty sure most of you have felt that way, too. And I think many of the writers experienced that throughout their life of following God, because those questions, how long Lord are all over, all over scripture. Last week, we started to really get into the tough stuff in Revelation. And by tough, I mean harder to understand, difficult things we kind of got to work through. And at the same time, it’s tough, because the subject matter we’re talking about judgment, and we’re going to be talking about judgment for a while now, God’s judgment on the earth, God’s judgment on people. And so if you’re here this morning, this is your first time, I’d recommend going back and listening to those sermons, because this is a hard one to kind of just jump into the sermon series, because what we’ve looked at the last number of weeks is that we need to, always, as we come to passage on judgment, look at who we are talking about, who stands behind it. All the glorious vision we get of Jesus Christ, from Revelation one all the way until now, and all the way through the book, to remember who he is, what he has done and what he will do. And so as we’re in this last book of the Bible, the last one written mainly about the end times, we’re still waiting for complete fulfillment of the things that we see in here. And if this is the last book, that means there’s 65 other books that came before it. And most of us are like, Well, we know this. Why are we? Why are you talking about again, it’s because as we read the text this morning, we should over and over again think, Where have I heard this before? Where have I heard this before? This isn’t new, and so we’re going to ask that question a lot this morning. And we’re not only going to just go back further in the Bible, just last week, chapter six and seven of Revelation, as Brandon talked about the seals, and he mentioned we have this recapitulation of the seals in the trumpets saying, okay, okay, let’s, let’s go a little bit deeper into what these things mean. It’s a retelling of the same truth, just from a different perspective. And so when we go back, we’re gonna say, Where have I heard this before? Not only in Revelation, but all the way throughout the Old Testament, and especially in the book of Exodus today. So we’re gonna see a lot in the Exodus story. And you don’t have to be very familiar with the Bible to understand what the Exodus story is about. Maybe for you, depending on your generation, it’s the 10 Commandments movie, and you kind of got a sense of what happened. Maybe it’s the prince of Egypt. Maybe it’s some other version that you’ve seen. Recently, but you you kind of get a sense of what the Exodus story is. God’s people are slave in slavery in Egypt, and God acts to save his people through different plagues. Now, there’s a few differences this morning, though, that we need to see from last week, and that is just that we’re we’re going deeper, and we will continue to go deeper into this judgment. And we have to think about God ratcheting things up here, ratcheting things up. Things are intensifying from this point forward. And then there’s another difference, and that is kind of our first point that you’ll see there is that judgment comes through prayer. Judgment comes through prayer. So let’s look at Revelation eight. I’m actually going to read verse one to where we stopped last week through verse five, Revelation eight, starting verse one, when he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour, and I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them. Another angel who had a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense to offer with the prayers of all God’s people on the golden altar in front of the throne. The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of God’s people, went up before God from the angel’s hand. Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar and hurled it on the earth. And there came peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake. So judgment comes through prayer. Things are going to get really loud here in the trumpets, as these trumpets are blown, but right before we get that, we get this silence that we ended with last week, this last seal, silence in heaven. The whole point here is it’s often quiet as before the storm. So if you know anything about weather, you know there’s a lot of times where things will get really, really calm, really, really quiet, and yet, Weather experts know that’s just getting things ready for the intense storm that’s coming. And here we have that there’s there’s silence, and then all of a sudden, trumpet blasts from heaven, trumpet blasts. And we have to think again. We’ve talked about this that the seven seals doesn’t mean the seven seals happen, then the seven trumpets happen, then the seven bowls will happen. But we got again, think of these things, summarizing each other, talking about each other, going deeper and deeper and deeper in our understanding of God’s judgment over time. And so what we see here is John sees seven angels, seven angels with these trumpets. And we’re, we’re pretty well set right on understanding how the number seven is my first time preaching revelation. So we got it, okay, Revelation, or Revelation number seven, very important, God’s perfect perfection. And here we’re gonna make God’s perfect judgment represented by these seven angels who are going to blow these trumpets and carry out God’s perfect will through judgment. And trumpets were regularly used throughout the Old Testament to call people to war, to call people for judgment. And other times in Scripture, we see the trumpet will blow on the day of the Lord at the very end. And so the trumpets will blow from these angels. But before that, there’s a little bit of a preparation that happens. We get another angel who comes down with a golden censer. This should remind us of the temple, that this angel is kind of acting like a priest in this moment, has this golden sensor, and he stands at the altar of incense. The altar of incense would have been in the temple, in the holy place, and so they would offer these offerings of incense before the Lord. It was a regular practice offering it up to him. But we find out here is this is no ordinary incense, nothing like we’ve seen before, although we’ve seen it before in Revelation five eight. Revelation five eight, it says the four living creatures and the 24 elders were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people, okay, the prayers of God’s people, and this idea of these, the prayers being offered up as incense we just read in Psalm 141, you’ll see it on the screen here. But David is talking, and what he says here is, may my prayer be set before you like incense, may the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice. And so this golden censor has the incense, has the prayers of God’s people. You see that, like our prayers are mixed in with this, and they are the incense that is going up to God. So what types of prayers are these? Well, we get a clue here in chapter six that we looked at last week, prayers like the ones we saw are this offered up by the martyrs, those who were slain for their faith in Jesus. So if you just look back, if you’re probably just to the to the left a little bit. Look at chapter six, verse nine: these martyrs come, and they say, How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood? How? Long until evil is judged. So prayers like this have been offered throughout human history. They’re prayers we have prayed too, and the answer we find out many times, just like they find out in chapter six, is God will say you must wait a little longer. And that’s hard. You must wait a little longer. Now, where have we heard this before? Where have we heard this before? The Israelite people are enslaved in Egypt for 400-plus years. How many of those years do you think they prayed, Lord? How long, I think, over 400 years, pretty well said on that, how long until you save us? And they cry out, and they wait, and they get discouraged, and maybe some of them stop praying, some of them stop hoping. Generations come, generations go, you must wait a little longer. And we ask why. The answer is that God’s timetable is not the same as ours, but God does answer. Look at Exodus, chapter three, as he calls Moses. He says this: The Lord said, I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt. God’s judgment on the nation of Egypt comes through the cries and the prayers that he hears of his people. And what we see here in Revelation is that God’s judgment on the earth, on evil, on those who are opposed to him will come because of our prayers too, the prayers of the saints over time, who cry out, God, how long until your justice is done? So when you pray against evil and injustice and sin and sickness and devastation and depression. When you cry out for God to do something, fight the temptation to think that he’s not interested. We’ve got to fight that temptation. We’ve got to fight the temptation that our prayers are just hitting the ceiling and going nowhere and that it just makes us feel good for a few moments that we’ve offered up these prayers that get nowhere. We have to fight that temptation because none of those prayers is wasted. They’re not hitting the ceiling. They are incense being offered up to God. They go past the ceiling all the way up to him. He hears every single one, and he says justice will be done, not it might it will be done. He hears them. He doesn’t forget them. Prayer makes a difference. They are one of his means that he is ordained to accomplish his purposes, to accomplish His judgment. Does that mean he’s gonna read justice and judgment every prayer we pray in the moment? No, but does he do it? Sometimes? Yes, I think sometimes he does respond to our prayers of just justice and judgment now, but the hope that we have is that all of them will be answered, every single one because he is making all things new. He’s making all things right. And so God’s answer of judgment comes in this awesome display, reminiscent of the presence of God at Mount Sinai in Exodus. Because the angel takes this fire from the altar, he puts it in the sensor, and he throws it to the earth. And what do we see? Thunder, lightning and an earthquake. Talked about last week that earthquake is always representing God’s judgment here in Revelation. So everything is prepared. Everything is prepared for these angels with these trumpets to come. And what happens next? Look at that second point there. Judgment is going to come on the earth. That’s our next section. So let’s read verses six through 13, the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared to sound them. The first angel sounded his trumpet, and there came hail and fire mixed with blood, and it was hurled down on the earth. A third of the Earth was burned up. A third of the trees were burned up, and all the green grass was burned up. The second angel sounded his trumpet, and something like a huge mountain, all the blaze was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea turned into blood. A third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed. The third angel sounded, sounded his trumpet, a great star blazing like a torch fell from the sky, and a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The name of the star is wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter. The fourth angel sounded his trumpet, and a third of the Sun was struck, a third of the moon and a third of the stars, so that a third of them turned dark. A third of the day was without light. And also a third of the night. As I watched, I heard an eagle that was flying in mid-air call out in a loud voice, wo wo, wo wo, to the inhabitants of the earth, because of the trumpet blasts about to be sounded by the other three angels. So a few things to mention here. We cannot get into all the details. I hope you saw the word like. You’re going to see the word like a lot in this again, because it’s, it’s just trying to say, this is, this is kind of what it looked like. It’s sort of like this. We’ve seen that throughout Revelation. We’re going to see it a lot today, especially in chapter nine. But a few things to mention about these first four trumpets. The first thing we see is that judgment, okay, these plagues on the earth are going to impact everything. We see the Earth, we see the seas, the waters, and we see the skies. So this judgment is coming on everything, everything will be touched. And so the first thing this should remind us of, where have I heard this before? Well, we’ve heard kind of the opposite of this, in the creation story. This is sort of a decreation story in this moment because in Genesis 1 and 2, God creates everything: the Earth, the waters, the skies. He puts everything there, and he fills it, and everything is very good. Genesis 3, sin enters the world, and everything is broken. Romans eight tells us the whole world is groaning, as in the pains of childbirth, just waiting, waiting for God to remake it, all right, waiting for that freedom to come. What creation experience at first? And so here we say, no, these things are going to change. It’s going to look a lot different than it once did. The second thing we need to notice is how much of the Earth is impacted by these plagues. We see it over and over again. Here we see a third, okay, a third of everything last week. Here’s the quiz time. How much was affected by God’s judgment on the earth? This is the participatory: a third.  1/4. I am not a math guy. I do know that that is less than 1/3, so what we see here is all of a sudden, okay, this is a little bit more intense than it once was. We go from a quarter to a third. And here’s the amazing thing: there is no reason it shouldn’t be 100%, and there’s no reason it should or shouldn’t be. All be taken out. We spend so much time thinking about the quarter, thinking about the third, and forgetting how much mercy there is, we focus on the judgment, not realizing in that judgment, God is always offering mercy, because it’s a fourth, it’s a third. When Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, God had every right in that moment to stop it there, to end it. That was it. He said, “If you eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, you will die.” They ate it, and spiritually, yes, in that moment, they died. They were separated from God. The relationship was broken with him. The relationship was broken with each other, but in that moment, he should have ended everything spiritual and physical. It could have all ended there, but he didn’t. Instead, he gives them hope, hope that would lead to repentance and hope that there would be a Savior who would come to save them from the sin they just committed, the sins they would commit, and the sins that all of us commit. So, we cannot presume upon God’s grace. Though, when we read a quarter, when we read a third, we cannot assume that will be the three-quarters or the two-thirds that are spared because eventually, it’s going to be 100%, so we take it seriously. Seriously, now and repent and turn to God. Finally, we look at these plagues, and we think, Where have I seen this before? Well, I hope you think Exodus right when we look at these plagues, trumpet one, we have hail and fire, sounds like the seventh plague in Egypt. Trumpet two, water into blood, like the first plague in Egypt, when the Nihil is turned to blood. Trumpet three, kind of reminds us of the same thing, because the Egyptians could not drink the water because we contaminated with blood. And here we get this water that is not they cannot drink it. It’s bitter, and if they do drink it, some of them have died because of that. And then we think also, when the Israelites are in Marah and they’re thirsty and the water is bitter, God gives Moses this piece of wood there he throws in the water, and it makes the water sweet, fit for drinking. We see this as that, as being undone. And finally, trumpet four, the ninth plague of darkness in Egypt, darkness over the land. Now, when God brings these plagues in Egypt, what is he doing? He’s demonstrating his his authority over every single Egyptian god, god of the Nile. He’s greater god of frogs. He’s greater god of locusts. He’s greater god of the sun. He’s great. Creator, because he just keeps going after that and saying, they have no authority. They are not real, true gods. I am. That’s what he’s doing. And the difference then in Egypt was that was a very small region that saw these plagues. What do we see here in Revelations? The whole earth will see God’s judgment, all of it. So now, instead of God going after the gods of Egypt, he’s showing that he has authority over all the earth, everything he created. He has authority over all of it. And all of it could vanish in a moment. It could be gone. So my question is, do you believe that? And I think we’d say yes, but do we live that way? Do we live as if tomorrow we could lose it all? Do we live as if we know that these things are temporary, that the things made by our hands could be gone in a flash? When we think about this, it’s the mercy of God on display. He’s saying, Do you remember what I did back then? Do you know what I’m doing now? And we keep seeing these judgments, and it’s all a warning. Will you learn? I mean, parents, we do this with our kids all the time. I told you, I told you I was going to do this, and then we give them a little bit of grace, and then we know what they do. I told you, I told you was coming, and we have grace, and we have grace, and eventually, that discipline comes, right? That judgment comes in that moment God saying, I’ve been showing you this mercy before the judgment. Will you listen? Will you repent? And then, in verse 13, we get a short interlude here with an eagle calling out, whoa, whoa, whoa, to the inhabitants of the earth. And this is a warning to those who are still alive after all of these judgments that have happened in these first four trumpets. So if you’re if you’ve made it through this, this eagle comes and says, Woe on you, because things are about to go from bad to worse, bad to worse. These woes are coming for humanity, coming for people. Those first four were affecting the Earth. Did affect some people, right? And living off in the earth. But now these are going to be directly on people, but not everyone, okay, not everyone. The phrase there in verse 13, says it’s going to be for the inhabitants of the earth, and we’re already seeing this, but in Revelation, when it says that it’s talking about people on the earth who are opposed to God. Those are the inhabitants of the earth, people who are living as if there is no God, who have no fear of God in their lives. So these judgments are coming specifically for those who are not followers of Jesus. Okay, we need to know that as we head into this last section. Now, we’re also going to look at two of these three woes in trumpet five and six. I know the sermon title says seven trumpets, but if you pay attention a little bit to the pattern of what’s going on here, there’s gonna be a long interlude between six and seven. So you’re gonna have to come back next week to find out what happens in trumpet seven and the third woe. So we’re gonna cover five and six, which are the first and second woes that we see here in verse 13. So, let’s look at this last section. Judgment comes for the unrepentant. We’re going to read chapter nine. We’re going to read one through 21, the whole chapter, okay? Verse one, the fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth. The star was given the key to the shaft of the abyss. When he opened the Abyss, smoke rose from it, like the smoke from a gigantic furnace, the sun and sky were darkened by the smoke from the abyss. And out of the smoke, locusts came down in the earth and were given power like that of scorpions of the earth. They were not they were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any plant or tree, but only those people who did not have have the seal of God on their foreheads. They were not allowed to kill them, but only to torture them for five months, and the agony they suffered was like that of the sting of a scorpion when it strikes during those days, people will seek death, but will not find it. They will long to die, but death will elude them. The locusts looked like horses prepared for battle. On their heads, they wore something like crowns of gold, and their faces resembled human faces. Their hair was like women’s hair, and their teeth were like lion’s teeth. They had breastplates, like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the thundering of many horses and chariots rushing into battle. They had tails with stingers, like scorpions, and in their tails they had power to torment people for five months. They had his king over them, the angel the abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek is Apollyon, that is destroyer the first woe is past. Two other woes are yet to come. The sixth angel sounded his trump, and I heard a voice coming from the four horns of the golden altar that is before a god. It said to the sixth angel who had the trumpet release the four angels who are bound to the great river Euphrates and the four angels who had been. Kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind. The number of the mounted troops was twice 10,000 times 10,000 I heard their number, the horses and riders. I saw my vision looked like this. Their breastplates were fiery red, dark blue and yellow as sulfur. The heads of the horses resembled the heads of lions, and out of their mouths came fire, smoke and sulfur. A third of mankind was killed by the three plagues of fire, smoke and sulfur that came out of their mouths. The power of the horses was in their mouths and in their tails. For their tails were like snakes having heads with which they could afflict injury. The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, still did not repent to the work of their hands. They did not stop worshiping demons and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood, idols that cannot see or hear or walk. Nor did they repent of their murders, their magic arts, their sexual immorality or their thefts. So the fifth trumpet, a star, falls from the heavens, and the star is given a key to the shaft of the abyss. Who is this star from heaven? Best guess here is that this is an angel. Angels are referred to as stars in Scripture. If you went back to Revelation one verse 20, it says that the seven stars over the seven churches, over the seven churches are the seven angels. Okay, so these seven stars, seven angels over the churches. So we see this language used, and there’s debate on if this angel is good or bad, or is this, is this actually Satan himself, without getting into all the different possibilities I’m inclined to believe without, you know, big dogma, like dogmatic approach here, just is what I am inclined to believe, that this is a good angel, okay, sent from heaven. The Fallen is not the nature of the angel but just came from heaven. And I believe this mainly because of Revelation 20, which you’ll see on the screen. So later, almost at the very end of the book, we see this. And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven having the key to the abyss and holding it, holding in his hand a great chain. He sees the dragon, that ancient serpent who is the Devil or Satan, and bound him for 1000 years. He threw him into the abyss and locked and sealed it over him to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore until the 1000 years were ended. And so at judgment, the angel opens the abyss, and at the end, the angel locks and seals the abyss. So I think this is the good angel that God sends who has this key. And it doesn’t matter much who this is. The most important thing about this is who is the one who gives the key? God is the one who gives the key. It’s his to give. It’s nobody else’s. It’s God’s decision that this is the right time for judgment to come. So he sends an angel, gives him the key to open the abyss. And this angel opens this literal, or not literal pit, but this place, right? That’s representing the demons, okay? And so this is the time, again, not a literal place, but just showing that key is turned. They are released because they’re released for a very specific purpose, to bring judgment on the earth. To bring judgment on the earth. The important thing to see here is that Satan and his demons can not do anything without the permission of God. They cannot and do not operate freely outside of his will. He has opened it up. It is the time for judgment, and there’s smoke and there’s darkness again, taking us back to Egypt, the reminder of that darkness that comes and then that cloud that comes with locusts. That’s the eighth plague in Egypt, because we have the locusts who are released here. If you’re with us, last year, we looked at the book of Joel. We also talked a lot about locus at that time. So your mind might go there, might go back to Egypt, and we don’t have time to look at all the details and all the description of the locust. I’m pretty sure these are not Apache helicopters, though. Some people think that. Don’t think that’s what he’s describing here in this moment. But what is it meant to describe that evil is terrifying? That’s what Revelation does. Gives us these pictures, and the pictures we get here because locusts are about destruction. We saw that in Joel. They’re about destruction coming in and destroying the plant life, taking care of it. But these locusts are also compared to scorpions, and scorpions can inflict a lot of pain. So we have these two features of these terrifying creatures who are released on the earth. They have intelligence and strength and power, and they’re under a leader, this king that we see in verse 11. This is who I believe is Satan, not the angel who had the key to the abyss, but this destroyer, Abaddon, is usually referred to as a place. So it’s a place personified. Now, Apollyon might have something to do with the fact of, like, we’re thinking about the gods of the time and Nero and stuff. Thought he was a god, and so it might be a play on. That too. But regardless of that, it’s showing there’s some sort of authority behind them. But this authority has limited power. This authority cannot release the demons on his own. The authority comes from God, and God says it’s the time for judgment, and we keep seeing that, because there’s limits set on what these destroyers can do okay, limits set on the demons, what they can do and for how long they cannot kill. In the fifth trumpet, they are not allowed to kill, but they can harm and torture for five months. Now, five months is that literal? Is it not? Most locusts in this area lived about five months made of September. And so it’s probably just saying, just like locusts are temporary, this is going to happen for a time, and then it will be over. So most likely representing that that span of time, whatever that actually is, there’s also limits set on who they can harm. Look at verse four. I already mentioned the inhabitants of the earth, but we find out more about them. Verse four, those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads, we found out last week that those with the seal of God are believers. You have the seal. You are in Christ. Those who are saved, washed in the blood of the lamb and the demons cannot touch them. Think it’s also interesting here that you can implicitly, kind of understand, like the demons know who is God’s and who is not. Right. They know who has the seal and who does not. So, where have we seen this before? Where have we seen God’s judgment coming on the unrepentant and God’s people spared? Let’s go back to Exodus, chapter 10, the plague of darkness. It says this. Then the Lord said to Moses, Stretch out your hand and toward the sky, so that darkness spreads over Egypt, darkness that can be felt. So Moses stretched out his hand toward the sky in total darkness covered all of Egypt for three days. No one could see anyone else or move about for three days. Yet all the Israelites had light in the places where they lived. So the plague of darkness God’s judgment comes in the unrepentant. And yet, where the where the Israelites are, there’s light they can go about their days. And what we see here is this punishment, this judgment is coming on. Those who do not have the seal of God, those who have not repented of their sin will experience this judgment when you think about this. If the Egyptians saw that, wouldn’t you want to maybe give God a little bit of investigation, like, why did they have light and we don’t? Does the world see us and see our lives? The difference in our lives. Are they drawn to the light, attracted to that light? So there’s something different about you. Are they drawn to us and to the God that we serve? So here we have the unrepentant who are experiencing torture by this swarm. We cannot try and explain this away. They are being tortured. They are experiencing spiritual and physical torture and pain. It’s probably natural and supernatural, caused directly by demons or some through some influence of demons on humanity, but either way, they’re experiencing this pain, this devastation that the Locust caused, this pain that scorpions cause, and it’s so great, it says that they want to die, but cannot imagine that pain to want to die, but you can’t. And I’m thinking, What a contrast to those who are in Christ. When you think of the apostle Paul and what he wrote in Philippians 1. Take a look at this the way he views his own life, which included, by the way, a lot of pain and suffering. He says, I eagerly expect and hope that I will no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now, as always, Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If you are in Christ, this is how we live. The unrepentant are living lives they wish they died and they can’t. We have hope to give them. We have life to give them. They can experience this. Whether I die, I am with Jesus, and that is far better, or if I keep serving him on the earth, I get to serve Jesus and see fruitful labor. But we look at life differently. We look at death differently. This morning, our church is grieving, and we grieve with hope, because it’s not the end of the story, it’s not we know what the end is. It’s resurrection life. That’s what we get when we’re in Christ. Now, something that’s as you’re reading this. I don’t know how you can not think this, but it’s hard that God allows and uses evil as an instrument for his own. Judgment. Okay? We see that here, Satan, its demons, its sinful humanity. God has allowed this throughout Scripture. The trumpets blast. God’s will. The key is open. It’s God’s will. Judgment comes, it’s God’s will. And there are many answers we can give. We’re not getting into the whole sovereignty of God discussion today, but I think we get one reason. Okay, one reason why this happens. Look at verse 20. Okay. Look at verse 20. It says the rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, still did not repent of the work of their hands. They did not stop worshiping demons and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood, idols that cannot see or hear or walk. So this is how the inhabitants of the earth, those not sealed by God, are living. They are worshiping demons and idols, it says. And so I think God uses evil to bring judgment because it shows the true character of the idols. It shows the true character of the demons, that while we are deceived by Satan, his whole goal, the entire time, is to deceive us to the point where he can kill us. And so God uses it to say, all along I’ve been saying this leads to death. Idol worship leads to death. Worshiping demons leads to death. Walking in sin leads to death. And so, why does God use it in this moment? Because it’s being exactly what evil is. It’s destroying, and so he says, I’ve been telling you this whole time that this will lead to death, and now it does. What does Romans 623 say, For the wages of sin is death. We get what we deserve. This is for all of us. This is every single person who has ever lived. This is who we are in our sinful nature. And then Paul goes on to say, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ, Jesus our Lord. So, we all should get what we deserve. We should all experience this judgment. But the gift of God as eternal life in Christ, Jesus, our Lord. But to get that gift, you must repent, repent and believe in the good news, in the resurrection, in the forgiveness of Jesus. And so if you’re here this morning, do not presume upon God’s grace. Don’t think that you have time. Tomorrow isn’t promised, so take it seriously. There is a pattern where God shows judgment. He gives mercy. Would you believe? Turn your heart to Him because if you don’t, if you keep living that life, your heart will get harder and harder, just like Pharaoh’s, just like these unrepentant people who, no matter what they see, they will not bend the knee to Jesus, repent and believe the good news, and God will demolish, he’ll start demolishing today, the power of these idols and sins and strongholds that we have now. That’s the first Whoa, trumpet five. Now the second Whoa, trumpet six. We’re not going to spend a whole lot of time here. It very much follows the same pattern that we just saw, but for the sake of time, I want to kind of just move through a few different things here. Trumpet six intensifies. Okay? It’s ratcheting up again. So immediately, we’re reminded that this judgment is still coming because of the prayers of God’s people. That’s what we see here right at the beginning. Right, the sixth angel sounded his trump, and I heard a voice coming from the four horns of the golden altar that is before God. This is where the prayers of God’s people are being offered. So, this is still in response to the people’s prayer for God’s judgment to come. Trumpet five brought pain for those who do not repent, those who refuse to submit to God, and now the judgment is even more severe. The limits have been taken off for some because now the angels are released. These four angels on the other side of the great river Euphrates, who have been restrained up until this moment, from this day, right, this month, this hour, they are meant to go at this point, and they are released to kill a third of mankind. The limits have been lifted. So they were allowed to torture, not kill. Now they can kill, but again, Mercy. It’s not everybody. It’s a third of the number here in verse 16 of this kind of army that’s coming. The quick math here is 200 million soldiers, which is like an unimaginable number to us. So just showing this is going to be across the earth. You are not safe from God’s judgment. So it seems like what’s going to happen here are going to be wars and plagues. We see this fire and sulfur and smoke. We’ve seen this on a smaller scale, the plague wiping out. How much of Europe we’ve seen COVID go across the. World. In a very short period of time, we’ve seen other things come up here or there that have wreaked havoc on society. And what we see here is 200 million are coming. Everybody will be affected by it. Now. Where have we heard of this before? In Exodus. The plagues brought pain. They brought suffering, suffering and devastation, and spiritual and physical pain. And then what was the final plague? The Angel of Death, nine different plagues with the chance to repent, and when they were unrepentant, the final plague comes, one of death, the death of the firstborn son, unless, of course, you have another’s blood to spread across your door posts somebody who would stand in that place so that the angel of death would pass over First. Corinthians tells us Christ is our Passover lamb. Every time they celebrated that they remember what happened to the unrepentant Egyptians and how God spared them in his mercy, judgment and mercy in those moments because that plague would have that angel death would have affected the Israelites too. If they didn’t have the blood, we have the blood of Jesus. Now, that’s what we walk in. That’s our hope. Now, I don’t know about you, but when you get to verses 20 and 21 you might feel a little frustrated, confused, angry. How can people keep living if they’ve if they’ve experienced all this, how can they keep living the same way, in rebellion, it in opposition to God, ignore everything that’s already happened. My first question is, how long did we go? That’s my first question. How long did we go living that way? And then, for us who are in Christ, how long have we let sin continue to linger, not killing it but kind of keeping it around a little bit? Verses 20: 21 just shows us the power of pride and selfishness. That’s what it is to see all of that and to dig your heels in even more, harden your heart. If you’ve ever known somebody who deals with addiction, something destroying their life, then you know what this is like. You’ve seen this. You’ve experienced it. You’ve talked to people who see they’re destroying their life, and they can’t stop, and you plead with them, and there’s just something there that just they dig in their heels even more in those moments. Something has to happen. Something has to break through. We’ve talked about it here, that suffering is like a megaphone, and God is very clear and very loud and very right in his judgment, and people will still not repent. This is meant to invoke feelings in us. It should invoke a desire to go out and proclaim the good news to people. So, just like an attitude, you want to tell them what’s going on, and you want to tell other people this is what is coming. And so it’s this implicit call for evangelism. People are living in bad news. Sometimes they know it, sometimes they don’t. I’m also not talking about scaring people into heaven. I don’t think we can do that. What we’re doing in those moments is having them sit there and say, Is this really the best path for you? Is this really what you think is going to bring hope and satisfaction to your life? We have good news to tell them, so maybe in that moment when you tell them they repent and believe was what we’re hoping for, maybe that moment doesn’t come years down the road for them when some sort of tragedy strikes and they take it seriously in that moment, or it’s just the grind of living in a world that’s broken with sin, till eventually, they can’t do it anymore. And yet, there’s still others whose hearts will just harden more and more. And our role, our role is just to tell others there’s something better, that there is life, that there is someone who is making all things new again. And so we must pursue with urgency and plead in prayer. That’s what we need to be about, pursuing with urgency and pleading in prayer, the apostle Paul hardened his heart so much that he went out to take the Christians to prison, to see them killed, to see this faith about this Jesus, the way done away with and yet he confessed, repented of a sin to. Turn to Jesus. Nazi soldiers confess their sins, repented and followed Jesus. There have been terrorists who have confessed their sins, repented and followed Jesus. And if you’re here this morning, you know Jesus, you did the same thing. You got to a place where you said, my sin is not the answer, it’s destroying me. So you confessed, you repented, you believed and followed Jesus. And the amazing thing is that Jesus doesn’t turn any of us away. We come to him with soft hearts, and we repent. He is there for us. He won’t turn you away this morning if you say, I repent, I believe. So, let’s bring this all together. Here’s the big idea for this morning. Prepare for God’s coming judgment through repentance and prayer. Prepare for God’s coming judgment through repentance and prayer. What does revelation 89 have to do with our life? I kind of already mentioned it. If you’re a believer here, we know evangelism is important, that we need to tell people the good news about Jesus, and then if you’re here, also, if you’re a believer, you follow Jesus. We need to keep repenting and keep praying. We have not figured out all the sins in our lives. We need to keep bringing them to God, keep laying to God, keep laying them at his feet, and keep repenting. We don’t just do it once. We do it every single day. We cannot trust in our own hands. So confess, repent and seek the Lord’s mercy, again giving him the honor due His name, and then keep praying for God’s justice while also praying for His mercy. We can pray both prayers because judgment is either going to come on those who deserve it, like we all did, or that person is going to experience the mercy of God in that moment and realize everything that they have done, every evil they have done that was placed on Jesus, on the cross, that He absorbed, all the wrath that they deserve, that we deserve. So we keep praying, we keep repenting. If you’re here this morning and you don’t believe this step is very simple, your prayer should be a prayer of repentance. Brandon mentioned this last few sermon series that evil and sin and suffering have an expiration date, they do. But we could also say that God’s patience has an expiration date because judgment is coming in full, incomplete. It’s going to happen. He will not restrain his judgment forever. So don’t leave here today without taking it seriously at this moment because God is the God of justice. He will judge according to what we’ve done. And our work will not be enough. These works that they keep offering up here keep living in what we see in verses 20 and 21: this work with our hands is not going to be enough. Instead, we need perfection. So the only way we stand with our works before God, and he says, yes, you can come out and in is if it’s Jesus’s perfection that we’re standing in, that’s it. And the only way to do that is to repent and believe in Jesus and what He has done for us. So keep praying, keep repenting, and then keep doing it again and again and again. Let’s pray.
Lord, judgment is not a topic that is fun. It’s not one that we come to lightly. And yet, Lord, we know that in your goodness, in your perfection and in your justice, you must take care of sin, you must judge. And I pray that all of us here this morning as we come to the Lord’s table, as we’ve given our life to following you for a few moments, we sit there and think about what it cost Jesus on that cross, Lord, we love you, and we pray this in Jesus name, amen.