Sermons tagged with Salvation

Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here as just a little point of order. If you received a bulletin when you came in and you're someone who fills out the notes, I would direct you to the back of the bulletin. In the middle of the notes is a point that starts out. I think the local church is the blank thing to which we are all called. You can cross that out. Okay, I'm not going to get to that. The word there was bigger, so if you really just want to fill it in, there you go. But we're not going to include that. So I don't want to get to that point of the notes and you guys think, oh, no, he forgot it. No, I didn't. I'm leaving it out on purpose. Also, some of you have asked, Nate, why are you wearing your Crocs? Do you have a gout flare-up? No, jerks. I know that you would love that, but I did not. I did not. I also, before I'm telling you why I'm wearing them, have promised my sweet wife that I would communicate to you that she loathes them. They are the least favorite thing of hers that I own, and it is to her great dismay that I continue to wear them every day. I'm wearing these because these are my friend's shoes. These are the shoes that you only see when I am your friend. If you come to my house, and I knew you were coming, if you come to my house and I didn't know you were coming, come on, man, what are you doing? But if I do know you're coming and I'm still by choice wearing these, it's because I'm totally comfortable with you and we're friends. If you invite me over and I'm wearing sweats and Crocs, it's because we're pals, all right? Only my close friends see these because they are shameful. And when I come to church early, I get here early on Sunday mornings, and usually I just throw these on just to be comfortable until I need to put on my church shoes, my preaching shoes. And as I was pacing, thinking through what I was saying this morning, I just realized that what I'm going to say to you this morning is hard. It's hard for me to say. It's going to be hard for some of y'all to hear. And as I say it, I want these to remind me and you that I'm coming to you as a friend. I'm saying these things to you because I love you. Because I feel like Grace is collectively my pal. And so I want you to know up front that I have been praying this week and this morning for courage and gentleness. And so these Crocs are a little bit more gentle than my preaching boots. So I'm wearing these today. Years ago, there was a show called 24. I don't know if you guys have ever seen it. If you have, your life is better for it. But 24 was released, I don't know if you remember this, right on the cusp of like DVD series and then live series. For those of you, I don't know how young you have to be to appreciate series that are on DVDs, but we used to buy whole volumes of series that now you get on Netflix. But 24 is right on the cusp of that. And so when I heard about it, my friends were watching it and they were like a couple seasons in, I think they were on season four. And they had this tradition of every Monday night, they would go over to my one friend's house and they would all watch it with rapt attention and then talk about it during the commercials. And then when it started again, total silence and they were very committed to it. And then they would kind of talk about the episode afterwards. And I really wanted to go to this. I was having serious FOMO, which for old people, that's fear of missing out. I was having some serious FOMO of my friends are having this fun and I can't have this fun because I'm not caught up on the series. So I tracked down the DVDs and got caught up on the series. And I don't know if any of you have had this experience. Raise your hand if you watch 24 on DVD. Okay, you are my friends and you know what I'm talking about. The end of the episode always, without fail, ends on a cliffhanger. And then there's that countdown, the beep, boop, beep, boop. And you're like, no, I got to know what happens to Jack. So then if you're watching the DVD series, it's like play next episode. Yes, of course. And you play the next episode and you just binge that thing. This is when binging started. And it was so satisfying to be able to watch. And this was, let's see, I was probably 19 or 20. So I could watch an ungodly amount of uninterrupted TV at a time. And I mean the word ungodly because it was not spiritual to do what I was doing, but I could watch a ton at one time. And so you power through these seasons, man. And I got through them and I got to go watch with my friend. Now this is the big night. I get to go to my friend's house. There's like 15, 20 of us there. This is great. I'm going to consume this content this way. And as I was doing it, I was like, this stinks because it ended. First of all, I had to watch commercials. That's a bummer. I don't want to watch commercials. I'm into the story. I don't want to hear about Claritin again. And then it ends. There's the beeps. And it's like, let's watch the next episode, guys. And you can't. You've got to wait a whole week. And by the time the next week rolled around, I really wasn't very much into it. And I realized within a couple of weeks, you know what? I don't really like consuming this this way. I like it better on the DVDs. So I waited and just watched it all at once on the DVDs. And I bring that up because this is when content really began to make it very clear that it was a product and we are the consumers. We can watch whatever we want to watch. We have all kinds of streaming services. We have everything available at the tip of our fingers. We can choose the content that we want to watch whenever we want to watch it. This is 24 to me illustrates when it became very clear in our culture that there's all kinds of content out there that we can consume when we want it, where we want it, and when we actually have a desire for it. When we think it's what's going to be best for us, when we feel like it's what we want in the moment, it's right there and we can consume it. I'm bringing that up because I feel like I've seen church become that for many of us too. I feel like in Christian culture, in church people, and then most pointedly at grace, I have watched a slide over the years that the pandemic has accelerated where we are now in ways consumers of church. Church, to some of us, in our mindset and in our families, has become a product that we consume. Sunday morning is something that if I have time, I'll go. If we don't have other plans, I'll attend. If there's not just one more inconsequential thing, and when I say inconsequential, I mean something that we allow to take Sunday morning away from us that isn't gonna matter one little bit in 20 years, then we'll just do that thing and I'll catch up with church during the week. I'll watch it on Tuesday. I'll binge it. I'll listen to the whole series. And it's not easy or fun to say this because normally when I come to you as the church and I say convicting things, I'm right there with you. I always put myself first and say, this is my conviction, join me in it if it applies. Well, this one's different because I get paid to do this. I don't have the perspective that church partners have. But I do have the perspective of a pastor. And I can tell you what I see from my perspective. And what I see from my perspective, as someone who leads a church, as someone who I think is pretty tapped into Christian culture, as someone who talks to other pastors regularly, I see a slide in our culture towards consumerism as it relates to churches. That for many of us, church has become a commodity or a product that I will include in my life when and where I want to, when and how I want to. And I know that none of us would cop to that out loud. None of us would say, yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm a consumer, church is the product, that's how it is. But in our practices and in our patterns, that's what we make it. I'll get to it when I can. I'll include it when I want to. I'll catch up with it on my jog. Revelation really is not very interesting of a series for me. I'll catch it at Christmas. Or, Revelation is super interesting to me. I'm going to totally pay attention to this one. Last one, I wasn't really there for it. I've seen us become consumers in the way that we volunteer, which is less and less, which is a good indicator that in my mind, church exists for me to make my life better. It's a product that's there for me to grab and to consume when I want it. And this is something that I have seen and noticed for several months. And something that I've wanted to put in front of you for several months. But I didn't know the best way to do it. I didn't know how. And I wanted to be really sure when I did it. Because I know that I'm stepping on toes right now. And here's how I've been complicit in it. Is I've allowed that mindset to reduce my role to a producer of content. There are many a week in the last two years when I viewed my role as literally nothing more than just giving you something worth consuming on a Sunday morning and forgetting about the pastoring and the leading that has to happen during the week. I have been complicit in reducing my own role as the pastor of a church to simply producing content that's good for you that you'll choose to consume again. And I'm just, I'm telling you guys, we're wrong about that. It is a dangerous thing when church gets reduced to a commodity to consume. And I'm convinced that that's true and that it's right and good for me to take a Sunday morning and talk about it and that it's worth stepping on some toes because Jesus's attitude towards the church is so vastly different than the attitude of someone who consumes the church. Jesus didn't for one second think that the church was a commodity to be consumed. Jesus for one second was not interested in putting out a product that people would want to come back to. He wasn't interested at all in commodifying and making us comfortable in the way we choose to consume his body. The New Testament does not talk about the church as something to be consumed. It does not talk about the church as if it's something that's optional for us, that we can include in our life when we feel like it, that we can include in our life when we feel like we have time or effort or energy or space. And so for me as a pastor to watch this slide in my church and say nothing about it is a dereliction of duty. It is irresponsible. So we've got to talk about it. Again, we've got to talk about it because as I thought about communicating this idea this week and what passage to use, I was thinking through the New Testament and how the church is talked about and it dawned on me, there's not like a single passage to use because the whole New Testament is about the local church. The whole New Testament assumes that you are a part of the local church. The New Testament teaches us that the moment you get saved, that when you accept Christ as your Savior, that you are now a member of the big C universal church. And it is incumbent upon you to express that membership within the body of the local church. The one book, the biggest portion of the New Testament that's written to an individual is written to a guy named Theophilus by Luke, probably on behalf of Peter. And he writes to Theophilus so that he can understand who Jesus was and what he came to do, which is to begin the local church. The one big major book that's written to an individual to explain things in the New Testament is written so that that individual could understand the local church and how it came about. Then Paul writes letters to churches. And every directive in the Bible that's given is given to us communally. There is nothing, nothing about individual spirituality in here. It all, the whole thing, cover to cover, assumes that you know and understand that you are functioning within a body. That you are functioning within the local church. And so it's difficult to pinpoint one place where this is clarified because it's assumed all throughout the New Testament. And I don't know if you've ever thought of this, but do you realize, and I believe this with all my heart, that the local church, this expression of grace that we sit in this morning, is the reason that Jesus stayed some extra years to do ministry? I don't know if you've ever wondered this, but Jesus was 33 when he was crucified. If all he came to do, if all of his marching orders were to become flesh, live a perfect life, die for the sins of the world, why didn't he just get crucified at 30? Or 25? Or 17? What was he doing? Hanging around, putting up with us? He was building the church. He was training the leaders. He was preparing the world for his kingdom. Jesus stayed those extra years and put up with us so that he could call the disciples to him and train them and show them. He taught them how to teach. He taught them how to perform miracles. He taught them how to cast out demons. He taught them how to lead. He taught them how to love. He showed them how to do ministry to one another. And then he died. And then he came back and he left. And when he left, he said, now go do all the things that I've been showing you to the ends of the earth. Go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. He said, go and do what I told you to do. And how did they respond to that? They huddled up in Jerusalem. And they said, what do we do? And then they got the gift of the Holy Spirit and they started a church, man. And its numbers grew day by day. Acts 2, 42 through 47, you can find it there. And then the rest of the book of Acts is about the disciples' effort to go and to plant more local churches. All of Paul's life was dedicated to planting local churches. When Jesus left and said, you, I've given you the keys to the kingdom. I've spent these years and I've trained you and now I'm going to leave and you've got the Holy Spirit. Go do my ministry. What did lost and broken world, and there is no plan B. That's not my idea. I stole that from another pastor. I don't remember who. But the local church, this expression, this Grace Raleigh is God's plan to reach this community. And there's no plan B. We have got to do our part. We are a part of God's divine strategy, of God's divine plan. This is not something to be flippantly participated in. That's not the point. There's something bigger going on here. The New Testament teaches us that we are the body of Christ. 1 Corinthians chapter 12. We're the body of Christ. We are his different members. We're going to talk more about this next week. But the New Testament also preaches this. And this was one of the more convicting things to think about this week as I think about our attitude with how we approach church. It is admittedly an odd passage to land on for the sermon this morning, but it's Ephesians chapter 5, verses 25 through 32. This is a marriage roles passage. This is usually talked about in weddings. And when we read it, that's where our mind goes. And one day, hopefully sooner than later, I would love to walk through this passage with you as a church body and walk you through kind of how my understanding of this passage has changed over the years. But this is not what I want us to highlight this morning. As I read it to you and you read along with me, I want you guys to pay attention to the relationship between Jesus and the local church. I want you to notice the dynamic that's going on there, and then we're going to talk about it just a little bit. Ephesians chapter 5, beginning in verse 25. He says this in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. and cherishes it just as Jesus does the church because we are members of his body. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. The church, Christians, we are the bride of Christ. That is our divine identity. We are the body that he came and died for. We are the body that he's going to come back and rescue. We are the body that he intentionally started. We are the body that was prophesied about in the Old Testament. We are the love of Jesus's life. We are the bride of Christ. And what I'm saying to you this morning is being Christ's bride should be wholly consuming, not flippantly consumed. Being the very bride of Christ should be an identity that is wholly consuming to us, not flippantly consumed. Nothing about that passage and nothing about that role says to us that there's any space whatsoever to simply be consumers of the product that church puts out. No, we are called to be a part of what the church is doing. This is where the whole idea of this series came from when I was thinking about it last fall, is this idea of doing what I can to transition us from sliding towards consumerism and push us back towards being consumed. The church was not created for us to consume it. It was created so that it could consume you. It was created for your whole devotion. It was created for you to be all in. It was created to give you a new life completely separate from your old life and give you something bigger to be a part of that we all long for. Being the bride of Christ deserves our full attention. It deserves our fanaticism. It deserves to consume us. To drive this home just a little bit, I want you to think about something with me. What would your marriage look like if you decide that you were simply going to be a consumer of it? What would my marriage with Jen look like if I decided, you know what, I know she wants to talk about her day-to-day, but I'm not really feeling it. I don't really want to do that. I want to watch football. And also, I've never done this. What would it look like if all the time my interactions with her, I only thought about, well, how does this benefit me? Is this something that I really want to do right now? Why don't I just schedule something over what's happening? What would it look like if in our marriages we simply became consumers and when we were asked to volunteer our time to make the house better, we said, what's in it for me? What are you gonna do if I clean clean the garage? You make meatloaf? All right, I'll clean it. How dead would our marriages be if we became consumers within them? And we saw our marriage as something that just produced a product that was there for me to consume if I wanted it or not. If that analogy holds true, and Ephesians tells me that it does, is it any wonder why some of us just don't feel like our spiritual life is clicking like it should be? Is it any wonder why we just don't feel like we're in sync with God? Is it possible that maybe we don't feel a spiritual vibrancy in our life because we've reduced the things of God to things to be consumed to improve our life when we feel like we need them? You know, it's funny, and it's worth mentioning. Over my years as a pastor, and Grayson at previous church, I've sat down with parents of teenagers, and they've said, we just can't get our kid to come to youth group, and we don't know what to do. And I can't say it, but I think it. Well, if you want to do anything right now, you need to get in the time machine and go back 10 years and quit treating the church like it's something to be consumed for you. You have modeled this method of consumption to your children for 10 years and now is it any wonder that when they get to make their own choices, they're consumers too? Is it any wonder that maybe we don't feel as close to God as we could when we don't treat the things of God as they deserve to be treated. I thought of this as well. Paul is at the end of his ministry and he's writing a letter to Timothy. It's one of the few things written to an individual in the New Testament. And guess what? It's about how to lead the local church. Anyways. In already being poured out as a drink offering. And the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. What a remarkable statement to make. Now I'm about to ask you a question. It's an unfair question. It's a gotcha question. And I'm admitting that up front. So this isn't to make anyone feel bad. This is just to help you think along with me, okay? Did any of us on December 31st, a few days ago, kneel and pray and say, God, thank you for 2021. I was poured out for you like a drink offering. Now, listen, you may have gotten to the end of 2021 and felt like you were poured out like a drink offering. We may have gotten to the end of that year and said, I got nothing left. But were you poured out for the right things? Were you poured out for the things of God? Were you poured out because you were consumed with your identity as the bride of Christ? So, either you're just mad at me and you want the sermon to be over. I get that. Or you're with me and you're okay. I want to be all in. I want to be consumed by the church. What do I do? Well, the very simple answer is this. You give of your time, talents, and treasures. A very simple answer to think about how can I be consumed by the local church is to give of your time, talents, and treasures. And as I was prepping this sermon, I lamented that when I got to this point in the sermon, I've been preaching for too long to really adequately do justice to what that means to give of our time, talents, and treasures. And then it occurred to me, dude, you're in charge of the series. You can do whatever you want. So next week, we're going to talk about that in detail. We're going to come back. Those of you who remain with us are going to come back and we'll go, here's how we can be all in together. Here's what it means and looks like to give of our time, talents, and treasures. But for this morning and for 2022, this is the message and the challenge that I wanted to issue to us as a church. If you're at Grace, be all in. If you're here, mean it with everything you got. You'll notice through this whole sermon, I've not talked about grace as far as what God calls us to. I've talked about the local church. And so I say this with all humility and candor. If you can't be all in at grace because you're not all about what's happening here, that's fine. There are a lot of churches. And with only kindness and love in my heart, I'm admonishing you that if grace isn't it for you, find a church you can be fanatical about. Find a church that you love what's going on there. Find a church that you can be all in, and that you can be consumed by, and you want to pour yourself out for. I hope that's grace, and I hope that what we're doing here is something that matters deeply to you. But if it's not, as just your friend, as a pastor, as a Christian, I'm telling you, we need to be consumed by the local church. So find one to consume you. And this is why I think it's so important to preach this message. And why I wanted to do it at the beginning of this year. Because I know that the cloud of the pandemic still looms over our culture. But I've got to believe that the sun's going to break sometime soon. And I don't want to tread water in 2022. I don't want to just cling on and try to exist this year as a church. I am praying and hoping that Jesus will eagerly and earnestly move in this place. I want to see Jesus show up this year. I want to see children fill that baptistry. I want to just dunk them and I want their friends to be in here celebrating it with them. I want to baptize you guys. I want to see your friends and your family and your coworkers begin to come to church with you and for you to experience the joy of watching them move into a faith because God used you in their life. I want to see you guys take steps of obedience that are far beyond what you thought you would be capable of sacrificing before. I want to see a church with their hair lit on fire for Jesus and begging him every week that his kingdom would come here and that he would move here and that he would do great things here. And that starts with our individual decision to be consumed by the body of Christ and by the identity of being his bride, and then it culminates in a corporate culture of pursuing him and of prizing him and of doing the things of Jesus because we love him and because it's our identity and because we're consumed by him. I don't want to tread water anymore. I want to move. I want to do ministry. I want to see salvations. I want to see people come to know Jesus. I want to see marriages rescued. I want to see children discipled. I want to see hurt people cared for. I want to see people prayed for. I want to see small groups blossom and multiply. I want to see discipleship happen intentionally. I want to see the great friendships that God has planted in this church do more than just make us feel good about ourselves, but point us back towards our Father and enhance our spiritual walks. And how can any, and here, you're all looking at me and I know that you want that too. And how can it happen if we're consumers? If we continue to just slide towards thinking of church as a commodity to be consumed? It can only happen if we say, here I am, Lord, and allow ourselves to be consumed for His purposes. So if you're at grace, be all in. And listen, I say that knowing and being humbled by the fact that we have a bunch of people who are all in. I know that we do. I'm humbled by your service every week. And we have people who have watched online faithfully for two years who simply have health issues that will not allow them to come and be a part of us. And I know you're all in. I know it. And so my prayer has been that the Holy Spirit would be whispering in each of your ears. And if you are someone who is all in, and if you are someone who has been consumed by the local church, that the Holy Spirit would be whispering into your ear right now, and he would be telling you, hey, this is not for you. This is to bring you some help. You don't need to feel convicted by this. Similarly, my prayer for the rest of us is that the Holy Spirit would whisper to us too. And he would be telling you right now how you need to listen. You need to hear this. For the sake of your marriage and your kids, you need to hear this. For the sake of your anxiety and your peace and your joy and your angst, you need to hear this. For the sake of being swept up and knowing how much I love you and experiencing my goodness as being part of a kingdom, part of my kingdom on earth before eternity, you need to hear this. So next week, we're going to come back and we're going to talk about what it looks like to be all in. I hope that if the Holy Spirit is telling you right now, hey, this is not you, that you will pray with me this week. For those to whom it may apply a little more. If the Holy Spirit is talking to you right now and telling you that you need to listen, I pray that you will. And if any of you are mad at me, my door is open. I'd love to chat. But next week, we're moving forward with who we got and we're gonna do some cool things this year. I believe it with all my heart. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the church. Thank you that we are invited to participate in it. Thank you for the way that it wraps its arms around us. Thank you for the way that it is your presence in our life. Thank you for how it trains our children. Thank you for how it strengthens our marriage. Thank you for how it points us towards you. God, we pray that grace would be the church that you want it to be. We pray that we would be consumed by building your kingdom here. We pray that we would understand in our bones what it means more and more to be your bride and to be your body. God, if I've said clumsy things, I just pray that you would grant grace and forgiveness where it's needed. God, we offer you ourselves. We offer you this place. We thank you for creating it. And we just ask that you would give us the faith and courage to serve you and to be consumed by you as we move through this year. It's in your son's name we ask. Amen.

Good morning, everyone. My name is Kyle. I am the student pastor here at Grace, and I'm so excited to once again be able to be up in front of you getting to preach. I hope you had an awesome Christmas. I hope you had an awesome New Year. Shout out to everyone who's in the building right now. It's January 2nd. We are on the back of the other side of two pretty big holidays. So the fact that you're here, even though it's quite icky outside, shout out to you. But also, good morning or good whatever time of day it is that you may be watching online, whether it's live or whether you're watching it sometime in the future, or everyone in here who loves it so much that you're going to go back and watch it later on. Shout out to you as well. But it's also particularly exciting this morning because we're kicking off a new series that we are calling Consumed, and the ultimate goal is to take a look at where in our lives we might be able to transition from being consumers to being consumed. And so this morning, I have been tasked with diving into what might it look like for our lives and our hearts to be consumed by Christ. Now that sounds like a very easy topic to preach on because it's like, hey, that's kind of the point, Kyle. But I felt myself a bit overwhelmed by this because as I take a look back and as I was thinking through this, what I knew was this, that the last series that we just did was a Christmas series. The entire goal of our Christmas series all through December was to take a look at Jesus and to make much of what Jesus came on earth to do. We celebrated for four weeks or however many weeks or however many Sundays we had, literally going through and talking about, look at this Jesus who came down from heaven to earth. And we celebrate the fact that he came to earth for us. That ultimately his goal and his mission was to live a perfect life as a human and eventually take and bear a cross, dying to put our sin to death. Later being raised to life, signifying that as our sin has been put to death, that death will not be the end of us, just like it was not the end for him. And as he's raised to life, signifying that one day we will be raised into eternity, into heaven. That as we come to the end of our days on earth, that that is not the end, but instead, just as Jesus was, we will be lifted up into eternity. And so that's a lot of really good news to be talking about. That's a really great way to talk about Jesus if I want to talk about being consumed with Jesus. But we just did it for an entire month. Not only that, but if you look even further, it's like, okay, let's look at a different picture of Jesus. Well, here's another picture of Jesus as we went through Revelation. And in Revelation, the ultimate goal of Revelation is as much as it is to learn and to gain knowledge about what does all of this mean, ultimately the purpose is to look and to see how unbelievable, how incredible our God is and how incredible Jesus is. It was to make much of and to bring as much glory as possible to Jesus. That not only in the past was Jesus this human who made himself like us in order to save us, but in the end, ultimately, he becomes this great and mighty and glorious warrior who is coming down to, as Nate likes to say, to wreck shop, to make the sad things untrue, to make the wrong things right, all of those things, that is another picture of Jesus that might be able to go, hey, we should be consumed by this Jesus. This Jesus is awesome. This Jesus of eternity that one day he's going to come down and he's going to get his people. And even if we don't get to experience that from heaven, ultimately at the end of our days, we look forward to eternity where we get to meet that Jesus and be in the presence of that Jesus. And so basically for the past like two or three months, we have been going through the premise of uniting with Christ, of making much of Christ, of giving pretty good descriptions as to why we should be consumed with Jesus. And so here I am sitting and I'm like, what in the world am I supposed to be talking about this morning that is at least anything different than what we've been doing for the last 10 weeks? Well, as I was sitting and working on my sermon and tasked to do so, I was also working on a devotional. I was writing a little devotion and it was actually for something for grace. So get excited. I'm not going to tell you about it right now, but to come, there's going to be some awesome devotions and mine won't be one of them, but some other people wrote some great ones that you get to read in the near future. But as I was writing this devotion, the premise behind it was a role of Jesus that I feel like often gets overlooked. Or maybe not even overlooked, because I think overlooked may be on the side of people who are teachers or preachers that maybe we don't talk enough about it to where maybe some people don't even know about this role of Jesus. Because if I were to sit down with you guys and I said, hey, what is the role of Jesus? Or what are, what were, what will be the roles of Jesus? I imagine that most of our answers would look similar to all the stuff I just got done talking about. He came to earth. He left heaven being fully God. He came to earth to be fully man, to sacrifice himself for us, ultimately buying our salvation and buying our entrance into the promise of salvation that we get to have eternal, we get to be in an eternal relationship with God the Father. Maybe you'll quote me John 3.16 because that's a great way to do it. For God so loved the world that he gave us one and only son, whosoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life. God sent his son Jesus to die for us. That was his role, was to bring about our salvation. And then his role is eternity, right? He gets to be in eternity. And one day we get to spend eternity with him. One day we get to see and rest in his glory. Or one day he gets to come down in his glory and bring us up to him and win our salvation once and for all. That's what I was trying to say. Once and for all of our faith. Our faith is in the fact that we are nothing, we deserve nothing. Our sin makes us in this place where we deserve nothing but eternal separation from God. But because Jesus came to earth, made himself man, and was killed on a cross, that his perfect sacrifice gives us eternal salvation. And I have to be honest with you, when I used to read this verse, the other thing I would have said is, hey, you know what Jesus gets to finally do? He had to endure the cross. He had to do all this stuff, but what does he finally get to do? He finally gets to sit at the right hand of God, the Father, who sits on the throne. He gets to rest, and he gets to wait to just get to meet his people. And I love how it says, for the joy that was set before him, that it's his joy to take on the cross. And therefore, it's his joy to be able to be in heaven, seated at the right hand of God, simply waiting to welcome his people into eternity. Waiting to welcome these people who he died for by name and by sin. But as I've done a little bit more research and as I've dived a little harder into Hebrews, what I realize is that is a very inaccurate reading of what it means that one of the joys set before him is to be seated at the right hand of the throne of God. As he is seated at the right hand, he's not being inactive. He's not sitting lazily by. He's not waiting expectantly to meet his people. Is that ultimately true? Yes. He can't wait to welcome you in. But while he is there, he right hand of God, is not twiddling his thumbs. It says that he is our high priest. Now, I know some of you guys are like, oh yeah, high priest, that's great. Other of you guys may have no idea what a high priest is. So the short version of what a high priest is, is he did a couple of things. He was this person who was appointed to be able to go into the presence of God and offer sacrifices for his people. Before Jesus, before the ultimate and perfect sacrifice, he would go and he would provide these sacrifices to God saying, Lord, let these sacrifices be enough so that my people can remain in your glory and in your presence. Well, we know and we just talked about that we don't do that anymore. And we don't do that anymore because we don't need to do that anymore. Because Jesus came down and was the perfect lamb that was sacrificed. That because of this perfect sacrifice, we don't need these small, insignificant sacrifices anymore because Jesus bought our salvation through his sacrifice for eternity. Well, the other thing, and what's basically completely linked to the first thing that a high priest does is he intercedes for his people. Basically, he is a go-between between his people and God. He was appointed to this place so that he could go into the presence of God, and while he's giving his sacrifices, he's also bringing about the pleas of his people. He's bringing to the Lord our sins, the things that we have told him, the ways that we have fallen short in the sight and in the eyes of God. And our high priest, and a high priest is to go in between us and God, praying to God and saying, Lord, as I sacrifice this, will you please forgive my people? Well, once again, what we know now, post-Jesus, is that since we have the Holy Spirit inside of us, when we say yes to Jesus, the Holy Spirit enters inside of us. What that means is we no longer have to have a go-between. We no longer have to go to this person on earth and say, hey, here are these things. Will you please take these things up to God? Because I could not be caught dead trying to talk to God because he's too holy. No, because we have the Holy Spirit within us, that means that we have the right and that we have the ability to go before the Father. But what gives us that right is Jesus. What gives us that right is not simply what happened in the past, not simply the fact that Jesus was sacrificed for us, but because Jesus is now sitting at the right hand of God. And what is he doing? He's our high priest. He's not currently living idly by. He's actively living as our high priest, actively pleading for us, is interceding for us, that he is always living to take our pleas to the Father, that his entire goal and his entire existence in heaven right now is to do everything he can to bring joy, to bring peace, to shower upon you hope and grace and mercies every single second of every single day. As we go to him, as we ask, Lord, please forgive me for this, or Lord, I just want to give this over to you. Jesus's joy is being able to accept that and to look to the father and say, Lord, that one's ours. And so he is forgiven. Lord, I died for that person right there, and therefore they are holy and they are blameless in your sight. Every single time we go to the Father, Jesus is interceding on our behalf saying, hey, you remember when I died? I died for that one. And as Hebrews 12, two says, it is his joy to do so. His joy is not simply his sacrifice in the past, but it is the current ability to be able to shower these mercies upon his people. Any person who is drawn near to his father. I love the way that Thomas Goodwin puts it when he says, Christ's own us, as he is able to comfort us, as he is able to relieve us, as he is able to comfort us, as he is able to shower grace and mercy upon us at every single turn, every second, every minute, every hour, every day. It is his joy, it is his comfort, it is his happiness, and his glory is ultimately greater and higher if his people would come to him for those things. And guess what? If you've drawn to him, if you have drawn near to God, if you have said yes to this faith, yes to this salvation that was authored by Jesus, then not only are you unlocking this eternal redemption, this eternal redemption that is brought to you by Jesus, but you are unlocking this ever-present redemption while you're here on earth. And that's good news. And the goal of this morning isn't simply for you to add to your checklist, oh, here's another role of Jesus. The goal is that it might impact us because I think that oftentimes when we look at Jesus, if I were to ask you to look at Jesus, then we would look at him as somebody of the past, somebody who was a human and died for us and died for our sins. And then, therefore, we look for him for the future. Because since he died for my sins in the past, that means my future is secure in eternity. And when we do that, and when we skip the middle part, when we skip the fact that Jesus is currently living and active as our high priest, consistently doing everything he can to draw us closer and closer to the Father, when we forget that step, I think that our faith starts to look about the same. When we begin to look at our faith, I think we look at it as an event of the past, that over here, we said yes to Jesus. We were bought and we were redeemed by his blood, and we've said yes to Jesus. And that is an incredible thing that we did in the past. And therefore, we get to go all the way over here to the end of our days and in eternity, we get to be with Jesus forevermore. We have this eternal, indescribable joy that we get to experience for the rest of our days. But when we forget the middle part of who Jesus is and what Jesus is doing, then we go from here and saying, you know what, for the rest of this time, I'm just gonna struggle through the rest of my life by myself. And then I'm gonna experience this incredible joy that I'm super excited about. And the problem is we fail to recognize that Jesus's current and active role is to make it to where that eternal joy is being realized in new and different ways every second of every day in our hearts while we are living on earth. That we don't have to wait for this joy. Jesus is just sitting at the right hand of God saying, why don't you just turn to me? I'll give you this joy right now. A quote that Nate has used a few times in his sermons that I'm gonna use again is by C.S. Lewis when he says, we are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us. Like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased. To put it a different way, imagine that you're living in poverty and you win the lottery one day. And this winning of the lottery is the amount of money that's not going to run dry. It's going to be there as long as you're using it. And so you have this huge celebration, this huge party. I did it. I won the lottery. I am victorious. And then you live the rest of your life out in the same poverty, never using any of your winnings to bring you the joy that it could bring you. And then the end of your day, as you start using it, and you're like, this is unbelievable. I love this. I love this so much. This is awesome. That's not a one-to-one comparison, but I mean, in the same way, when we simply see Jesus and celebrate Jesus as someone who saved us in the past, and we look forward to say, hey, at some point he's going to bring us joy in eternity, and that's what we're doing. When we forget that his current existence is literally consumed, he is wholly consumed with bringing us this indescribable joy more and more every single day. And we're just chilling with mud pies. And like, you know what, this is fine for now. I'll get the real joy later. Jesus just wants to grab you by the shoulders and shake you and say, what are you doing? I have this joy for you now. I would have called you later if I wanted you to experience the joy later. And when we shift our understanding of Jesus' role from one of the past and the future to one that is current and one that is active, then I believe that our faith begins to shift as well from a faith that is simply looking upon the past and looking upon the future into a faith that is current and active. And when we recognize and we understand that Jesus is wholly consumed right now with bringing about the greatest possible joy that you can experience on earth, not simply of the past, but of something right now, always. Bringing about new mercies and new joys and a new peace every single morning. That is his role. That is what he is consumed with right now. Why would we not want to consume ourselves with those joys? When we read Hebrews 4, 14, I want throne of God through Jesus. And we have a complete freedom to come exactly as we are because Jesus knows exactly what we went through because he experienced it on his time on earth as well. And the sins, the ugly stuff, the bad stuff that we don't want God to know about, the ugly stuff that is within our lives is the exact reason why we are welcome to come to Jesus. Those are the exact qualifications that allow us to get to come to Jesus, because Jesus only came to heal hurting people. He only came to redeem a fallen people. And it's his joy to redeem. It's his joy to be able to redeem you, to make you new, to make you whole, to shower upon you joy and grace and mercy and peace and forgiveness every single day. And so I want to return to Hebrews 12. We read Hebrews 12 too, and this time we're looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that is set before us. Today, may we not be a people who settle for mud pies. May we not be a people who have won the lottery but choose not to cash in on the joys that it produces. Let us run our races. Let us be consumed and let us step out into our faith, drawing closer and closer to Jesus as he is drawing us closer and deeper into the ever abounding peace, joy, and love of the Father. As we close out our service, we're gonna sing a song. And the song was placed here for a reason because the words are absolutely beautiful and do far more than I could ever do on this topic. But I just wanted to read a couple verses for you of the song, and if you will read with me before we sing it. The second verse actually goes, when Satan tempts me to despair and tells me of the guilt within, upward I look and see him there who made an end to all my sin. Because the sinless Savior died, my sinful soul is counted free. For God the just is satisfied to look on him and pardon me. The first verse says this, before the throne of God above, I have a strong and perfect plea. A great high priest whose name is love, who ever lives and pleads for me. My name is graven on his hands. My name is written on his heart. I know that while in heaven he stands, no tongue can bid me thence depart. Amen.

The All right. Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. If you are going to miss that Revelation intro, that's the last time you get to hear that music, let me know and I'll send you the clip. You can use it as your alarm clock on Mondays just to really face the week. This is the last part in our series moving through the book of Revelation and it's been a good series. I think it's been good for the church. I think it's been good for our small groups. I've heard that we've had some really good, robust discussions in those, and it's been fun for me to get to tackle this book on your behalf. And sincerely, I appreciate your trust and belief in me as we've walked through this together, and I've kind of served a little bit as a guide through the book of Revelation. By way of review, as we finish up the series, I thought it would be worth it to kind of recap all that we've learned and talked about as we arrive here at the final week. So in the first week, we're setting the scene. It's Revelation chapter one. John arrives. He's given a vision while he's on the island of Patmos. An angel comes and gets him and says, write down the things that I'm going to show you. And in that first chapter, we see this remarkable reunion between John and his savior, Jesus, his best friend, Jesus, who he served and spoken about and longed for for years. And we see that the greatest promise, no matter what else we encounter in the book of Revelation, the greatest promise in the book is that one day we will meet our Savior face to face. That one day we will meet Jesus too. And after we meet Jesus, after we see his face, whatever happens after that is going to be okay. That's the greatest promise in Revelation. In week two, my dad preached and we looked at Revelation 4 and 5. Remember, we skipped the letters to the churches in 2 and 3. We're going to tackle those in a series to be named later. Revelation 4 and 5, God sits on the throne. That's the important part. God's in control. And then Jesus steps forward as the Lamb of God, worthy to open the seals and begin the tribulation process. Remember, we define the the wrath of God and how even though we kind of shy away from it in the 21st century church, it's important. It's important to lean into. It's important to acknowledge. And we actually want a God that's capable of that. And then for the next two weeks, it was kind of academic. I pulled the whiteboard up here one week. We went through the events of the tribulation, the seals and the trumpets and the bowls and God's wrath being poured out and what order that comes and the different views around that. And then we kind of looked at the figures of the tribulation, the antichrist and the false prophet and the dragon and the witnesses and the 144,000 and kind of decoded some of those things within the book. And then last week was probably my favorite week where we look at the return of Christ and what that wins us. How he conquers evil once and for all. He conquers Satan once and for all. He makes all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. And we also kind of reflected on the idea that when Jesus comes, we can finally lay down our faith and our hope. Those things are no longer needed because we're looking at our Savior face to face. And so this week, we arrive at the end of the book, at the end of the series, and I almost titled this morning's message, It Begins, or The Beginning, because this is where eternity begins. This is where the temporal world stops in Revelation 22, and eternity begins, an eternity that I want us to see this morning, for which we were created. So we arrive not necessarily at the end today, but at the beginning. As we do, there's a couple more things in Revelation to look at, namely the millennial reign of Christ. The millennial reign of Christ is discussed in Revelation chapter 20. So Jesus has just come down. He stormed down on the white horse. He has the troops of heaven, the angels of heaven arrayed in white linen behind him. They conquer the armies of the antichrist, of Satan, of the false prophet. They conquer the dark kingdom. They take the beast from the sea and the beast from the earth, the antichrist and the false prophet, and Jesus binds them and throws them in the lake of fire forever. And now all that remains is to deal with Satan. How is Jesus at the end of time going to deal with Satan? We find this in Revelation chapter 20. Now just a caveat about this sermon. It was a holiday week, all right? So I wrote this basically in my head during the 24 hours I was in the car this week with a six-month-old, which means I didn't produce notes for Kyle to put in there, which means that Scott back there, who's in charge of the slides, has the easiest job ever. And Carly, who's in charge of printing your notes, had an easy job because there's nothing there. So it's entirely up to you to write down what you want to write down and to follow along as you want to follow along. I would encourage you to grab a Bible. Grab the one in the seat back in front of you and be looking at Revelation 20, 21, and 22. I'm going to read the first four or five verses from each of those chapters as we move through, and they will not appear on the screens. If you're at home and you're watching, grab a Bible so we can go through it together and interact with the text together. But we see the millennial reign in Revelation chapter 20 in the first three verses. John writes, So if you keep reading, what you find is that after Satan is bound and thrown in a pit for a thousand years, that at the end of that thousand years, he is released and allowed to tempt the people on the earth who are alive at that time. For just a little while longer, he pulls away some people from Christ. And then Christ once and for all binds him and throws him in the lake of fire with the Antichrist and the false prophet. So around this, there are a lot of questions. Namely, the biggest one to me is, why in the world would God bind Satan, put him in a pit, make him stay there for a thousand years, and then let him out to tempt people one more time, just one last hurrah from Satan, like God's doing a favor to an old buddy or something, and then throwing him in the lake of fire. Why does God do that? Listen, I don't know. To me, this is one of those mysteries of revelation. I have literally nothing for you. You can research it and read about it, and people make guesses, but in all honesty, as is often the case to me, a lot of the guesses, and in fact, for this one, all of the guesses out there really don't hold intellectual water for me. I see them. I can see how they might be thought of as reasonable, but I can also very easily, to me, poke holes in them. And so I thought it not worth sharing with you the different guesses because they're all bad ones. So I would say, I don't know. It's a mystery on this side of heaven why God chooses to order things in that way. I continue to believe that if in my elevated body, if in my new heavenly body I get at the marriage supper of the lamb, I have the mental capacity to understand this and God deigns to explain it to me and I even still care once I'm in heaven, which I definitely won't. But let's pretend that in heaven while we're amidst this perfect joy, we say, hang on a second. Why'd you do that thing with Satan where you released him one last time? If God were to explain it to us and we had the mental capacity to grasp it, I think we'd all go, oh, thanks. And then we'd go on with our joyful day. By the way, I haven't said this yet. It's important to point out. Part of the reason that heaven is so joyful is because there's no dogs or animals there. It's fantastic. No more hassles, no more cleanups, no more messes. It's really, it's a wonderful place. I know it says lion lays down with lamb. That's figurative. There's no animals in heaven. I'm certain of it. I'm sure your dogs are all there. All right. I'm sure they are. Except for my first dog, Maggie. If they have an afterlife, Maggie's in hell, that dog is. What was I preaching about? So we don't know why God chooses at the end of the millennial reign to allow Satan loose for a period of time and then throws him into the lake of fire. And I'm not going to pretend to offer you explanations because they don't make sense to me. There are also views about the millennial reign. And we're going to get in the weeds just a little bit. And if this doesn't interest you, I am sorry. But there are some people who showed up with questions this morning about the millennial reign. And so this needs to be discussed. So we will move quickly, but there's kind of three traditional views about the millennial reign. They are called amillennial, postmillennial, and premillennial, and they're questions about when does God return? When does Jesus return? Does Jesus return after the millennial reign? Does he return during the millennial reign? Does he return before the millennial reign? And so we're going to basically group them like this. There's premillennial, which says Christ's return is before the millennial reign, that Christ comes back like he does in 19. He conquers Satan. He throws them in there. It's literally a thousand years where he reigns on earth and Christian ideals flourish and Christians flourish and God's kingdom flourishes. And then at the end of those literal thousand years, Satan is released. He tempts some people and then Jesus conquers them once and for all. Amillennial and postmillennial believe, and this is where it gets tricky, that you take chapters 19 and 20 and you lay 20 over chapter 19. See, premillennials believe that first chapter 19 happens, which is the return of Christ, the big war. He comes out of heaven and he conquers the beast. And then chapter 20 happens, which is the millennial reign. So premillennialists read this literally and say that these things literally happen. Christ, after he binds the beast and throws him in the lake of fire, then he reigns for a thousand, he binds Satan, then he reigns for a thousand years, then he loses him. It's a literal thousand years. The amillennial and postmillennial view think that you take chapters 19 and 20 and you lay them over top of each other and that they are different ways of describing the same events. Do you remember in week one when I said when you're interpreting Revelation that sometimes it's linear and sometimes it isn't? And how do you know when it is and it isn't? You just study really hard and you make a good guess. So some people have studied really hard and they've made this guess, that 20 lays over 19. In which case, the millennial reign of Christ, the thousand years, is figurative language for a long time. And we are in the middle of that. The millennial reign comes between the two comings of Christ. The Christ as crucified Savior that we read about in Scripture. And then the Christ as returning conqueror that we talked about last week. That in between those two comings of Christ are the millennial reign. And it is I fall in? Probably the latter, the ah or the post, the figurative meaning of the millennial reign. But as my father is listening to this sermon, he will vehemently disagree with that. So there are, I would say there are smart people on either side, but there's not necessarily based on me and my dad being on the two different sides. You'll have to pick which one of us is dumb. But there are good arguments to be made for either side, and it's really not that important which side you choose. The important part is, in the end, Jesus wins, and he binds Satan, and then we move into an eternity that's briefly described in Revelation 21 and 22. In Revelation 21, and you can look at verses 1 through four, we have a passage that I've shared a lot from this stage, that I refer to a lot in my preaching. It's a passage that I think is maybe the single most encouraging and hope-filled passage in the Bible. It's one that I use to comfort others with. It's one that I use to comfort myself. It infuses itself into my preaching and into my thinking over and over again, so much so that I can vividly remember that in the interview process and talking with the elders, when they were asking me about my worldview and my theology and all the different things and my approach to the Bible, I referenced this passage tearfully in my interview with them because it, over the years, has come to mean so much to me. And I thought it worthwhile before we read it this morning to tell you how I encountered this passage and the hope that it can bring in the most dire of situations as we prepare ourselves to look towards eternity. About, I think it was about eight years ago, I was at Greystone Church outside of Georgia, or Atlanta, and I was the small groups pastor and a couple other things, and one of the other hats that I wore at that church was I was the care pastor. Thank you. There it is. Right. Yeah, we were short-staffed. I don't know. I don't know what to tell you. That'll probably never be my title again anywhere I go, but it was my title there. And I got a call one day, and it was a couple who had just recently started coming to the church, and they had an eight-year-old son named Landon, whose name I'll never forget, who had passed away. And it was an incredibly sad circumstance. Landon had an infection. He was sick. Went to the doctor, got some antibiotics, took him, went upstairs, I think take a bath or something, and they found him dead. He had had an allergic reaction to the medicine that he took, and they didn't know it. Incredibly sad situation. So sad, in fact, that a few days after the funeral, I was driving somewhere, and I called Jen, and she said, what's wrong? And I said, I don't know. I just, I feel heavy. And Jen goes, Nate, those are emotions. And I was like, well, then you can keep these. These are terrible. I hate this. It was a hard time. And so leading up to meeting with the family and doing the funeral, I called my pastor growing up, a man named Buddy Hoffman, who's no longer with us. I wish he were so I could talk to him about being a pastor. But I called Buddy. I said, Buddy, this has happened. I'm going to have to do this funeral and meet with this family. This is way out of my depth. I don't know what to do or what to say. What do I do? And he says in his typical, very blunt, forthright, buddy nature, he said, Nathan, just don't say anything stupid. And I laughed and I said, yeah, man, that's the goal. That's what I'm trying to avoid. That's why I'm on the phone with you. And he said, well, in times like this, so often people try to say things when they shouldn't. Sometimes your presence matters way more than your words, so really lean into just being quiet and being there. And then when you share scripture, be careful what you share, because it can often ring hollow in times of deep grief. And I agreed with him because I think of when something terrible like this happens, when we lost our first child due to miscarriage and somebody would quote us Jeremiah 29 11, I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, prayers to prosper you, not to harm you, plans for a hope and a future. Listen, listen, listen, that's true and that's good, but that doesn't help my pain, right? And if part of God's plan was to take a kid from me, then I don't really want to be a part of that plan. You know what I'm saying? So those verses can ring hollow. And I didn't want to say those to this family, Romans 8, 28. You know, for we know that for those who love him, that all things work together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose. That's good and that's true. And that means that in eternity, it's gonna work out and we see it working out. That's what Revelation is about, is affirming Romans 8, 28. But in the moment, boy, that doesn't really bring a lot of comfort to a grieving family. And I said, I agree with you. There's verses that ring hollow. so what do I share? And he said, I always use Revelation 20, Revelation 21, verses one through four. This is the hope that we cling to. And this is why these verses have infused themselves into my preaching and into my thinking and into my prayers and why I still use this passage at every funeral that I do because I believe it's maybe the most hope-filled passage in all of Scripture. And it says this. John writes, I love this part. That, remember last week, I said that hope and faith were burdens and we cling to our hope and our faith. That is the hope that we cling to. This is the event that we place our faith in. That Jesus' death on the cross won us this. That one day, God will be with his people and we will be with our God and he will wipe every tear off of our face and there will be no more weeping and no more crying and no more pain anymore for the former things have passed away. And if you've heard me do a funeral, you've heard me say what the former things are. In this moment, the former things are death, pain, cancer, birth defects, difficulties, abuse, estrangement, broken homes. The former things are the brokenness of other people that spills out and breaks the people around them. The brokenness is gone is this idea that hurt people hurt people because nobody's hurt, so nobody's getting hurt. The former things are all of the things that cause you stress and anxiety and pain and discomfort now. There's coming a day where those things are no longer present. Those are the former things. And it hearkens back to this promise that we see in Revelation chapter 1 that we highlighted in the first week, that one day we will be with our Savior face to face. One day we will sit in the very presence of God. He will be with us and we will be with him. And in that day when that comes, the former things, the things that cause us pain now. The things that are difficult now. The things that made this week tough. The things that have made these last two years tough. The things that you came in here worrying about now, the scars that you bear from the people who have come before you, all those things have passed away and we walk in perfect joy. This is why I love this verse because this verse acknowledges the former things and it doesn't seek to cheapen those things. It doesn't tell Sean Weldon who lost his son Landon that this thing doesn't matter, that this thing doesn't hurt. Don't worry about it. God has a plan for this thing. It says, no, no, no. This is one of the former things, man. And if you can cling to your faith and your hope through this, it will become a former thing and you'll see him again. So I find this passage to be uniquely and tremendously hope-filled. And it inaugurates the eternity that we are going to share in together. The holy city comes down. We are a part of the new Jerusalem. We are a part of the new heaven and the new earth. Some people believe God creates an entirely new heaven and new earth. Some people believe he replaces this one. I believe it doesn't make a bit of difference. But Revelation 21 inaugurates the eternity following the marriage supper of the Lamb, the greatest celebration feast of all time. And it ushers us into this beginning of life. Not the end of time, but the beginning of eternity. And this eternity is described, I think, the best in chapter 22, verses 1 through 5. In 21, there's a description of what the new heaven and the new earth is going to look like. And if you remember in week one, I read you a portion of that description where it talks about the jewels that adorn the walls and sit at the base. It says that the city is like gold and the streets are like glass. And we're gonna see a description of a crystal river flowing from the throne of God. And it describes it as this remarkably beautiful place. And that's well and good. And I don't want to cheapen or dismiss the remarkable beauty of heaven. But what is more compelling to me is the peace that we find there, is the tranquility of life there, is the provision of God there, and the perfect peace that we rest in for all of eternity. And I think that's better captured in these verses, in chapters 22, verses 1 through 5, where John writes this. Through the middle of the light that we need. His kingdom knows no night. His kingdom knows no darkness. The tree of life is on either side of the river. It provides for us in season all that we need. There is nothing left to do but to enjoy God and His perfect love and the people that we are there with forever. And what I want you to focus on this morning and what I want you to remember from this series is that this is what we are created for. You understand? What we see in Revelation 21, what's described in Revelation 22, that's what you were created for. Hear me, you were not created for this place. You were not created for this world. You were not created for your current body. You were not created for that. You were created for what is described in Revelation 21 and 22. You were created for eternity. It's why you have a soul that will outlive your body. It's why you have a soul that will pass into this next life without the broken shell that it inhabits right now. It's why your soul longs for eternity. It's why there's something inside of you that says there's gotta be more than this. It's why the people who have accomplished the most on the planet get to the end of their rope of accomplishment and say there has to be more than this. It's why nothing in your life ever fully satisfies you. It's why I believe this to be true. Perfect happiness is not possible this side of heaven. To choose one road towards happiness is to fundamentally disallow another road to happiness. And we are therefore incapable of perfect happiness on this side of heaven. And that's why we are incapable of it, to remind us that on that side of heaven, we will walk in perfect happiness for all of eternity. Because we were created for that eternity. We were designed and purposed for that. We long for it. Paul writes about this over and over again in the things that he says and in the things that he writes to the early church. Particularly in Romans 8 where he says the whole earth groans for this eternity, pressing against the shell that we are in, waiting for our perfect bodies. And I think that this is why Paul writes this in 2 Corinthians 4, verses 17 and 18. You don't have to turn there. You can just listen to me because these are famous verses. We refer to these often. These are funeral verses. These are grieving verses. But I think that Paul writes them because Paul was aware of this idea that we were not created for this place. We were created for eternity. So he writes this in chapter 4, verse 17 of 2 Corinthians. I'm going to pick it up in 16. Paul calls all of the pain that we endure in this life light momentary affliction. And just so you know, he's addressing a persecuted church. And the verses that precede this, he's talking about the harm that faces them, the death that faces them. He's talking, he's in, if you want to look historically, he's in a time period where the life expectancy had to be somewhere in the 40s or maybe as late as the 50s. He's looking at a high infant mortality rate. He's looking at people who have lots of kids and are very used to some of the kids not making it to adulthood. These people know what loss is. They know what pain is on a level that most of us in this room are not even close to being acquainted with. So before we think that Paul is being flippant with our pain that we walk through, let's be clear. No, no, no. He's being flippant with way worse pain than what we walk through. And he still calls it light and momentary affliction. And he says it is not worth comparing with the glory that we will experience on the other side of eternity. The pain that we experience in this life is not worth comparing. It's just preparing us for the weight of glory that we will experience on the other side of eternity. I've mentioned this before, but you've likely forgotten it, and it stands out to me. When Lily, my daughter, was I think about three years old, we were putting her to bed one night. And as we were trying to put her to bed, she insisted on jumping on her bed. And we told her, no, you can't do that. Stop jumping on your bed. And she tried to do it. And I had to be stern. No, stop jumping on your bed. You're not allowed to jump on your bed. She lost her mind. She was so bummed that she couldn't jump on her bed. I mean, she screamed and she cried and she kicked and she wailed and she flailed. And it was the biggest deal in the world to her. And, you know, in that moment, would it have been easier to just say, all right, listen, kid, just jump on the bed for five minutes and then go to bed, right? Of course it would have. But the Rubicon had been crossed, man. I had planted the flag and I had to defend it. You will not jump on this bed. I will cry with you all night before you jump on this bed one more time. Like it is not happening. So she's losing her mind over and I won't let her, I won't let her jump on the bed and whatever. And while it's happening, after she settles down, she goes to sleep. I think to myself, that's so dumb. She treated it like it was the biggest deal ever. She's not even going to remember it in the morning. Two days later, that thing never happened. When she's an adult, it's not even a blip on the radar screen. It's completely and totally inconsequential to who she is as a human in every way that she didn't get to jump on her bed that night. It does not matter. And then I started thinking about all the things when you become an adult that mattered so much when you were younger that when you're older, it's like, who cares? Remember how much you cared about homecoming? And then 20 years later, it's just a waste of money. It was silly. Remember all the things that mattered so much in elementary school? Then in the light of adulthood, they just, who cares? It makes me wonder how often in this life we're wailing and flailing and ticked off and upset and hurt. And God's in heaven going, you're just trying to jump on the bed, man. When you get here, it's not gonna matter. Quit getting so dang worked up. It makes me wonder how often we just wanna jump on our bed. It makes me wonder all the things that we get so worked up about that cause us so much anxiety that just spike our blood pressure. We just got done with a week-long trip driving to two different cities with a six-month-old. So I had some chest tightness this week and it got pretty stressful. And it makes me just, if I see that through the eyes of God and in light of eternity, how utterly ridiculous it was for me to waste one ounce of energy on getting frustrated at a six-month-old for crying. And when I read through the Bible, the more I walk with God, the more of Scripture that I see, the more times I expose myself to Jesus and the Gospels, the more times I read Paul, the more times I see the nature of God and begin to ask, why did he do this? And why did he direct in this way? And why doesn't he give us more of this? The more I conclude that God himself is far more concerned with eternity than we are. And that the problem is not trying to figure out all the things that are happening in this life and how to make sense of them all. The problem is not focusing enough on the next life and looking forward to that and seeing this life through the perspective of eternity the way that God does. Because when we read through scripture over and over and over again, it's very clear to me that God cares way more about what happens after Revelation 22 than he does about what's happening right now. He's just trying to get us there. So as we go through this life, I think it could be helpful to have reminders of eternity. And maybe that's what joy and pain are. I would argue this morning, if we had notes, this would be a thing that showed up on the screen that I would encourage you to write down. But I would note this morning that all joy and all pain are simply reminders that we're not yet where we belong. All joy that we experience and all pain that we experience are really simply reminders that we are not yet where we belong. Thanksgiving was this last week. If at your Thanksgiving table there was pain, because maybe someone wasn't at that table this year who was there last year. Maybe we hoped that there would be a baby or spouse or at least just a boyfriend or a girlfriend or something at the table this year and there wasn't and that caused us pain. Maybe there's strife in our family. Maybe one of our family members just isn't who they used to be. And because of myriad circumstances, when we sat around our table this week, there was pain for us. That pain is simply a reminder that we're not yet where we're supposed to be. That pain that we experience, that's a former thing. It will pass away. So we let pain remind us that I'm not intended for this place. I'm holding on for the next place. Likewise, joy is a reflection of the perfect joy that we will experience in heaven. If we sat around the Thanksgiving table this week and there was particular joy there, there was richness of friends and richness of family and richness of relationships. If there was a new seat at the table, if there was a new baby at the party, if there is a pending birth to celebrate, if there was a new relationship represented there, if there was reconciliation, if maybe this was the first time we've been together as a family since we had to start wearing the dumb masks, maybe that's what got us together and that's what brought us joy. That joy that you experienced this week is just a reflection and a smudgy window of the pure joy that's waiting on you in eternity. It's just a hint of the joy that's waiting on us in the future. And so I think we would be wise to allow all pain and all joy simply remind us that we are not yet where we are supposed to be because God did not intend us for this life. God did not design us for this life. God designed us for the next one. And in Revelation chapter 22, chapter 21 and 22, we see those things begin. That's why I actually like the following verses in 2 Corinthians. The ones that follow the light and momentary affliction and they are preparing us for this eternal grace. Because they acknowledge that we were not made for this place. I'm going to read to you just kind of a selection of them from 2 Corinthians chapter 5. Paul writes, He's talking about what we talked about, the former things, that we weren't made for this world, we were made for the next one. So if in this tent, sometimes it's uncomfortable, if in this life, sometimes we feel pain, those are groanings that are reminding us that we were made for the next life. And then he goes on down in verse six body, we are away from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage. And we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please Him. Scripture acknowledges, that. It is right and good to hope for that. It is right and good to remind ourselves that there is perfect joy where the former things have passed away waiting on us and we cling to that hope. And I said in week one that this mysterious book of Revelation really is the greatest book of hope that we have in Scripture and I hope that you've reached that conclusion on your own as well. So I would finish the series with this encouragement. Cling to your faith. Cling to the hope that this is true and that one day these things will be realized. Cling to your faith and cling to your hope and take courage, Christians, because we know how this story ends. Let's pray. Father, thank you for telling us how the story ends. Thank you for not making us wonder that. Thank you for the book of Revelation, for the vision that you gave John. Lord, I pray that you would give us a heart to understand the important things there. That you would give us a heart to respect the mysteries, to wonder in awe at all the things described. More than anything, God, I pray that we would see that you acknowledge that some things in this life are tough. Some things in this life are the former things that we're walking through right now. But that God, you offer us a hope and a future. So Lord, I pray that we would cling to that. I pray that we would be of good courage. That no matter where we are, no matter what we're doing, we would live to please you. And that nothing that could happen to us in this life could wrestle away from us the hope and the faith that we have in you. God, we look forward to the day that we can spend eternity with you when Revelation 21 and 22 come to pass. We thank you for this book. We thank you for the series. God, I ask that it would push us closer to you and that it would more deeply entrench us in the hope that we find in you. It's in your son's name I ask these things. Amen.

The Yo, good to see everybody. Thank you again for being here. This is the sixth part in our series going through the book of Revelation. I have really very much enjoyed going through Revelation with you all. And honestly, you guys have been more enthusiastic about it than I expected because Revelation can be a slog. It can be tough. We just took three weeks working through the tribulation, talking about the wrath of God and all the mechanics of the tribulation best we can. And to me, that feels tedious, but you guys have been incredibly supportive and incredibly kind. And it seemed like y'all have enjoyed going through this with me. As folks have asked me, how is Revelation being received? I say, it seems universally good. However, no one's going to tell me it's bad. No one's going to email me and be like, just so you know, really are looking forward to when this series is over and we can talk about something else. So that might be out there. And if that's you, I'm so sorry. Thank you for hanging with us. But for those of you who have enjoyed this, thanks so much for the encouragement because it's been really, really neat to get to go through it with you guys as a church. This morning, we arrive at Christ's return, the return of Christ. And I said last week that this needs to be the best sermon that I've ever preached in my life, to do adequate justice to the grandiosity of what's happening in Revelation 19. This will not be the best sermon of my life. I just wish that it could be, okay? So let's temper our expectations now. This is a B minus, all right? But in this sermon, we arrive at Jesus' return, at kind of the culmination of God's wrath, the final nail in the coffin. I said we've been walking through the tribulation. We've kind of looked at it through three different lenses. We looked at it in the first week to understand the wrath of God that's poured out in the tribulation, and we defined it. We defined it that week when we looked at Revelation 4 and 5, and Jesus steps forward as the Lamb of God, qualified to open up the seals and begin to open up God's wrath on his creation. We said he's beginning the seven-year process of tribulation. Now, what is tribulation? Well, we define that as the seven-year process of God pouring out his earned wrath on his creation and reclaiming what is rightfully his. And this week, he reclaims it. This week, he does the last part of the tribulation. Then we looked at kind of the flow of it, the seals and the trumpets and the bowls, and then we looked at the figures of it, and we'll talk a little bit more about the beast, the Antichrist, today. But where we're at in the narrative of Revelation is we're at the end of the Tribulation. God has poured out his wrath. We've had this great battle. There's been a great earthquake. God has sent darkness onto the kingdom of the Antichrist. And then he sends his son to finish up the work. He sends his son to answer the voice of the martyrs that cries out in Revelation chapter 6, the fifth seal. The voice of the martyrs below the throne of God that say, how much longer, God, before you avenge our death? You know who killed us. You see us suffering as your children. How much longer will you let this keep going? And we talked about in that week how we cry out with the martyrs, that every time something in our life happens that seems difficult or hard to understand or seems unfair, every time there's a school shooting, God, how much longer are you going to let this go on? Every time we lose someone too soon, God, how much longer will you let this world be broken? Every time we see something that we can't understand, we cry out with the martyrs and we say, God, how much longer, oh Lord, will you put up with this? And when he begins to open up the seals and begin the process of tribulation, he says, no more. And when he sends his son Christ, when we see Jesus in Revelation 19, that is God putting the final nail in the coffin of evil and saying, now I will make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. Now I will rectify things. Now I will restore creation. Now I will answer the groanings that Paul talks about in Romans chapter 8 when we are told that all of creation groans for the return of the king. When we're told that we yearn inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons and daughters to experience eternity in the marriage supper of the lamb, we wait for this. We long for this. This is the hope that persists in our faith and keeps us anchored to our savior because we believe that revelation 19 is going to happen one day, that he's going to come get us, and that when he comes back, you guys have heard me say this before, he's not coming back as the Lamb of God. He comes back as the Lion of Judah. And we see this description in Revelation 19, beginning in verse 11. So if you have a Bible, you can read along with me. I love this description of my Jesus. Every time I read it, whether it's out loud or just in private, I get chills. I love this picture of him. And I don't know, I don't know if everybody can relate to this. This may just be silly. This may just be me being a dummy, and that's fine. I'm familiar with this territory. It's not unfamiliar. But when I read this passage about my Jesus, that part of me as a little kid that loved to see the hero win in movies, that teenage boy that loved to watch Braveheart win, that loved Gladiator and seeing Russell Crowe's character stick it to him, that little boy that loves Star Wars, that loves to see the hero win against evil, against all odds, that part of us, and I'm sharing that with you because I think that God lays that in us intentionally. I think we love the hero because the hero is a shadow of this reality that Jesus becomes. We grow up learning to love when the day is saved and when the hero makes an appearance because God wove that, I think, into our hearts to appreciate the appearance of his son when that hero returns and appears once and for all. So it's with that preamble that we'll read the description as Jesus comes back to reclaim his creation. This is the description of him that John records. Chapter 19, verse 11. And behold, a white horse. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty on his robe and on his thigh. His name is written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Gosh. That's Jesus, man. That's Jesus. That's our Savior. When we think of Jesus, when we pray to him, when we sing to him, when we think about him, when we think about being reunited with him in heaven, I believe that it's our tendency to think about the gospel of Jesus, to think about the crucified Christ. And I don't think that's anybody's fault. We have four gospels. We spend time there all the time. I revisit a gospel every spring with you guys. We focus on Jesus at Easter. We focus on Jesus at Christmas. And we see the teachings from Jesus come out of the gospel. And so it's right and good to think about our Jesus as the crucified Christ. It's right and good to think about our Jesus as gentle and lowly. We're actually reading a book, as the staff right now, called Gentle and Lowly, and what it tells us, and I did not know this, but that the only time that Jesus is ever asked to describe himself in scripture, or rather the only time that he actually does it, he describes himself as gentle and lowly. And I think that when we think about Jesus, we think about a humble Nazarene from the country. And that's fine and that's well and good. But that's Jesus in human form. Revelation 19, that's Jesus. You understand? That's who's waiting on us. That's who's coming to get us. That warrior king written on his robe and on his thigh, king of kings and Lord of lords as a callback to Isaiah so that we know exactly who it is. And when you read through this passage, it's unbelievable to me how rich it is with allusions to other parts of scripture so that there is no doubt about it that this is Jesus coming from the very beginning. It says that he was called faithful and true, capitalized. This is a deity. This is Jesus coming. And then it says that only he knows his name, which is, that's Exodus chapter three and four, when God refuses to share his name. That's a throwback to that. And then he says that he was called the word of God, which John is referencing his own writings at beginning of John, the gospel, when he says that the word was with God in the beginning was the word, the word was with God, the word was God through him, all things were made without him, nothing was made. And then at the end, king of kings and Lord of lords. John, in this description of Jesus is weaving together all of the scripture to point us to our savior. This is the Jesus, the one who has fire coming out of his eyes and a sword coming out of his mouth with which to strike down the nations. The one who rules with the rod of iron, who has the armies of heaven arrayed in linen, following down as he thunders down to conquer the beast and the dragon and the antichrist. That's the one that sits at the right hand of the Father and intercedes for you. That's the one that rules for all of eternity. That's the one that we pray to. And that's the one who's coming to get you. So I want to at least take some time this morning to encourage you. When you sing to Jesus, when you pray to him, when you think of him, when you anticipate meeting him, anticipate the conquering Christ. Anticipate this Jesus. Anticipate the warrior king coming down to settle the score. Anticipate the lion of Judah coming down to wreck shop. To once and for all sweep evil off the face of the planet. And when you do that, when you focus on the conquering Christ, to me, it really caused me to think about this a lot this week, that the conquering Christ renders the crucified Christ all the more miraculous. The conquering Christ, Christ conquering renders Christ crucified all the more miraculous. Because this description in Revelation 19 with a robe dipped in blood and a sword coming out of his mouth and a rod of iron that he rules a nation with, he's gonna tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God with all of heaven's armies arrayed behind him, thundering down to wreck shop. That Jesus hung on the cross for you. That Jesus walked away from all of that, condescended to take on our form, walked with us for 33 years, nurtured disciples to birth a church that would become his true kingdom that he's coming back to rescue so that you and I can sit in here 2,000 years later. He did all that, meek and mild. And when he describes himself as gentle and lowly, yeah, you're not kidding, man. Because look who he is in earth and look who he could be this whole time. This description, this guy, this God, this warrior king, he hung on the cross for you. Not just some sage from the hills of Israel. God condescended for you. He chose to hang on the cross. So I love that moment with Pilate. He's like, are you really a king? And he's like, don't worry about it, Pilate. If I wanted to, this whole place would be smashed. At any moment in Jesus' life, he could have called down these armies and just crushed anybody who opposed him. Caiaphas, the high priest, is sitting there thinking he's got Jesus right where he wants him, and Jesus is just thinking, you have no idea who I am. He dies, he's separated from God. Satan thinks he's got Jesus right where he wants him. Jesus says, you have no idea who I am. Christ conquering, to me, renders Christ crucified as all the more miraculous. And when I think about my Jesus, this is who I think about. He comes to get us and to take us back up to heaven and to start off eternity. And when he comes to get us, he takes us back, we're told, to what's called the marriage supper of the Lamb. He's defeated the beast. He's defeated the Antichrist. He locks them up. It begins the thousand-year reign. We're going to talk about that next week. There's an encore of evil, and then Jesus once and for all throws them in the lake of fire, and that's it. But he comes down. He captures the beast. The armies conquer. He takes his children, he wipes evil off the face of the earth, he purifies his bride, and then we have the marriage supper of the Lamb. And I feel bad for how I'm covering the marriage supper of the Lamb in this series. Because I'm not gonna do it justice. I'm not gonna adequately cover it. And I'm not saying that in this series. Because I'm not going to do it justice. I'm not going to adequately cover it. And I'm not saying that in this way of false humility, like, oh yeah, I'm really not doing that good of a job with it. Like, no, I'm not. We just don't have enough time to sink in to everything that's here and even all the symbolism in the marriage supper of the Lamb. But a simple way of thinking about it is the marriage supper of the lamb is the greatest celebration feast of all time. It is the greatest celebration feast that ever was and ever will be. And this should hit home with us. Because what do we do? What do we do when we want to celebrate? I got a little bit of good news last week. Such good news that I went straight to the butcher's market. I bought myself a big old ribeye and I had that for dinner when the kids went to bed. I had myself my own personal private celebration feast. When your team wins, what do you do? You have a feast. When something good in life happens, when you graduate, you have a feast. When people come into town, what do you do? You have a feast. What are we going to do this week? We're going to get together with friends and family. We're going to reflect on the blessings that God has given us, and we're going to have a feast. This is what we do to celebrate. When your kid gets married, and you celebrate kind of transitioning into that season of life. This one has passed. We've formed a new family. What do you do? You get all your friends together and you have a feast. This is what God is doing. It's the greatest celebration feast of all time. In the days of old when kings would conquer and they would come back from conquering another king, what did they do? They feasted. And Jesus is bringing us back to the marriage supper of the Lamb. Why is it called the marriage supper of the Lamb? Because Jesus is getting married. Who's he marrying? Us. The church. His bride. We see throughout Scripture that the church is referred to as the bride of Christ. We see in Ephesians that God purifies his bride. He prepares us. We are made pure for Jesus so that we might marry him in eternity. I don't know how all that works out. It's a word play, but we are made pure by our savior. How are we made pure? By the crucified Christ hanging on the cross. He died for us. He covered over you in righteousness, made you good, purified you, prepared you for this very moment, for the marriage supper of the Lamb, where the church and Christ are united for all of eternity and perfect bliss. And so it's right and good to have a feast to celebrate the marriage. And this feast, man, it's going to be a good feast. The ones that you've lost, they're going to be there. I don't know for certain. I can't find it in Scripture. But I'm pretty sure they're going to serve catfish at this feast. Because my papa is going to be there. He loves catfish. And I know he's got some waiting on me. Your loved ones are going to be there too. Your dads are going to be there. And your moms. And the children that you never got to meet because you lost them too early, they're going to be there. All the saints who have come before us, all the saints that you've loved, they're going to be there. And listen to this. They're going to be the best versions of themselves. They're not going to be sick. They're not going to be unhealthy. They're not going to be unwell. They're going to be the perfect versions of themselves. They're not going to have all the brokenness that hurts us sometimes. Do you understand what I'm saying? Your dad, who you loved, but man, that guy had a temper. In heaven, he doesn't have a temper anymore. He's just love. He's just all the best parts of him. The people who we love, who made it sometimes hard to love them. Jesus has prepared those brides too. Their brokenness is wiped away. And they love you with purity. And you're made perfect too. All the crap in your life, all the stuff that you wish wasn't true of you, all the things that you hope nobody finds out, all the brokenness that spills out of you and hurts the people around you when you don't want to hurt them and you hate that side of yourself, that side's gone at the marriage supper of the Lamb. You're made perfect there. You're made your ideal self there. You're made your eternal self there. And you can love other people finally with the purity that God loves you with. We see the best versions of the folks we love. I am convinced of this. We finally walk in the best versions of ourself and don't have to wonder what it would be like to not have to walk through life as a selfish, egotistical jerk. That one's just for me. I don't know what your thing is. That feast is going to be remarkable. And everybody's going to be there. And Jesus is coming to take you to that. And I think that's pretty great. And as I thought about these things this week, the triumphant return of Christ and the marriage supper of the Lamb and all that it represents and what Jesus really won with that victory. What does it mean for us? Yes, evil is smited. Evil is gone and all the wrong things are made right and all the sad things are made untrue. All that is very true and God wins once and for all and that part of us that loves a hero gets to see the actual hero come storming out of the clouds. He wins those things for us. We see our God claim victory and that's great. But there's something else that occurred to me too. I was prepared. I knew this was going to happen. We're not even to the hard part yet. Jeez, old Pete. Something else occurred to me as I kind of asked the question, what has Jesus won? And what are we celebrating at the marriage supper? And I was reminded of this idea that I have long carried with me, but I've not heard too many other people talking about it. I've actually never heard a pastor talk about this. It doesn't make it a unique idea. It's just one that I've not heard other people mention. And maybe it's because pastors aren't supposed to say things like this and the other ones know better and yours doesn't. But I've long carried with me this idea that faith and hope are burdens. Faith and hope are hard. We celebrate faith and hope in our belief system. We're told that the greatest of all these things is faith, hope, and love. We celebrate faith and hope. We want those. We name our children faith and hope. They are good things. But I, in my life, in my most honest moments, experience them often as a burden, as something to be carried, as something to be chosen. Because faith is a belief in things that you can't see. Faith is what we choose when facts fall short of certainty. Do you understand? There's things that we can know about the universe and about our God and about scripture and about the claims and about life. There's things that can be scientifically proven and broken down and rendered as factual. And then there's what we choose to put our faith in. Then there's certainty. And when facts fall short of certainty, we fill that gap with faith. Whether you're a Christian or whether you're an atheist, there's no way to be totally certain of what you think's going on in the universe. So when we reach the end of facts and we have to arrive at certainty, we fill that gap with faith. So faith is a choice. We choose it. We exercise it. We learn it. We let God speak into it. We let him strengthen it over the course of our life. The longer you walk with God, hopefully the stronger your faith gets, but it gets stronger because it's been tried and it's been tested and it's been a burden that you've chosen to continue to carry. Hope is a burden. Hope is a belief that one day something can be true that I want to be true. Hope, to even have hope, is an admission that right now things are not the way that I want them to be. Right now things are less than ideal. Right now things are not what I want, but I hope, I believe that one day the things that I want can be brought about. Hope is an admission of a shortfall. People who are not yet parents and desperately want to be hope that one day this can be true of us. We, as believers, we read scripture, we hear the stories of Jesus coming down out of heaven, and we hope in that day. We place our faith in that day. We believe that there's going to be a marriage supper. We place our hope in that. We place our hope and our faith in the idea that our prayers are working, that they get to God, that they are powerful and effective and they're not just bouncing off the ceiling. But sometimes, life makes hope heavy. Sometimes life makes hope heavy. When you lose someone too early and your Bible teaches you that your God could have done something about it and you have to be confronted with the fact that he just simply didn't. In that season, you choose hope. And in that season, it's heavy. And sometimes, when life gets hard, and when faith and hope become burdens, and they become heavy, we see people put them down and walk away from them and say, I can't carry this faith anymore. I don't know how to believe in a God that would let that happen, so I'm gonna set down this faith. I don't know how I can still cling to hope when I've been disappointed in these ways, so I'm going to set down this hope. Sometimes faith and hope get heavy, and they get hard to carry. When you grow up in church, being taught a simple faith, and then you become an adult adult and there are things that happen in your world that just don't align with what you were taught when you were a kid and you have to learn how to find this new faith. You have to cling to it and you have to hope and you have to choose hope and you have to find ways to make what you were taught and what you're experiencing mesh and you have to find a whole new way to understand scripture and understand God and to understand how he speaks to you. In those moments, faith can get hard and hope can get heavy and we have to choose them. And I am convinced that the Christian life is simply a series of the decision to choose faith and to choose hope in Christ over and over and over again until we make it to the finish line. My prayer as I prayed before I preached this morning was that if there is anybody in here that's carrying heavy hope that it would get lightened just a little bit today. That we would have the strength and the faith to continue to carry it for a little bit longer. Just get down the road just a little bit further. Because sometimes faith and hope get heavy. And I hate that we don't talk about that as much because we should. And if that's true, if I'm right that they can be burdens, then one of the best things that Jesus wins when he comes sweeping out of the sky is on this day, he lays to rest faith and hope forever. And he says, here, you don't need these anymore. You don't need faith and hope anymore. Maybe that's why Paul writes in Romans 8, he says, for in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. When Jesus shows up, we don't need hope anymore. When he shows up, we don't need faith anymore. There's no more gap between facts and certainty. There's just Jesus. There's no more hoping for one day. There's just Jesus. One day has arrived. Do you understand that when Jesus sweeps down out of the sky, that he lays to rest for us for all eternity, faith and hope. And he says, you can set them down, weary traveler. You're here now. Let's feast. And I think that's a remarkable blessing. Because to be a Christian is to believe that one day these things will be true. To be a Christian is to believe that one day God will set all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. One of my favorite songs in the world is this song called Farther Along. Farther Along, I like the version from a guy named Josh Gerrels, and it opens up. And he says, I wonder why the good man dies and the bad man thrives and Jesus cries because he loves them both. And the chorus is, farther along, we'll know all about it. Farther along, we'll understand why. And it's just this acknowledgement, I think, that faith and hope are hard. Faith and hope are hard, but one day, I won't need those anymore. I can lay that and everything else down at the feet of my Savior. And on that day, when Jesus comes back, there are no more one days. On this day, Revelation 19, marriage supper of the Lamb, on that day, there are no more one days. It is one day for all eternity. There's no more wondering, there's no more hoping, there's no more struggling, there's no more pain. Because on that day, he puts an end to waiting on one day. And I kind of wonder now if that's why Paul didn't say what he said in Corinthians. When he gets to the end of talking about all the spiritual gifts and he says, but now these three remain, faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these, Paul says, is love. And I've always read and accepted that teaching, and it's made sense to me. Love binds. Love is the very nature of God. Love is what unites us together. It makes sense to me that love would be greater than faith and hope. But now I wonder, in light of what I've thought through this week, if maybe love isn't the greatest because when Jesus comes back and lays faith and hope to rest, that love is the only thing that exists for all of eternity. Maybe love is the greatest because it's the only thing left after Revelation 19. And we live in an eternity of perfect love that God designed us for, finally. As I was thinking through this sermon this week, I was pacing in the lobby. And as I was out there, just kind of walking back and forth, thinking through these things, asking myself the question, what has Christ won for us? I noticed on the information table, a bracelet, like a little ringlet. And I picked it up and I saw an inscription there. And I thought, oh, what is this? God, are you talking to me? Let? Speak, Lord, your servant hears. I'm working on the sermon. There's a bracelet here. You've got to be working in this. So I reach over, and on the bracelet, it just says, it is well with my soul. Also, if that's your bracelet, it's right out there. It just said, it is well with my soul. And I thought, oh, I love that song. But that's not really helpful. Okay, God's not speaking. And I just kept pacing. And I got done and I kind of had a fully formed idea. And sometimes on Tuesdays when I get a fully formed idea, I get a little bit excited about the sermon and I'll go and I'll tell Kyle because Kyle's always up for a conversation. I said, Kyle, I got it. Listen, I told him about this idea of faith and hope being burdens and that Jesus is going to put those to rest for us. And Kyle started to get a little teary eyed. And he said, he said, that just reminds me of my favorite song, my favorite line from my favorite song. And he quoted me these lines from it as well. And I was like, oh my gosh, God is speaking. I'm just dumb. I always say God speaks in stereo. And Kyle quoted these lines. And he started crying. And I got misty, and I knew that this is what we were supposed to share, and I knew that we were supposed to end the service today with it as well. Because in these lines, we see the author of this song admitting what we've just talked about today. The faith and hope are burdens, and so it is well with my soul. We often sing this song in a response to grief as an admission that I am going to choose faith and hope even though it's heavy today. Now let's sing it looking forward to the day we can lay those things to rest and Jesus has won the final victory and forever we will say it is well with my soul. Stand and let's sing together.

The Well, good morning. Good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I am the senior pastor here. Can you guys hear me? Is it coming through? Okay, good. Yeah, there we go. Yeah, I'm the senior pastor here, so thanks for being here. If you're watching online, thank you for doing that or catching up during the week. We're grateful for that as well. If you are watching online, you probably cannot tell that this room is full, so that feels pretty good, which means I can only draw one of two conclusions. Either as a people, we are starting to feel a little bit more comfortable, a little bit closer to post-pandemic life. Fall activities are coming to a close, and we feel more comfortable gathering together. And so maybe culture is coming back to life in general, which is great. Or you guys just really love tribulation and wrath sermons. I think it's the latter. And so we've got a lot more of that coming, baby. I'm rethinking January. We're really going to drill in on God's wrath and terrible things that we see in the Old Testament too. I'm very excited for it. Clearly you guys are as well. To that, I'm just kidding. to that end, this is a series in Revelation. It is a little bit of a different series than what we normally do. I mean, normally we go through stories and books in the Bible and things like that, but focusing on the content in Revelation is a challenge for us, but we felt as a church, having never gone through it, that it was appropriate to stop and to study the book of Revelation. And one of the reasons we do this is because the book opens up with this idea of blessed are you for studying this book. So it's worth it to move through it as a church. And I feel compelled this morning to make this delineation for your edification and expectations of what's going to happen this morning in this sermon. I don't know if you've ever thought of the difference between preaching and teaching. Many of you would have no reason whatsoever to ever try to define that in your own personal life. I am compelled to do that often. And so to me, the difference between teaching and preaching is that teaching informs and preaching inspires. So when I preach, my goal is life change, that we would open up the scriptures, that we would encounter God's goodness there, that we would be turned towards a desire for him and for our Savior and for the Spirit, and that we would leave changed. Convicted, challenged, encouraged, inspired, whatever it is, we would leave changed. Well, teaching is different. Teaching, the goal is to inform. I want you to know more about this thing than you did before you came this morning. So this week, just to be clear, is teaching, okay? Last week, I had the whiteboard up here. That was teaching. We walked through the events of the tribulation. Some folks told me it felt like a college classroom, which is generous. I would have said upper middle school classroom, but I'll take it. I'll take college classroom. Maybe it's a reflection of you guys. But anyways, take it easy. I was just, I was talking specifically about Alan Morgan, not anybody else. Last week was teaching. It was to inform you. I got a lot of good feedback on that. This week is teaching. It's on the figures that we see in the tribulation. My goal is that you would simply understand it better. So I would say if this is your first sermon experience at Grace, they're not all like this. It's not that I'm not proud of this. I just want you to know that this is a different experience than what we normally do. In Revelation, we've been spending three weeks in the tribulation. The tribulation is in chapter 6 through 17 or 18, depending. And there's really no way to go through and just do chapters like 6 through 10, and then 11 through 14, and then whatever. There's no way to group them together. So what we did is the first week we talked about God's wrath. What is the tribulation and why is it necessary? Because in the book of Revelation, we see God, the tribulation we defined is pouring God's seven-year process of pouring out his earned wrath and reclaiming what is rightfully his creation. So we talked about the necessity of God's wrath. Last week, we talked about the events of the tribulation, the seven-year period that comprises it, and everything that happens, and the seals, and the trumpets, and the bowls, and all the events that happen. And I kind of mapped them out on the whiteboard, and you guys responded favorably to that, and I really appreciate that. It was very encouraging this week. But also in the tribulation, in those chapters, 6 through 17, we see a lot of mysterious figures. We see beasts and dragons and groups of people and two witnesses and a woman in Babylon. We see all of these different figures, and it's not readily apparent all the time. There's only one that's specifically spelled out as to what it is, and that's the dragon, and we'll get there today. But the rest of them are really pretty mysterious figures, and this is where we start to encounter things like the Antichrist and the Mark of the Beast and all of that stuff. So this morning is devoted to just tackling these figures. There's six of them that we're going to look at this morning. We're going to go through them one by one. I'm going to say, here it is. This is where we find it in Scripture, and this is what we think that it could be or represent. So this is teaching this morning. And then we are going to wrap up with a spiritual point, but to get us ready for next week, when we start preaching again. Next week, I'll just say it this way. I feel incredibly intimidated by next week. Because next week basically needs to be the best sermon of my life to do adequate justice to what happens in the text next week. It is unbelievable and moving and I might yell through it, I might blubber through it, I'm not sure, but next week's got to be the best sermon of my life to even come remotely close to doing justice to the crescendo of time that happens next week. But to get there, we've got to understand everything happening in the tribulation. And part of that is the figures in the tribulation because we're going to see some of those come to life next week. With that preamble, let's begin to work our way through chapter 6 through 17 and look at the different figures that show up there and simply ask, what are they? What do they represent? What do we know about them? I would say a couple of things. First, I'm going to present to you one or two thoughts about each of them. I am not going to present to you all the views that exist of them. And as I said in week one, when it comes to revelation, be cynical of certainty. So everything I'm saying, I'm holding with an open hand. If I get to heaven and find out I'm wrong, I'm pretty comfortable with that. And I don't want anybody saying it's gospel truth, whatever I say this morning, because these are all guesses and hearsay. You're all smart adults, so we can deal in that realm. Most of you are smart adults, so we can deal in that realm. So the first figure that we see early on that we have not yet discussed, but we've mentioned and alluded to, is the 144,000. So if you have notes, you can write that down. The notes are simply a list of these things. Underneath each figure is some text that's listed. Those are the main places or the main place where we see this figure, or in this case, this group of people. Please know that that's not an exhaustive list of all the places where we encounter that figure. It's just the main place, specifically the dragon. I think I've listed, yeah, chapter 12, verses 1 through 17 for the dragon. That's three down. The dragon shows up throughout the book, okay? That's just the main place where the dragon is described. So just a little disclaimer. The 144,000, I am going to read a description for the rest of the figures. There's no good synopsis verses for the 144,000, but here's what we know about them, okay? The 144,000 are comprised of 12,000 Jewish virgin males from each tribe in Israel. And those are listed out in chapter seven in the first reference that I gave you. And there's really nothing else there that we're told. There's 144,000 Jewish males that for some reason God has sectioned off for himself to worship him in a particular way. They show up again in chapter 14, which is why I'm mentioning them, because they show up twice. If it was only the one time, I just would have kind of skirted past it because I don't have much conclusive to say about them. But because they show up twice, it feels important enough for us to at least say, why is that there? The second time they show up, we learn a lot more about them in chapter 14. In chapter 14, we learn that they are around God. They follow the lamb wherever he goes. They are being taught a song by the angels that only they can understand. No one else, we're told, can learn this song. And it's interesting that they are virgins and it says that they are blameless. They're sinless. They have been kept spotless by God for the purpose of following the Lamb wherever he goes. Now, what are they? Who are they? What do they represent? How do Jewish males know if they get into the 144,000? We really don't know that stuff at all. There's been a lot of guesses over the years. Some conservative Christian theologians have attempted to explain the 144,000 as a figurative number that's representative of all people who will ever be saved. There's a big Christian camp that kind of holds that opinion of the 144,000, that it's a figurative number, that the 12 times 12 times 12, 12 times, that is some sort of figure of perfection. The 144,000 really just means multitude. And so really it's a figurative way of saying all the people who will ever be saved in all of history are grouped together like this. The problem with that viewpoint is there is zero, absolutely zero indication in the text that that's the case. What's going on there is conservative Christians got upset that they weren't included in the 144,000 because they're not Jewish male virgins. And they're like, well, then it must mean this because then I'm in. We're just finding a way to shoehorn ourselves into God's blessing, which we've been doing for all of history. This is another instance of it. That probably doesn't hold a lot of water. There are other offshoot religions like Jehovah's Witnesses that have staked their claim in being the 144,000. That likewise holds very little merit, it would seem. The most reasonable view to me, to me, is that there's literally in heaven 12,000 Jewish virgin males from the different 12 tribes of Israel that total in number 144,000 that for some reason God has sectioned off for himself in eternity. And the real reason I bring this up is to make this point. It would seem, based on this, and based on much of Revelation, as kind of a counterbalance to the rest of the New Testament, it would seem that in the book of Revelation, we see coming out of it, particularly in God's treatment of this 144,000, that the physical nation of Israel and the actual genetic descendants of Abraham, God's chosen people, it would seem in Revelation, still matter to him greatly. That God still has a soft spot for Israel. That God still has a soft spot for his chosen people. As we read through the New Testament, it's easy to move away from that, particularly when we get to Romans and we read some of the Pauline writings where it indicates that if you have faith, then you are a spiritual descendant of Abraham and you are God's child, which is good for us because we want to be in that chosen number. We want to receive God's blessing in that way. But what Revelation shows us as kind of a counterbalance to the Pauline teachings is the nation of Israel, at the end of the day, remains important to God. I'm not going to pretend to tell you why or how or what that means, but it's my opinion that God does actually care about the physical nation of Israel. There's a lot of stuff going on in Jerusalem in Revelation. I think he cares about Israel. And I think he cares about the Hebrew people. And I think that's one of the things we can pull out of the inclusion of the 144,000 twice in the book of Revelation, second time being taught a song that only they can know. And if I'm right about that, it has implications for some of the other figures as well. So just kind of set that thought to the side, and we're going to circle back to it when we start talking about the beasts. The next figure that we see, there's actually two of them, are the two witnesses. We see them in Revelation chapter 11. They show up in the back half of the tribulation. You'll remember last week, if you were here, that the tribulation lasts seven years. And the first three and a half years, maybe, probably, is the seals being opened in heaven. The four horsemen of the apocalypse, the voice of the martyrs, the great earthquake, and then the silence in heaven as God's wrath is ushered in. And so those are pre-wrath in the first three and a half years. And then I argued last week that there seems a reasonable chance, based on Revelation 7, that the rapture could happen in the middle of the tribulation prior to God's wrath. And so we think that for the back half of the tribulation, the last three and a half years, that God has already raptured Christians up to heaven. This is why the two witnesses are important. So I'm going to read you a brief description about them and then we're going to talk about who the two witnesses are and what they do. I'm looking in verse three if you have a Bible and you want to follow along. It says this, and I will grant authority to my two witnesses and they will proph for 1260 days, clothed in sackcloth. 1260 days is three and a half years. So it's the back half of the tribulation. These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth. So the text goes on. They show up, these two witnesses show up in Jerusalem, in the back half of the tribulation, to prophesy and to share the gospel. So what this tells us is God, even though he's pouring out his wrath on what we believe based on some of the passages that we looked at last week, are an obstinate people who are refusing to ask for mercy from God. God sends two witnesses in his goodness to proclaim his good news, to tell people to turn to God, to remind them that they can be saved from this wrath if they would only turn themselves to God in humble submission. And so God, even in the back half of the tribulation, remains interested in bringing people into heaven, into the place that Christ has prepared for them, into his eternal glory, into their eternal glory. God still wants to do that. And I think that's worth pointing out. Now these witnesses, they share and they prophesy, and it says that they're given the power to shut up the sky, that they can stop it from raining, and that no one can kill them. They're impossible to kill, and if you kill them, you will be killed in the same way that they are killed. And because they go around sharing the gospel, and because they keep pressing on it, and we're going to get to this point in a second where we understand this character and why it matters, the beast gets ticked at them sharing the gospel, and the beast war against them and they end up killing the two witnesses. They kill them in front of the whole world, it says, in the middle of the streets of Jerusalem. So I'm imagining this being on CNN and BBC and things like that. Or just the internet. Maybe it'll be on YouTube. Who knows? I just thought of trying to explain YouTube to the Apostle John. That would be a fun exercise. So they die, but they lay dead in the street for three and a half days because their followers won't allow anyone to approach the bodies. After they've laid there for three and a half days, God miraculously resurrects them. They walk again in front of the whole earth, and then God sweeps them back up into heaven. So their role is to come down, share the gospel, be one final sign from God of his love and his goodness, and then they're swept up back into heaven. Now, a lot of people like to ask, who are the two witnesses? And it's good that you're asking because I know for sure who they are with no doubt whatsoever. Some people, most people argue that the witnesses are Moses and Elijah. This is based primarily on the scene of the transfiguration in the Gospels, where Jesus goes up on top of a mountain, he's transfigured into his heavenly appearance, he's glowing bright as the sun, and Moses and Elijah are there, and they're talking. And just as an aside, Peter says the most Peter thing in the history of Peter, when he leans, you can find the story in the gospel where he leans forward and he goes, it's a good thing I'm here. I can make you guys some tents. You can hang out for a little while. What kind of audacity do you have to have to see Jesus the Messiah turn into his heavenly form? Bright as the sun, you can't look directly at him. By the way, Moses and Elijah are there, brought back down from heaven to have the special conference with Jesus for them to chat. How could every urge in your body not be to simply shut up and try to not be noticed? And Peter decides to go, you know, fellas, you're lucky I'm here. Shut up, Peter. What's the matter with you? Just soak it in, man. Anyways. So a lot of people think it's Moses and Elijah based on the transfiguration and because of their prominence in the Old Testament. Some people think it's Enoch and Elijah because Enoch, along with Elijah, are the only two people to never experience death, to be so righteous that God sweeps them up into heaven. And so maybe he was preserving them for this moment. Not very many people think that. I think that because who cares if I'm wrong about it? What's the difference? So I'm an Enoch guy. My dad is a Moses guy, and we will argue about it until we get to heaven. But the other thing is, it could be none of those people. It could be two women. We don't know. We don't know. It could be people that we've never met. So those are the guesses, and those are the roles of the two witnesses to prophesy, to point people to God, even in the midst of his wrath. Those are the good guys, the figures that we see in the tribulation, the 144,000 and the two witnesses. So now we get to the bad guys. The bad guys make up this term, and you may want to write this down. The next three, you might want to draw brackets and bracket them together and title them in your notes as the unholy trinity. That's kind of what they're known in eschatological and theological circles, the unholy trinity. And I'll tell you why in a little bit. The first one we see is the dragon. The dragon shows up in Revelation chapter 12. I read this passage in week one as an example for another point that I was making, but just to refresh our memory, this is the description of the dragon. Verse three, and another sign appeared in heaven. Behold, a great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns, and on his head sevenabor it here. The simple answer is it's a picture of Christmas. And doesn't that get you into the spirit? The dragon is the only figure where we are told very specifically what he is. Further on in the chapter, I believe in verse 9, John just goes and states right out that the dragon is Satan or the devil. So we know that whenever the dragon is mentioned in the book of Revelation, it means Satan. And his tail sweeping the stars out of the sky is again a picture of him bringing a third of the angels out of heaven with him when he was expelled and they became demons. In the, sorry, I've got a cold. I've been tested. It's not COVID, promise you. It's just a cold. Anyway. In the unholy trinity, the dragon takes the place of God the Father. So the unholy trinity is meant to mimic the holy trinity. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. So in the unholy trinity, the dragon is God the Father. He is the one that imbues the beast with power. He is the one that gives the message to the false prophet that we're gonna talk about here in a little bit. He is the one kind of directing the show, so to speak, in this point in history, and the one kind of pulling all the strings. So the rest are doing the will of the dragon in the same way that God the Son and God the Spirit do the will of God the Father. So that's kind of how they work together. And we don't need much explanation of Satan. I think we're pretty clear on what his role is. His role is to take as many people away from God as he possibly can. He's fighting to hurt God in every way possible. The next figure that we see is the beast from the sea. The beast from the sea. This beast comes out of the sea in chapter 13. I'll read you a brief description of him like a leopard and head like a lion and all that stuff. I have no idea. Your guess is as good as mine. Anybody who says different isn't being truthful. So whatever. With that description, it's an impressive beast is the thing to take away from that. What's important is that it's imbued with the authority of the dragon and given the right to rule. So the beast is often referred to as the antichrist. So that's something that we've all heard before. If you watched horror movies and didn't read the Bible growing up, you still heard the term Antichrist at some point or another. And we have been looking for the Antichrist, wondering who the Antichrist is going to be. This is a thing that we concern ourselves with. I think every president that's ever in my lifetime has been accused of being that. And then there's historical figures like Hitler and sometimes the Pope gets lumped in with this of being the Antichrist. The reality is the Antichrist has not made an appearance yet. And it's going to be a lot more powerful when it does than anything we've tried to name it over the years. The other thing I would tell you is this. The word, term, title, Antichrist is not in the book of Revelation. At no point does John say this is the Antichrist. We get the idea of the Antichrist from 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John when the same guy who wrote Revelation is writing letters to the church and he's warning them about the Antichrist and Antichrists, plural. So not only is there a the Antichrist, but there are other Antichrists. Any Antichrist is someone who tries to take on a messianic persona and trick other people into believing that he is somehow or she is somehow the Messiah and they should follow him or her. For those with a long enough memory, before Waco, Texas was a home goods store, it was the place where you thought of David Koresh. He was an antichrist, but not the antichrist. So because of what John wrote, we look for the antichrist, and many see him in Revelation and go, the beast, this has got to be the antichrist, and it very likely is. It's just important to me to point out to you that at no place does Revelation claim that, okay? But we're gonna treat him as if he is. The role of the Antichrist is to trick the world into thinking he's the Christ, is to trick the world into thinking he is the Messiah. So we think of the Antichrist as being evil, but it's important to know that when he shows up, he's going to seem inherently good. Particularly in the midst of a tribulation, he's probably going to be promising health and wealth to people and protection to people. And we know that the Antichrist sets up his own kingdom and sets up his own religion. He is the king of the kingdom. He is the focal point of the religion. And the whole world is to gather around and worship him. And he institutes this policy where you can be particularly effective with the Jewish audience, which we learned based on the 144,000, God still cares about deeply. If you've ever heard me preach through the Gospels, if you've been in a Bible study with me working through the Gospels, one of the things that I like to point out, because it helps us understand our Gospels so much better, is that no one around Jesus really understood who he was and what he came to do. Everyone's expectation of Jesus when the Messiah came was that he would be a physical king and sit on a literal throne, that he would be the most powerful physical ruler in the world. He would establish a worldwide empire and the whole world would worship him as a God while he did it. King, emperor, deity. That's their expectation of Christ. Now we get to the end of time and the Antichrist comes to impersonate and to deceive and what does he do? He meets the expectations that everyone has ever had of Jesus. By uniting the whole world under one empire, sitting on that throne, being the emperor and the deity that is the focal point of all the worship of the world. Okay? Which, sadly, is going to be particularly effective with the Jewish community. In 2012 or 13, I went to Israel. And one of the things I got to do is on the night of the Sabbath, on Friday night, I went to the Wailing Wall. It's the wall of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. It's a holy place. And there was all these men dressed in traditional Jewish garb with the phylacteries and things on their forehead and the whole deal. And they're praying and they're wailing and they're rocking and they're singing and they're praying to God. And it broke my heart because God sent Jesus for them. And they don't yet believe in Jesus. They're still waiting for a Messiah to come and sit on the throne and be the emperor of the world on a focal point. They are primed and ready for the deception of Satan at the end of time. For the deception of the beast. Satan is very intentionally digging at God the best he can as he deploys his strategy to tear people away from God. So that is the Antichrist. In the unholy trinity, he's clearly taking the role of the son, right? But there's one more in the unholy trinity. That's the beast from the earth that's talked about later in the chapter. His brief description is this. Chapter 11. Then I saw another beast rising out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb and it spoke like a dragon. It exercises all the authority of the first beast in its presence and makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast whose mortal wound was healed. We're not going to get into the mortal wound thing, but we see that the role of the beast from the earth is to point people towards the beast of the sea. That's why he's often called the false prophet. So there's the Antichrist and the false prophet that have been prophesied about, and most people believe that these beasts fulfill those roles and round out the unholy trinity. And we see him as being the spirit. The spirit points us to Jesus. The spirit speaks to us in personal ways and directs us to Jesus and shows us what we ought to do. And so the false prophet, the beast from the earth, directs people towards the beast and towards the authority of the beast and acts as an evangelist for the beast, okay? And again, we don't see false prophet. We don't see unholy trinity show up in the Revelation text. We just use those terms to help us understand who they probably are, okay? So that's the unholy trinity. And those are the ones, those are the beasts that when they get tired of watching the two witnesses win souls to heaven, that go and attack them and kill them. These are the beasts that in, I think it's the sixth seal or the fifth bowl of wrath, God darkens their kingdom. He darkens the kingdom of which the first beast, the Antichrist, sits on the throne. These are the beasts, along with the dragon, that assemble the armies of Gog and Magog at Armageddon for the final battle, for the final scene in history. They're the ones that God curses when he sends a huge earthquake and breaks Jerusalem into three parts. This dragon and these beasts are the ones that are thrown into the pit and locked up for a thousand years for the millennial reign of Christ, which we'll talk about in two weeks. And then come back out and are loosed and are allowed to tempt the world for a short time before Jesus finally and victoriously throws them in the lake of fire for all of eternity. These are those beasts, okay? So those are those figures from Revelation. There's one more figure left to talk about. Her name is the least comfortable to say out loud, but she's the whore of Babylon or the great prostitute. We see her in chapter 17. We're told about who she is, and we're told in chapter 18 the author delights in her demise, like in a song. I'm going to dive into some research on that so I can adequately sum it up for you next week because it transitions into Jesus showing up in chapter 19, which is the best part. But this figure in chapter 17, known as the whore of Babylon, I will argue to you, renders Revelation chapter 17 as the most mysterious, unknowable chapter in the whole Bible. I don't think there's any way to know who she is and what's going on there. What we know for sure is that she represents a city. We don't know what city. People over the years have tried over and over again to guess. In the text, there's some indications that it could be Rome. That seems to be the strongest indication in the text because it's noted in chapter 17 that she is, oh, here's her description. I'm sorry, I almost forgot. And then I'll was written a name of mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of prostitutes and earth's abominations. Another quick point to make here, it says at the beginning that she is arrayed in purple and scarlet. If you dig into the Greek there, those color words can also be translated electric blue and silver. So Panthers fans, just be careful. You never know if you're wearing evil, evil colors. I'm just looking out for you guys, you know? For those that don't know, I'm from Atlanta and I hate the Panthers and I just made that up. That's not remotely true, okay? It's very clear in the text that she's representative of a city. It's hard to know which city. There's indications that it could be Rome because it says that she is drunk off the blood of the martyrs of Christ. And at the time of the writing, Rome had essentially declared a holy war on the followers of Jesus and was martyring them left and right. So that matches up. And then there's a mention that she sits on seven hills. And if you've ever been to Rome or studied Rome, you know that Rome is defined in its geography by seven hills. And so there's some lining up there. And it's very easy to say, well, that's got to be Rome. The problem with that is that would mean that whatever happens in Revelation has to take place when Rome is the most powerful city in the world, which was true at the time of the writing, but is no longer true. So if you want to say it's definitely Rome, you have to either commit yourself to compressing the timeline of Revelation to a degree that all of it's already happened, and then we have to figure out what the implications are with that interpretive style. Or you have to think that maybe Rome is going to be thrust into the forefront at some point later on in the future. Maybe that's where the beast decides to sit and brings it back to prominence as he leads his world empire. But when you get there, you're just guessing, man. It may as well be Tupelo, Mississippi for the guesses that you're making because you have no idea what's going to happen in the future. Which renders this chapter and understanding exactly who she is or what city she represents impossible and is the most mysterious chapter in the Bible will very likely only be known within the generation that it happens or in eternity for most of us. What we can know is she, the city that she is, embodies all the sin and all the willful rejection and all the flippant dismissals of Christ and his blood and God and his goodness throughout history. We could think of it like we would culturally think of Vegas. Just a city that thumbs its nose at Christian sensibilities, thumbs its nose at the idea that a God could exist who would actually care about what we do and honoring him with our bodies and our morals and just pursues hedonism and throws everything and greed and throws everything else to the wind. The whore of Babylon is the personification of reckless, unfettered, selfishness, evil, greed, and what we would call sinning for all of history. It is the embodiment of rebellion from God is how we understand her. So those are the figures of the tribulation. I would end with this thought as we try to wrap all that up and prepare ourselves for next week. Deception has always been and will always be Satan's strategy. Deception has always been and will always be Satan's strategy. The whole purpose of the unholy trinity is to trick a generation of people into believing that they are the Godhead, that the beast, that the Antichrist is the Messiah, that you are good and right and wonderful to put your faith in him and follow him. And in doing so, deceive people away from God and hurt God the Father's heart as he watches his creation march away from him being deceived, believing that they are doing good. That's the insidious part of it. It's not that these people are choosing to worship Satan because you stink God, we love Satan. They think they're worshiping God. They think they're following the Messiah. It's a deception of Satan and it's evil. And it's important for us to realize that now because deception will be then, was in the past, and is right now, the language that Satan speaks. It is the way that he pulls you away from your creator. And it's worth simply asking as we wrap up, what lies are we believing that are pulling us away from our God? There's any number that we could place there. Some of us believe the lie that politics are the way to fix our culture. Some of us believe the lie that if we just get the next thing, we'll be happy. Some of us believe the lie that if that thing wouldn't have happened in the past, that we could be happy right now. Some of us believe the lie that we're the main character of the story of the world. Not me, other people. It has never not been a profitable exercise for me in my spiritual life to not sit and contemplate. If Satan is the author of lies, he's the father of deception, and his efforts to pull people away from God are going to culminate in the greatest deception, what lies am I believing now that I need God to free me from? If you want a spiritual exercise from this teaching this morning, that would be the place that I would lean into. And if it makes you angry that Satan has been lying to people for all of history and has been hurting and harming you with his lies, if you see your children believing the lies of Satan and it hurts you to watch them walk in those lies. Guess who else is upset? God. And next week, we'll see him send his son to a wrecked shop and make someone pay for those lies. And it's pretty great. Let me pray for us. We'll go throughout our weeks. Father, we thank you for the book of Revelation. We thank you for being so clear with us in ways of what to expect, what's going to happen, how things are going to go. God, I pray that we would have a better understanding of this book and the things that occur in it now than we did weeks prior. Lord, my words that have been unclear or clumsy or poorly or irresponsibly chosen, I just pray that they would be forgotten or forgiven. The things that are right and good and true, let us lean into those and hold tight to those. Let our study of this book enliven our hearts towards you and help us want to know you and understand you more. God, I pray for all of these folks as they go throughout the week. I pray for the folks listening as they go throughout their week. May you show up, God. Would they see you? Would you be present to them? For those who need encouragement this week, I pray that you would breathe that into their life in a way that only you can so that there's little doubt that you love them and care about them. Thank you for loving and caring about us. Thank you for loving and caring for this church. Thank you for all that you're doing here and all that you're allowing us to do through your spirit. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.