Sermons tagged with Heaven

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 All right. Well, good morning. Thank you for being here. Thank you for watching online or for catching up later in the week. If you're listening to my voice later in the week and you're planning to just listen to this one in your car, this one is visual. So you might want to wait until you can watch it at home. But we're going to do the best we can to work through this whiteboard today. So I will say this up front. If you are inherently interested in the tribulation and better understanding the events of the tribulation in a concise way, then I think that you're really going to enjoy this morning. If you are not inherently interested in the events of the tribulation, this is going to be terrible. I'm just going to be upfront with you. I've accepted that. My role this morning is to inform more than it is to preach. I don't have a big spiritual point coming at the end of this. So this is not necessarily a sermon proper. This is going to feel more like class. And for a lot of us, that's okay. For some of us, it's not. For you, I'm sorry. Kyle's suggestion to you, who's on a retreat with the students, by the way, is that there's a subtle design on the back of the notes. Take a pen and just kind of trace over that design and start to color things in. That should pass the time nicely for you. Speaking of the notes, even if you're not a notes person, this is a good week to find them and grab them and take a look at them because what we have on the notes is an exact replica of what's up here. And so as I write and fill things in and add to it, you can too. If you're watching online, our great camera person, Drew Turner, is going to do the best he can to pick up what I'm putting down up here. But I also have an electronic version of this available if you want that. You can email it to me. You can email me and I'll just send you this kind of typed out. The reason we're doing it this way is to help you understand the events of the tribulation. We're spending three weeks on the tribulation because it takes up a huge portion of the book of Revelation. We see the tribulation in chapters 6 through 17 of the book of Revelation. You could argue about 18, 19 if they're part of it, not part of it, whatever. But really, the bulk of it is 6 through 17. So it's 11 chapters in the book of Revelation of God pouring out his earned wrath as he returns to reclaim what he rightfully owns. And that's what we talked about last week. Last week, we invested a whole week in explaining this wrath, how it's earned, and how really and truly when we begin to reflect on it, we want a just God who is capable of wrath. That's the God that should be sitting on the throne. And one of the things that we pointed out last week that I'll reiterate a couple of times this morning is that God's wrath is only poured out on those who don't believe God is pouring out his wrath. If you don't want to experience God's wrath, all you have to do is say, God, please don't make me experience this. And then he won't. Okay? So I don't mean to be too flippant with that, but as we move through this, because some of this stuff is pretty awful, let's just keep in mind that God's wrath is only poured out, I believe, on people who obstinately refuse to accept him as God and to admit that he is Lord of the universe and that he is the one actually pouring out this wrath. So as we approach the events of the tribulation, next week we're going to talk about the figures of the tribulation, the antichrist, the beast, the 144,000, the mark of the beast, the unholy Trinity, all that stuff that comes out of revelation that we kind of asked now, who is that? Now, what does that represent? That's next week. This week is simply the events of the tribulation. And I got, I got an email this week that was not necessarily the impetus to the sermon because I knew what this was going to do, but it was certainly telling me that I was headed in the right direction. Somebody emailed me and she said, you know, I've been reading through Revelation and I'm trying to understand it all. There's just a lot going on. There's seals and there's woes and there's trumpets and there's bowls and there's dragons and there's beasts and there's figures and there's angels. There's just a lot going on and I kind of lose track of it. Is there some sort of simple guide to help me understand how I can move through Revelation and understand the tribulation process? And I basically said, come Sunday. I'm gonna preach on that. But years ago, when I had to preach to this the first time, I dove into the research and thought, let me see what's out there to just kind of help me get a bird's eye view of what's happening in the book of Revelation. And as I dove into that research, what I realized is there's nothing out there to help. There's no resource that just says, hey, here's what happens in the tribulation. It's really, really difficult to try to piece it all out of the book and understand it in a succinct way. And listen, I spent four years in undergraduate school. Well, I spent six years in undergraduate school, but I got a four-year degree in pastoral ministries. I've studied theology. I got a master's degree in theology. And still with that training, it was difficult for me to approach scripture and understand what was happening. There was no aids out there to help me out. And so for people who have not had the opportunity to study that much theology and be trained in that way, it's got to be that much more challenging. So I thought that the most helpful thing I could do as a pastor is to kind of spell out the events of the tribulation for us and help us piece them together. So like I said, if that interests you, then you're going to like this. If it doesn't, I'm really sorry. I hope your team wins this afternoon. But let's get started. So the tribulation is broken down into these kind of three categories of items. First, the seals, then the trumpets, and then the bowls. The seals we find in Revelation chapter six. The last one we see in Revelation chapter eight, if you're following along. The trumpets we see in eight through 11, and then the bowls we see in 16. And that kind of lends itself to why it's a little bit difficult to piece all this together. Because you're reading through and the seals are coming one right after another in chapter six. You're like, all right, cool. I'm following along. I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. And then after the earthquake at the end of chapter six, there's chapter seven and all this other stuff happens in chapter seven. And you're like, wait, when is this happening? Is that the last seal? No, the last seal is in chapter eight. And you read that. And then that ushers in the trumpets. And then you're reading through the trumpets and they're coming in quick succession. And then all of a sudden you get to chapter nine. And then in chapter 10, there's this vision of a dragon and a space lady and her baby. And you're going, how in the world is this following all of this? And then just randomly in chapter 11, it's like, oh yeah, the last trumpet is the temple of God. And then there's all this interlude of material from chapter 11 through chapter 15 until you get to the bowls that were opened in chapter 11, where it's other visions and things that you're seeing. So if you're just reading Revelation linearly, it's kind of difficult to pick up the events and the narrative of the tribulation. So I've isolated it for us this morning so that we can go through it together. So let's go through it, and I'm going to do the best I can to kind of address the questions I think you would have if we could be doing this one-on-one. And boy, wouldn't it be fun to do this one-on-one for an hour and a half? Yeah, I know you'd love it. All right. So the first thing we see when the seals begin to be opened, remember Jesus has stepped forward in chapters four and five, and he begins to open up the seals. He begins the process of the great tribulation, which we understand is a seven-year process. The first thing that happens is one of the cherubim, one of the angels with the four faces yells, come forth. And the first thing that comes forth is a white horse. And it says that the rider of the white horse comes conquering and to conquer. And a lot of folks think that that might be the Antichrist. A lot of folks think this rider on the white horse might be the Antichrist coming down at the beginning of the tribulation. We're going to talk more about the Antichrist and what his role is next week. But his role is basically to deceive people and make him think he's the actual Jesus and follow him away from heaven instead of towards heaven. So his role is to be a deceiver. He is a tool of Satan to pull people away from God. And so a lot of people believe that this is the Antichrist because when Jesus comes all the way over here in chapter 19, he comes on a white horse to conquer. And so a lot of scholars think that the Antichrist is imitating the Christ that's going to come later in the book of Revelation. Here's the problem. There's no textual evidence to suggest that this is the Antichrist. All right? So we just kind of think maybe. There's plenty of people out there who will write a whole book about how this is definitely the Antichrist and what it means and treat the whole rest of the tribulation as if the Antichrist is present beginning at the very beginning. But we don't know that for sure. So there's a question mark. All right? That's an important question mark. Maybe the Antichrist. Then the red horse comes. The red horse is war. The black horse is famine. And then a pale horse comes. What's the difference between a pale horse and a white horse? I don't know. Maybe it's khaki. I'm not very sure. Maybe it looks like He-Man's horse. I really have no idea. But the pale horse comes, and his rider, this is kind of cool, is death, and Hades is following with him, which sounds pretty ominous, all right? So the pale horse comes, and he brings pestilence and plague. These four horses here, you've probably heard this before. This is the most awkward thing I have to write sideways like this, are the four horsemen of the apocalypse. So if you've ever heard that phrase, this is where it comes from. Revelation chapter six. Those are the four horsemen of the apocalypse. So we'll notice that the angels are the ones that send them. So do these horses come from heaven? Possibly. Do they come from hell? Possibly. But God's angels are the ones that release them. And when they're released, the white horse comes to conquer as a precursor to the rest of them. Then the red horse comes and wars increase. And then the black horse comes and famine increases. And then the pale horse comes and pestilence and plague follows those things. And they happen, it seems, in pretty quick succession. Then we get to the fifth seal, which I talked about last week. The fifth seal is interesting in that it is not a wrathful seal. The fifth seal is the voice of the martyrs. When Jesus opens it, the voices of those below the throne of God who have been killed for his name cry out to God, when are you going to avenge our deaths? And last week we talked about how as believers in creation, we cry out with the martyrs, yeah, God, when are you going to make things right? What's interesting is that the voice of the martyrs is not wrathful. This is not God pouring out his wrath or his vengeance, which makes us think, and we're going to come back to this point. Oh, we're just getting started, man. This is getting hot and heavy, makes the point that this is probably pre-wrath, that the wrath of God hasn't really begun with the horses yet, that they're precursors to the coming wrath. And I'll tell you why we think this in a second. After this, the sixth seal ushers in an earthquake. And the description of this earthquake is incredibly ominous. And it serves as kind of a great equalizer. It's so ominous that I thought it would be worth it for us to take a second and read it together. So I'm going to read the description of the earthquake. And you guys follow along on the screen here or at home as I read, beginning in verse 12. The sky vanished like a scroll that is being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and generals and the rich and the powerful and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come. Who can stand? So this great earthquake comes after the four horsemen of the apocalypse and the voice of the martyrs cry out, then God answers them with a great earthquake. And earthquakes are significant in Revelation because we'll see that there's one at the end of every cycle. So the earthquake comes and it says the mountains and the islands are moved out of place. And I call it the great equalizer because kings and generals and rich and poor and slave and free are all hiding in the rocks together now. And now they are c. Then the seventh seal is opened. And when the seventh seal is opened, one of the most profound things, not in history, but in eternity happens. And if we just read Revelation, and we just read these verses without pausing to reflect on the significance of them, we can miss what's going on here. So I wanted us to read them together and then try to wrap our heads around how significant it is what's going on in heaven at the seventh seal. So in chapter 8, verses 1 through 5, this is what happens. When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. Then I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them. And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer. And he was given much incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne and the smoke of the incense and the prayers of the saints rose before God from the hand of the angel. Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth. And there were peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake. We're going to talk about this in a second, in more detail. This, these seals are not yet the wrath of the Lord. The trumpets and the bowls are God pouring out his wrath. These are precursors to his wrath. This is to give us a heads up, hey, it's coming. This is God's wrath. And before God pours out his wrath in heaven, when the seventh seal is opened, heaven, who for all of eternity has been an ongoing, never-ending chorus of praise to God, has been bustling with activity, has been bustling with praise, has the angels surrounding the throne of God all time at every moment crying out, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come. Holy, holy, holy. It's an unbroken chain of jubilant praise that doesn't go back for all of history,berly prepare for the wrath that is going to be poured out. There's silence in heaven after an unbroken chain of praise for all of eternity. As the culmination of history comes to its apex and God's wrath begins to be poured out and he begins to reclaim what is rightfully his and the wheels of eternity are set in motion. I don't think we can overemphasize how big of a deal the silence in heaven is. As heaven itself braces for the wrath that is going to be poured out on creation. There's a word in the Old Testament called Selah, which means holy pause. This is the holiest of pauses. This is the greatest Selah as we prepare for what's coming next. Because of this pause, and because of the voice of the martyrs that is not wrathful, and because of Matthew 24 and what it tells us to look for, Jesus tells the disciples, you really can't read Revelation without reading Matthew 24, So at some point during this series, you should go back and read at least that chapter to help us understand some of the things going on in Revelation. But Matthew 24 makes it pretty clear that these events are a precursor to God's wrath, that when we start to see these things, we need to start opening our eyes and our ears and looking for what could come. And so a lot of folks, a lot of scholars, this is pretty widely agreed upon, would kind of draw a line of demarcation here and say that this is the portion of the tribulation that is pre-wrath. And I know that you can't see this, but hopefully you can. The other thing is at the end of the service, we're just going to set this over there. This sounds so presumptuous for me to say this out loud. It feels weird. But if you want to take a picture of the things that I write down, you can do that. It'll be over there. You can take a picture of it, take it home with you. But this is pre-wrath. And then this, moving in this direction, is wrath. This is a precursor. This is the actual wrath of God, which also begs the question, because here in chapter 7, between the sixth and seventh seal, we see this scene in heaven. There's 144,000 Jewish males. We may or may not talk about those next week. I just don't know if they're going to make the cut. Also, I don't understand them, so I'm not sure what you expect me to say about them. But I've got a whole week to do some research, and we'll see. But then after that, there's this scene. I've alluded to it before in one of the past sermons, but there's this multitude coming into heaven dressed in white. And John leans over to the angel next to him, and he says, who are they? And the angel says, those are the children of God coming out of the great tribulation. And a lot of people believe that that's the rapture. The rapture, you may know, is the second coming of Christ. The Bible teaches that Jesus is going to appear in the air, that he's going to be announced by trumpets, that the whole world will be aware of his presence, when is the rapture going to happen? And we know that we don't know the day nor the time. But we also know that Jesus gives us signs that it's about to happen. And so a lot of people, based on Revelation chapter 7 and the masses coming into heaven out of the Great Tribulation, that in chapter 7 is actually the rapture. And so we call that a mid-trib rapture or a pre-wrath rapture. But we have to put our question marks. Are we sure the rapture is there? No, we are not sure. Some people, I was talking with somebody last week who grew up in a church that preached a pre-trib rapture. And they said, Jesus comes to get us before the entire tribulation begins because God wouldn't want his children to have to endure any of these things. So he comes to get us long before the tribulation, or right before the tribulation starts. So you don't have to worry about that, which is a nice thought. And there's a lot of schools of thought, particularly Baptist thought, that glom onto that. And they're like, yeah, that's got to be true. The problem is there is zero textual evidence to support this. None. You can do some gymnastics and try to convince yourself that things allude to it, but they don't. So I'm hoping with you in a pre-tribulation rapture, but the text does not support that at all. I really think that the text supports a mid-tribulation pre-wrath rapture. If I had to guess, that's what I would guess. I wouldn't bet you any more than a Chick-fil-A sandwich on it, because I could be wrong, but that would be my guess. But see, if you do go like I asked you to and read Matthew chapter 24, and you do it with an open mind, what you're going to see is that Matthew chapter 24 makes it pretty tough not to believe in a post-trib rapture. I'll write Revelation 7 here. You read Matthew chapter 24 and you're like, well gosh, it really feels like people are getting saved right up to the end and that God is waiting right up until the very end where he's still tormenting his children, and then he pulls them out. And so I texted a friend of mine, another guy who knows Revelation well, and I'm like, man, I think I'm mid-trib, but I read Matthew 24, and it sure seems like post-trib is a thing. And he said, yeah, no matter how well all the puzzle pieces go together, there's still always gonna be some left out. And so that's the fun of Revelation. So which is it? I don't know. But I've just explained to you almost literally everything I know about whether, when that is going to be. So these things occur prior to the silence in heaven, prior to the wrath of God, I think likely prior to the rapture. And as far as the timeline of these events, okay, the tribulation is seven years. So this portion, the seals, is three and a half years. Happens over the course of three and a half years. So do these horses come down together? I don't know. When does the earthquake come in relation to the horses? I'm really not sure. But these events happen over the course of three and a half years. And then these events happen over the course of three and a half years. So you can see that once the wrath of God starts, that things really begin to pick up in pace. Which tells me, if you look over here to the bowls, in the second bowl, the sea is turned into blood and is unusable. Subsequent to that, all the fresh water is turned to blood and is unusable. Which means if you're here during the tribulation and God hasn't yet raptured us and you have a lake house and all the oceans get turned to blood, you probably want to get in a couple of weekends because like your lake's not going to be usable here pretty soon. All right. I'm just, that's just a freebie. Try to enjoy the tribulation, make the most of it. After the silence in heaven, seven angels are given trumpets and they begin to blow their trumpets. And then very quickly, you guys have this on your paper. The first one is hail and fire and it renders a third of the earth uninhabitable. The second is a burning mountain is thrown into the sea and a third of the ocean is rendered unusable. The third is a, it looks like a comet called Wormwood falls from the sky and renders a third of the water, fresh water unusable. If you know your C.S. Lewis, you know that Wormwood is the name of the demon in the screw tape letters. This is where he gets it from. And then the fourth trumpet is the sun is struck and one third of the heavenly light. So moon, stars, things like that are blacked out and we begin to lose the light in the heavens. Then after the fourth one, an eagle flies over heaven and says, whoa, whoa, whoa to those who remain. And these are then, these last three trumpets are also called the three woes. So if you're reading the book of Revelation and you're following through, I'm following the trumpets. I got them, I got them, the first trumpet, second trumpet, third trumpet, I'm following along. And then the woes start and you're like, whoa, I didn't know there was gonna be woes in the trumpets. Then they're the last three trumpets. So the first woe is the fifth trumpet and so on and so forth. That's how we can keep track of it. And it gets a little tricky because the second woe is the sixth trumpet and then we wait two chapters before we get to the third woe and the seventh trumpet. But this is when it starts to get particularly rough. At the fifth trumpet, God himself releases an angel named Apollyon, which is a fantastic name for a scary-sounding angel. And Apollyon has an army of locusts that come out of the earth. They look like locusts, they have tails like scorpions, and they sting humankind, and the sting torments you for five months. Why five months? I do not know. I guess God decided that four months was not enough and that six months was pushing it. I really don't know. Another question about numbers, a third, a third, a third. Why is it a third? Somebody asked me this earlier in the week. We're not sure about that either. What we do know is that when Satan fell, he took a third of the angels with him to form the demons, and that we see that depicted in Revelation chapter 10 when the tail of the dragon sweeps the stars out of the heavens and a third of them fall to the earth. And so it might just be in keeping with that, but I'm not sure that we can assign much significance to a third for those of you wondering. After Apollyon and the locusts torture us for five months, the four angels are released. This is pretty ominous. There's four angels, angels of war, sent from heaven, and the number of their troops, if you do the math, is 200 million. And they are sent to kill a third of mankind, which sounds terrible, which is why I thought this might be a good time to remind you of something that I've already pointed out that we see in Revelation 9, verse 20 and, I am convinced, experiencing the wrath of God are those who refuse to believe that it is the wrath of God. They obstinately refuse to bend the knee and to submit to our creator God. And so, if you're still around here and it seems terrible for the angels to come and kill a third of mankind, I agree with you. There's an out. All you have to do is ask for it. After that, there's an interlude. We see the scene that I just alluded to with the dragon and the woman and the baby. And then in chapter 11, the temple of heaven is opened. There's an earthquake and there's great hail. After the earthquake and the hail, out of the temple is a voice that says, pour out the bowls. There's seven bowls. These are the bowls of God's wrath. This is when it gets really bad. So the first bowl is painful sores for everyone who has the mark of the beast. In Revelation, we're told that there's a mark of the beast that you must get in order to buy and sell and trade goods. And so for everyone who has the mark of the beast and worships him, they get painful sores that torment them. We're going to talk more about the mark of the beast next week. I'm not going to belabor it this week. After that, the sea is turned to blood and then the freshwater is turned to blood. Then the sun scorches the earth. When the sun scorches the earth, it scorches the earth so badly that if you go outside, you catch on fire. It's really, really bad. And people cry out. And there's another time where the text stops and makes sure that we understand the people left here experiencing this are people who have not repented and refused to bow the knee. Okay? Then I just wrote dark kingdom. But what's going on here is this, if you've never heard it before, you might jot down this term, unholy trinity. The unholy trinity consists of the antichrist, the beast, which is probably Satan, and then a false prophet. That's the unholy trinity. We see them throughout the book of Revelation, and next week we'll talk about who they are, what they do, and why they exist. But they have, by this point, established a kingdom on earth, and God darkens everything over their kingdom. As a response to that dark ever heard of, you've ever heard, you've heard of the battle of Armageddon. Thanks to Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck in particular. We know this phrase Armageddon. This is where it happens. It's the battle to end all battles. Once Armageddon is done, God says in heaven, it is done. Which sounds a lot like Jesus on the cross saying it is finished. I'm just saying. There's the greatest earthquake the world has ever known. The great city, Jerusalem, is split into three. And 100 pound tribulation. And it's interesting to me, as I was kind of listing this out this week, this, the hail and the fire makes a third of the earth uninhabitable. It kind of impacts the whole earth. The painful sores seem like a progression of this. A third of the sea is rendered unusable. The whole sea is rendered unusable. Third of the fresh water, all of the fresh water. The sun is struck and now the sun scorches the earth. I don't know. I thought about trying to link Apollyon and the locusts to the dark kingdom. I don't know how to do it. I'm pretty sure it exists, okay, because it's so consistent in other places. But the four angels declare war on mankind, and then it's the war to end all wars, and then earthquake to earthquake. And so it's interesting to me that from the trumpets to the bowls, that God's wrath is progressive, that it gets worse, it builds, it's cyclically more severe. Even from the first, the four horsemen of the apocalypse bring these things in general upon the earth, and then it happens in more specific and worse ways as we go. And the cyclical nature of the worsening of this isn't dissimilar to other places in scripture, most notably the book of Judges, where if you read the book of Judges, it's three cycles of sin and reprisal and punishment and repentance, and then they fall back into sin, and the sin is worse, and so the punishment is worse, and the repentance is greater, and then it's worse and worse and worse. It's three different cycles until it ends in Israel being as evil as any nation that has ever existed. And so the cyclical nature of the process of the tribulation is not lost on me as it finalizes in the worst version of everything that God has already wrought. I think that's interesting and worth at least noting. And then we finish with the great earthquake. After this, in chapters 17 and 18, we see there's dialogue in heaven about what's about to happen next. And then in 19, the greatest scene in the history of history is the marriage supper of the Lamb and Jesus coming as returning conqueror. And I can't wait to preach about that in two weeks. And then after that, eternity begins with the new heaven and the new earth. We'll come back next week and we'll talk about the figures of the tribulation to try to understand those a little bit better. If you got a lot out of this morning, then I would expect that you would like next week. If you did not like this morning, I don't know what to tell you. Come in two weeks, please. That's going to be better than this. And any grace person will tell you if you don't come here often, this is not typical, but I wanted you guys to be able to understand the tribulation and the process of it. As I wrap up, I would simply say this, and I don't mean to open up more questions than I'm going to answer this morning, but in my own personal life, as I've been growing in this last year or so, I've been reflecting a lot on this idea that our God seems to be remarkably resistant to clarity. He doesn't seem to be overly interested in showing us exactly what to do and exactly when to do it. He doesn't seem to be overly interested in telling us what's going to happen and how it's going to happen. Should I take this job or should I not? Should we buy this house or should we not? How do we parent our kids? How do I fix my relationship? How do I honor my wife? How do I honor my husband? God gives us principles that largely leave us kind of lurching for what exactly is it, God, that you want us to do. And I think that that lurching is on purpose because in that groping in the dark, we learn to reach for God. We learn to hear him. We learn to be sensitive to his spirit. Our God is resistant to clarity because he wants you to be drawn to him in the unclarity. Which is why it's super interesting to me that God is so very clear about what's going to happen here. There is no place in the Bible that goes into this much detail at this length about what is going to happen. There are places in the Bible where we find this much detail, maybe a snippet of it here, but we don't find anywhere where God goes into this much detail for this length of time about exactly what's going to happen. And I think it's interesting that God chooses his wrath as a place to be crystal clear. And I think a smart Christian will wonder, well, why, God, are you so clear here? Why is it so important to you that we understand this with that level of clarity? And I would tell you, after a week of thinking about it, I don't know. But if you want to talk about this sermon in your small groups, that's the question I would begin with this week as you meet in your groups. Why is it, do you think, that God goes through that much trouble to give us that much clarity in a unique way about the end of time? Let's pray, and we'll worship together, and then we'll be done. Father, thank you so much for this morning. Thank you for who you are and the clarity that you give us. Lord, thank you for telling us what's coming. I pray that we would understand it better and in understanding that we would understand you. God, this may be complicated or dizzying for some, but I pray that you would create and maintain within all of us this burning desire to really understand you and your word. I pray that our spirits would actually be enlivened by learning more about you and what you've shared with us. Father, we thank you for your clarity here, and we ask that we would learn to properly deal with and process that. More than anything, God, if there is anybody within the sound of my voice who doesn't know you, who might be subject to that wrath, would they simply ask you to spare them? And in doing that, look forward to spending eternity in heaven with you, which is the whole point of the exercise anyway. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.

The Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. If you're joining us online, thank you for doing that. If you're catching up later in the week, we appreciate you following along. This is our third part in our series going through the book of Revelation. There's a lot of questions there, a lot of curiosity, a lot of mystery. And so I want to do the best that I can as we move through the series to help make Revelation more approachable and understandable for all of us, whether that means pulling back from the details and the weeds so that we can actually see the forest and get the point of this amazing book, or whether it means making it approachable so that we can actually understand what's happening throughout the book. Last week, my dad carried the weight for us. He did a phenomenal job. Many of you have said kind things to me about him, and I appreciate that. I was as surprised as the rest of us that he did such a good job. I was watching from the cabin that I was at going, huh, look at this. The dude's good at it. So that was really, really cool and a neat moment for us. So I appreciate you guys indulging that. And he did a good job talking about Revelation 4 and 5. And the point that he made was that God in chapter 4 is seated on the throne and that Jesus, the Lamb of God, is the one worthy to open the seals. That's what happens in 4 and 5. But there's a question that leads into the rest of the book of why is Jesus, as the Lamb of God, stepping forward to open a seal? What's the deal there? What's going on? And it's actually an important part in the narrative of Revelation, what's happening in 4 and 5. And basically, what's happening in 4 and 5 is that Jesus is stepping up to begin the tribulation period. This is when the tribulation begins. It's the official start of it. Now, some of you know that word tribulation. Others of you may not. Maybe we can define it. Maybe we kind of have a loose knowledge of what it is. But what Jesus is doing in Revelation 4 and 5 is he is beginning the tribulation period. And in Revelation chapters 6 through 17 describes this tribulation period. So the way that we're going to approach it as a church is for the next three weeks, we're going to talk about this together. This morning, we're going to define the tribulation. Next week, we're going to look at the events of the tribulation. And then the week after that, we're going to look at the signs in the tribulation. Because this is where it gets sticky. This is the tough part. Revelation 1 through 5, that's easy. We just did that. The last two sermons, Jesus comes back. Hooray. God establishes new heaven and new earth. Those are easy. These middle three, boy, they're tricky. They are tricky. This is where if you have questions, what does this mean? What happens? In what order? I'm genuinely interested in them. So this week or next week, as you're reading through Revelation, hopefully you're following along in the reading plan, or maybe there's been something rattling around for a long time. If there's something that you in particular want me to address and say, hey, this is how we understand this event, then let me know, email me. And I will absolutely, if I can't address it in the sermon, I'll figure out how to answer you personally. But I would love your questions because the thing is, if you're asking it, so are five other people, at least. So ask away and we'll kind of cobble this thing together over the next three weeks as we focus on this tribulation period. So this morning, I want to define the tribulation and what it is, and then ask, why is it necessary? So that's the first thing to think about. What is the tribulation and why is it necessary? Why does it have to happen? And the tribulation is quite simply, the most abrupt way to put it is, the tribulation is the seven-year process of God pouring out his earned wrath and reclaiming what is rightfully his. The tribulation process is a seven-year process of God pouring out his earned wrath on creation and reclaiming what is rightfully his. I will be up front with you and tell you, this sermon this week is the least excited to preach a sermon I have been in my life. Okay. I did not wake up going, yes, wrath of God. This is super fun in 2021. I'm actually getting on a plane this afternoon to go to Atlanta and just be around the stadium during the game in case they win tonight. And it is really hard for me to not focus on how excited I am for that and appropriately address the wrath of God in the service this morning. As we began the series, I knew that this was coming. And to me, it's the hardest part of Revelation. Not interpreting what's going to happen and trying to figure everything out, but for a 21st century audience, to actually, for us to wrap our head around the fact that our God is a wrathful God, that he is a just God. And so this morning, as I was preparing this week, I realized we can't really go on and discuss the events of the tribulation until we adequately understand the wrath of God that's seen in the tribulation. So when we ask, why is the tribulation necessary? Why is it necessary for God to pour out his wrath on his creation at the end of time? Well, the first answer that I would offer you is that God's wrath is necessary because his justice requires it. God's wrath is necessary because his justice requires it. My dad did a great job last week of defining holiness in a way that I had never thought of before when he was talking about the angels around the throne and they're singing to God. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. And what does that word holy mean? Well, he defined it as being the intersection of God's love and God's justice. That they are perfectly balanced in God. And we love God's love. We love God's love. But we don't talk a lot about God's justice. And the reality is that his person, his very essence, requires a balance of love and justice. And the further reality is we don't want a God creator sovereign over all of the universe who isn't just, who isn't capable of wrath. Our own sensibilities insist that our God would be just. Here's what I mean. The Braves are playing the Astros in the World Series. The whole country is a Braves fan right now because everybody hates the Astros, right? They are the patriots of baseball. Everyone hates them. Now, here's why everyone hates the Astros. For those of you who don't know baseball and may not be informed about this, back in 2017, the Astros had a great season and a great team, and they won the World Series. And they kind of came out of nowhere when they did it, and I think they may have won the next year or the year previous, I'm not sure, but two years around 2017, they won the World Series. And it was kind of fun, because they were kind of a cool team, and they were kind of fun to cheer for. But then it came out that they were cheating. Like, not cheating a little bit. They were cheating a lot of it. And that's how they won those two World Series. And then what happened was, what did baseball do? What did the commissioner do? Did the commissioner bring wrath and justice upon the Astros? No, he'd like find the owner and I think the coach got in trouble. But none of the players who actually cheated got punished. And so everyone hates the Astros because it wasn't fair. It's not right. They cheated, they got caught, and nothing happened to them. And our senses of justice cry out and say, that's not fair. To the extent that, and I was so proud of my hometown, when their best player came up to bat in game three of the World Series, first time he had to play in Atlanta, the whole stadium broke out with chants of cheater, cheater, cheater. I'm like, yes, this is great. Our sense of justice is offended when things are not fairly litigated. To think about it in a more applicable personal way. Parents, if somebody did something to genuinely harm your child in a way that requires you to be in court and to prosecute them. And they are absolutely guilty. How offended would you be if the judge did not display justice and said, you know what? That wasn't you. You didn't mean it. You're off the hook. No, we want a just judge in the same way we want a just God. His nature requires it. And our senses of fairness and justice demand it. The uncomfortable side of that justice is his wrath. And make no mistake, when you read the middle sections of the book of Revelation, it reads very much like the Old Testament prophets. Two times in the book of Revelation, the phrase, the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God is used. In Revelation 19, when Jesus comes back, it says that he is going to tread the press of the fury of the wrath of God, which tells us that God's wrath does not only exist, but it is furious. We are told at a different point that God will send an angel with a sickle to take a third of humanity like grapes and put them in a wine press and press them with his fury and his wrath. The wrath of God in Revelation is unavoidable. And to pretend like it's not there is dishonest and unfair. So we have to come to grips with this existence and learn how to accept that this is a part of the God that we worship. To do that, I think that we can listen to the voices of the martyrs in Revelation chapter 6 to begin not only to understand that God's justice requires wrath and that we want a just God, but also to begin to understand the source of this wrath. It's helpful to listen to the voice of the martyrs in Revelation 6. This to me is one of the more poignant moments in all of scripture, and I'll tell you why in a second. Revelation chapter 6 verses 9 through 11. So there's this poignant scene in heaven. As Jesus begins to open the seals, and if you don't understand what the seals are, that's all right. We're going to talk about those next week. The rest of Revelation is scheduled out through seven seals, seven trumpets, seven bowls. And we're going to talk about that progression next week. But for this one, as this seal was opened, then there's martyrs under the throne at the altar of God. And these martyrs are men and women who have died for their faith. They were killed because they professed a faith in God. And they cry out, how much longer are you going to wait before you avenge us, God? We were killed for you. You saw the people from heaven. You know who murdered us. When are you going to punish the people who are harming your children? And this voice, the voice of the martyrs, echoes. And it echoes particularly with the original audience. Because I told you in week one that the people who received this letter endured great persecution. The generations of the church that immediately followed this time around 90, 95 AD endured tremendous persecution. To be a Christian, to proclaim and claim the gospel of faith in Jesus was to put your life at risk, was to put your family at risk. So the people reading this letter and receiving it, they cried out with the martyrs too. Yeah, God, win. How much longer? And here's how much longer before you avenge. You saw them take our dad. You saw them kill our mom. You saw them take my wife. When are you going to make that okay? And if we pay attention, what we see is that we cry out with the martyrs as well. We also cry out with the martyrs. Paul talks about this in Romans when he says in Romans chapter 8 that all of creation groans for the return of our king. When we have that sense that this isn't right, most of you know that part of mine and Jen's story is that at the end of last year, her dad lost a two-year battle to pancreatic cancer. Her dad was the best man I ever knew. And I will always be sad that Lily doesn't get to experience the glow of his love in her life. I will always be sad that his grandson will only get to meet him in eternity. And so we cry out, God, he loved you. He served you. He loves his grandkids. He cried when we told him that we were pregnant because he knew we wouldn't meet that one. How is this okay with you? And that's just ours. You guys have it too. Where you cry out with the martyrs. God, you could have done something and you didn't. When are you going to fix it? When are you going to make this okay? How are you going to make this right? And it's not an insistent thing. It's not a precocious thing. We don't walk into the throne room of God and demand. We sit at the altar and we humbly wonder and plea like, God, how much longer are you going to watch this? And we need to realize that that voice has been echoing throughout the centuries, not just for the things that we endure that seem unfair or seem like God could have prevented it and he didn't, but for all the things going on over the course of history. God sat in heaven and he watched the Holocaust. And the voice of the martyr says, God, how much longer? He sat in heaven and he watches the slave trade. That still exists. And we think, how much longer, God? He's seen the atrocities of people claiming his name in the Crusades. Evil meted out over an entire continent, falsely claiming him. How much longer, God? So at the beginning, when I define the tribulation as God pouring out his earned wrath, that's what I mean. He's been waiting. He is angered by the evil things that happen. He is angered and hurt by school shootings. He is angered that our sin has broken down the world in such a way that we lose people too early from disease. He's angered by that. He's hurt by that, that Satan has been loosed into his perfect creation and the people who listen to his voice, including us, have perverted it and made it something that it is not. He's angered by that. He's angered by us when we trample on his gospel and we presume upon his grace and we act like our actions have no consequences because we're so used to hearing about the love of God that we forget about the wrath of God. And it angers him. God says that vengeance is his, and he will take it. He's simply waiting. And when the martyrs ask him, how much longer are you going to wait to do, as I always say, to make the wrong things right and the sad things untrue? When will that happen, God? His response is, rest a little while longer because there's still more to be added to your numbers. It's not time yet, but it's coming. And so we see in listening to the voice of the martyrs and in seeing the response of God that part of the necessity of God's wrath and his tribulation is that God's wrath is actually working to draw people to him. His wrath is working to wake people up and to draw them into his eternity. If there are still martyrs who have yet to be added to the number in Revelation chapter six, then what it means is there are people in the tribulation period actively sharing their faith so that more people might know Jesus, so that more people might spend eternity in heaven. If you flip the page to the next chapter, what you see is a mass of humanity being ushered into heaven. And John leans over to the angel next to him and he goes, who are they? And he says, those are all the people who have accepted Christ who are coming out of the tribulation. God is using his wrath as a tool to wake people up and draw them near to him. And if that sounds like a contradiction, then let's think of it this way. In our house, we try to be calm. I try, best I can, not to raise my voice. Except at Jen. Boy, howdy. I really get after Jen. I'm just messing around. I try not to raise my voice. Now, sometimes, Lily, she's five. She's very much like me. And so, I can't help it. But most of the time, I'm pretty calm with her. And the reason I try not to raise my voice is, first of all, I want to set that model for her. But second, I want it to matter when I do. We raise our voice all the time. Eventually, I mean, you can see these kids. They're in the store. Their mom's yelling at them. They couldn't care less. Because mom yells at them all the time. So I want it to matter when I raise my voice. Because when I raise my voice to Lily, sometimes I do it because it's the only thing left that's going to get her attention. Right, parents? I tell her to stop. Don't do that. Put that down. We're not going to talk about that. I try to be as calm as I can. But sometimes I have to get stern with her. And when I get stern with her, I'm doing it to get her attention. Because what I'm saying matters. The same is true of God. Sometimes God has to get stern with his children because he's been trying to get our attention in other ways and we're not listening. So sometimes God gets forceful with us because you parents know if you pick your moments there, you can really get your kids' attention simply by being more stern with them. So God also knows, and we see it in the Old Testament, that sometimes to get the attention of His people, He raises His voice. He does not do it to intimidate or scare us, although that should be our reaction. He does it to draw us near to him, to get our attention. He does it because his biggest priority in all of creation is that you and I would spend eternity with him. That's why Paul writes that even though we endure pain for a little while, he considers it nothing compared to the glory that he's going to experience in eternity. It's nothing. It doesn't matter. So is God, and Jesus tells us, listen, if your eye's causing you to sin, gouge it out. It's better to enter into heaven with one eye than it is to have both eyes and not be in eternity with God. So sometimes God uses his wrath and his stern voice to get our attention because his priority is that we would spend eternity with him. This may be why Solomon writes in Proverbs chapter 9 that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Many of you have probably heard this verse before. And when I was growing up and we would come across this verse, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, we were kind of told that fear there is an awe, it's a respect. It's not being afraid of our Heavenly Father because our Heavenly Father is good. It's being in awe of Him, and that's the beginning of wisdom. No, no, no. It's being fall on your face, terrified of the Father. It's actual fear. On the holiday that we celebrate fear, this is actual fear. Being fearful of our almighty God creator in heaven. Being scared of what he can do to us if he were to so choose. Being actually fearful of him. Reading through the wrath of God that will be poured out on creation and going, that sounds terrible. And God goes, yeah, because here's the thing. As we go through Revelation and we see God's wrath meted out on creation, please understand, the only people who experience God's wrath are the ones who don't believe in it. The only people who experience the wrath of God are the ones who have said, please God, or the ones who have not said, please God, spare me. At any point, if we look to God and we say, God, you're God and I'm not, and I trust you, please spare me your wrath. He does. The only ones left to experience the wrath at the end of the tribulation, I am convinced, are those who have chosen obstinately to refuse to submit to God in faith. And so he pours out his wrath. And he pours out his wrath because God in his goodness sent his son to rescue us up to heaven to spend eternity with him. And we obstinately, some of us choose to not believe in the son that he sent. Instead, we spit on it. Instead, we don't believe it. Instead, we pass it off like a fairy tale. And one day, every knee will bow before our God in heaven. And the only ones who will experience God's wrath are the ones that have to be forced to bow. And it is not, to me, until we understand that, that we can begin to appreciate God's love for us. This is why wisdom begins in, oh no, God created the universe and I'm terrified of him. And God says, good, but guess what? I created it so that you could spend eternity with me and I love you. And all you have to do to be spared from that wrath is ask me. As I sank into this topic for this week, I began to reflect on the wrath of God. It actually occurred to me, something that I've long understood, but something that fits very well into this sermon and this idea right now, which is it is impossible to adequately appreciate God's love without being in awe of his wrath. It is impossible to adequately appreciate God's love without being in awe of his wrath. And I think it's actually good for us to take a Sunday and confront the fact that our God is just and his justice necessitates wrath. And for us to exist and tremble and for us to hear it said, yeah, we want to be as nice as possible to everyone, but one day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess. And you do not want to be made to bow against your will. We submit to God now and we spend eternity with him later. And I think it's good for us to sink into that reality because we talk a lot about the love of God and we should. We talk about our good, good father and we should and we talk about his grace and we talk about his forgiveness and we talk about his mercy and we should. Those things are good and trust me, I like preaching about those things way more. But I think that sometimes we talk so much about God's love for us that we forget he has every right to smite us. All the times that we've trampled on the gospel. All the times that I've presumed upon God's grace, knowing he would forgive me. All the times I've cheapened the blood of Christ on the cross with my action and my attitude and my obstinance. We were in here on Tuesday morning for Bible study and I was sitting right here and over there was a roach. And I noticed it and Shane noticed it, but it was a roach. And we're like, whatever, I didn't care. It was like 620. Live it up, roach. But when Britt Vinson, who was dressed up like a cowboy that day, noticed it. You like that, Kyle? Okay. All right, pal. There you go. I love Kyle. When Britt Vinson in his cowboy boots saw the roach, he got up. That was the end of that roach. We live our lives as if God can't do that to us. We live our lives as if that's not a daily reality. And we live our lives as if it would somehow be unfair if he did. When it's not. The most fair and just thing for him to do is to take us. Is to die for our sin. That is the most just thing. But because his incredible love balances his incredible justice, he sent his son so he doesn't have to smite us, and we walk around acting like that's not a reality when it is. And so it's good for a Sunday for us to sink into the wrath of God and to appreciate it. Because I wonder about me and maybe about you if we feel stagnant in our walk with the Lord. If we heard Steve talk about being on fire for Jesus and it's been a while since we have experienced that. If we give mental assent to the fact that God loves us, but we are not warmed by it daily and overwhelmed by the magnitude of the grace of his love for us, maybe it's in part because we haven't sat and thought for a minute in a long time about the wrath that his love is balancing out. About what he's sparing us from. About what it means for him to have every right to claim us and choose in his goodness not to. So my hope and my prayer this week has been that by focusing on God's wrath, it would actually inexplicably draw us closer to him and help us more deeply appreciate the love that he lavishes upon us and the things that John writes, like from his fullness he has bestowed upon us grace upon grace. I hope we can appreciate those sentiments a little more deeply today and feel God's love a little more closely today by reflecting on his tremendous wrath as well. Let's pray. God, thank you for your justice. Thank you for your terrible and furious wrath. We know that we would not want a God that was not capable of those things, whose character didn't require them. Father, I pray that if anyone can hear my voice, whether it's today or in the future, who doesn't know you, who has not bowed their knee, I pray that they would cry out to you today. That they would claim Jesus as their Savior and you as their Father. That they would simply ask to be spared of your wrath, which you are so anxious to do. God, would we be brought more close to you? And God, would we walk more fearfully of you? To give us a greater depth of appreciation of your love for us. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

The Good morning, Grace Raleigh. How are you doing? It's good to see you today. I'm Dale Rector, Nathan's dad, and I am glad to be with you today. Hang in there for a minute. It's going to be a journey. I've got two Bibles. It's a long sermon. So just bear with me. Maybe it'll go quickly if we try. But I want to say something to the Grace Raleigh family first, and that is thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Not just for moving my son out of my basement four and a half years ago, but for loving him, loving his beautiful wife, Jen, our precious, precious grandchildren, Lily, and now John. And we are so grateful for you. Within the sound of my voice are those of you who will volunteer and step up and will do something to minister to my family and to my kids. And I can't thank you enough. You will do life together. You will laugh together. You'll cry together. You'll tell them the word of God together. You'll grow together. And I couldn't think of a better place for my family than here. So thank you very much, Grace Raleigh. When I was a child, I was given this Bible to me by my grandparents. 1969. I was 11 years old, and they gave me this Bible, and of course, this King James Bible. But Matthew chapter 24 is perhaps the most read portion of this Bible during my young adult life. In Matthew chapter 24, if any of you don't remember or recall, it is the place in which the disciples asked Jesus, what are the signs of the end times? What are those signs? And when is your return? If you pay attention and read Matthew chapter 24 this week, you will see it mirrored and imaged in Revelation chapter 6 next week with Nathan. So pay attention to that. We were crazy about eschatology. What's that? That's the study of the end times. And we dove in and we heard sermon after sermon. In fact, we predicted that Jesus would come back in 1988. There was a book that was written that said 88 reasons why Jesus would come back in 1988. And I'm like, wow, really? It didn't happen. It didn't occur. He still hasn't returned. And it seemed like over the years, the eschatology speeches and the study of Revelation got to be a little quiet and a little silent because most people were wrong. Most people, when they tried to predict something or say what this means, they were wrong. I have another Bible in front of me. This Bible was stolen by, it's not a Gideon Bible. It was stolen by my son four and a half years ago when he came up to here at Grace Raleigh. And four and a half years ago, he took this Bible that I had as a high school student, and I never had a chance to write in it and to say something in it, you know, sappy and meaningful like, you know, the greatest ever, the great Nate, you know. I love you dearly, the best dad you've ever had. Nothing like that at all. I don't have the words. Until I was preparing for this sermon, I thought, I have the perfect words. And to my son Nathan, this is true. That's it. This is the word of God. In Genesis, we see the tree of life. In Revelation, we see the tree of life. In Exodus, we see the ark of the covenant. In Revelation, we see the ark of the covenant. In Joel, we see the Ark of the Covenant. In Revelation, we see the Ark of the Covenant. In Joel, we see the trumpet sounds, and the day of the wrath of the Lamb has come. In Joel chapter 2 and chapter 3. In Revelation chapter 7, we see the trumpet sound, and the day of the wrath of the Lord and the Lamb comes. In Daniel, we see the exact specific days of the tribulation period. In Revelation, we see the exact same specific days in that book as well. Over and over and over again, if you fall in love with the Old Testament, you'll fall in love with Revelation because it all ties together. It all links together. It's true. It's right. It's God's word. It's what he wants us to have. So I'm grateful for you guys and your study of the word. And I'll be going into Revelation chapter four. If you have your Bibles, you can turn there. But basically, you know, when Doug got up a couple weeks ago and he spoke, I thought to myself, Doug, it's really kind of funny and hilarious that you were given one verse. I was given the two easiest chapters in the entire book of Revelation, and you'll see how easy it is in a minute. But chapter 4 is a mirror image of Ezekiel chapter 1. And if you have Ezekiel 1 and you study it later, you'll see this same throne room of God. But John, 90-year-old John, is caught up into heaven. And he's caught up into heaven. And on the Lord's day, he's in the spirit. And whose voice does he hear? Jesus. He says, John, come up here. I have some things I want to show you. I have some things I want you to see. And he shows him where dad sits, where God the Father has a throne. And there's this throne. It's a majestic throne. And on the throne is a brownish image. It's an image of God. It is God. And it looks brown. And it's got an emerald rainbow around its head. Ezekiel says there are fire and metal around his waist. And there's lightnings and thunders that come from the throne of God and go out, and there's a brightness and a brilliance and a wonderment. The throne is set on a firmament of solid water and glass, and it looks still, Still to indicate the comfort and the sovereignty of God. And that's the picture we see of the throne room of God. And around the throne is 24 elders and four cherubims. And we get all enthralled with the brilliance, with the majesty, with the wonder, with the glorious look of the throne of God. And we forget what the point is. What is the point of Revelation chapter 4? It's so simple. It's so easy. Theologians miss it. They like to describe everything that's in here. And I'm going to tell you this, and you're going to go, well, that's not that bright. What's the point of the throne of God? God is on the throne. That's it. God is on the throne. He is on the throne. When Joseph was in prison, captive, God was on the throne. When the children of Israel spent 400 years in captivity, God was on the throne. When the first Passover came and the blood was put on the doorpost of every Jewish family and the death angel passed through and spared those children, God was on the throne. When Moses led the children of Israel out of captivity and 40 days became 40 years, God was on the throne. When Moses was put to the side and went up to the mountain and wasn't allowed to go to the promised land, Joshua went into the promised land with the children of Israel, and God was on the throne. City by city, they took over. Promised to them, to the father Abraham. And the Jews possessed the promised land, they possessed the Canaan land, and God was still on the throne. The period of judges came. We had a few good kings with a bunch of bad kings. We had a dispersion of the nation of Israel. The temple was destroyed. Again, the nation of Israel was taken back to captivity to Babylon this time, and God was still on the throne. They came back to Israel. 400 years of silence. Jesus was born. And Jesus was born of a virgin, came to this planet, and lived in the filth that Satan and we created. And God was still on the throne. The thorns were placed upon his brow. The blood came down. His hands were pierced with the nails. He was hung on the cross, and he cried out, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani, which means, my God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? God was still on the throne. He couldn't look on his son because of our sin, but he was on the throne. Remember that. At that Passover, he was on the throne. Jesus was put into the grave. Three days later, God said, come forth. He came forth. God was still on the throne. 47 days, he appeared to 500 people at one time and then ascended into heaven. And guess what? God was still on the throne. He was still there. Still in control. Still in charge. Now what happens from here? What happens from here? Well, we have 11 of the 12 apostles martyred. John sees 60 years go by. And 60 years go by and he's caught up into heaven on the Lord's day. He thought he died and went to heaven, but he didn't. He was in the spirit. And guess what he saw? Revelation chapter four, God on the throne. Now what's going to happen in Revelation chapter 6 and following is nothing more than a full court press, nothing more than a reclamation process in which God reclaims stolen property. And he comes back and he takes what's rightfully his to redeem the last person who will say yes to Jesus and to say no to Satan and to crush Satan underneath our feet is what Romans says. And guess what? During everything you encounter in the next few weeks with Revelation, as good and as bad as it may seem, God's still on the throne. He is there. He hasn't left. He hasn't abrogated his position. He hasn't vacated it. He's still there. Through your cancer, through your COVID, through your disappointment, through abandonment, through your addictions, through your loss of family, loss of loved ones, to the loss of a young child. Everything that this world can throw at us and this world system can throw at us, God is still on the throne. That's chapter four. Now you say, well, what are the four cherubims? Everyone wants to know about the four cherubims and who are they and where'd they come from? And at this point in the sermon, I would say, who cares, right? Because God's on the throne no matter what. But we've got this curiosity about us. Have we seen the four cherubims before? Yes, we have, Ezekiel 1. The question is not what are the four cherubims, but where is God? You see, when the four cherubims show up, you would expect to see God, because God made these cherubims, angelic beings, if you will, looked like a human, had four sides to their head, the one of a man, the one of an ox, the one of an eagle, the one of a lion, and they looked weird to us, but we've never seen them. And John saw them and described them is exactly how Ezekiel described them in Ezekiel chapter 1. And these are around the throne of God. They move in unison around the throne of God. They're all together, the four cherubims, angelic beings. And I've got this to say about what the faces represent. And most people are guessing. And I'm guessing as well. But the faces represent the very essence of God. You see, we are made in the image of God. When I picture God, I think of a man. The descriptions of God, he has a head and face and hands and so forth. So I think these angelic beings meant to reflect the very essence of God, which is man, which is one of the faces you see. The other faces you see is the very essence of God as creation. And I think he made what he likes. You become that which you worship. And these four creatures, these four cherubims, wherever they go, they're around the throne of God. Can you imagine someone watching you 24-7, 365? I challenge you. Follow Nathan around 24-7. You may all leave the church. I hope you don't. I hope you stay with it. Jen's got a lot of love. We were so grateful for her. But for 24-7, 365, these angelic beings are around the throne of God. And you know what they say? It's recorded in Revelation chapter 4 and verse 8. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come. What is holiness? What does that mean? Holiness is the intersection of love and justice. It is the attribute of attributes. It's the attribute that contains all the other attributes. It's where love and justice collide. Everything, God's mercy, God's long-suffering, God's love, God's justice, is all wrapped up in this perfect word called holiness. It means different, different, different. Unique, unique, unique. There's never been anything like God. There'll never be anything like God ever again. He is holy. He is different all unto himself. The perfect amount of love is sprinkled with the perfect amount of justice at the right time, in the proportion in the right way. It is God's way and he is holy. So who am I? Who am I to question the character of God? I think it's funny. Each of us periodically do this little thing, which is wrong, but we do it anyways because we're human. Well, if I were God, I would zap them. Right? I mean, just think of it. When I'm driving down the road in traffic, you know, it's like, okay, here it comes. I believe half the people on the planet would be gone if I was God. Really. My wife knows that's true. You can't, you did what? Come on, man. But we sit there and we judge God through our lenses and through our eyes and from our limited perspective and we say, God, why didn't you exercise justice quicker? Hitler. Six million Jews died. We sit in amazement and say, well, God, if you'd just zapped them a little earlier, we wouldn't have had six million Jews die. And we question God's patience and long-suffering. And then when he does zap somebody, we go, man, that was mean. I can't believe God did that. What's going on here? So, you see, we can't do that. Whenever God acts, God acts in perfectness of love and justice all the time. There's a second group of people around the throne. It was the 24 elders. People have said it represents 12 apostles and 12 representatives from the tribe of Israel. They're wrong. I'm amazed at how wrong theologians can be. And when you study commentaries, be careful. Be careful. The way I study Revelation is in light of what it says in other parts of the Bible. Because some people have a bent on how it should play out. Well, I believe in this, and I believe in that. Well, I believe in the Word of God, and I'm going to let the Word of God just speak to me and say, what does it say to you? It's not Mother Teresa, it's not Billy Graham, it's not the Stanley brothers, you know, it's not Charles Stanley, it's not Andy Stanley, it's not any leaders, it's not any brilliant, it's definitely not me, definitely not my son. We're not one of the 24. What are they? Angelic beings. Well, how do you know that? Job 38, 7, where God is basically, if you will, talking to Job and saying, where were you when I created? You remember that? And Job 38.7 says, when the morning stars were put into place, when the planets were made and the solar systems were made, The sons of God rejoiced. Yes. The angels were there during creation to prove what the Savior did in creation. And these are nothing more than angelic beings that have some authority and some leadership. Why do you say that? Well, I say it because of what is in Revelation chapter 4 and verse 11. You created all things, and by your will they exist and were created. That's what they said. They're not puppets. They saw it. They were there. Hebrews 11.3 says, You mean the law of thermodynamics is wrong? In this case, it is. God created something out of nothing. He created that which is seen out of nothing. Well, that just doesn't compute with science. I love the faith of a child. Don't you? I love my grandkids. I mean, you can tell them almost anything and they believe it, right? And some of you think they have been duped in believing that Jesus is real and the Bible is real and they just haven't learned enough yet. When you walk a child through salvation and through that experience in following God, they look at you and they believe it. They trust you and trust you what you're going to say. Then they start trusting the word of God. Then they start trusting the teacher. Then they start trusting the preacher. And it says right in here the word of God that God created. Well, you know what? That's good enough for me. I don't care if it takes you 4.5 billion years to get there. I don't care. God could speak and it could happen. Well, science says this. Who cares? I believe what it says. He made us. He created us. And the reason we don't like to believe in a creation is because we don't want to be subject to God. But the whole thing hinges on his creating us. Because he made us and therefore he owns us and we're subject to him. Now, as an older adult, and this church has a lot my age and older, we kind of return back to that simple faith. That simple time that we had as children. And we sit there and we go, yeah, okay, I get it. Scientists have changed the age of the earth 18 times since I was born. Maybe they just don't know. Maybe they weren't there. And I'm telling you, the reason I believe it is because if I believe God existed in the four walls of my brain and that was it, I'm in big trouble, buddy. I really am. I mean, really, seriously. I get up from my easy chair, I go to the other room, and I wonder why I was there. Right? Hey, honey, would you bring the crackers back? You forgot the crackers again. What about the pudding? Well, I ate the pudding in the kitchen. Did you leave the light on? I don't know. Where's your phone? I don't know. Is it on silent? I don't know. And right now, all of you are thinking, I need to check my phone. You leave the house and you say, did I close the garage? Did I close the garage? You drive back, it's closed. You didn't believe yourself. I mean, this is fun. I mean, this is a blast getting old. And the older I get, the bigger God gets. Nathan, when he was of age to go to college, and we were grateful, my wife and I were both crying. We were crying for different reasons. When he went off to college, he went to Auburn. Not my pick. I picked a Bible college. I said, you should go to Bible college for one year. He didn't necessarily want to be a preacher. And he said, no, I'm going to Auburn. Why? Why do kids do that? Because they know more than you, right? They're smarter than you. They've got this thing figured out. So he went off to Auburn and I said to him, son, I've got one requirement for you and one only. And he says, what's that, dad? This is going to be pretty easy. I said, yeah, it's really easy. When you return from college, I want you to be dumber. And he looks at me, dumber? You want me to be dumber? Yes. He says, why dad? I said, well, right now, you know everything in the world. When you finish your first year, I want you to know a little less and I want you to be dumb again. I checked with him a few weeks ago and I said to him these words, son, the older I get, the bigger God gets. The more miraculous he gets, the more wondrous he gets. And he said, dad, I think the exact same thing. And I'm like, yes, he's dumb again. I like it. John 1 says, That's John 1. The triune God created mankind. We were created in the image of God. And in chapter 5, we see a segue to the right hand of the throne of God, and it is on the right hand of the throne of God you see a scroll. It looked nothing like this. This is the best we could do. And the scroll represented the title deed to planet Earth. And the title deed would be opened one seal at a time. And you had a seal, you opened it, you read it. You had another seal, you opened it, you unscrolled what was written. Had writing on the outside and writing on the inside. The writing on the outside was a person authorized to take the scroll from God the Father, from his right hand. And on the inside was the playbook to the end of the earth, to the reclamation of this planet and us back to our rightful position where he makes all the wrong things right. It's the playbook. It's the rest of the book of Revelation, what was in the Father's right hand. And there was a search in heaven as to the person who was worthy to take the scroll out of the Father's right hand and then loose the seals that were there. And John, 90-year-old John, weeped bitterly. He wept bitterly. Why? It's conjecture on my part, but can you imagine for a 60-year period of time between when Jesus ascended into heaven and when John was called back up into heaven, 60 years had passed. When you became a believer in the New Testament church era, first and second century, it was a death sentence. It was a sentence by which you would die. So John had led and given the gospel out to the ends of the earth and basically had seen his friends die. 11 out of the 12 apostles died and John and John alone only remained. And I can imagine, because I have doubts as an old person, always I have doubts, and I sit there and I go, is this really true? Is this word of God really true? Is this right? And John, I felt like, he thought for a moment, what if Jesus is not coming back to reclaim stolen property? What if this is all in vain? What if those people died in vain? And what I've been saying for 60 years is wrong. What then? What are we going to do? The angel of the Lord said to John, John, there's no crying in heaven. We don't cry up here. Dry it up, buddy. Something like that. And the angel said, behold, the lion of the tribe of Judah, of the root of David. Whoa. Wait a minute. To a Jewish boy. That meant something. That meant something. The lion of the tribe of Judah. The root of David. That was the Messiah. That was the Messiah they expected to come the first time. And rescue him for all the pain. And set up his kingdom. This is the Messiah they expected to come the first time and rescue him for all the pain and set up his kingdom. This is the Messiah. This is the one I've been waiting for. This is the guy, the lion of the tribe of Judah. And when John saw between the throne of God and the cherubims that were around the throne, he saw this figure. And it was a figure as a lamb that was slain. Wow. The lamb that was slain. Now wait a minute. Let that sink in a little bit. You mean it's not pretty picture book Jesus with the nice flowing hair, all his hair, with a nice face, a nice body, fit body? You mean it wasn't that Jesus? No. It was a Jesus from 60 years ago he recognized on the cross with the crown of thorns, the nails in his hand. It was a lamb as if it was slain. He had the scars that he got from the crucifixion. And John, I believe his countenance probably changed from tears to gladness, recognizing that the Savior he had followed for 60 years was really true. It was really right. It was the right thing. This was the lamb that was slain because he saw the marks. You see, you can debate the resurrection all you want, but it happened. You can debate creation, but it happened. You can debate how God is going to come back. It's going to happen. Jesus was around with 500 people at one time. There's no scientist on this planet that has the key for that. Nobody has the key for that except God. Without the resurrection of Jesus Christ, there is no hope. Let's go watch football. Let's go play. Let's go eat. But we exist because of the resurrection. We are the Easter people. We do celebrate. Every week, the new church celebrated the resurrection of Christ because it was such a miracle. And John, 60 years later, saw that same Jesus in front of him and was just overwhelmed with joy and gladness. That is the resurrected Christ. Now, the disciples, I believe, had their marching order in a couple places in the New Testament. One is found in Matthew chapter 16. There's a location that's in northern Israel called Caesarea Philippi. And at Caesarea Philippi, there was this, what is called the gates of hell. I'm allowed to say that in church because it says it in the Bible, the gates of hell. And what was that place? It was a cave, and me and Nathan were there in 2014. It was a place where people came to worship false, dead gods. It was a place where they came to do unspeakable atrocities, things that were wrong, to try to please these false gods, dead gods. And Jesus had the boys there in such a wicked, vile place with all these gods and the pan-god, and he says to them this something very simple, who do these people say that I am? Who do they say that I am? Well, you're Elijah. You're John the Baptist. You're a righteous dude, right? You're a good person. And then Jesus stopped them and said, no, no, no, no, no. And this is the question of questions that everyone must answer. But whom do you say that I am? Whom do you say that I am? Whom do you say that I am? And I love Peter. Peter finally got it right with all boldness, with all everything in his gut. And I believe the decibel level got really high. And he said, thou art the Christ, the son of the living God. And what did Jesus say? Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed it to you, but my Father which is in heaven. And upon this rock moment came back in every one of the apostles' mind as the ascension of Christ occurred, as they gathered together, as Jesus conquered death, as we see him overcoming death and overcoming all obstacles. They were worried that they would die too, but now they weren't worried. Why? Because Jesus came to life. And when Jesus came to life, they approached Pentecost with a fervor and an intensity that they never had before. And that intensity, I think, they kind of looked like, after the ascension, I think they kind of looked a little like William Wallace. Braveheart. You know the story. Every time I see this, I think of Peter. That's William Wallace. What happened to William Wallace? He died. Hey, you guys don't know what I'm referring to. Google it. In Google, we trust. So just Google it. You'll find out what Braveheart is. He lost his life for the cause. And Peter died, crucified, upside down, dying for the cause. 11 out of the 12 died and were martyred because of what happened. You know what we need today in the church? We need more William Wallaces. We need people that are willing to die for the cause. You know, we just kind of want them to show up to live for the cause, let alone die for it. And why has it become so hard and so different? 2,000 years later, what happened to our intensity? What happened to our focus? I've got a hero of mine. His name is Randy Rye. Randy was a preacher. He left his church because of illness. He was supposed to have died eight times. He's got cancer. He's got organs that shut down. A couple weeks ago, he texted me and said, pray for me. I've got pneumonia. I'm hoping it's not COVID. If he gets COVID, he may die. It may be a death sentence for him. Randy, everywhere, he has no money. He has two nickels to rub together. But he loves the Lord with all intensity. And you know what he does? Everywhere he goes, he says to the doctors, to the nurses, to the patients without hope, he says, I want to tell you about Jesus. And I don't know a better place than in a hospital to tell somebody and get them prepared for eternity. But that guy, he approaches the gates of hell and he says, I'm going to tell this last person about Jesus. In our offices, God is there. Tell people about Jesus. Now, how can we do that today? How can we be the person with intensity today that lives out its Christianity with all fervor? I don't know about you. I haven't checked with this church yet. You're probably not typical of every North American church because Nathan's here. You're probably a little different. But every church I know of has a need for children's ministries. Always. Always a need. Hey man, it's the next generation in there. It's an opportunity to teach and train the next generation. Aaron should have a waiting list of names for people to do childcare. Look, you can hear Nathan on video. We know that. So go sit with the kids. Tell them about Jesus. Well, I don't know what to do. Well, Moses didn't either, but he did it. We need people to step up. What if we had twice as many people step up for children's ministries? What if we had a need come about and twice as much money came in? What about if we had a missions trip and twice as many people signed up for it as could go. What about if we asked for volunteers to serve to love our neighbors and twice as many people showed up? We've lost our intensity. John was the bishop of the church of Ephesus. And at that church, if you read the first two and three chapters of Revelation, you'll find out that the church of Ephesus lost its first love. And John was the bishop there, and he held some responsibility for losing that first love. And they were admonished by God that, hey, you need to get that first love back. Maybe that's what we need to do. I believe when John went back, he was different. And things were different from that point on. Now, if you all would do me a favor and go ahead and stand up, we're going to have the reading of the word of God, and then we're going to transition right into worship at the same time. But John went from Patmos to paradise, from paradise back to Patmos. In one year, he left Patmos and went back to Ephesus. And for five years, he lived. And then five years later, he died. In that five-year period of time, he discipled many young person. Hey, who would like to learn at the feet of John, one of the apostles, particularly after he'd been up to heaven? Well, I would. That would be neat. And so John went back to Ephesus and he discipled a young man, 25 years old, by the name of Polycarp. Polycarp became the bishop at the church of Smyrna. He died a martyr's death in 155 A.D. He had somebody else he trained, Irenaeus, which gave us all the doctrines that we preserve today. The grandchild, if you will, the spiritual grandchild of the apostle Paul. Or, I'm sorry, John. And you see, it pays to disciple one another, to disciple our kids. And I believe John's life ended well with discipling one another. He also had a song. He had a song he learned when he's revelation experience and it's found in verses nine through 13. And it went something like this. And I heard a voice of many angels around the throne, the living creatures and the elders, and the number of them was 10,000, and thousands and thousands saying with a loud voice, worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing. And every creature, every creature, which is in heaven and on earth and under the earth and such as are in the sea and that are in them, I heard saying, blessing and honor and glory and power be to him who sits on the throne and to the lamb forever and ever.