Revelation 8:6
Our reading tonight is Revelation
chapter eight, six through chapter nine, verse 21. And we’re in
the second cycle. We looked at the first cycle
a few weeks back and finished last week, the cycle of the seven
seals. And so tonight we begin what
will end up being three parts on the seven trumpets. And so we want to hear from God’s
word starting at chapter eight, verse six. And we read this,
now the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared to
blow them. The first angel blew his trumpet
and there followed hail and fire mixed with blood. And these were
thrown upon the earth and a third of the earth was burned up and
a third of the trees were burned up and all the green grass was
burned up. The second angel blew his trumpet,
and something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown
into the sea, and a third of the sea became blood. A third
of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the
ships were destroyed. The third angel blew his trumpet,
and a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it
fell on a third of the rivers and on its springs of water.
The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became
Wormwood, and many people died from the water because it had
been made bitter. The fourth angel blew his trumpet, and a
third of the sun was struck, and a third of the moon, and
a third of the stars, so that a third of their light might
be darkened, and a third of the day might be kept from shining,
and likewise a third of the night. Then I looked, and I heard an
eagle crying with a loud voice as it flew directly overhead.
Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth at the blast of
the other trumpets that the three angels are about to blow. And
the fifth angel blew his trumpet and I saw a star fallen from
heaven to earth. And he was given the key to the
shaft of the bottomless pit. He opened the shaft of the bottomless
pit and from the shaft rose smoke like the smoke of a great furnace.
And the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke from
the shaft. Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth and
they were given the power like the power of the scorpions of
the earth. They were told not to harm the
grass of the earth or any green plant or any tree, but only those
people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads. They
were allowed to torment them for five months, but not to kill
them. And their torment was like the
torment of a scorpion when it stings someone. And in those
days, people will seek death and will not find it. They will
long to die, but death will flee from them. In appearance, the
locusts were like horses prepared for battle. On their heads were
what looked like crowns of gold. Their faces were like human faces,
their hair like women’s hair, and their teeth like lion’s teeth.
They had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the noise of their
wings was like the noise of many chariots, with horses rushing
into battle. They have tails and stings like
scorpions, and they have power to hurt people for five months,
and it is in their tails. They have as a king over them
the angel of the bottomless pit. His name in Hebrew is Abaddon,
and in Greek he is called Apollyon. The first woe has passed. Behold,
two woes are still to come. Then the sixth angel blew his
trumpet and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden
altar before God saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet,
release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.
So the four angels who had been prepared for the hour, the day
and the month and the year were released to kill a third of mankind.
The number of mounted troops was twice 10,000 times 10,000.
I heard their number, and this is how I saw the horsemen in
my vision and those who rode them. They wore breastplates,
the color of fire and sapphire and of sulfur. And the heads
of the horses were like lion’s heads, and the fire and smoke
and sulfur came out of their mouths. By these three plagues,
a third of mankind was killed by the fire and the smoke and
the sulfur coming out of their mouths. For the power of the
horse is their mouths and in their tails, for their tails
are like serpents with heads, by means of them they wound.
The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues,
did not repent of the works of their hands, nor did they give
up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze
and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk, nor did
they repent of their murders or of their sorceries or of their
sexual immorality or their thefts. Thus far, this is God’s wholly
inspired and inerrant word, and we pray for his blessing and
help. This morning in our scripture
reading, our Old Testament scripture reading, we read from Daniel
chapter seven. And in Daniel chapter seven,
we read of four kingdoms. We read of four kingdoms that
Daniel saw in his vision. And in those four descriptions,
the fourth beast, representing the fourth kingdom, not Babylon,
not Persia, not Greece, but representing Rome, we had appearing the strangest
of the creatures. And in Daniel chapter seven,
verses seven and eight, he says this, I saw in the night visions
and behold a fourth beast. It was terrifying and dreadful
and exceedingly strong. It had great iron teeth. It devoured
and broke into pieces and stamped what was left with its feet.
It was different from all the beasts that were before it, and
it had ten horns. I considered the horns and behold,
there came up among them another horn, a little one plucked before
which three of the first horns were plucked up by the roots.
And behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of a man and
a mouth speaking great things.” It’s generally considered that
the first three of those creatures, those beasts are Babylon, Persia
and Greece. The fourth one, the one we just
mentioned or read of is Rome. Rome became mighty and powerful. Remember when Isaiah’s prophecy
came in the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on
his throne. That was in the eighth century
before the coming of Christ. And about that time, Rome was
founded, the city of Rome. And then the Roman Empire began
to grow and spread. And the Roman Empire, we know,
lasted from the 8th century BC till the 5th century after Christ. And Rome absorbed or took up
other nations, weak nations, troubled nations, fragile kingdoms,
and it became a great empire. and throughout the Bible we see
a mention of Rome. Well, Saint Augustine, who was
the Bishop of Hippo in the fourth century, he lived from about
354 to 430, he lived in Rome in the twilight of its greatness. And in the year, I think it was
410 or so, Rome was sacked by the Visigoths, the city of Rome. And because Rome under Constantine
and others had become largely a Christian nation, supposedly
a Christian nation, the blame was put squarely on the shoulders
of Christians. The reasons we were attacked,
the reasons we are not as great as we used to be is because we
have become a Christian nation. Well, St. Augustine wrote a huge
book, probably one you’ve heard of, it’s a classic, called The
City of God. And in The City of God, he was
writing to encourage Christians who were bearing the blame by
the Romans for the sack of Rome in the 5th century. Rome would
fall about 60-70 years later, we know from history. They didn’t
know this at the time, but St. Augustine wrote the city of God
to encourage Christians. that no, you’re not to blame
for the fall of Rome or the impending fall of Rome. In fact, if there
are Christians in a city, Christians in a culture, if they’re faithful
to Christ, they actually make the city better. And he said,
Christians make life best. About a thousand years later,
1100 years later, John Calvin would basically say the same
thing after the Reformation. And from Calvin’s Geneva would
come great strides in art, in music, in education, in politics,
and every aspect of life under the sun would not go untouched
by the influence of Calvinism and the Reformation. But a thousand
years back, Augustine, writing The City of God, He says that
Christians make life best. Now, Wednesday night, when we
studied the different millennial views from which we can interpret
the book of Revelation more or less faithfully, we considered
that one of the old views was the post-millennial view. It’s
now mostly been adopted by many in the Reformation strand as
the Amillennial view because the Postmillennial view took
a little bit of a turn interpreting some things. But go all the way
back to St. Augustine who would have been
a Postmillennial and who would have thought at some point in
time human history will get better because of the preaching of the
gospel. And so in the city of God, you
get a little bit of this reflection that the progress of culture
because of the preaching of God’s word will take place. And he was trying in his work,
the city of God, to explain that Christians make life better. They make life best. But a little
bit further on in this city of God, you see St. Augustine describing
to Christians a biblical view of history. And it’s a biblical
view of history that marks out history in two different camps.
One is the earthly city. People in this world who pursue
this world only, and they pursue it as if it is all there is.
And then there’s the people of the city of God. These are Christians
who are looking to the next world. They’re looking not for Babylon
on earth, but Jerusalem, which is above. And they give up everything
to pursue God now. And so in a sense, Christians
bring great prosperity to the earth. But our chapter, our passage
from Revelation tonight is going to show that non-Christians in
their state of unrepentance, they bring great calamity on
the earth. This is the second cycle of judgments,
as it were. In chapter six through chapter
eight, five, we saw the seven seals. Now we move in chapters
basically eight through 11. Tonight we read eight through
nine, but in eight through 11, you have the trumpets. We move
from the seals to the trumpets. Two parallel passages explaining
life on earth, saints in glory, and ultimate judgment. In the
last cycle, we saw the perspective from saints. Tonight, we’ll see
the perspective from those who are not the children of God,
those who do not have the mark of God on them. And so we’ll begin by looking
at these trumpets this evening, the city of God versus the earthly
city, so to speak. We’ll look at the progressive
history with hostility towards Christians. The first thing we
want to notice from our passage is that creation suffers. We find this in verses 6 through
12 of chapter 8. The Lamb opened the seventh seal. There was silence in heaven,
chapter 8, verse 1 tells us. Then there’s the judgment from
that last cycle. Now the seven angels who have
the seven trumpets prepare to blow them. And these first four
trumpets that are blown bring great calamity on account of,
because of, because of those who have not repented of their
wickedness. And so creation suffers. Why
does creation suffer? Well, it comes because of the
trumpets that are blown, but go back. Go back to the garden. We mentioned this briefly this
morning. Creation suffers because of the
futility brought about on it because of Adam’s sin. Romans
8 echoes this teaching when the Apostle Paul says, Now this groaning, this travail, this
suffering, this futility on creation is described in our passage tonight
as only one-third of the earth. One way you might think of that
is only some parts of the world are earthquake prone. Only some
parts of the world are hurricane prone. Only some parts of the
world are avalanche prone, go through every
natural disaster and there’s not one natural disaster that
could wipe out the whole earth. That only took place in the flood
and God by sign of his rainbow has covenanted not to allow that
to take place again. But we see a limited view of
all of creation under the tyranny of sin. but we have these wonderful
promises. The new heavens and the new earth,
God will make all things new, but until then the earth and
the sky and the sea or all of creation is under this curse. One of the things we have to
think about, I know it brings up great controversy, but when
some natural disaster takes place, when some tragedy takes place,
remember 9-11 and Jerry Falwell chimed in or, you know, the bombing
of the building in Oklahoma City back in the 1990s, whatever the
tragedy, whatever the natural disaster, whatever the terrorism,
whatever, some Christian always pipes up and says something,
and it’s always at the wrong place at the wrong time. But
what we see here is that God is judging the earth continually,
not completely until the final judgment, but he is judging the
earth continually for her lack of repentance from their sin. And we get glimpses, we can watch
the news, we can experience the earthquakes. We were watching
the NBA opening game where our beloved Dukies, Zion Williamson
and RJ Barrett, they were making their NBA debut. And you get
two-thirds through the game and what do they have in Las Vegas?
They have a six point on the Richter scale earthquake, the
game is stopped. And we didn’t feel the tremble here in North
Carolina, but they sure felt it there, and it sent them into
a panic. There had already been an earthquake the day or so before
in California. And we see glimpses, we see glimpses
of God’s greater judgment to come. And these are meant to
be wake-up calls. You remember after 9-11 how churches were
full for about a month? You remember after 9-11 how people
were interested in the things of God for a few weeks. And that’s
the way Revelation is describing the unrepentant people. The earthquakes
and shakes and God shows his impending terrors. These are
harbingers of greater things to come. These are glimpses of
greater and larger judgments. These are the curses of sin.
These are the judgments of God. There’s bitterness and Plagues
just like in Egypt, but much like Pharaoh, pagans, when they
repent, they backtrack. Well, didn’t really mean it.
You can’t have your people and go in the wilderness and worship
God. No, I will not. repent of my sins. And so creation
suffers because of it. And so compare what Augustine
was saying about the city of God. There’s the glorious hope
of heaven. There’s the way we live for the
city we’re marching to. And it blesses others. When Christians flourish, the
world is blessed by it. But conversely, and sadly, when
there’s unrepentant sin in this world, Creation suffers, and
so therefore we suffer. We endure these hardships as
well, but we have our eyes fixed on Jesus. And that’s the first
thing we learn from these judgments tonight. Creation suffers. The
next thing we notice is that non-Christians suffer. If you look at chapter nine,
beginning at verse 13, It speaks of the sixth angel blowing his
trumpet. I heard a voice from the four
horns of the altar before God saying, release the four angels
who are bound at the great river Euphrates. So the four angels
who had been prepared for the hour, the day, the month, and
the year were released to kill a third of mankind. The number
of mounted troops was twice, 10,000 times 10,000. I heard
their numbers and it goes on to speak of what happens in these
blasts of trumpets. These trumpets are blasted. These judgments are dispensed
because people disobey God. Sometimes, maybe when you have
a little kid, you say to them, try me. See if I won’t do what
I said. And here God, in a sense, is
saying, you’ve tried me and here is your judgment. These folks
would rather be killed. They would rather have the mountains
fall on them, for that would be far better than repenting
or getting God’s judgment. They’d rather be squashed by
the weight of a mountain than the weight of God’s hand of judgment. There’s lots taking place in
the city of man, lots of evil, evil things. The Apostle Paul
says, his writings that we fight not against flesh and blood,
but we fight against the principalities of this world. We fight against
the forces of evil. And then he goes on to tell us
we should put on the whole armor of God. And sometimes as Christians,
we think we’re fighting the Democrats or we think we’re fighting the
Republicans or the bad judges, or we think we’re fighting Roe
versus Wade. We think we’re fighting the downfall
of morality in our country and Yes, we are fighting those things,
but they are symptoms of paganism. They are symptoms of something
greater, the forces of evil. The forces of evil here are described
as this army of locusts, this army of locusts that have the
ability to torment the people of God. Sometimes, year by year,
we have an invasion of locusts. And if you’ve ever lived in a
neighborhood that was a tree neighborhood that had an invasion
of locusts, think six years in Greensboro. Six years ago in
Greensboro we were living in the Friendly Shopping Center
area and there was an invasion of locusts in the summer of 2013
and it was loud all day and all night you could hear the
beating of their wings and it was so loud that when you opened
your door to go outside it was a mighty sound it was a force
to be reckoned with and you may think what you will of what these
locusts represent which army from which nation You can get
into all of that if you want to, but the way I think it’s
best to understand this army of locusts is that we fight against
spiritual forces, and these spiritual forces are everywhere. One of
the things we say every Sunday as we gather to worship and as
we prepare to have our voluntary for silent prayer is we say something
like this, we have come out of a busy world, but we’ve also
come out of a noisy world. And we now have all these gadgets
in our pockets. We have these things mounted
on our walls, which make lots of noise and send lots of visions
and pictures into our houses. And it’s very hard, if we’re
not careful, not to hear the whirring of the beating of the
wings of these locusts, which can kill us and can destroy us.
And these are the forces of evil at work in the world. They’re
trying to brainwash us and not think thoughts after God. They’re
trying to have us follow the world and not the word. They’re
trying to lure us into following Satan and not Christ, into following
the passions and desires of the lust of the flesh, and to not
live by the Spirit, self-controlled, God-honoring lives. And non-Christians
continually suffer. The book of Romans says that
God leaves us in our sin, those who don’t come to faith in Jesus.
He leaves them in their sin and their own destruction comes because
they wallow into sin. They are given over to their
sin and they live a life of futility because of their wickedness.
I was I want to move to the third point
now. The third point is, we won’t say sorry. Have you ever heard
a kid, maybe it’s one of your own or one you’ve taught in school,
who you say, hey, little Timmy, you’ve done something wrong.
You need to say you’re sorry. And the kid very defiantly stomps
his foot and says, I won’t say it. Well, that’s the last that
we see here in verses 20 and 21. We see, a group of unrepentant people
who won’t say sorry. These are the defiant kids. They
won’t apologize. And God says, I’ll visit you,
I’ll judge you, and you’ll pay for your sins. Now something
to think about, I think a few moments ago I read the verses
I meant to read for this little section, and I skipped reading
the verses I did mean to read, which were earlier in chapter
8 and 9. You can sort that out for yourselves. But in chapter
9, verses 13 through 20, we see how darkness, we see how dark
darkness gets. I think one of the great examples
of this is in our day and age when we are parading around what
should be kept private and we are parading around as if we
are prideful of our sin in the body against Almighty God. Now,
is that not the most oxymoronic thing? Is that not the craziest
thing? We are living in a nation that
takes pride in a sin of the human body, which is a crime against
humanity and a crime against the living God and King of the
universe. How dark must darkness get before
God comes and judges? How dark has darkness gotten
to come to this day where we speak of being proud of a way
of life which is over and over condemned in the Word of God. These are crimes against humanity. These are crimes against the
living and true God. It is a hostile place to live
in the city of man. And so what is God trying to
say to us? What is God trying to do to encourage us as saints
here in Revelation. He’s ultimately reminding us
that Jesus wins. I think he’s helping us make
sense of the world that we are living in. It’s a wacky world,
a crazy world, a noisy world and Satan is calling for our
allegiance. He has dominion, limited dominion
over this earth. He’s been released and He is
able to do harm and to deceive and all the rest, but God is
in charge. And we can’t help but think of
chapters eight and nine as connected to chapters four and five. Remember
in four and five, God was on his throne. Jesus is the lamb
slain who conquered and overcame and was worthy to open the scroll.
And so yes, we may walk out of these doors this night, We may
go armed with the Word of God we’ve learned today. We may go
armed with the prayers we have prayed. We may go armed with
the Holy Spirit. We may go armed with the blessing and benediction
of Almighty God, but we’re going out into that noisy world where
the beating of the wings of the locust of the evil of this world
will be all around us. but we have perspective. God
will judge this. He will not put up with us forever.
He did not put up with Pharaoh forever. He did not put up with
Jericho forever, but one day the trumpet will sound and these
kingdoms will fall and the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ will
be finally fulfilled as he gathers us together with him in heaven.
We can’t divorce, we can’t separate these chapters from four and
five, the reality of the throne of God. But we also can’t separate
these from the realities of chapters 21 and 22, where finally God’s
dwelling place is with man and all wickedness is judged and
we will be with God forever and ever. Amen. Let us go before
God in prayer. Lord, we thank you for this perspective
of life in the city of man and how evil is limited. The calamities of this earth
are limited. Satan is limited. Everything is under the sovereignty
of God. And yes, it can hurt us. Yes, it can harm us. Yes,
it can discourage us. But we remember the Lamb who
sits on the throne. We remember the Ancient of Days.
We remember the horn which soon shall sound and Christ shall
come. So let us not lose heart and grow weary in our well-doing. We ask for your help and blessing
and pray it in Christ’s name. Amen.