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Luke 1:26-56 – Sermon Manuscript

-Christmas songs tend to make me laugh. As I was growing up my favorite was ‘Joy to the World’ which I found out wasn’t written as a Christmas song! Based on Psalm 98, focused more on Jesus’ second coming than His first.

-As I’ve been in ministry myself for a number of years now, my favorite has become ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’ because it gets to the primary focus of the Christmas season: “O come let us adore Him!”

-But now we’ve also got more contemporary Christmas songs, like “You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch” or “All I want for Christmas is you.”

-There are 3 songs that make me at least chuckle, if not LOL every year: Little Drummer Boy. After having kids, I don’t think any mother after giving birth would nod to a little drummer boy once the baby is asleep. First, who wants a snare being hit next to a sleeping infant, but secondly have you ever heard a little kid play drums? There is nothing calming or quiet about it!

-Which gets me to my second one: Silent Night. Has anyone ever heard of a silent baby? They’re only quiet when they sleep, but on top of that, the delivery is the opposite of calm and bright. Someday I’ll do a Christmas series ruining Christmas songs for you.

-The last song that makes me laugh is ‘Mary, did you know?’ which is the inspiration for this sermon series, mostly because I see this meme float around every Christmas. Written in 1984 as a poem for a church Christmas musical, it eventually came together as the song we know today in 1991, but it asks a series of questions of Mary, like “did you know that your baby boy would save our sons and daughters, has come to make you new” and the reason I think it’s funny is because Mary is explicitly told the answer to all these questions in today’s text! No, she didn’t know every little detail about Jesus’ future life, but she did know the primary direction His life was going to take!

-Please stand with me, as we read Luke 1 and hear exactly what Mary knew.

PRAY

-I’ve shared this before, but the other thing I think of each Christmas is Bilbo Baggins, who is described in LOTR as “the most unlikely creature imaginable” to find the ring, similarly, Mary is the most unlikely creature imaginable to be chosen as the mother of God’s Son.

  1. The Most Unlikely Creature Imaginable (26-38)

-A couple things I want you to keep in the back of your mind for every Christmas season: 

-First is that we’re coming off 400 years of silence

-Second is we’re dealing with real people who had full lives, emotions, hopes and dreams just like we do. It can be easy for us to separate these stories from reality because it’s just words on a page.

-Finally, don’t forget how incredible this is! I at times feel like the Grinch this time of year: I have to go back and preach the same texts I’ve done numerous years in a row, I’ve heard this same story every Christmas as far back as I can remember, it’s way too easy to just slip into sentimentality and gloss over just how significant the incarnation is. God literally took on flesh, the Creator became creature, the author of history entered history. What human would come up with a story like that to provide salvation to the world? 

-Friends, we’ve seen this over and over this past year as we’ve walked through Revelation, God is in control, His plans can’t be stopped, His ways are right and good, but it is going to run in conflict with the way the world trains us to think and live. His ways are better, but we are tempted to live by the ways of the world. Christmas is our annual reminder to not become seduced by the dragon, but to live in the way of the sacrificial Lamb, who came not in power or influence, but came in obscurity, with nothing, to a poor family living in a tiny community.

-6th month refers to Elizabeth, wife of Zechariah who was a priest. An angel had just appeared to him to tell him that in their advanced age, they would have a child (we’ll see them again in the next section), but just as God has a history of redeeming childless wombs, here we see Him doing it again.

-I don’t know if you’ve ever considered this, but the story of Jesus is littered with barren wombs until God intervenes. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to take that idea to mean that you can tell which side God is on by the way someone cares for infants and children. God loves when families grown, and Satan hates it. There’s a reason God has to overcome so many childless women.

-Nazareth: tiny, backwoods town. Didn’t have any extrabiblical accounts of it until the 1960s, so insignificant that no other historical accounts thought it worthy of a mention. There’s a reason Nathaniel says “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” John 1:46.

-Surprisingly little is said about her – we know her name, that she was engaged, and that’s about it.

-Notice that there’s nothing in Mary that makes her worthy of being favored. She didn’t achieve this by doing something special or by being born in the right family or living an exemplary life, what’s most significant about Mary is that she obeyed God’s commands. That’s it. She did what’s possible for all of us to do: hear God’s Word and respond in obedience. 

-Friends, you can find favor with God! The key to understand what’s happening here is God speaks, and Mary responds with obedience. This is a picture of what salvation looks like. God speaks through His people, and through His Word, and ultimately through His Spirit as the dead are brought to life. When that happens, suddenly we have favor with God! 

-Obedience doesn’t mean Mary has no questions, she knows where babies come from! And she’s never had the opportunity to create a baby.

-But what we view as impossible is nothing to God. The word “overshadow” here is used often in the OT to talk about God’s presence descending on a place. There were times where Moses couldn’t enter the tabernacle because the cloud that signified God’s presence “overshadowed” the tabernacle. This isn’t (as some have argued) the Holy Spirit taking on flesh to have intercourse with Mary, this is a unique creation. Just as God had opened the womb of so many of Israel’s ancestors, what’s going 1 step further and creating new life in a womb?

-Because of this unique conception, He will be called “the holy one” and the Son of God. This was considered fairly normal at the time.

-All Jews thought of themselves as God’s children. In fact, even the name that this child was given was one of the most common names in the 1st century: Yehoshua (Joshua) Iyasous (Greek) meaning “God saves.” Once again, this is demonstrating the ways God chooses to work in the world is through what we would see as weakness. A normal child with the most common name, born to a poor woman in a tiny town that no one cared about.

-However, this child is unique among all humans because He has no earthly Father, just a heavenly Father.

-This also shows us the way salvation comes about in all our lives. What could you do to save yourself? Nothing! What could you add to merit God’s salvation? Zippo! But what’s impossible with us is nothing to God.

-See most of us are similar to Jesus. Not worth much based on what the world values. Not smart based on worldly standards. Yet God still chooses those exact people to bring them into His family because nothing is impossible with God.

-Connects to a story Jesus tells about how difficult it is for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven, his disciples say then heaven must be impossible, Jesus replies “with God ALL things are possible.” Think of the hymn ‘Rock of Ages’ “Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to the cross I cling.” We trust that Jesus is who He said He is and we are saved.

-This brings us to the next section of this text.

  • The Second Most Unlikely Creature Imaginable (39-45)

-Mary hurries south to see Elizabeth. Remember the angel had told her that her relative was pregnant, even in her old age, so I think Mary rushes there to see if Elizabeth is truly pregnant, or if the angel was pulling a fast one on her.

-Hurry is a bit of a relative term, couldn’t drive, people would generally walk everywhere, so Mary would have to travel somewhere between 3-4 days (80-100 miles)

-I read onetime that God’s speed is 3 mph, that’s how fast Jesus walked, and some estimates say He spent as much as ¾ of his ministry walking, to Jerusalem, back to Capernaum, back to Jerusalem, and we get frustrated when 70 mph isn’t fast enough!

-Already we see the way people should respond to the arrival of Jesus: John in the womb leaps for joy, and Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit.

-Blesses Mary (again, not for anything she’s done, because Mary is obedient) We see that explicitly: (45) she who has believed what the Lord has spoken. That’s the way God works: He speaks, we should respond. But how often do we not respond? How frequently are our hearts too hard to fully obey God? Mark Twain quote. 

-The Bible’s purpose isn’t just to comfort us (although at times it does that) in many cases the Bible’s purpose is to make us UNcomfortable because it asks something from us. Think of Rom. 3:23 “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” All. That includes me! That tells me I’m a sinner, I have fallen short, thankfully it doesn’t stop there because it goes on to say “and are justified by his grace as a gift” That means there’s hope, and that I need to live differently.

  • Respond with Praise (46-56)

-Magnifies: to make greater. The blessing given to Mary is an opportunity for her to continue praising God.

-If you think about it, that’s a great way to summarize the point of worship: to make greater. But it’s not make yourself greater, it’s acknowledging that Jesus is the greater one, that He’s the only one who deserves being made greater. Greater than what? Everything. The whole book of Hebrews is a long explanation of how Jesus is better than everything that came before in God’s plan. He’s better than the sacrificial system, better than any priest, better than Moses, better than the angels, He’s better than everything, and because of that we must respond with worship.

-But why is she looking to make God greater? Because He looked with favor on her humble/poor condition. She recognizes that in God’s view she has nothing.

-This is an example for how we should approach God, humbly and not entitled.

-Kent Hughes.

-Friends, do you approach Christmas as the poor and humble or as proud and self-sufficient? Be honest. Each year we have times and seasons to take time to reflect on certain things, Christmas is our annual reminder that Jesus came for the poor, humble, and lowly, that’s inherent to the gospel message. This is why Jesus said it’s so hard for the wealthy to enter the kingdom of God, it requires admitting that you can’t do it on your own. 

-Not only can you not be saved on your own, you can’t continue growing as a Christian on your own: 

-From generation to generation – this has been God’s plan all along.

-What God does when He saves us is adopt us into a new family. This new family provides as place for you to truly be yourself, a place to find belonging and direction to your entire life. I don’t want to stretch this imagery too far, but the fact that we’re adopted means it at times is going to feel unnatural to us, just like someone who’s adopted is going to at times struggle to figure out their new family rhythms and routines. I don’t know about you, but I often struggle at holidays because my routines are thrown off! God is trying to teach us a new way of living in His family, which is different from the way the world teaches us to live.

-This new way of living is shown through God’s mighty deeds, and as we saw throughout Revelation, it’s the opposite of the way we expect the world to work:

-scattered the proud: those who think they’re self-sufficient, that they’re able to do whatever they want in their own power and strength, like the tower of Babel

-toppled the mighty: who can stand against God? No one! Trust in Him!

-Satisfied the hungry: God provides the solution to the deepest longings of your heart, only when you trust in Him can you be completely satisfied

-Kept His word: God has made promises and delivered on every single one of them. Trust in Him because His ways are good and true. If God has said He’ll do something it’s guaranteed to happen.

-Just like Mary, we are the most unlikely people imaginable to be chosen by God to be his children, if we trust in what He’s said. 

-That doesn’t mean life will be easy, or that you’ll always trust and obey God perfectly. I remember growing up reading the Bible stories and thinking to myself “If I experienced these kinds of things I would NEVER have questions or doubts in my faith.” But friends, everyone has questions and doubts at some point in their life, even Mary. 

-In Mark’s Gospel, we read that early in his ministry, as His fame was spreading, news reached His family, and here’s what they thought. But surely not Mary, right? She had this amazing visit from an angel, you’d think that everyday she’d be reminded to keep faith because Jesus was right there in front of her! Her miracle child! But just a few verses later, Mark says who was there. His mother and his brothers. See, even a visit from an angel eventually wears off. This is why the “camp high” needs to be connected to the truth. Emotions fade, experiences get less potent, but God’s Word remains the same.

-As we enter this Christmas season and look at these 4 characters of Christmas together, I’d like you to think back to why you are a Christian, and if you’re not a Christian, what’s holding you back? Questions and doubts are normal for Christians and non-Christians. If Mary, the mother of Jesus, can have doubts, so can you. But don’t just leave them there. Explore them, doubt your doubts! One of the best things about Christianity is the wealth of knowledge to draw from in studying and researching. 

-But do something. One of our mottos here is 1 step closer: what step are you going to take this Christmas season to grow closer to Jesus? Read a new devotional, read a book on the incarnation (Athanasius, written in the early 300s), read a reflect on Matt. 1-2 or Luke 1-2. 

-Or maybe you need help doubting your doubts. Reach out to me, I’m guessing I have a book or resource on whatever question you’re facing, because Christians have been wrestling with this faith for centuries.

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by mikethestrand on December 1, 2024  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, History, Life, Sermon
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Posted by mikethestrand on December 1, 2024

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2024/12/01/luke-126-56-sermon-manuscript/

Revelation 22:6-21 – Sermon Manuscript

-We did it! We’ve made it through the entire book of Revelation! After having someone tell me I should NEVER preach through this book because no one can understand, I was worried we’d end up with confusion and frustration every week, but I’ve already had a number of people tell me they finally feel like they have a grasp of how to interpret this book, which was my prayer when we started this.

-Today’s text serves as a summary, direct application to our lives, and some final reminders on what we’re supposed to do now that we’ve walked through this whole book, not only that, but it’s the last verse of all of Scripture, the last words God wanted us to hear regarding His plans for the reconciliation and renewal of all things. Because the reality is Jesus is coming soon. Now, it’s going to take us another 30 minutes to understand what that means!

READ/PRAY

  1. Look to the Word (6-11)

-The first thing we need to notice is there’s wording and themes here that should sound familiar. Look at the parallels between chapter 1 and 22. It’s almost like there was a plan, purpose, and direction to this entire book to communicate these ideas! This section also sounds very different from all the stuff we’ve been reading over the past number of months.

-Said this in the first sermon I preached in this series: combination of apocalyptic, prophecy, and letter. We’re back to the letter part.

-Begins with the reminder that these words are faithful and true, exact same phrasing we saw in 21:5. God communicates and identifies Himself through words. Words that come from a God who is faithful and true are also faithful and true. 

-Reflecting on why we have the written Word. What’s the best way to communicate something that can be saved and preserved for centuries? Write it down! Make copies of it! (working on digital stuff, have 3 copies of everything)

-Since God wants us to know Him, He had people write down what He wanted us to know, therefore the mark of a Christian is trusting that His Word is faithful and true. Friends, don’t give up on the Bible!

-God of the spirits of the prophets. What is that? True prophets only speak on behalf of God. John is identifying himself in that lineage. Just as God spoke previously to His prophets, He’s concluded His speaking here to John.

-Sent his angel, just like the beginning.

-Soon take place. Look I am coming soon. How soon?

-Is 2,000 years soon? God looks at time differently, think back to Rev. 6 where the martyrs beg God to return and He says “not yet.” My kids think waiting a half hour is FOREVER, and we laugh! Don’t you think that may be a picture of how God looks at time, even 100 years is nothing to Him! But whether it’s 2,000 or 20,000 years, the next step in salvation history is Jesus coming back. 

-If you just think through the primary events in God’s plan of redemption: creation, fall, redemption, salvation, and then consummation is the only thing left!  

-Blessed: Revelation beatitudes. Jesus gives beatitudes in Matt. 5, things like blessed are the poor in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs. 

-6th of 7 blessings promised throughout this book. Review the blessings:

-Read, hear, and keep the words (remember there’s an end goal for us to DO something with this text)

-If we die in Christ we actually live!

-Alert and clothed: alert to not give in to the way the world works to seduce us, and clothed in Christ’s clothing (19:8: “fine linen represents the righteous acts of the saints.”)

-Invited to the marriage feast – those saved and washed by the blood of the lamb

-First resurrection, when Jesus returns and sets up His kingdom on earth

-Then here we’re back to the start: keep the words of this book (pointing back to the start), 1 more to come.

8-Reminder of who wrote this book: John! Once again, he’s tempted to worship an angel, one of God’s messengers. This happened once before in Rev. 19. 

-All of God’s creation is meant to have 1 aim and goal in life: worship God. Worship isn’t just what we do on Sunday morning (though it includes that), it’s not a type of music (though it includes music), worship is an orientation to our entire lives, it’s what we do all the time, everyone worships something or someone. The most dedicated atheist worships something, but generally their worship is geared/focused on themselves

-I think this focus of this book is to force us to answer the question: what are you worshipping? Some people worship politics (the beast from the sea) and some people worship the power and influence that comes from politics (the beast from the land) but we’re all tempted to worship in worldly categories instead of heavenly categories, the way God intended us to. The temptation is to worship the gifts God has given that point us to Him, because if we pursue them as an end in themselves we will always be lacking. Augustine: our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God. That’s why Revelation is so timely! Do you think anyone is looking to politics for salvation today? Do you think anyone is looking to power and influence for salvation today? Pastors aren’t immune! Why do you think pastors always question how big each other’s church is?

-Friends, what are you worshipping?

-We glance by this: DON’T seal up. Why does that matter?

–Dan. 12:4. God is telling John that the end is now here. It has been the last days since this book was written, 1900 years ago. 

-Vs. 11 seems weird, doesn’t it? Where do we see God encouraging people to sin?

-Once again, John is picking up an idea from Daniel, where it’s not encouraging people to pursue sin, but it’s saying that sin blinds people, and until they are saved they will continue pursuing sin.

-Connection here is unrighteousness leads to being filthy, righteousness leads to being holy. The way you live has spiritual implications, we don’t just work to become a better human, we need a complete transformation. 

-I love the way Jeremiah 31 describes it, it says God will remove our heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh. He’s saying even a quadruple bypass isn’t enough, we need a transplant, an inbreaking of something completely new and alien to us, we need to be spiritually raised from the dead.

  • Look at Your Works (12-15)

-Once again, a reminder that Jesus is coming soon! While He comes in judgment, He also comes with a reward that’s only given to those who live according to His will and ways.

-This comes about only by a transformed heart. You can’t offer good works to God without His Spirit changing you from the inside out. We talked about this idea in Rev. 19, so if you want to hear more about that go back and listen to that sermon, but the core idea is that faith comes by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone, but then as Calvin says the faith that saves is never alone because it’s always accompanied by new good works that God has called us to

-And all of this is possible because in 3 different ways, Jesus identifies Himself with God and as the author of history: alpha and omega (A and Z), first and the last (and everything in between), and beginning and the end.

-Time itself only exists in God, that’s why He can speak with confidence and authority about the way everything is going to happen. 

-Final Beatitude (blessing) in the book: wash their robes. What does that mean? Picking up a theme from the rest of the book.

-Multitude in Rev. 7 praising God, one of the elders asks John who they are, John says that the elder must know, so the elder responds: 

-The way our robes are washed is by being washed in the blood of the Lamb. This is picking up another theme that God spoke about back in Isa. 1. The means by which clothes are washed is through faith in Jesus Christ, the outworking of that is “the right to the tree of life” and “entering the city by the gates”

-Remember back to last week where we saw this odd combination of a city and a garden. Reflections back to Eden with the tree of life and the water of life, but now remade as a city. The perfect place, the new Most Holy Place where God lives among His people.

-I also think it’s significant that we enter “by the gates,” where angels watch over them, and they point to the historical validity of Christianity. One of the reasons I remain a Christian is because of history! 

-Think of this: for Buddhism, what would happen if we were able to definitively say that Buddha didn’t exist? Nothing! Hinduism, too many gods to articulate, but has no reflection in reality. Mormons: take away Joseph Smith and nothing happens to their faith (even when their religion is proven time and time again to be historically unverifiable). What is often called Liberal theology even argues that even if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead they would still be Christians (which honestly is just dumb!). Friends, part of the reason you should be a Christian is because of history. We look back to a definitive event where Satan was defeated, and we look forward to an end point in history where death will be no more! Where the gates will never be closed, where everything will be finally work in perfect peace and harmony.

-But not everyone will be there, only those whose lives are marked by Jesus, who are clothed with the righteousness of Jesus, who realize that they can’t do anything in their own strength but need Jesus to work in them.

-For those people:

  • Look to Jesus to Come (16-21)

-Another reminder who’s in control: Jesus. Everything centers on Him, all of History hinges on Him, and the End is held off until He comes back. 

-He’s even in charge of the angels (messengers), notice that the angel’s job is just to serve as the messenger of Jesus.

-Who is the message to? Not to angels, to the churches, the churches which are comprised of those who have washed their clothes in the blood of the Lamb. Picks up the same idea at the very beginning where John recounts that Jesus sent an angel to John, who recorded everything that was revealed (Revelation) to him.

-Jesus is the root and descendent of David (the Messiah), picking up a theme from Isa. 11:1, Jesus is David’s promised son who sits eternally on God’s throne.

-Bright morning star: Num. 24:17. Balaam’s prophesy (mentioned back in 2:14, letter to Pergamum) Balaam hired by a king to curse Israel, goes to do it, but only blessings come out. Friends, God can use even greedy, wealth-seeking false prophets to carry out His will and plan! And the prophesy here is that some star will come to destroy the enemies of God’s people. What has happened over the course of this book? God’s enemies have been destroyed! All of them! None are left. The descendent of David has won!

-What word do you see repeated in vs. 17? Come! This is to anyone who is hearing this message (all of you), and it gives both a command and a commission:

-First the command: Spirit and the bride (anyone remember who the bride is? The church!) they say to come. Come and align yourself with Jesus, wash your clothes in His blood so that He can bring you near.

-Next, the commission: anyone who hears join with the Spirit and the church to say “Come!” Friends, this is where all of us are a part of God’s reconciling plan to bring all things under His sovereign rule and reign. This book isn’t meant to be us sitting in a room by ourselves trying to figure out if we’re living in the last days, because we are living in the last day, and even if Jesus were to come back tomorrow, it would change nothing about what we should be doing today! We’re supposed to be bearing fruit and inviting others to come to have their clothes washed in His blood. I shared this idea a few weeks ago, but I want to say it again: the point of a sermon isn’t for you to walk away with 3 new things to try to “fix” your life in your own strength, the point of a sermon is for you to behold God and remember what Jesus has done for you! And then we are sent back out into the world to continue inviting others to come!

-Which gets us to the third invitation: anyone who is thirsty. Thirsty for what? John 4 – eternal life. Jesus provides the solution to all the deepest longings of your heart. Jesus’ offer is for any and everyone. So if you’re here today and you haven’t yet trusted Jesus to be your Savior and Lord, why not? Your life won’t have any ultimate purpose or meaning until you do, you won’t find the answer to the deepest longings of your heart until you do!

-Then there’s a warning: do not add or take away from any words of this book, but that could also be extended to the rest of the Bible. If God has spoken, we must respond. This actually picks up almost the exact wording in Deut. 4:2. 

-Tertullian: “Just as Christ was crucified between two thieves, so this doctrine of justification is ever crucified between two opposite errors.” 1 error is adding to God’s Word, this would be called “legalism.” This tells you not only what sin is, but how far you need to stay away from even the appearance of sin. But the opposite error is taking away from God’s word, this would be called “licentiousness” living however you want. We must be completely obedient to God’s Word alone, and the temptation is to lean one way or another and call it the gospel, but Jesus doesn’t allow us to do that, He perfectly embodies grace AND truth, not grace OR truth.

-Once again, we’re remined that Jesus is coming soon (in salvation history), and in response John (and we) respond with “Amen!” yes, we agree, come, Lord Jesus!

-This should be the prayer and cry of every Christian down through the ages. We’re supposed to live as Jesus comes back tomorrow, which means get busy being obedient to Him! Luther was asked if he knew Jesus was coming back tomorrow what would he do? He said he would plant a seed today. Where are you planting seeds today that will bear fruit in eternity? Where is God calling you to be faithful today so that you can be ready to see Jesus face to face? Because the reality is He is coming soon! No one knows when, but we need to faithful today because it’s one day closer to THE day.

-God’s grace (undeserving free gift) be with everyone. Amen. What an appropriate way to end this sermon! God’s grace is freely available to everyone! So come, and come Lord Jesus.

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by mikethestrand on November 24, 2024  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Sermon, Theology, Worship
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Posted by mikethestrand on November 24, 2024

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2024/11/24/revelation-226-21-sermon-manuscript/

Revelation 21:1-22:5 – Sermon Manuscript

-This American Life, the Sound of Music favorite movie, sharing it with a friend who agreed, minus the Nazis. The primary person said what Nazis? Turned out she’d only ever seen half the movie, so in here mind it was a charming flick about a nanny who brings order to this house, teaches children how to sing, and then rides off into the sunset singing “Good night!” When she was growing up, her family only had 1 of the VHS tapes and had somehow lost the second one.

-That’s the temptations of the human heart, to miss the end of the story. Think of the impulse toward “eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die.” If this is the only life we have that impulse makes sense. Pursue pleasure and alleviate pain

-But the reality is much different than that. Friends, life is only going to get better, but I can’t promise that will happen before eternity. However, when we know what eternity is like, it makes it easier to endure whatever happens here.

-Norwegian rats and swimming. 

-Book on navigating the future “We tend to oscillate between naïve optimism and cynical pessimism (see the narratives of decline across the political spectrum or the alarming statistical trends in depression, loneliness, and suicide.” “It is only if we can reclaim a sense of Purpose that we will be able to articulate a fully human and cosmic sense of flourishing and address our crisis.” I would say that Purpose (capital P) is to prepare for a new heavens and a new earth.

READ/PRAY

  1. What is New (1-8)

-New heaven and new earth: there is an earth! 

-Passed away – some debate about the significance of this, I would argue that this is similar to the death we will go through. We’ll be raised again, we’ll still be ourselves, but purified.

-Sea: place of chaos, doesn’t mean there’s no water in the new heavens and earth! Probably best to refer to it as the new earth, because the point of this passage is that heaven comes down to earth so they’re now 1 place instead of 2, where right now they separated, they won’t always be

-The holy city, new Jerusalem

–Gal. 4:26 – “The Jerusalem above” Heb. 12:22 “the heavenly Jerusalem”

-We’re supposed to contrast this description with the other woman John saw: Babylon the prostitute. Here all of God’s people are described as a new city

3-The goal of this entire thing, the goal since the Fall has been this reality: God dwelling, tabernacling, living with His people.

-Promised back in Leviticus, promised again in Ezekiel, God is saying all those promises that He made in the past are fulfilled here in the new earth.

-Also shows us that in the new heavens & earth we’re in community. There’s no isolationism in Christianity, there’s no just me and God, it’s always WE and God

4-God will take away all sadness and pain. Those are gone, along with death.

-I want to just mention this briefly (if you want to talk more about this let me know) but one of the realities of heaven is we’ll understand God’s justice rightly, so there won’t be the sadness of knowing someone we loved is in the lake of fire

-Goes on to say that nothing is left out of this renewal! EVERYTHING is made new. Trees and bees and grass and buildings and stars and planets and galaxies, all made new.

-And He guarantees it “faithful and true.”

6-Just like Jesus “it is finished” God has been there from the beginning, He will be there until the end. He gives ridiculously generously to all. But there is a caveat:

7-The one who conquers. Remember that language from the beginning of the book? To each of the churches, God had promised something to the one who conquers, pointing here. Sonship isn’t saying men only, it’s signifying the familial blessing, that context women didn’t receive inheritance

-Unlike the one who conquers is those who go to the lake of fire, not a complete list but representative of a wide assortment of sins

  • What is Symbolic (9-21)

-Some debate about this section (again), is this referring to a literal city, or is it signifying something else. Probably won’t surprise you that I lean toward this signifying something else, we shouldn’t expect to see this giant cube city on the new earth (but again, I’m fine being wrong because God can do whatever He wants!) Just to give you some perspective, here’s the measurements as outlined in the book.

-Why do I think it’s symbolic? Because of vs 10, carried me away in the Spirit, that happened before! Rev. 17 where he saw the fight between the dragon and the woman in labor. Just like that was a symbol of something else, I think this is a symbol of something else.

-Beautiful city, without any of the vices or problems of cities today. Cities in the 1st century were places of protection and security, walls meant bad guys were kept out.

12-12 gates, 3 on each side, named for the 12 sons (tribes) of Israel (Jacob), and 12 foundations built on the apostles.

-God’s goal has always been to have a people living in His place serving under His rule and reign. This is signifying that the ways the world divides people no longer exists. God’s people have come from every nation and culture and all of them are given unmediated access to God Himself! 

15-Angel is given a measuring rod, need the original wording here to not miss the focus of the numbers (symbols not statistics): 12,000 stadia. Just like the 12 gates and 12 foundations, 12 x 103 ALL of God’s people. Not just square, a perfect cube (which has 12 sides)

-Did you know that there’s 1 other place in the Bible that’s a perfect cube? The Most Holy Place in the temple, 1 Kings 6:20 tells us the measurements of it. What’s significant about this is where the Most Holy Place was only accessed 1/year by 1 person, now the whole city is the Most Holy Place, and everyone is welcome there! Direct access to God’s presence!

17-144 cubits (again perfect, 12×12)

-What is the significance of the jewels? No one’s sure, there’s some overlap between this list and the jewels on the priestly garments, but what scholars have found is this exact same list used in the signs of the Zodiac, but backwards. So some think it’s John’s way of saying all the predictions the world offers are cheap imitations, but this is the reality.

-Pearls were the most costly jewel in the 1st century, and I think it should make us think of the parable Jesus tells of the pearl of great value! In the new earth gates are made out of them, and lastly the streets of gold. Picked up from 1 King 6:30

-The temple was meant to be a picture of Eden, which was thought to be modeled after heaven itself, and here we see we now have the full picture. Turns out it was modeled after heaven! 

  • What is Missing (22-27)

-John notices something that’s gone that he was expecting to see. After millennia of God only meeting with his people in a temple, now there’s no temple because there’s no need for one! God is the temple! We have full access to Him without needing anything or anyone else standing in between.

-Vs. 23 doesn’t say there’s no sun or moon, it says there’s no need for them. God’s light illuminates everything else.

-Then vs. 24 says that the nations will walk by its light. So here we see that nations still exist, which means if you haven’t gotten to travel on this side of eternity but there’s places you’ve wanted to visit, just wait. But I would also argue that what is meant by this isn’t just referring to illumination, but is referring to the way everyone’s living is according to God’s will and way. Think of Psalm 119 which says God’s word is a lamp for me feet and a light for my path. Doesn’t mean we hold a Bible to navigate when we go into a dark room, it means our life is guided by God. And think of what Jesus says in John 8 “I am the light of the world. Anyone who follows me will never walk in the darkness but will have the light of life.” 

25-Gates will never close by day, and no night. 

-What’s the point of gates if they never close? Gates are meant to provide protection, and night is the time when people are most susceptible to being attacked. See I don’t think John is saying there’s no more sunsets or sunrises in heaven, I think we’ll still be able to enjoy them, as well as sleeping. What’s meant (similar to the sea) is the negatives that come during night no longer exist. Again, I could be wrong, I’m making speculations based on all Scripture, but I have reasons to think these things!

26-Bring the honor and glory of the nations. Friends, this means things will be redeemed from here and brought there. We’ll still have technology, we’ll still have trees and grass and food and water, but they’ll all function perfectly without ever breaking.

-I read Heaven by Randy Alcorn this week, if you haven’t read it PLEASE get it and read it ASAP, it’s just beautiful. (don’t read “heaven tourism books though) But one of the words he uses in there that I want you to understand is what is being described here is very earthy. It says new heavens and NEW EARTH. I would postulate that what we’ll see there will look very similar to what we see here, but better. Colors will be more vivid, smells will be more potent, but it will be real. 

-Picture of this in The Last Battle of Chronicles of Narnia where Peter and Edmund are looking around at Narnia’s version of heaven where they start to notice familiar hills nearby, then looking closer they realize they are the exact hills they were thinking of!

-What I would argue based on Scripture, is that heaven is all around us, but our eyes can’t see it. Sometimes you can get glimpses, maybe it’s through a specific song or a conversation with a friend or a bite of the most delicious food you’ve ever had or a time of prayer where you get a sense of how wonderful God is, God allows us these glimpses to spur us on. I think there are 2 examples in the Bible that bear this out – think of the stoning of Stephen in Acts 7. He’s giving a glimpse of heaven to encourage him as he faces death! And then 2 chapters later, I think Paul is given the same glimpse, but because he’s not saved he falls on his face. 

-I realize this sounds a little weird, but I truly believe that heaven is a different realm that we can’t see right now. Quantum physics even points us in this direction where they say that there’s all these quarks (real word!) that all interact and engage with each other across the universe. Over my head, so I’ll stop there, but I think heaven is real, those who have died in faith before us are there now waiting for the Lord to enact his Kingdom here just like it is there. There’s more, but let’s finish these last 5 verses:

  • What is Central (22:1-5)

-River of the water of life, where does it come from? Throne, God’s provision for His people. Straight through the heart of this city. Tree of life (apparently a LARGE tree, enough to go across the river) 12 seasons of fruit.

-Once again, I would argue science backs this up. People are trying to bio-hack their bodies to lower their biological age. I read a story this week of someone who celebrates his birthday every 19 months because that’s how long he believes it takes his body to advance a year. What if God has created a fruit that allows our bodies to live forever?

-Leave are for healing of the nations (once again, nations in heaven) 

-No curse, no thorns or thistles in response to our work

4-Right now, no one can see God and live is now changed to we will see His face and our entire orientation is toward Him.

-Finally, we will reign with God. God will have some area (I’m sure of varying sizes) delegated to us. Think of the parable of the servants who were left with talents to steward, then God commissions them with more. Some will be given oversight of a little piece of land, others will be given oversight of cities or nations, but everyone will have some oversight of something in the earth.

-So what? Why is all this important? Because we need to have hope in the midst of the uncertainty of this world. The movie doesn’t end in the middle where we sing “the sun has gone to bed and so must I” and ride off into the sunset, there’s a direction we’re heading. AND in Col. 3 we’re commanded to set our minds on heaven. I believe we’ve over-spiritualized heaven and neglected to read Scripture as God has actually revealed the new heavens AND EARTH to us. 

-And here’s what I mean when I say that. The primary thing we’ll get is being with Jesus, but there’s also additional benefits that are OK to hope for and look forward to. Things like time with dear friends, going for long walks where you knees don’t hurt, time to spend doing the things you love that you don’t have time for now. All those things will be redeemed in heaven. Here’s why I believe that, Heb. 11, the hall of faith: seeking a homeland, desire a better place. Friends, it’s ok to get excited about the gifts of God’s creation, He wants you to! That’s why there’s things that are enjoyable even on this side of heaven. That’s why sunsets are so pretty, that’s why the gentle lapping of the waves at the beach is so soothing, that’s why a perfectly cooked medium rare steak tastes so good, God gives us these things to point to Him and help us remember that He loves us extravagantly!

-But what’s even crazier about this is when can we start getting excited about heaven and preparing for that new home? Right now. Look up at vs. 5, what tense is the verb in? Present. God right now is enacting this new heavens and earth among us. Think of what Jesus said when He taught His disciples to pray: “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” God’s eternal kingdom is breaking into this earth right here and right now. When you are a humble you’re living in heaven, when you are a peacemaker you’re living in heaven. When you live as God intends you to live, you’re living as a citizen of heaven instead of earth. You’re preparing yourself for life after life after death. God’s plan to redeem creation has already started, it started the moment Jesus rose from the dead. 

-So what are you doing today to take 1 step closer to living in the new earth? And not just for you, who else are you encouraging to grow 1 step closer to living in the new earth? You don’t need to wait to live for eternity, because eternity starts now. Friends, set your minds on heaven, and as the old hymn says “The things of earth (the old earth) will grow strangely dim.” By focusing on heaven we are able to live faithfully here and now.

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by mikethestrand on November 17, 2024  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on November 17, 2024

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2024/11/17/revelation-211-225-sermon-manuscript/

Revelation 20:11-14 – Sermon Manuscript

-One of my favorite movies is Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), based on a ride that’s been at Disneyland since 1967. Who knew you could make a whole feature length movie on a theme park ride, but they did it! The reason I liked it is because it was the next movie from a LOTR star (had to get that movie in there somewhere)

-If you haven’t seen it, follows the story of Captain Jack Sparrow, a pirate who is on a quest to recover his perceived rightful place as the captain of the Black Pearl, a ship from which he was mutinied. Early in the movie, Jack is shown arriving to town on a sinking ship where he quickly runs into trouble. After being cornered by a group of soldiers, a woman that he accidentally saved protests his arrest saying “Commodore, I really must protest. Pirate or not, this man saved my life.” Commodore: “One good deed is not enough to redeem a man of a lifetime of wickedness.” Jack: “Though it seems enough to condemn him.” Commodore: “Indeed”

-I think this is the way many of us tend to view today’s topic: the final judgment, here called the lake of fire, otherwise referred to as hell. If we think of hell at all, we tend to view it as unfair condemnation, and I understand that impulse.

-Not something to take lightly, don’t joke about it, I understand that this topic often comes with much grief 

-I approach this topic with great fear and trembling

-At the same time, as I’ve shared before, where Scripture is emphatic, I’m going to be emphatic, so because it’s in here (and not just a periphery issue), it’s something we need to address.

READ/PRAY

  1. The Great White Throne (11)

-This is the 7th glimpse of the throne in Revelation, so when John mentions it this time he wants us to remember all the previous things we’ve seen:

-1: Rev. 4:2 – someone seated on a throne (no one else is allowed to sit there, and no votes for this position), rainbow around the throne signifying God’s mercy, 24 more thrones with elders on them, in the middle of the throne stands the slaughtered lamb. Centrality of Jesus on the throne, friends this cannot be overstated!

-2: Rev. 7:9 – great multitude who can’t be counted, who cry out that salvation belongs to God, shows us the central place that worship should have in our lives

-3: Rev. 8:1-5 – silence in heaven about a half hour, prayers of the saints rise up to God like incense, shows us that prayer is brought to God’s very throne

-4: Rev. 11:16 – elders giving thanks to God that He has begun to reign and the time to judge has come. Shows us the way God’s just judgment is worthy of praise

-5: Rev. 16:17-19 – voice from heaven “It is done,” praise to God for his ways are just and evil has been vanquished, goes on to recount the destruction of Babylon viewed from the throne. Even the most powerful human institutions can’t stand against God.

-6: 19:4-5 – God seated on his throne, voice from the throne saying to praise God, multitude responds who are invited to the marriage feast of the Lamb showing that there is a way to come before God’s throne: being his pure bride. People used to complain to me about “Jesus is my boyfriend” songs, and I would tell that the problem wasn’t that it was too intimate, it was that they weren’t intimate enough, because Scripture talks about Jesus as our husband.

-All that is now gone, and the focus is on the “great white throne” Great: large, impressive. White: purity

-One seated: the Lamb. That’s why it was important for us to think through all those other glimpses we had of the throne previously. 

-So pure that the corrupted earth and heavens can’t be in his presence. Think of some of the other examples we’ve seen of creation coming undone. 16:20 “every island fled, and the mountains disappeared” peals of thunder, millstones thrown to earth, hail, earthquakes. Think of Rom. 8 where Paul tells us that creation is groaning for this day. Creation was subjected to sin, to death, to decay because the people God created to steward creation destroyed His perfect plans

-Sin can’t be in the presence of holiness. Isa. 6 the prophet catches a glimpse of God seated on His throne and he becomes undone! He worries that he’s going to die because he can’t be in God’s presence and live. God has to send an angel with a burning coal to touch Isaiah’s lips so that he can speak to God. 

-And what’s amazing is because of the slain Lamb we can come boldly into God’s presence. We don’t need any other sacrifices, we don’t need coal from the altar, we can talk to God whenever from wherever! 

-Not a literal fleeing, but creation is coming undone, just like we’ve seen at the end of the seals, trumpets, and bowls. This is preparation for the new heavens & earth

  • The Dead (12-13)

-Throne is the predominant focus, but that’s not all John sees: there’s also the dead

-“great and small” not just wealthy or well known, this is everyone who has ever lived coming to stand before God waiting their turn to be judged.

-And books were opened? Maybe like me, you enjoy reading! Perennially, some of the best-selling books are biographies, and there’s always some bit of juice that comes out each time some new celebrity releases one.

-Look at the end of the verse, “according to their works by what was written in the books.” Apparently there’s a library in heaven with the biography of everyone who’s ever lived. You and me have book that recount our entire life story in them, and according to this everyone will be judged “according to their works.”

–Luke 12:2-3 “There is nothing covered that won’t be uncovered, nothing hidden that won’t be made known. Therefore, whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in an ear in private rooms will be proclaimed on the housetops.” When I was growing up, the way this was taught to me was that someday there’s going to be a movie that plays for everyone to see what you did in your life, so be careful! But I don’t think that’s what’s meant here.

-Pointing that God is aware of everything. Every thought in your mind, every step you take, Jesus says He knows how many hairs are on your head! Nothing is hidden from Him, which means His judgments weigh everything, He knows everything that has ever happened and nothing escapes from His oversight. Friends, think just how comforting that is! When you’re walking through the valley of the shadow of death, who is with you? God is! Nothing catches Him by surprise, nothing catches Him off guard, even your sins. He knew every sin you would commit, He knew that before sent Jesus to die for you, yet He still did it so that now nothing can separate you from Him.

-What this means is everyone will someday give an account for their actions, and the question for us is whose actions will you be judged by? Because all our actions are as useful to getting to heaven as garbage. Jonathan Edwards said “You contribute nothing to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary” Your contribution is the problem, but we’ll talk about that again at the end.

-Who else comes?

-Sea: if people weren’t given a proper burial, as was customary

-death and Hades: the storehouses of the dead (Rev. 1:18 – Jesus holds the keys to these places meaning He’s in charge of them) 

-These people are also judged according to their works

-How does this language fit with the belief that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, and not according to works? 

-John Calvin: “It is therefore faith alone which justifies, and yet the faith which justifies is not alone: just as it is the heat alone of the sun which warms the earth, and yet in the sun it is not alone, because it is constantly conjoined with light.”

-How do you know if someone is saved? How do you know if someone just says they’re saved? And how do you know if someone isn’t saved? Jesus tells us how in Matt. 7:16 “You’ll recognize them by their fruit.” The question is: what fruit is being demonstrated? See, we’re not commanded to judge whether or not someone is saved, but if someone claims to be saved we do have room to ask if their lives are marked by the right fruit. Jesus says that people can claim to follow Him, prophesy in His name, and even perform miracles in His name, but still not be saved. It must change everything about us, including the ways we live. If we claim to be in Christ but don’t give any evidence of that in our lives (bear fruit) then people should ask us if we’re truly believers. 

-That’s what John is saving here. Salvation only happens by faith alone through grace alone in Jesus Christ alone, but then if we’re truly saved, there will be enough evidence in our lives to demonstrate that reality. 

-This connects to what I shared last week: Jesus wants to be with us in every area of our lives, which means everything we do is an opportunity to honor and glorify Him. Eating, drinking, sleeping, working, playing: all can be done as a way of honoring Jesus as your Lord. And if not, the Bible calls that sin, which as Jack Sparrow learned is enough to condemn someone.

  • The Lake of Fire (14-15)

-This section begins with death and hades are thrown into the lake of fire

-Joining the 2 beasts and Satan, the second death. Everyone dies once, but only those who are going to the lake of fire will die a second time. Similar to Jesus talking about being born again. Everyone is born once, but only those who put their faith in Jesus are born a second time.

-Just so we understand how all the Bible fits together: 1 Cor. 15:26 the last enemy to be abolished is literally death itself. Just as we’ve seen creation coming undone, death is now undone as well.

-Who else? Anyone whose name was not written in the book of life

-This took place before the earth was created. Referring to the beast: (Rev. 13:8) Notice WHEN this happened “from the foundation of the world.”

-Friends, what this means is the ultimate destiny for anyone who worships the beast is the lake of fire

-How could a loving God send anyone to hell? That’s a good and right question to ask! God describes Himself as love, as slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and mercy, as gracious, as patient, so why would He send His creatures to hell? We first need to address what it is we’re talking about, and then I have 7 things (in keeping with the theme in Revelation) we must believe about hell based on Scripture.

-First, when we talk about God we need to recognize that He is God and we are not. He knows more than we do and His judgments are completely right, even when we don’t agree. What that means is while God describes Himself as love, He gets to define love, and while God is love, His love also includes wrath and justice. Think of it like marriage. My wife loves me. If I were to be unfaithful toward her she would rightfully be full of wrath. Throughout this book we’ve seen spiritual idolatry referred to as harlotry, so God’s response to that is condemnation.

-Secondly, everyone believes that some people deserve hell. Hitler, Stalin, etc. THOSE guys deserve hell! Why do we get to go from there to determine who should be deserving of hell? Our judgments are going to be off, but not God’s. Anytime someone wants to debate this topic this is where I go.

-Emotional reaction to this. Emotions aren’t necessarily wrong, but our emotions can’t always bear up to the weight of reality. Pinnock, Stott

-EFCA SOF: “We believe that God will raise the dead bodily and judge the world, assigning the unbeliever to condemnation and eternal conscious punishment and the believer to eternal blessedness and joy with the Lord in the new heaven and the new earth, to the praise of His glorious grace.”

1-The lake of fire is real. While there is a lot of imagery that we shouldn’t take literally in Revelation, the lake of fire is a real place where the unholy trinity will spend eternity with all those he deceived in rebellion against God.

2-The lake of fire is eternal – both in existence and in terms of decision. Once someone dies there are no second chances. Heb. 9:27 tells us that people die once, and after that death face judgment. 

3-The lake of fire is just. No one can blame God (even though they will), no one is there who doesn’t deserve to be there because the judgment of God is perfect. We saw this in Rev. 19:2, the multitude praises God because His judgments are true and righteous. We will someday worship God because He judges everything as it is supposed to be judged. There won’t be any room to debate or defend yourself

4-The lake of fire is where God’s presence in wrath is poured out. We saw this back in Rev. 14:9-11. Undiluted wrath poured out on the unbelieving, and how long does it endure? Forever and ever. That’s a VERY long time!

5-Jesus believed and preached on hell, a lot! He had no issue telling people exactly where their destiny was! For the sake of time, just one example, but we could pick any of the Gospel accounts and find Jesus talking about the reality of hell.

6-People choose to spend eternity in the lake of fire we often quickly jump to the throwing into the lake of fire, but what we miss is that people willingly pursue it. Remember, people will give an account for how they lived, and even if they were given the choice to leave they would still want to stay in torment. You can see this in the parable Jesus tells of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16. The rich man in hell never asks to be released. Hell is where he’s supposed to be. 

7-Eternity is the destiny for everyone. Everyone lives forever, some will spend eternity in the new heavens and earth, and some will spend eternity in the lake of fire.

-Once again, just as we’ve seen throughout this whole book, there’s only 2 ways to live: either for God, or opposed to God. You either willingly bow the knee to Jesus now and find the life you’ve been looking for, or you’ll be forced to bow the knee to Him later where you’ll get the life you deserve.

-But this isn’t something to gloat over, it’s not something to wish away, it’s something to remember because each day you’re helping point people (and yourself) to one of these 2 places.

-I shared the story of Jack Sparrow at the beginning, and we saw in the passage that everyone’s story is being recorded in heaven. But there’s a big difference in the story between someone who’s been washed by the blood of the Lamb, and those who have chosen to live their own way. In many cases, the stories would read exactly the same! Snapped at his kids here, gossiped about a friend there, cut someone off in traffic here, but for some people, next to the sins it says “forgiven.” Those sins are crossed out and in their place it says “read Jesus’ book here.” 

-If anyone here wants to have their story changed, now is the time! Don’t let this moment pass you by, believe in your heart that Jesus is who He said He was: the Savior of the world, and then confess that He rose again your book can be rewritten, you no longer need to worry about ever being condemned.

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by mikethestrand on November 10, 2024  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on November 10, 2024

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2024/11/10/revelation-2011-14-sermon-manuscript/

Revelation 20:1-10 – Sermon Manuscript

-Think back to the most significant moments in your life. You can probably remember the smells, the feel, the emotions behind all of it, right?

-Receiving an award in high school, the day I got married, the day my kids were born (somewhat foggy due to lack of sleep after)

-In those moments, who was with you? Significant events don’t happen in isolation, it’s always with someone else, and Jesus wants to be that someone else for every human.

READ/PRAY

-What is this 1,000 years? One of the most hotly debated passages, with entire systems of theology built around interpretations of this.

-First thing to note: all of these positions are trying to make arguments from the text of Scripture, therefore none of them are heresy. You can believe any of these positions and still be a faithful, orthodox Christian, if anyone tries to tell you that you HAVE to believe certain things about the end times just give up the conversation because it won’t be worth your time! 

-Second is this 1,000 years is used 6x in the entire Bible, and they’re all in vs. 2-7 that doesn’t mean we just ignore them, but keep them in perspective!

-Third: the main point of this entire story isn’t the 1,000 years, it’s the new heavens and earth! In the timeline of eternity, 1,000 years is nothing! 2 Peter 3:8 “Dear friends, don’t overlook this one fact: With the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.” When we have eternity, 1,000 years is as significant as we count a day. It matters, but it’s not the main thing.

-So what MUST you believe about the end times?

1. Jesus is coming back physically, for real. He will return bodily to enact His perfect, just, and eternal reign. His kingdom will be established, and it will be a physical reality, not just a spiritual one. Everyone agrees on this point.

2. No one knows the day or the hour. The only thing we can say with certainty is each day gets us 1 day closer to THE day. That’s it! And if you try to predict it you’ll ruin it for the rest of us because NO ONE knows!

3. Jesus isn’t going to become King. You can’t become something you already are. Jesus is already ruling from His throne, and He invites us to join with Him in His work of reconciling the world to Himself (2 Cor. 5:19)

-3 positions (all of which have subsets of thought): premil, amil, postmil. None of these positions require the 1,000 years to refer to a literal 1,000 years (numbers are often signs) This is the only time I’ll use charts in Revelation!

-Amillennial: many prefer to call this “realized millennialism” “a” means no, they argue that this 1,000 years refers to the time between Jesus’ 2 comings, not future. This was the predominant thought among the church from the 400s until the 1800s, due to the influence of Augustine. They argue that the binding of Satan took place when Jesus died, and since then, God has regularly been working to draw people to Himself and conform them into His image, literally stealing them from the domain of Satan (we’ll get there)

-Postmillennialist: the gospel will continually spread across the globe until we get “1,000 year” time period where God’s peace and justice are the predominant focus across the world.

-Premillennial: Jesus returns before (pre) His millennial reign. This one has a sharp divide between historic (classical) vs. dispensational premillennial. Historic appeal to early church fathers like Papias and Irenaeus for their support, and dispensational premil didn’t come onto the scene until the 1800s. Dispensational argue for a secret rapture 7 years before Jesus’ return, and that was what most evangelicals in America believed in the 20th century (if you ever heard teaching on Revelation it was probably this kind) I don’t agree with it for 3 reasons (1) partly because most of church history was dominated by amil, (2) nothing in Revelation points to a secret taking away of the church because the church remains throughout the entire book, and (3) the passages people appeal to for a secret rapture I would argue shouldn’t be interpreted as a secret rapture, but should instead be read as either punishment/judgment or being a part of God’s welcoming committee. If you want to talk more about that, let me know!

-There is a very tiny difference between postmil and classical premil, they both use the same interpretive tools for approaching all of Scripture, including this text. My caution to you is to not use this text as a way of trying to interpret the rest of Scripture. Remember: numbers throughout Revelation are symbols and not statistics. However, the reason I’m still in the premil camp (barely) is because nowhere in Revelation does time serve as a symbol for something other than time (which is my issue with amil), my issue with postmil is it’s too positive, and my issue with premil is it tends to be too pessimistic!

-Every interpretive option has “problem” texts, does better with some verses than others, as we work through today, I’ll be primarily arguing for the historical premil, but will also share how the other options make their arguments.

  1. Serpent Bound (1-3)

-We’ve seen lots of angels! And we saw an angel holding the key to the abyss back in Rev. 9 to allow the locusts to escape. This time, instead of letting things out, he’s throwing something into the abyss.

-Apparently different than the lake of fire, as we’ll see in vs. 10. 

-Binds Satan for a thousand years

-Last week we saw the 2 beasts captured and thrown into the lake of fire

-Lots of emphasis given to this binding: seized, bound, threw, closed, sealed.

-Premil believes this is part of Jesus’ return

-Amil believes this binding happened when Jesus was rose from the dead (based on Mark 3:27 “But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man. Then he can plunder his house.”)

-Do you think Satan is currently bound and not deceiving the nations? Seems to miss the way the beast has been the puppet master behind all the political persecution throughout this section.

-Released a second time, or is this recounting the same event we saw last week: the final “battle” where God’s rule is enacted? 

-I believe this is referring to a second battle, but you’ll need to wait until the end to see why! It comes up in vs. 9

  • Saints Seated and Share (4-6)

-John’s focus shifts from the dragon to the saints. Some work needed to understand what John’s saying here! 

-Thrones, people seated on them with authority. Rev. 2:26

-And the souls who had been beheaded, connects back to Rev. 1:2

-Don’t push the idea of beheading too far – most likely a stand in for all believers, who may be required to pay for their belief with their life, because the descriptions are true of all believers.

-They reigned with Christ, which we are currently doing! Eph. 2:6, right now we’re meant to serve as Jesus’ ambassadors, that is we represent Him and His rule and reign to the rest of the world. 

-If what I’ve proposed on vs. 4 is true, then vs. 5 refers to the resurrection of the unbelievers. John calls this the “first resurrection,” but he never goes on to talk about a second resurrection, so we need to do some inferring.

-Blessed – every other time it’s used in the book (6 others for total of 7) it refers to all believers. Priests – same, every other time it refers to all believers.

-“Second death” John never refers to a first death, so once again we’re speculating. 

-This is where the premil position is probably weakest and amil is strongest because there’s some things here that seem to not make sense to us. At face value, it appears that all believers will be resurrected to receive their glorified bodies, and will be living and judging on earth at the same time that unbelievers have their normal unglorified bodies for this thousand year time period (however long that actually is!) Is that even possible? Is that correct?

-I’m going to go ahead and argue yes! But why? Because God is FAR more patient than any of us, and once again in the grand scheme of eternity 1,000 years isn’t that long. I believe this 1,000 years is the final demonstration that even when people are no longer blinded and deceived by Satan, they’ll still reject Jesus and choose sin.

-The other reason I think this is because we already have an instance where a glorified body was here walking around the earth hanging out with people who didn’t have their glorified bodies yet, and people still didn’t believe Him, that’s Jesus. Believe it or not, we do have a picture of this reality and if God’s done it once, why wouldn’t He do it again?

-If this feels or sounds odd to you, it may be because of how culturally conditioned we are, and how much we tend to view the material as only bad and negative.

-I was at a funeral recently where the speaker mentioned that the important part, the spiritual and immaterial part was saved. But that’s wrong! That’s platonic philosophy, not Christianity! God’s plan is to renew both heaven AND EARTH. So God’s plan includes a period of time where the world will be operating as it should have been operating forever. Where He is on His throne and all of us are given a job to spread His influence across the world. 

-The hard part for me is that I’ll have to find a new job when we get to this point, because I theoretically won’t need to preach anymore! But anyone who has a job outside of ministry will be able to take that vocation with you (we’ll get there in a couple weeks, this is just a teaser!) 

-And remember, this isn’t the ultimate end for us. This is just a taste of how great it will be! Yet even when everything is as it should be, with Jesus on His throne and His followers faithfully following after Him, people will still reject Him. That’s just how depraved humans are, just how prone humans are to reject and walk away from Him, at the end of time no one will be able to blame God for being unkind or impatient with them.

-If you’ve ever read The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis, this is the closest you can find in the Bible as evidence for his beliefs in there.

  • Satan’s Demise (7-10)

-After these 1,000 years, Satan is released for what was earlier called “a short time” to conduct the true final battle.

-Similarities to last time, drawing the armies up, but where in 19 it only listed kings of the earth and their armies, now it says all nations. So interpreters argue that Gog & Magog are a stand in for the nations of the world (picking up on the terminology Ezekiel uses Ezek. 38-39). Much larger army than before!

-Shows that even after all this time where Jesus was ruling, the world was as it should be, as soon as Satan is released the people flock to him with their plans to attempt to overthrow Jesus’ perfect reign.

-“Beloved city” aka “encampment of the saints” which is Jerusalem, but not the Jerusalem we know today, because that’s a stand in/representative for the entire universe (which you’ll need to come back for in 2 weeks to see how!)

-Once again, a very anticlimactic battle. 

-Saved the illustration for this week: end of ROTK, Aragorn and a tiny army of men and elves (with a dwarf and a couple hobbits) draw up against Sauron and all the forces of evil. Aragorn whispers “For Frodo” and charges. Outnumbered, impossible odds, and then the moment the ring is destroyed the earth caves in on itself and Mordor is destroyed, leaving only the good guys standing.

-Similarly here: fire consumes the army, reminiscent of another showdown in the OT (1 Kings 18) where Elijah confronts the prophets of Baal and attempt to call down fire from heaven. Spoiler alert, Elijah wins, and to connect it to last week, he wins by speaking and asking God to respond.

-Devil, dragon, ancient serpent, Satan (deceiver) finally thrown into the same place as the 2 beasts. Place of never-ending torment “day and night forever and ever.”

-We’ll look at this more closely next week, but the lake of fire is the same place unbelievers are thrown, too. After all this time to repent and turn to God, even at this late stage they refuse.

-Shared a story before of someone I heard at school saying he would just wait until he was on his deathbed to confess and get into heaven, this shows us that won’t actually happen. His choices even up to the end will be to turn away from God and pursue his own sin.

-Friends, everything we do has consequences, either positive or negative. That’s why you have to walk by a sign that say “One Step Closer” each time you walk into our doors. Every day is a new opportunity for us to grow closer to Jesus. Unfortunately, it’s also an opportunity to walk further away from him.

-PDT life isn’t made up of a few major decisions, it’s made up of millions of tiny decisions that turn into your life. What decisions are you going to make today?

-Talking with staff this week about technology – how do we use technology as Christians, as something that draws us closer to Jesus? 

-Conversations with others: how do we engage with other people in a way that allows us to better model Jesus to them AND push them closer to Jesus?

-Watching the Vikings tonight, how can we walk that in a way that brings us closer to Jesus? 

-Friends, Jesus wants every tiny little part of your life to be a way of engaging with Him. Will you allow Him in?

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by mikethestrand on November 3, 2024  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on November 3, 2024

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2024/11/03/revelation-201-10-sermon-manuscript/

Revelation 19:11-21 – Sermon Manuscript

-After months walking through the unfolding of human history, we’re finally at the end of time. We’ve seen the rise and fall of civilizations, the promise that God will someday bring about perfect revenge, and it all centers on the King enacting His final rule.

-I’ve been waiting for this week for months, because I really get to push into my LOTR fandom here! And thanks to Bradley, I also have a sign to help you remember the theme of this passage and this book.

-in LOTR Aragorn was the rightful king of Gondor, even though he hadn’t enacted his place. Instead, Denethor was the steward, tasked with taking care of the Gondor until the king returned, and it was a glorious day in Middle Earth when Aragorn took his rightful place as king! 

-Keep that picture in mind as we work through today’s text.

READ/PRAY

-A few literary keys to understand what’s going on here, one that gives us a framework of the book, and the other that gives us a framework for this section: “Opened” and “I saw”

-“Opened” – 4:1, 11:19, 15:5, 19:11

-Window 1: 1:9-3:22: Hears a loud voice commanding Him to write down what he sees, turns and sees Jesus standing among the lampstands (churches)

-Window 2: 4:1-11:18: a door standing open in heaven, throne, someone standing on the throne with a scroll that has 7 seals, leads to 7 trumpets, and heaven sings

-Window 3: 11:19-15:4: temple of God opened, Ark of the Covenant appears leading to a number of signs, war between beasts and the seed of the woman but the beast is never successful 

-Window 4: 15:5-19:10: temple of the tabernacle opened, 7 bowls of judgment with the worst penalties yet, fall of Babylon, Lamb’s Bride is ready

-Window 5: 19:11-22:7: victory of the Lamb, descent of the city of God, the New Jerusalem

-We’re in the last glimpse of history here now, after God has delayed His judgment, that delay is done and it’s time for Him to take His rightful place as King of kings and Lord of lords.

-3 scenes, each begins with “Then I saw” the king, an angel, and the beast

-Spend most of our time on the first one since that’s the most important!

  1. The King (11-16)

-White horse. White is purity, horse is a signal of riding in to make war, but the emphasis is on the rider.

-Contrast this arrival with Jesus’ first arrival. His supposed “triumphal” entry was to go die, this true triumphal entry is to enact perfect everlasting justice. This tells us the way the world works, that we hate is that humiliation is the only way to true life. To save your life you must lose it, to be great means you must be a servant.

-Rider is called Faithful and True

-Contrast this with all the descriptions we’ve seen of the beast and his minions. His leadership always leads to destruction, and if you dig deep enough you’ll find him unfaithful and untrue. 

-Think of the implications of this reality: there are no hidden skeletons in Jesus’ closet, He’ll never lead you the wrong way, He’s always available for you, He’ll never leave you or forsake you, He literally died for you. Friends, Jesus is completely worthy of your complete worship and adoration. Because He is faithful and true, it is worth losing everything to get Him (including your life), which this book reminds us may be the case. Satan will work to destroy every follower of Jesus with any means he has, whether it be through economic oppression, political oppression, religious oppression, or even martyrdom, he LOVES when death comes, which is the opposite of Jesus.

-Jesus only judges with justice, when he pursues war it is in the pursuit of true justice. Podcast on parole boards in IL, asked the question “how do you determine when justice has been served.” We can’t! How do we weigh time served in prison vs. someone being murdered? Jesus can! His judgment is completely just, which is evidenced in the next verse:

-Eyes: penetrating, understanding everything, nothing can be hidden from their sight. This is why his judgment is completely just: He understands everything from everyone, even down to your deepest desires. Can’t lie to Him, can’t trick Him, can’t deceive Him in anyway, He sees it all, which would be terrifying if He weren’t faithful and true!

-Many crowns, but not numbered. 

-Another contrast with the beast: remember 7 heads & 10 crowns, trying to be impressive but shown to be useless. Once again, the beast power is limited, but Jesus’ is limitless!

-I thought of a funny example of this that I read about hamburgers. Back in the 80s, A&W tried competing with McDonald’s quarter pounder by created 1/3 lb burger. Spent all this time and money researching and developing it but it never took off, and they couldn’t figure out why so they created a focus group. In their tests, people liked the taste of their burger better, it was cheaper than Mickey Ds, but it turns out Americans are really bad at math so they thought they were getting ripped off because 3 is less than 4. 

-Similar to the way people thought they were deceived by the numbers, Satan here looks like he has all the power, but his 10 are nothing compared to the MANY crowns on Jesus. Don’t get tricked by Satan’s many deceptions 

-Name: seems like a weird description “a name that no one knows” when we’ve seen 2 names so far, we’ve got another one coming up in the next verse, and then it seems to list 2 MORE names in 16

-Need to understand 2 cultural ideas here to understand what John’s saying. First is when talking about a deity, to know their name gives you some sway or influence over them, which is why the Romans had so many named gods to try to force the gods to obey them. You can see this when you’re out in a public place and someone yells your name, don’t you immediately stop and look around? (Side note, unfortunately ‘Mike’ and ‘like’ sound very similar in public settings)

-Second is names were seen as representing characteristics about someone, so to know someone’s name was to know who they are. We’ve already seen 5 names of Him, but that’s just the start because there aren’t enough names in the world to adequately describe Jesus, this is why we’ve got eternity to try.

-So what’s signified by this is no one can influence Jesus in any way, and no one can know Him fully. We can know Him truly as He really is, but not completely.

-Robe: whose blood? Either the defeated armies or His own. 

-Some irony to this being referred to as the last battle, not just because no battle takes place, but because Jesus won when He rose again! I don’t know that it matters whose blood is on this robe, because the point is the same either way: Jesus is returning completely victorious. The battle is won.

-Jesus isn’t alone, armies are coming with Him! White: purity, linen: priestly clothes

-This gets to the question what are you wearing? Paul gets at this idea in Eph. 4, where he compares growing in holiness (like Jesus) to taking off clothes and putting on new ones. Like we’re at the stage of life where we go through a TON of clothes! And that even includes leaving kids in dirty clothes far longer than we should. But what does that look like spiritually?

-Paul answers that questions in Col. 3 when he lists the clothes that Christians should wear. What clothes are you wearing? Are you clothed in all these attributes or do you need to work to take off the worldly self?

-Sharp sword comes from where? His mouth: Jesus’ power is in His words.

-Think of the night of His betrayal when Judas brought a group to arrest Jesus, Peter strikes out and cuts off someone’s ear, and Jesus says that He doesn’t rule with the sword, Jesus rules with words.

-We don’t often see or admit this reality that words have power. ‘Sticks and stone may break my bones’ We know this! Yet how much more damaging can words be than a broken bone that heals in weeks?

-And think of what Jesus does with words: He casts out demons multiple times. When He and His disciples are stuck in a storm in the middle of a lake how does calm it? He speaks. How does He raise Lazarus from the dead? He speaks. How do we know that He’s God? Because He told us Himself, He used words. But think back even further than that, how does God create the world? He speaks. 

-Friends, the reality is that in this world, words have incredible power. How are we saved? By using words: confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord with our mouths, and believing in our hearts (deepest part of ourselves) that God raised Him from the dead. Words bring the dead to life (spiritually), and God’s Word is always effective, that’s why preaching God’s Word is such a significant part of our Lord’s Day gathering! The best modern example of this is in a wedding ceremony: how is this new family created? By words “I now pronounce you man and wife,” from that point on they’re no longer 2 single people, there’s power in words.

-And at the end of history, when Jesus returns, words are the only thing that will matter. Words are how He rules the nations.

-Most English translations translate the next sentence here as “rule with an iron rod” but I think it makes more sense to translate as “shepherd with an iron rod.” His rod can’t break but that’s a blessing because He’s a good shepherd who cares for His sheep.

-Tramples the winepress (talked about that in Rev. 14)

-Name written on his robe & thigh: King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

-Everyone else, no matter how high they are in the political or global stage, isn’t the true ruler of the world. At this time, Nero would have thought he was, previously in history you could point to Alexander the Great, Atilla the Hun, even Mohammad, or Napoleon, King George, none of them are the king above all kings!

  • An Angel (17-18)

-I hope you’ve been picking up on the ways John is drawing out comparisons between the city of man (Babylon) and the city of God (New Jerusalem) as we’ve continued through this book. Last week Micah taught us about the bride of Christ who was invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb. This time there’s another invitation to supper, but it’s a very different supper, this one is called the great supper of God, and the outworking is gross.

-Begins with an angel “standing in the sun”

-Too bright to look at, high above the earth.

-Picking up a prophecy from Ezek. 38-39 about the destruction of Israel’s enemies, which was pointing to this story at the end of history. Remember it’s important to know our WHOLE Bible to interpret Revelation properly – John regularly picks up OT themes or ideas and reinterprets them for his new audience, demonstrates this is God’s story and plan from beginning to end. It means we can trust Him.

-One thing that’s unlike Ezekiel is here no one is left out: free and slave, small and great, a way of referring to everyone 

  • The Beast (19-21)

-Remember that the beast is always trying to mimic the Lord – unholy trinity, signs and wonders, marks on his people, here we see him bringing an army just like Jesus has

-Jesus’ army is impressive: white horses, pure clothing, this one is a beast, the kings of the earth, and their armies, but nothing listed about their purity, nothing listed about their ability to conquer

-All this build up, increasing intensity in the book leading to this final showdown, in 1 corner you have Jesus and all the saints who have been saved and redeemed, in the other you have the beast and all the people he’s deceived through the course of history ready for one last attempt to finally commit the ultimate rebellion and cast God out of heaven. Unfortunately, no matter the size of the army it’s not a fair fight, because the true victory was won 2,000 years ago when Jesus walked out of the grave. That was the moment the beast, that ancient serpent, lost the fight.

-And look what happens to them: the beast and the false prophet were taken prisoner by Jesus and thrown into the lake of fire. They’re ready to knock down, and when the time comes there’s not even a fight. Talk about anticlimactic! 

-The rest of the army also doesn’t get to participate, by the word of Jesus’ mouth they’re killed.

-At the end of time, we’re once again faced with the question: whose side are you on? Which army are you fighting in? We don’t get to opt out of this one, we don’t have someone fighting in our place, but we do have a choice.

-“I may never march in the infantry, ride in the cavalry, shoot the artillery, I may never fly o’er the enemy, but I’m in the Lord’s army”

-But friends, here’s the thing, our fight isn’t against flesh and blood, we fight spiritually, with the Sword of the Spirit (God’s Word), but putting on the full armor of God (Eph. 6)

-Have you ever paid attention to the characteristics of someone covered in the armor of God? Growing up in church we’d always focus on the items instead of the characteristic:

-Belt of truth, breastplate of righteousness, gospel of piece, shield of faith, helmet of salvation “pray at all times in the Spirit” 

-The way God commands us to fight and live through is words, words are the means by which God’s message goes forth, God’s Words continue having power today, God’s Word is the way dead people are brought back to life, and we now have to speak the words of eternal life to others.

-Truth-tellers. Don’t play the worldly game of deception, of assuming the worst, of looking for a fight.

-Had a conversation with a retired pastor who said people would often complain that his sermons didn’t have enough application, they wanted him to tell them what to do. Friends, the message I want you to hear every week isn’t what you need to do, it’s what Jesus has already done.

-Words have power to transform, each week it isn’t about finding something new to add to your life, it’s being reminded that there’s nothing we can add to our salvation to make Jesus love us any more. He already loves us unconditionally!

-The king is already sitting on his throne, the battle is won, but the world doesn’t realize it. Someday everyone will bow the knee to Jesus, either willingly or by force – and our job is to use words to invite others to join the right army, our job is to faithful stewards, the key word there is faithful. The kingdom is advancing, the battle is being fought, but one side refuses to admit defeat. If you want to be on the winning side it’s easy: use words to confess with your mouth that Jesus is the Lord, and if you have done that daily continue putting on the godly characteristics we’ve seen today.

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by mikethestrand on October 27, 2024  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on October 27, 2024

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2024/10/27/revelation-1911-21-sermon-manuscript/

Revelation 18 – Sermon Manuscript

-I love Table Topics. If you haven’t heard of them, it’s fun questions that prompt conversation, here’s some examples. One of my personal favorites is if you could change 1 event from history, what would it be? You can ask me later if you want to get into a discussion on church history. But a table topic question today’s sermon is: When are you most happy? Raise at work, A’s at school, recognition for your accomplishments, your birthday, new car, new house, new iPhone

-The flip side to that question is: what do you grieve? I think you can learn a lot about a person by knowing what makes them happy (celebrate) or what they grieve. Usually they’re connected, you would grieve the loss of what makes you happy. 

-In this week’s text, we’re going to look at worldly grief. 

READ/PRAY

  1. Announcing the End (1-8)

-“Another angel”

-Shifting focus a little bit from last week, not one with the bowls, but remember this is still a zoomed in focus of the 7th bowl – the destruction of Babylon the great. Cities look like they have all the privilege and prestige, but Revelation reminds us that things are not as they appear.

-“He called out”

-A warning, judgment comes but not without a warning beforehand.

-Don’t miss this warning! God has given a warning before the judgment comes. 

–2 Peter 3:9 “The Lord does not delay his promise, as some understand delay, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance.” Friends, God’s eternal patience is true, but it also depends on repentance. God should not be messed with or assumed about His grace and mercy, but we often do assume it, but someday your choice will determine your eternity. God’s heart and desire is for everyone to spend eternity with Him, but unfortunately that won’t be true of everyone. Some people will perish – spending eternity experiencing God’s wrath. This is why a message like Revelation is so needed! Think of what we just saw roll through FL, and thank the Lord that we have the technology we do so people can prepare, they knew the hurricane was coming. Similarly, we know judgment is coming, the question is are we prepared?

-Babylon the Great – the place of decadence and extravagance, the place where everyone gets what they want when they want it.

-Remember, described as a woman in this section. Suddenly she’s not so great. 

-A haunt (GRK prison) for demons, spirits, animals. Anything that is dirty and broken resides there. 

-This is a reminder for us that things are not always as they seem, and the physical doesn’t always match the spiritual. Think back to the descriptions of the 7 churches earlier in the book, the ones that are most vibrant and healthy are the ones facing the most physical persecution, and the ones that look the most appealing are the ones who are the least healthy spiritually. That’s true throughout history. I think of the excesses of Rome, the beautiful architecture, ornate buildings that I paid a few dollars to walk through. They hid a culture of despair and decay by beautiful art and architecture, but underneath it’s a prison for everything that is broken in the world.

-(3) Everyone, all nations have drunk of her idolatry

-Description here is of excess, no lack. Wealth that comes about with no concern about how you get it. We’ll talk about that a little later, but what comes to your mind when you think of pursuit of wealth in an unholy way? Is there a way that the pursuit of wealth can be unhealthy or unholy?

-The other key to remember is this sexual immorality language is referring to idolatry. It’s looking for ultimate satisfaction in something other than God, which is the drift of the human heart. All humans are looking for some way to get their deepest longings met. Think of what the Rolling Stones said “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” that’s the cry of every human apart from God.

-Another voice (angel or God?) Seems to be God for 2 reasons: “my people” John otherwise has no problem referring to angels. However, vs. 5 refers to God in the 3rd person, so that could be wrong!

-“Come out of her” What does that look like? Are we supposed to flee to the hills? Become Amish or monastics? Is it sin to live in a city? I’ve even read some books over the past few years that argue that it’s time for Christians to flee civilization, to head for the hills and create a holy enclave that won’t be influenced by the world. If you’ve been in our church history class you know that pull is centuries old! Monks have argued for this!

–John 17. Jesus wants us to remain in the world, He prays that we would remain faithful in the world. In but not of. Key distinction. Notice that Jesus says that we are sent by Him into the world. I don’t want you so busy with church activities that you’re never able to engage your neighbors, co-workers. There was a time when I was growing up where church was the social calendar for everyone, that time is gone, and we have a mission to pursue. One church I worked at the Sr Pastor would work to add stuff to the weekly bulletin (explain bulletins) so it looked like the church was busier than it actually was.

-And I can empathize with this impulse! It’s good to spend time with our church body, it’s healthy for us to enjoy each other, I’d even say it’s essential for you to remain engaged and involved here for your sanctification. But it’s also essential for you to engage in the rest of your lives with the good news of the gospel. At work, while shopping, while driving, while walking, while talking. God wants to use you to accomplish His mission of making disciples of all nations. He’s inviting you as a part of His plans. Are you joining with Him or working against Him?

-Since seminary one of my favorite passages to meditate on has been Deut. 6, something Jews have recited daily for millennia. “Hear Israel, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God, talk about Him ALL THE TIME.” Friends, what should come up when you’re having conversation is God and His Word. 

-I have some things that trigger me, one of them is when someone feels like they have to add a devotional to a gathering to make it more “holy.” My hope is that you can’t help but talk about God’s Word, what He’s done in your life, what you’re learning and being challenged in. The reality is you should have at least 1 steady input of God’s Word every week: right now! At minimum you’ve got Revelation 18 to chew on and meditate through for the next week, which should lead to new thoughts and ideas from this text that you can share with others! So do it!

-Condemnation of Babylon continues in vs. 5

-Contrast this description with the original Babylon in Gen. 11. The reality is anytime we try to make a name for ourselves it only serves to condemn us because it’s trying to force our way into the place of God.

-Sinful pursuits, the impulses they have are what will come back around to hurt her. God always remembers and will eventually bring about perfect justice and judgment. No one will doubt that He’s right in His judgments, except Babylon.

-Look how she describes herself in vs. 7. This sounds similar to what is described in Psalm 14 as a fool. Fools say there is no god, fools say that no one will hold them accountable, fools say to just pursue pleasure and alleviate pain. 

-Think about what Babylon (worldly temptation) says here “I will never see grief.” Friends, do you hear the call of our culture today? How much marketing is spent on never needing to grieve? How much time is spent on not needing to grieve? If we’re entertained 24/7 there’s no time to grieve. Why struggle with grief if I can just turn on Netflix and be numbed?

-But the reality is grief will come at some point – that’s guaranteed. Just like vs. 8 goes on to remind us. There is 1 kingdom that’s eternal, the rest will someday end by destruction.

  • Grieving the End (9-20)

-I asked earlier what makes you happy, but now I want you to thin about what do you grieve?

-Do you grieve when you sin? Do you grieve when people pursue Babylon instead of the New Jerusalem? Do you grieve at division in Christ’s body?

-Even as we talk about that, we need to recognize that there’s a difference between godly grief and worldly grief. Worldly grief will be modeled here, but godly grief is meant to lead us closer to Christ, closer to holiness, aligning us closer with what God has created us to be.

-Picking up on themes, ideas, and language from a few OT places of destruction: Ezek. 26-27, Jer. 50-51. I don’t have time this morning to dig into them, but you can read them on your own if you want to trace the lineage of God’s response to Babylon! There are 3 groups who grieve the destruction of Babylon.

  1. The Kings (9-10)

-The first group mentioned are the kings. Those in leadership and positions of power. But notice that they stand “far off” they don’t want to face the penalty, but they’re grieving.

-“Woe” could be “alas” or “Oh no” a sigh of mourning

-The judgment on the city is fast! They imagined they would continue in perpetuity (as the woman said) but their demise was quick

-Parable of the rich fool (Luke 12:16-21) Where the phrase “eat, drink, and be merry” comes from, but it’s not a positive connotation. This parable is a reminder that everything on earth will someday disappear. None of us know when we’ll die, none of us know when our end will be. If you really think about some of the things we do, we’re all crazy! Strapping ourselves to a metal box, then moving inches away from another metal box going 70 mph. One twitch and you could be gone! But that’s not the way the world often thinks, the world thinks this will go on forever.

  • The Merchants (11-17)

-We also have those who have become wealthy from the worldly systems. Mentions extravagant things, all the nicest items, and this is the longest of these 3 groups. But culminates in treating humans as a commodity – slaves, instead of viewing them as image bearers.

-Let’s talk about this now. Have you ever considered ways you may be propagating unjust economic systems in our day that force people into slavery? The reason we have cheap and easily accessible clothing is often due to someone in SE Asia being forced to work in grueling conditions for an unlivable wage, and some those people working are children. Our culture expects things to be fast, easy, cheap, and easily accessible. There are moments where I won’t order something on Amazon because I can’t have it in 2 days. That’s ridiculous (and tells you where my heart is). I don’t have an easy solution to this, I’m not very good at economics, but I can see the ways we’re all impacted by our finances. Remember a few years ago when COVID hit and everyone went crazy with TP? Probably better things to horde, but when things suddenly aren’t going to be as easy as we thought we often don’t know how to respond so we do things that are really dumb. (Saw people with mountains of TP in their carts, heard stories of people filling their garages with it and then they couldn’t get rid of it)

-And the problem is Christians aren’t immune to this. I read a quote this week that I think brings this point to light, but to understand it you need to think of the city limit signs you see as you drive around. When I drive home every week after church, I drive by a sign that says “Welcome to Eagan established 1860” telling my I’ve crossed the line into a new city, if you live north of here you drive by it too!

-“There’s no ‘city limit’ sign to the earthly city precisely because the earthly city is less a place and more a way of life, a constellation of loves and longing and beliefs bundled up in communal rhythms, routines, and rituals.” James K.A. Smith Isn’t that interesting? We are all marked by the rhythms, routines, and rituals that we live in. Think of the ritual of a stoplight. Stay behind the white line, watch the lights next to you for them to turn red, impatiently wait and get bored so you pull out your phone to check your texts. We all have lived in these rhythms more than we realize, so if we’re going to live in different rhythms we need regular reminders that we’re citizens first and foremost of heaven.

-Just as the kings mourned but stayed away, the merchants do the same thing. Only used what they could and as soon as it wasn’t advantageous for them anymore, they ran away.

  • The Sailors (18-19)

-The last group to grieve were the sailors who once again got wealthy from the influence of Babylon. Once again, they’re not mourning for good reasons, they’re mourning because they’ve lost their access to wealth. Eugene Peterson summarizes this in his book well:

-Do you see any places where people worship economic prosperity instead of God? One I’ve been thinking of recently is “starter homes.” I keep reading about starter homes becoming more and more expensive and leaving out those who need a home. I remember when I bought my first home I was told the average time someone lives in a home was something like 3 years.

-We’re at a similar point to the parable of the foolish rich man. I’m not saying it’s bad to have nice things, I am saying it’s bad, wrong, and foolish to view money as your salvation. It’s not wrong to have a nice car, steward it, take care of it, and look for opportunities to bless others with it. It’s not wrong to have a nice house. Take care of it, have others over. But don’t look to your things as your ultimate source of comfort and hope because they will always let you down.

  • The End (20-24)

-Unlike the world, those who live in the way of the Lamb are called to respond to Babylon’s demise differently: Rejoice! Do you rejoice when evil is destroyed or judged?

-Look what happens to Babylon, the music stops, the work stops, the lights go out, there’s no more joy or happiness found there. 

-All this is in preparation for next week where we will start to look a different city.

Table Topics for this week:

-Do you talk about God’s Word everyday?

-What rhythms, routines, and rituals do you practice on a weekly basis, do those help you live more in Babylon or the New Jerusalem? 

-I realize this second question is harder because the practices of heaven don’t seem all that impressive. Read an old book, pray to a God we can’t see, meet 1 morning a week with people who don’t like the same things as us. Even the practices Jesus commanded us don’t seem to have any significance: take a bath, and drink some fruit of the vine and bread. Yet these habits and practices shape and form us into new people. God is working in us as we practice these habits in the context of His body – the church.

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by mikethestrand on October 13, 2024  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on October 13, 2024

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2024/10/13/revelation-18-sermon-manuscript/

Revelation 17 – Sermon Manuscript

-What animal do you see on the screen?

-Is this a picture of an old woman or a young lady?

-Last one: vase or face?

-Fun tricks! What we’re going to see in today’s text is that Satan is great at pulling optical illusions. Paul summarizes it well in 2 Cor. 11 “Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. 15 So it is no great surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will be according to their works.” 

-Today’s text is a call for us to not be seduced by Satan’s schemes, to remain alert to his schemes, and to remember that the end of following him is destruction

READ/PRAY

  1. A Woman on a Beast (1-6)

-Recapitulation: repeating the same story from a different perspective, hence the 7 seals, trumpets, bowls are recounting the same event from different perspectives 

-7th all recount lightning, thunder, earthquake, and hail. Exact same language in each section, as if they’re recounting the same event but focusing on different aspects of the end.

-Intro from Discipleship on the Edge

-As I said earlier, I think today’s text is the most explicit call to wake up and live differently because the world will continually, day after day work to seduce us with her charms.

-Friends, this is why it’s SO important to meet here every week. This gathering isn’t an optional add on for when you have free time, this is your lifeblood to remember what’s truly true, to be reminded that there are spiritual implications to everything we do. It’s so easy to question and doubt when you don’t have this, and even when you have this it’s easy to doubt!

-I wrestled through this in 2021. As I’ve shared I listen to a lot of podcasts, found one that had a lot of musicians that I like and listened to it. The problem was all of them were ex-vangelical and talking about deconstructing their faith, without any sense of rebuilding. Things at church were difficult in that season, we were adjusting to having 3 kids (laughable now) but I found myself starting to get disillusioned with the church. I’ve shared before the need to preach to yourself more than you listen to yourself, and I found myself listening a whole lot more than I was preaching! I’d think really dumb things like church doesn’t matter, God doesn’t care, His ways are harmful: guys I know better than that! What snapped me out of it was listening to one of those musicians again who shared a similar story of wrestling through dumb questions and he realized it was because he had been touring too much and not spending time with his church family. About this time a Psalm became a balm to me, Psalm 73. I share that because I want you to understand that we’ll all wrestle through seasons of doubts, and the temptation is to not tell anyone about them. Friends, bring them to the church! When you’re discouraged or doubting, bring it here!

-Graphic warning: John uses pretty strong language!

-“One of the 7 angels” reference back to last week

-Zooming in on the 7th bowl for these next 2 chapters, how the destruction of Babylon will take place

-This is also intentionally contrasted with another woman that we’ll get to in Rev. 21, but listen to the description there: Does that sound similar to anything we read this morning?

-John is contrasting the city of God against the city of man, described as women. One destined to last forever, one destined for destruction.

-Babylon is taken from Gen. 11 the tower of Babel where the goal was for the people to build a name for themselves, which is idolatry. Throughout history you see the city of man continually trying to go their own way and refuse to submit to God’s will for them.

-The imagery picks up in vs. 3

-The woman’s sitting on a beast that we saw in Rev. 13 (signified by the 7 heads and 10 horns, remember John doesn’t follow a linear approach to this story)

-At first blush she sounds beautiful, well dressed, well put together, but it’s all a façade. In her hand is a gross cup (Fear Factor, youth group games)

-Label on her forehead, just like we saw the mark of the beast in Rev. 13, not a literal mark, but a way of identifying their MO. This woman’s primary motivation is the mother of everything deranged on earth

-What’s in her cup is the blood of the saints, she keeps oppressing and killing them, just like a drunk person can’t stop drinking, she can’t stop killing them. A way of demonstrating the city of man: opposed to God and His people.

-John is amazed. The word he uses here for “greatly astonished” was used earlier in Rev. 13:3

-Just as I shared earlier, even John isn’t immune to the allure of the woman! She’s seductive, pulling people in, and it takes an angel to wake John up.

  • The Beast Is… (7-14)

-Ever been zoning out and it takes someone pushing you or saying something repeatedly to get you to snap out? That’s what the angel does here.

-One of the few places in Revelation we get a description of what’s happening. Now, that explanation doesn’t fill every detail in, but it does give some clarity.

-Mystery in the NT isn’t the same way we use mystery today. Something previously concealed that’s now been revealed in God’s redemptive plan.

-The beast is trying but failing to copy Jesus’ atoning work. It was, currently isn’t, but is about to come up.

-Governments and regimes opposed to God and His work. At the time it was Rome, and it will continue coming back again and again. I really enjoy reading thrillers, got really into Tom Clancy, the threat of Communism, but then it seemed like communism died, but now we’ve got a whole new threat of totalitarian regimes in other parts of the world.

-Who’s astonished? (same word as before) those who have not been written in the book of life, aka those who are following the beast.

-Mind that has wisdom, just like Rev. 13

-Wisdom for what? To understand and live faithfully as someone who follows the Lamb instead of the beast. Again, the world is enticing, it looks beautiful but at the end of the day it only leads to death.

-7 heads are 7 mountains:

-Rome. Rome was built on 7 mountains, and now we see the woman sitting on them. And just to make it even more confusing they’re also 7 kings! 

-But wait, we’re just getting started! Because 5 of the kings have fallen, the 6th us, and the other hasn’t come yet. No one has figured out what John’s referring to here. And then to get going even more, the beast that we’ve seen is an 8th that’s one of the 7, and pretty soon you start to think that John doesn’t even know how to count!

-Best explanation I read involves 2 previous ideas. First is the number 6 which is the number of man and falling short, which signifies that the current king continually falls short. Then the 8th is similar to Proverbs: 7 things I hate, 8 are an abomination, just a way of bringing emphasis to that one.

-Next verse we have 10 more kings who will serve for a short time.

-Has no 1st century parallel, so most likely referring to the complete turning away from God in preparation for His return as the world draws near to the end. It seems that what John goes on to say validates this interpretation.

-They have 1 purpose, they go to make war against the Lamb. That’s coming up, but just bear in mind each time it talks about this coming war is there’s a ton of buildup and when the final showdown happens there’s no war! Jesus shows up, speaks and wins, which is what John says here.

-The world will continue fighting against Jesus, but what they don’t realize is Jesus has already won. He’s already sitting on His throne, He’s already ruling and reigning, but He’s waiting until history has been completed to come back. He’s Lord above any other lord and King above any other competing king.

  • The Woman Is… (15-18)

-Even more explanation of the vision: the waters the woman sits on covers the world. No one is exempt from the influence of this woman. Anywhere you have people you’ll have the pull of the woman.

-And here’s the irony. While it initially looked like the woman was ruling over the beast by riding on them, that’s shown to be a farce because they turn around and destroy her. Her clothes will be ripped off, they’ll eat her flesh, and then burn her carcass. It’s gross! But it’s also a picture of how evil always, always, ALWAYS will turn in on itself. It’s never satisfied, it never rest, and it will continually seek to exert its’ control further and further. You can see this in literally any totalitarian government in the world! 

-Think of Russia with Putin. With all the bodies left in his wake how feasible would it be for him to step down? That’s a death sentence for him! Or Kim Jong-Un in North Korea, he claims to be a god. How likely would a transfer of power be from him? How long would he live if he willingly resigned? And on and on we could go throughout history.

-Yet who’s still in control? God. Everyone is still culpable for their choices and actions, yet God can still work to carry out his plans. 

-How does that work? I don’t know. I’ve done a fair amount of reading and research on this topic, and I want to be very careful to not go further than the Bible goes in discussing the things of the Lord. 

-Somehow and some way God is in complete control such that nothing can stand in the way of His ultimate plans. And at the same time, humans are responsible moral creatures who can willingly choose actions and activities that have real consequences. We’re not robots forced to choose things we wouldn’t willingly pursue. And I would argue that we’re at another mystery that we get to spend eternity discussing without the same sinful constraints we have here! I love the word paradox when we talk about some of these things. According to google, a paradox is: “a seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition that when investigated or explained may prove to be well founded or true.” When we reach a paradox we’re reminded that God’s ways aren’t our ways and His thoughts aren’t our thoughts, so our response should be to fall on our faces in worship of Him. 

-Jesus being fully God and fully man. God being 3 persons and 1 God. God being completely sovereign and humans being willingly able to choose sin or obedience to God. Paradox, a reminder for us to worship Him.

-Finally the woman is solidified: the great city (Rome, Babylon, Washington DC, New York City, London, Paris, Tokyo, Shanghai) All of the cities on this side of eternity will be marked by the allure of this sinful woman. Opposed to God, hating His people, doing everything they can to take more and more power. 

-Think of what cities are: mass densities of people. One of the first things we learn about people in the Bible is people are sinners. So if you take a bunch of sinners and throw them together in 1 location, what do you think the consequence of that is going to be? Lots and lots of sin. You see that reality all over in the Bible!

-But the craziest thing about that reality is in the new heavens and earth God’s people live together in a city, New Jerusalem, a city where this woman will have no power or influence, where the effects of sin are non-existent. Can you imagine that? I struggle to even process something like that! I’ve been to some pretty cool cities and all of them have sinful pulls in them.

-The unfortunate thing is it’s not just cities that are marked by sin, even if you move to the middle of Antarctica and live alone, this prostitute will still find you because you’re still with you, and I hate to tell you but you’re a sinner. And this is where we once again get to the good news of Revelation: you don’t need to stay there!

-Once again, the message we’re seeing in Revelation is the reminder that there are 2 ways to live, in the city of man (Babylon) or the city of God. Both of the stories of these cities originate in Genesis and continue fighting against each other throughout history. The dragon (the old serpent) leads 1 city, and God leads the other city.

-And right now these 2 cities look like they’re in competition with each other, and many times it looks like the city of man is winning, doesn’t it? We hear of pastors falling out of ministry (again), we hear story after story of people deconstructing their faith, of Christian influence waning.

-Yet at the same time, I keep hearing more stories of revival and renewal breaking out across the world. Football players at THE Ohio State meeting for testimonies and prayer, 10,000 students at Univ. of Arkansas met for a night of prayer and baptisms, University of South Carolina, TX A&M Corpus Christi. Friends even when it feels like the world is getting worse, God is still on the move and at work! The city of God continues breaking in against the city of man, and it requires us being faithful to continue bringing the light into the darkness, to remember that we are first and foremost citizens of heaven and to live differently because of that. 

-What does that look like?

1- Walk by faith and not by sight. Remember that this woman looks attractive and appealing. Even John was tempted by her!

2- Be ok living differently than your friends and neighbors. We have different goals, we’re living as citizens of a different kingdom which means we need to look, act, and think differently than many of the people we’re rubbing shoulders with on a regular basis. Work hard, but don’t let your work define you. Steward your possessions, but don’t let them control you. Care for your kids but remember they’re first and foremost God’s and not yours.

3- Practice the regular gifts of grace God has given (Bible, prayer, church) Bible is God’s very Word, He still speaks to us in and through His Word. Prayer is us responding to Him, speaking back. Church is the new nation that we belong to, our citizenship is in Heaven and church is a glimpse of that reality where we’re brought into and invested in people that we wouldn’t naturally get along with (different ages)

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by mikethestrand on October 6, 2024  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on October 6, 2024

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2024/10/06/revelation-17-sermon-manuscript/

Revelation 16 – Sermon Manuscript

-When you think of God, what comes to your mind? Is God in your mind like a divine Santa Claus who’s there to give gifts? Is He like Zeus who just waits for something to displease him and send out a lightning bolt? Is He like the dad from Full House who’s always understanding and patient? Is He like the perfect grandfather with flowing gray locks and perfect hair as Michealangelo pictured Him in the Sistine Chapel? 

-I hope the past few weeks have been stretching to you! In our world today we emphasize the love and grace of God, but we tend to miss the justice and wrath of God as just as true as His love. It’s jarring to our Western mind to think about justice and wrath as right attribute of the God of the Bible.

-But what about this explanation of God by Richard Dawkins? What Dawkins (and many others) miss is God hasn’t changed! The culture around us has changed significantly since Genesis 1 was written (and Revelation 16) but that’s for us to process through, not God!

-We’re continuing today with the theme of God’s wrath being poured out like bowls. Friends let me pause to remind us that while God is a wrathful God, that’s not the only attribute of God. God’s wrath is only poured out on those opposed to Him, God’s wrath is meant to be a warning to lead people to repentance. Listen for that theme as we read the text together:

READ/PRAY

-Last week, Micah prepped us for this week. God’s wrath is promised to come on those who refuse to serve Him. But before we look at the bowls, I think we need to think about why we’ve now gotten to God’s wrath being poured out, and in order to do that we need to understand the storyline of the Bible.

-In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The culmination of that was humans who were tasked by God with imaging Him in the rest of creation, stewarding and caring for the creation, and ruling over the creation, but they were also given limits, a law to follow in order to flourish in the world as God intended. But our first parents (Adam & Eve) rebelled and disobeyed God’s law. 

-From that point humanity split into the followers of God and those opposed to God. The followers of God were meant to serve as representatives to the rest of creation what true life looked like. By obeying God’s law it would lead to flourishing and peace. But time and time again God’s people disobeyed. 

-Then Jesus comes and lives the perfect life where He completely obeys every law of God. I don’t it’s a coincidence that one passage describes Jesus as weeping over Jerusalem (Luke 19), how frustrating do you think it would be to see the brokenness in the world and people’s refusal to live as God intended? Jesus then dies for the sins of the world, and offers people a new way to flourish in the world, which Jeremiah describes as having God’s law written on our hearts: instead of being written on stone tablets our internal drives and desires will shift and be able to align with God’s law, His instructions for living as He intended. 

-But we don’t see the full implications of that yet. It’s hard to obey God’s law, we don’t always pursue Him, we continue to rebel and disobey which is why we have Revelation to remind us that this struggle will someday end.

-One of the phrases that I’ve intentionally been using throughout this explanation is God’s law. His expectations for His people have never changed since the creation of the world. The way that looks has changed as His plan has unfolded, but we still need to obey God’s law, and the reason for that is summarized by a quote I read this week: “God’s law is not an imposition, but an exposition.” E. Stanley Jones. 

-I think that when we think of God’s law our minds drift towards the imposition (that was true for Adam and Eve). We view God’s law as shackles and restraints preventing us from living our “best life.” Friends, your best life isn’t going to happen until Jesus comes back! But the only way to have a life of flourishing is by living according to God’s law, hence it’s an exposition (explanation) of this world. And I love how even scientific study regularly backs up God’s law. Like the fact that loneliness is being described as an epidemic today, God says in the beginning it’s not good for humans to be alone. First thing for us to realize is God’s law is good and leads to life.

-Secondly, we are storied people, even though we often don’t realize it. We define ourselves based on stories/accounts that happen to us, and what God invites us to do is align our stories with His and move to start identifying our lives based on the 1 true story of history that will stand the test of time. What that means is you have the choice to either live in God’s story or pursue your own story, which God calls sin. One of the most striking things to me as I’ve been studying Revelation is how much the Exodus story is meant to serve as a primary story for God’s people, and it’s especially true in today’s passage. 

-Exodus plauges

-The thing to keep in mind is there are only 2 ways to live, either you obey God or you don’t, either you live in God’s story or you live in the dragon’s story. So as we look at God’s wrath, we need to remember something J.I. Packer said: “Nobody stands under the wrath of God, save those who have chosen to do so.” J.I. Packer. 

-Friends, we have a choice in our lives to follow after God’s law, or to follow after God’s wrath. We’ll once again see the destruction that comes from disobeying God, but even in the midst of that be reminded of God’s mercy.

-Bowls are a natural, automatic reflex of holiness (just as you have a gag reflex)

7 seals: from the church, 7 trumpets: from the world, 7 bowls: from the temple of God

-There is at least a closer connection between the bowls and the trumpets, but remember as well the increasing severity of the judgment. Seals affected ¼ of the earth, trumpets 1/3, now with the bowls it’s the whole earth.

  1. 4 Bowls on the World (1-9)

-From the temple – God is done with the rebellion and sin and is going to deal with it once and for all.

-The punishment fits the crime for every bowl that comes out. First bowl: Rev. 13 those who received the mark of the beast are given a mark of judgment. What they thought would be their saving grace earlier (literally the only way to participate in the economic system) ends up being their demise.

-And friends, how often is this true of us? We adopt sinful habits or practices that we think will help us succeed, but then they end up consuming us later. I think of the house projects I’ve been working on – I keep finding stuff that the previous owner did that were done completely wrong! And if I weren’t going through and cleaning them up could have let to my house literally being destroyed! And most of the time the issues we struggle with aren’t major things at the beginning, but if we’re not regularly reminded of the way the world lulls us to sleep and tries to get us to stop living in God’s story, it will consume us.

-We see it again with the next 2 bowls, the thing that people view as saving them is what leads to their demise, and I think this has 2 implications to it. First is what’s spoken in the text:

-This is a just judgment given to the earth, because they’ve killed God’s messengers, so in response the earth is suddenly covered in blood. God talks about this all the way back in Genesis when he says if someone sheds blood their blood will also be shed. There will be retribution for the disobedience of people. 

-But the second implication we can draw from this is in the way people look to money and wealth as their primary focus in life. Shipping back then, just like today, serves as a way people can expand their wealth and status, and fish are a great source of food! I love a good sushi! (good, my general rule is I won’t order seafood at a landlocked state)

-A couple weeks ago I talked about the reality that we become like what we worship, which is true! But what if God’s response is to take what we worship away from us? What if this water being turned to blood means people no longer are able to profit from the normal means they’ve typically used?

-Just this week, some new legislation came out banning any Chinese or Russian software in our cars (that’s a weird thing to say) What would the implications be of every vehicle in our country was hit with a software bug? (I know some of you with old school cars would be fine!) The great depression was not that long ago! I know I’m always told that if I invest now it’s guaranteed to grow by 3% until I retire, but what if it doesn’t? This is John’s reminder that we’re not as in control as we think we are. God can call down judgment at any moment, and someday He will! Are we ready for that day?

-The last thing to note from this is the last line of vs. 6 “They deserve it!” GRK “they are worthy” Worthy for what? Judgment! This is picking up an idea from Rev. 4:11. This communicates the same idea I’ve been sharing: everyone is worthy of something, every human (apart from Jesus Christ) is worthy of condemnation because they’re not realizing that only God is worthy to receive praise.

-Which is what the next verse reminds us of. The altar is the place where the martyrs are. The martyrs, who had begged God earlier to avenge them, are now acknowledging that God is right and true and when He judges, it’s just. 

-Think of it like if you got caught blatantly disobeying the law (officer pulls you over for driving 20 mph over the speed limit). There are consequences to your actions, it is just for the police officer to give you a ticket. Similarly with God it is just for Him to judge you, but God doesn’t just leave you there, He provides a way for your judgment to disappear, we’ll get there at the end.

-Similarly to the previous bowls, this time people are scorched, but notice their response

-Instead of repenting and moving towards living in God’s story, they blaspheme and refuse to repent. Friends, even in His judgment God wants people to move towards Him! In this verse it’s saying there’s the choice to repent! God wants everyone to follow Him, to live as they should, to find life to the full, but not everyone will. C.S. Lewis quote.

  • 3 Bowls on the Beast (10-21)

-The focus of the bowls moves in a different direction now to the throne of the beast, and just like in the Exodus, the beast’s power is shown to be deficient because his kingdom is completely dark.

-Response of the people here seems weird, doesn’t it? Why are they gnawing their tongues? Not in the text, but I think they’re doubling down on their refusal to repent. If they don’t have tongues it’s going to be difficult to be forced to praise God, isn’t it? This is demonstrating a people who have become so calloused they’ll do everything they can to continue in their ways instead of repenting and trusting in the one true God.

-And it leads me to asking a question for you: do you have any areas in your life where you’re proverbially cutting off your tongue so you don’t need to submit it to God? Do you have little secret impulses or desires that aren’t honoring to God? I had a friend over the summer share that he’s working on better worshipping God with his dreams. Dreams are often the outworking of your thought life, are you worshipping God with your thought life too?

-And notice again the purpose of this pain: to lead them to repentance, but they continue refusing to repent. Friends, pain and suffering is often a kindness of the Lord that’s meant to lead us to repentance. It shocks us out of our stupor, focuses our attention and energies, and demands we pay attention to it. God walks with you even in your suffering. C.S. Lewis quote

-The sixth bowl focuses on 1 specific river that served as the Eastern border to Israel, and the place where a feared enemy in the 1st century resided. If there’s no river, there’s no protection from them.

-Unclean spirits, demonic influences. Frogs (again notice the LIKE here, not literal frogs), referencing back to the plagues of Egypt again! Text explicitly says they are demonic spirits who are opposed to God. They’ll continue fighting day after day until the great day with God comes back.

-Then there’s an interesting parenthetical note that Jesus is coming like a thief so be careful so that you don’t end up naked (guessing you didn’t think you’d be hearing that at church today) This is a warning to the church to not end up like the world. Same warning to the church at Laodicea in 3:18, reminder to store up your riches in the right place.

-Hebrew Har-Maggedio (mount Meggedio), not a mountain but a plain. A battle was fought between King Josiah of Judah and King Neco of Egypt (2 Kings 23), Judah was defeated and led to being captured by Babylon. John is recounting the great reversal of history: the new Babylon will bear the judgment of God in the exact same place the previous Babylon had conquered God’s people. See, God has an eternal scorecard, He never loses track of what takes place in the world and He will bring about perfect justice (which at times means divine irony)

-Last bowl into the air, sounds similar to Jesus’ last statement before He breathed His last, but this time what’s finished isn’t a sacrifice, what’s finished is God’s wrath being poured out. The creation is being uncreated and turning back into chaos. Similar language to the 7th seal and trumpet.

-And once again, after all this, what’s the response of the people? Blaspheming God, shaking their fist in anger at Him.

  • Judgment or Repentance?

-Friends, which side of this story are you going to be on? Part of the reason we have this book is to shake us out of our stupor, to wake us up to the realities of the life to come, and to remind us that even though Satan looks powerful here, he has no ultimate power in the end. Because even as we read this text (that sounds shocking and awful) we’re reminded that there’s still mercy, but not how we think:

“There is no refuge from the judging God. But there is refuge in the judging God. Mercy!” Darrell Johnson

-Who could imagine that? We can be preserved from the wrath of God only by running to the wrathful God because that God is also the only loving God. In the coming weeks we’re going to see how the dragon uses and abuses people promising riches and life but it only leads to their destruction, just like in the garden at the beginning. As Jesus has promises, He offers life to the full, but it comes by being obedient to Him.

-So I’ll leave you with 2 questions today: 

-Have you brought your story in line with God’s story by repenting and putting your faith in Jesus?

-If you are following in God’s story, are there any areas in your life that you’re holding on to too tightly and not allowing to be brought into God’s story?

-Either way, God’s mercies are new every day, including today, so I’d encourage you to repent and align or realign your life with God’s story.

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by mikethestrand on September 28, 2024  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on September 28, 2024

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2024/09/28/revelation-16-sermon-manuscript/

Revelation 14:14-20 – Sermon Manuscript

-I HATE scary movies! Thrillers I can handle (and often enjoy, even when they keep me up late because I need to find out what happens)

-Even though I don’t watch them, I know all the tropes that come with scary movies: don’t go near the basement, stay away from windows, make sure you stay in a group. Good lessons to be learned if you ever find yourself in a horror movie!

-One of the pieces I hope you’re taking away from our study in Revelation is similar – that there are only 2 options to how you’re going to live your life: either worshipping God or worshipping the dragon. Today’s text is meant to be like a horror movie where we run away from these consequences and run towards God. See sometimes God tells stories that are repulsive to serve as models for us so that we run away from sin and death and run to Him. 

-C.S. Lewis “Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.”

-Part of the reason we (and the 7 churches) need to read about true justice is because we need the encouragement to remain faithful in the midst of this difficult world. When you’re used and abused, sometimes the only encouragement is to keep your eyes on Jesus, knowing that He will bring about perfect justice.

READ/PRAY

-Same section as last week, interlude between judgments, we’ve looked at 7 seals and 7 trumpets, then we’re in this interim leading into the 7 bowls where I believe John is given a glimpse of the arrival of Jesus through a heavenly perspective. 

-Jesus, the Creator of everything, came into creation as a baby. Didn’t appear out of nowhere, didn’t float down out of the sky, didn’t crash to earth on a spaceship like Clark Kent, he was born the same way you and I were born, which meant Satan thought he had the perfect opportunity to finally destroy God’s plans, but each time he’s thwarted! He gets angrier and angrier and works to destroy God’s plans and bring praise on himself instead of praising God, that’s why there’s this repeating theme of worshipping and praising God throughout this book, Satan’s aim is to steal that worship.

-Today we see 2 stories of reaping, but before we dive in there’s some debate about this section (much like the rest of the book) 3 options as to what this refers to:

-Both are negative judgments against those not following God

-1 is positive (grain) and the other is negative (grapes)

-Both are positive judgments referring to salvation.

-Yes, every interpretive option is on the table! Personally, I don’t find the first option convincing, and only found 1 person who argued that these both refer to negative judgments from God, and I’m currently leaning toward the middle option that this is recounting 2 separate harvest that serve 2 different purposes, as I’ll explain when we go through.

  1. The Grain Harvest (14-16)

-The next thing revealed to John is one like the Son of Man, some debate about who this could be referring to, some angel that looks similar to Jesus? Jesus himself?

-I would argue it’s Jesus. This title (taken from Daniel), last time referred to Jesus in 1:13, so it would make sense that when it’s used again it’s referring to the same person, this time instead of standing among lampstands (the church), he’s seated on a cloud. Jesus says his return will be “on the clouds” which is being realized in this vision to John.

-Golden crown on his head, connects back to the elders, signifies his rule and reign. Last time we saw the Son of Man, he had 7 stars in his hand, this time what does he have?

-A sharp sickle. This time he’s not standing sovereign in the church, this time he’s standing sovereign in harvesting.

-This would have been a common theme in the 1st century. Think of one of the pivotal scenes in the Gladiator: walking in the wheat field. When’s the last time you took a stroll in a wheat field? This is part of where we can miss some of the stories or implications in the Bible because we live in a different day. In the 1st Century their lives were dominated by the changing of seasons, and if the fields weren’t taken care of, death was immanent. When I need food it comes in saran wrap that I rip open! 

-So when John sees Jesus with a sharp sickle in his hand, we tend to miss the implications, too. My mind jumps to something like the grim reaper, or a horror movie (doesn’t help that people already have Halloween decorations up). Not a positive idea. What John’s readers had in mind was more like this: farmer’s out in their fields reaping their harvest, that means it was another successful year, they were going to continue having enough food, it’s a positive connection.

-Then “another angel” appears. Remember from last week, we’d seen 3 angels who delivered various messages: eternal gospel, fall of Babylon, the cup of God’s wrath. This angel comes out of the temple.

-The temple is where God lives, so this angel is sent from God with a message that it’s time to reap. This is where people have attempted to argue that this Son of Man couldn’t be Jesus then, because angels are sent from God, angels don’t tell God what to do. I would disagree with that sentiment, because it doesn’t say Jesus is submitting to them, all the angel is doing is sharing the message from God, and if you remember, one of the things Jesus said while He was on earth was that He didn’t even know when He was going to come back. How that works when He is God is a mystery, but we know that in everything Jesus does, He submits Himself to the will of the Father. 

-Why is it time to reap? Because the harvest is ripe. This is full of a bunch of previous imagery John would have heard from spending time with Jesus! Just a couple examples:

-Jesus tells a couple parables about sowing and reaping in Matt. 9, one is very well known where the seed is sown on all sorts of different soils which leads to different outcomes, but the second parable is applicable for today’s passage. 

-He shares a story of a good farmer who’s taking care of his field and plants his seed faithfully and lets it start to grow, but during the night one of his enemies throws a different kind of seed into the field to compete with the wheat. Doesn’t make a lot of sense to us, think of this like 2 businesses who are in constant competition with each other and continually look for ways to undercut the other. When the plants start to come up, they notice that wheat and weeds are growing together! The servants come to the master and ask if they should pull up the weeds, and he responds:

-This is a picture of what happens all around us all the time! Just as the eternal gospel is being sown and people are being saved, Satan (the enemy) is continuing to work to fight against God, just like this image shows us. Friends, this should give us hope because it means there is hope, even if it feels like the world is just getting worse!

-The second passage that illumines this text is from John 4 right after he met a sinful woman at the well and told her that He is the Messiah. His disciples come back very confused, and here’s how Jesus answers their questions:

-His disciples can read the signs of the seasons, as can we! As the temperature drops at night, we know the leaves will start changing colors, and then the first frost will come and kill all your plants. But how good are we at reading the signs of the spiritual seasons? See, we’re supposed to be looking for opportunities to share the gospel indiscriminately, we’re supposed to be like the Sower who doesn’t care what soil we’re in we continue throwing out seed.

-Because here’s the other reality: the harvest is abundant. Friends, spiritually it’s harvest season all year long! You don’t need to wait for pumpkin spice season to invite people in!

-What we see in Revelation is the implication of the gospel going out. As the seed of the gospel takes root in people’s lives they continue to grow and produce more fruit in more people and eventually will be harvested into heaven. Jesus uses so many different harvesting illustrations that John would have remembered and picked up on as he saw this vision from the Lord. 

-And because Jesus talked about this so much, I don’t want us to miss one of the applications for us today. Look at vs 38 here:

-Friends, this means we need to actively be praying that the gospel continues to go out, that more people are called by the Lord to go out and share the gospel. But this message isn’t just for others, we’re included in that “workers” word. There’s a reason we end every service saying: “you are sent.” God welcomes you in each week, and then God sends us out each week to live as his witnesses and to share the gospel in our words and our lives.

-But that’s only 1 harvest, John is given a glimpse of another harvest:

  • The Grape Harvest (17-20)

-Differences: first is done by the Son of Man, second by an angel. This one has some connection to the altar and the fire on the altar. This second one talks about the implication of the harvest, first one just mentions that the earth was harvested, so it seems like a bit of a stretch to argue that this is exactly the same as the previous one.

-First thing is an angel with a sickle, we’ve seen a sickle before! He’s ready to go, but he’s waiting for the call, so yet ANOTHER angel comes with a message.

-“Authority over fire” connection back to 8:3-5, judgment coming because of the prayers of the saints, which I think is also signified by “came from the altar” which also connects us back to the saints in Rev. 6:9 There the martyrs are begging God to return in judgment and avenge them, but they’re told to wait a little longer. Now we’re seeing that time has come.

-Instead of wheat, this time he’s to gather clusters of grapes because they’re ripe, and this is where the story diverges from the previous harvest. The grapes are successfully harvested, but then they thrown into a great winepress of God’s wrath.

-This connects to last week’s text again, 10 “he will also drink the wine of God’s wrath,” so John is saying where this judgment is coming from. Wine pressing is an interesting phenomenon in the 1st cent. The way wine was made was stomping on the grapes in a winepress until the juice flowed out, that juice was collected and preserved to let it ferment and create wine. 

-This idea is actually picked up in Rev. 19 in a description of Jesus. The one who’s enacting God’s judgment is Jesus. We talked a bit last week about God’s wrath, but don’t miss that Jesus is also wrathful. So often Jesus is pictured as a hippy who walked around with long flowing locks and told everyone to just get along, but that couldn’t be further from the truth, the difficulty is Jesus just doesn’t play by the same earthly rules that we tend to get so bogged down in. He doesn’t have to play the power game because He’s already reigning supremely. And while His first coming was in humility, His second coming is with a vengeance.

-But there are some things for us to note about this pressing of the wine. First: outside the city. We have an opposite idea of the city today than the 1st century would have!

-City provided protection and safety from the oppression of the wilderness where you could be robbed or attacked by wild animals. I have a friend who lives in downtown St. Paul and anytime he offers to host a meeting I ask if it’s safe to come in there from the burbs! Outside the city is where you were left to fend for yourself, and this is even more true when you realize that coming up in Rev. 21, the city of God will come down to be the place where God’s people can live securely, so being pressed outside of the city is a terrifying reality.

-And even more terrifying: what flows out isn’t juice but a river of blood up to about 5’ for 1,600 stadia (which is approximately the length of Palestine 1,664 stadia), symbolically it’s 4×4 by 10×10 – if you can think back to 7:1 we saw the 4 corners of the earth, thinking back to Rev. 4 there are 4 living creatures, so 4 is often referring to all of creation, then 10 refers to completeness, so what’s signified is the way God’s wrath extends to all of creation.

-One of the most significant things we’ve seen through this book is the reality that there are only 2 ways to live: either for God or against God, and everyone is moving closer to one of those realities with each decision they make.

-One of the incredible things about this section in Revelation is the judgment only comes after the eternal gospel has been proclaimed. Look back in your Bibles to 14:7 “Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come. Worship the one who made heaven and earth.” How do we do that? 

  • Blood Enough?

-Throughout this section there has been this idea of wine and blood almost intermixed. Those who have the name of the beast will drink the wine of God’s wrath, here we see that wine is actually blood and condemnation on those who are opposed to God, but even in the midst of this, there is good news because someone has drunk the entire cup of God’s wrath, and now stands willing to welcome us in with open arms where we won’t need to drink that cup or be crushed in the winepress of God’s wrath, someone who took all of God’s wrath on Himself and now gives the freedom to live a new life: Jesus.

-The reality is this description of brutality described here could also be seen as describing the payment Jesus made. Do you know where Jesus was crucified? Outside the city. And think of how Isaiah describes the crucifixion in Isa. 53 Jesus was trampled so that we don’t need to be, his blood poured out so that ours doesn’t need to be.

-And what about the 1,600 stadia? Quote from Discipleship on the Edge What an incredible blessing that we have! Jesus was crushed on our behalf, His blood ran freely so that ours wouldn’t. His blood is enough to cover every sin of those who repent and believe in Him.

-Jesus talks about this idea on his last night before the crucifixion, He pleads with His Father to take the cup of wrath away, but submits Himself to His Father. Friends, Jesus drank the whole cup, not a drop of wrath needs to be given to any of us IF we trust in Jesus as the one true Messiah, the Savior of the world.

-Salvation is both the most difficult and easy thing in the world. Difficult because it meant someone had to die, someone’s blood had to run, someone had to drink the full cup of wrath. But easy because now you don’t have to, now the Bible says salvation requires 2 things: confess and believe. Confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord, that He reigns over everything and is worthy to be worshipped and praised, and then believe that truth in your heart which means focusing your life in a different direction, and this is true for all of us, whether you’re a brand new believer or you’ve been a believer for 100 years, if you believe that Jesus Christ is Lord, do you live like it? What step do you need to take today to better live in Jesus’ kingdom here? 

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by mikethestrand on September 15, 2024  •  Permalink
Posted in Bible, Blog, Church, Life, Relationships, Sermon
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Posted by mikethestrand on September 15, 2024

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2024/09/15/revelation-1414-20-sermon-manuscript/

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