-A defining story of your life, or your family’s life?

-some of my most fond memories from growing up involved my parents taking too long to go home after church. Playing football, running through the dirt paved parking lot, trying not to get into trouble. First time parents warned you we’d be leaving in 5 minutes meant we had AT LEAST 30 min. My parents locked the doors of the church when they got married!

-We all have these family stories that we can use to communicate something about ourselves. The Bible does something similar, and it’s important for us to understand the Bible’s defining stories if we want to understand the significance of God’s message, given to John, passed down to us today. The defining story for God’s people is the Exodus: God’s deliverance out of slavery into a season of exile.

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-Not sure about you, but I think this might be one of the most difficult passages in the Bible to interpret correctly! Full of OT allusions, mention of specific times and days. I’m going to give an overview of the whole chapter, and then we’ll walk through it over the next 2 weeks, just so there’s no surprises. I say most of this with a grain of salt, and I reserve the right to change my opinion on this in the future! But as I’m working through this letter and trying to study this section this week I think this is the best way to interpret the text.

-This is a call to the church to continue witnessing to the truths of the gospel despite increasing persecution.

-John is told to measure the temple and count the worshippers. This is referring to God’s people today, not a physical temple that will someday be built. 

-The 2 witnesses are similarly referring to the church (again, wait until I build my case for that!)

-The numbers are a way of pointing back to Jesus, but through a prophesy in Daniel. Their story also parallels an upcoming story in Rev. 12-13 about the beast persecuting God’s people. Their death and resurrection points to God’s provision of His people throughout history and validation of their witnessing to the truths of Jesus as the Savior and King.

-Finally, the last trumpet takes us all the way to the end, where God’s kingdom has come and His will is being done on earth just like it is in heaven. That’s where we’ll be going over these next 2 weeks, now let’s talk about how I got there!

1. Measuring the Temple (1-2)

-John is given a commission, connected back to his role from last week to “prophesy again.” 

-Connected to Zech. 2, Ezek. 40-42. John is the next in line! 

-Notice “was given” this is all from God, God’s work, and God’s plan

-The idea of measuring is connected to counting. Think of Jesus who said God counts even the hairs on our heads (which is easier for some people than others!) It’s a way of signifying that God knows each and every person who belongs to Him. No one can take them away, no one will be lost, He will keep track of them all and preserve them all.

-Before we go on, I want to ask you a question about that: if John were asked to go and count His people today, would you be included in that number, or would you be left outside and be trampled? If you want to ensure you’re a part of God’s people, if you want be counted in the temple, then you need to confess that Jesus Christ is the Lord, and believe that He was raised from the dead. If you do, you’ll move from death to life, from outside the temple to inside the temple, and God will welcome you in with open arms.

-A few options about this temple:

-A physical temple that’s rebuilt, a heavenly temple, or the temple that we today refer to as the church. I don’t think it’s a physical temple because of the way this book uses symbols and imagery throughout to communicate a bigger spiritual reality. Similarly, I don’t see how it could be a heavenly temple because I’m not sure how “the nations” could trample any part of it then. 

-I also think there’s an assortment of other NT passages that tip the scale in the direction of the church, here’s a few. 

-All of these are referring to the church. Similarly, when we trace the idea of the temple (or tabernacle) throughout the Bible, it signifies God’s dwelling place with His people, not necessarily just a building. It’s meant to be a new Eden because of the way sin broke the relationship between God and His people. When Jesus comes, the Bible says God tabernacled among us (God moved into the neighborhood), and then Hebrews reminds us that Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promises, so there’s no more need for priests or sacrifices or a temple, they’re pointing to Jesus who now fills his people with the Spirit, making them a new temple. 

-The last piece that tilts the scales for me in this direction is the ending of this letter, Rev. 21:22 says God’s eternal plan is no temple. This is like Eden where God’s plan was to be in perfect relationship with his creation, no separation, no divide, but sin broke that. That’s what’s signified by the lack of a physical temple, we don’t need that anymore, Jesus has provided a way to approach God that’s superior in every way (again, read the book of Hebrews).

-Why is there an area excluded? 

-“Court of the Gentiles” or “court of the women” most likely the first as it had been given over to the nations already.

-If the temple is the church (as I’ve argued) this could either refer to persecution of a segment of the church, or is a way of signifying that not everyone is a part of God’s people. I lean slightly toward the latter as I think it makes better sense of the comment “outside the temple.” The only way to avoid being trampled is by becoming a part of the temple, or the church. 

-We’ll get to the holy city a little more when we get to vs. 8, but really briefly notice that it’s referred to by 5 names. Holy city, great city, Sodom, Egypt, where their Lord was crucified. Can’t be all of those at the same time, and 1 of them is a country! Once again, John is using a well-known idea to signify something bigger: there will always be rulers, nations, and civilizations opposed to the work of God. Once again we see that there’s no middle ground: you’re either for God or against Him.

-We now get to a hugely debated section that is very difficult to understand and needs to be nuanced incredible carefully: how do we interpret the 42 months? One of my primary arguments through this series has been we struggle to understand this text (Revelation) because our minds aren’t saturated enough by the whole text. The 1^st century reader would have devoted themselves to the Bible, many of them had memorized large sections of it, if not the whole thing. Our minds today are too cluttered by useless trivia (or movie quotes for me) to memorize large portions of God’s Word, much less go on to meditate on those Words and then apply them to our daily lives. If our identity starts to become defined by anything other than God’s Word we’re in trouble! 

-This text kicked my butt this week! I’ve shared before that my Hebrew prof. in seminary: wrestle with the text. I did a LOT of wrestling this week! Because there’s so much background to this text, I also divided this sermon into 2 weeks, so consider this part 1. Also, fair warning, you’re going to need to put your thinking caps on! There’s a mountain of other texts being referenced here that we’re going to need to wrestle through together today to understand John’s message.

First, remember numbers in Revelation are symbols not statistics, the numbers are standing in for something important. We’ve talked about these before, so 7 (and it’s multiples) refers to: perfection or completeness. 10 (and it’s multiples) refers to fullness. 4 refers to the whole creation/earth. 12 (and it’s multiples) is God’s people. But then we start adding in halves, or lesser numbers. So if you remember back a few weeks ago to the overview: 666 is signifying that Satan and his unholy trinity false short in every case (fail, fail, fail). With 42 months:

-It’s another way of saying 3.5 years. If you look at vs. 3, you’ll see 1,260 days, which also happens to be 42 months. Vs. 9, 11: 3.5 days. Maybe these are all referring to the same period of time?

-To understand this reference, we need to go back to a prophecy in Daniel 9, which itself is a meditation on God’s Word from Jer. 25, which itself is using language from Lev. 25. Do you see why this book can be so hard to understand and interpret correctly? Are you ready to wrestle through this text with me?

-First, Daniel introduces this section to us by saying he was reflecting on Jeremiah, and notice what he’s wearing, because that will come up again. This tells us that Daniel is meditating on a specific passage in Jeremiah, something to do with 70 years. 

-Jeremiah is God’s plan for getting the people out of Babylon. They’d been carried off into exile as a penalty for their sin, but there was an end point to that exile. God will bring His people back and redeem them.

-Those 70 years are the season of exile, where Israel is under the Babylonian captivity. As Daniel starts doing the math, he realizes that 70 years is close to coming up! So he begins by confessing his and the nation’s sins and asking God to listen and respond. God does by sending the angel Gabriel to visit him and tell him what’s going to happen. Before we get there, 1 very important note: Israel wasn’t in exile for 70 years, it was more like 60. So if that number is a symbol (like in Revelation) we should also expect the rest of the numbers to be symbols.

-We begin with “70 7s (translated as weeks)” Anyone remember the significance of 7? Completion, perfection. This means Gabriel is picking up the language from Jer. 25 but using weeks as a stand in for years. Look at the 6 things promised from God, specifically 2-4, stop sin, atone for iniquity, everlasting righteousness. God is saying He will take care of the sin Daniel had just been confessing. Who do you think that’s talking about? Sunday school answer: Jesus! Just wait, it gets even better!

-Gabriel then he goes on to break those years down, starting with 7 weeks. This gets us back to Lev. 25 on the sabbatical year and Jubilee (7 7s). Israel was supposed to practice the year of Jubilee every 50 years. Those who had sold property would have it reverted back to the original family, anyone that had sold themselves into slavery would be freed, it was a reset so that no one would be getting rich off the rest of the people and helped them place their ultimate trust and allegiance in God. It was a celebratory year! What’s fascinating is we have no account of Israel ever actually practicing a year of Jubilee. They became complacent and were too enticed by the world and riches instead of continually trusting in God’s provision for them. 

-The 7 7s would have started with a decree from Cyrus in 538 BC, meaning the completion should have been 489, but nothing happened then! So Gabriel begins by what would have been seen as a cycle to get to Jubilee, or a great reset. Therefore, this most likely refers to the time period between the edict and either the rebuilding of the temple or the wall (515 or 444, 23 or 94 years).

-Then Gabriel goes another 62 weeks, which would be referring the time period between the rebuilding of the temple/Jerusalem to the arrival of the Anointed One (Jesus) Math isn’t my strong suit, but my calculator said 434 years after this is getting close to Jesus’ arrival, but not exactly. There is 1 person who has added all these together (490 years) to argue that it gets to 33/34 AD, the exact day when Jesus died, but I would argue that for some imprecision in their dating because there’s MAJOR debate about which decree is referred to, and Gabriel intentionally breaks up these 70 weeks. 

-Plaza and moat: completely rebuilt, and difficult times facing various atrocities and even more persecution from the Romans.

-Finally, we get to the end. These are 2 verses referring to the same thing, first half about the sacrificial work of the Anointed One, the second half referring to the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. A better translation of “have nothing” is “but not for himself,” meaning this “cut off” is for someone else.

-Then we see this strong covenant with many, but in the middle of this week (which would be how many days? 3.5) Jesus’ death means there’s no longer a need for sacrifices and offerings. So we’re still in the time period of these 70 weeks, because the second half of the week is the rest of the time before Jesus comes back a second time. 

-But what this refers to is the fact that we now look forward to living in the year of the ultimate Jubilee. If 7 7s (weeks) in Leviticus brought about Jubilee, then 70 7s would be the ultimate Jubilee! I read a quote that I thought summarized this well: 

-Jesus’ death on behalf of others provides the means for living in this new time of Jubilee. Sin is dealt with, Jesus has made a sacrifice once and for all, and now we get to live with the Holy Spirit in us, making us as new temple! Isn’t God’s story good? All that background to help us understand that when John talks about 42, he’s referring back to this promise from Daniel, reminding God’s people in the 1^stcentury that God is still in control! 

-So to summarize: 42 = 3.5 years, or the time period in before we get to the ultimate Jubilee of God dwelling with His people forever. In between Christ’s first and second comings is an incomplete time because things aren’t as they will finally be forever. Half of perfection, meaning it’s not God’s final word on the subject. God will use however much time He needs to bring about His perfect plan.

-Another way of thinking about this connects to the exile idea I mentioned earlier. 7 would be the perfect and completed plan of God, but until that day we’ll be living in 3.5, not God’s final plan. God cares much more about our spiritual exile then our physical exile, so much so that he’s ok leaving us as exiles for thousands of years.

• Measuring 2 Witnesses (3-4)

-This section will be a little easier, and take less time because I’ll pick it up again next week. The question is: who are these 2 witnesses? Why do they have authority, and what’s the significance of the days?

-I would argue this is referring to the church. Why? Look at the description of them in vs. 4. Olive trees and lampstands. What is that? Can anyone think of a passage in Revelation where we’ve seen lampstands before? First few chapters, ironically enough, does anyone remember how many churches had no critiques from the Lord? 2.

-This is picking up a prophesy from Zech. 4: Olive trees and lampstands. Later on, the olive trees are identified as 2 anointed ones, a king and a priest. By calling these 2 witnesses by this identification, John is saying the church will be a kingdom of priests – a theme throughout the Bible, but mentioned in reference to the church in Rev. 1:5-6 “To him who loves us and has set us free from our sins by his blood, and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father.”

-But why 2? Throughout the Bible, the minimum required number of witnesses for it be true was 2. It’s a way of validating the truth of their message.

-The final reason I think this refers to the church is the overall structure of the book. One of the predominant ways Jewish authors wrote was through chiasms. A chiasm is named after the Greek letter chi (looks like an X), a way of emphasizing the middle point, then the outer parts connect/mirror each other. Here’s the chiasm for the entire book of Revelation, emphasizing Jesus being Lord, and responding to that reality in worship.

-So just as the church will face opposition from Satan in the next couple chapters, the church will face opposition from Satan in this section, do you see how they pick up similar themes? But the middle remains the same: worshipping God because we’re now a part of HIS kingdom, instead of the kingdom of Satan.

-So what do we do with this? How should we respond to this reality?

-Worship. Do you worship and praise God because He is in control and has a perfect plan for all human history? This is why, even when life is really hard, Paul can say “Rejoice always.” This is why Christians can be faithful to love and serve God when it looks foolish, when worldly rulers and powers are bearing down because this passage reminds us we live in the 3.5, not the 7. 

-And because we live in the 3.5, we are supposed to be prophesying, declaring God’s Word to believers and unbelievers. It’s God’s Word that saves people, and it’s God Word that sanctifies people (makes holy). 

-I’m currently taking a class on pastoral ministry during the Reformation “The Christian life is a pilgrimage with a banquet spread in the wilderness for weary travelers.” Friends, if you are a part of God’s family, we have all the riches we need to grow more into what God has created us to be, and that allows us to prophesy faithfully to each other and the world.