Revelation 10
Amen. Turn in your copy of the
scriptures to Revelation chapter 10. Our reading tonight is verses
1 through 11. Revelation 10 verses 1 through
11. We’re in the second cycle now of history repeating itself,
as it were, in the book of Revelation. We looked a couple weeks back
over three Sunday nights at the seven Bowls now we’re looking
at the seven trumpets the first week. We always look at the first
six the second week We always look at the interlude and then
third week. We look at the seventh trumpet.
And so tonight we’re at the interlude between trumpets six and seven
And then next week we’ll look at chapter 11, which will be
the seventh trumpet of judgment and so we want to give our attention
tonight to God’s Word and starting at verse one of chapter 10. This
is John and he says, then I saw another mighty angel coming down
from heaven, wrapped in a cloud with a rainbow over his head. And his face was like the sun
and his legs like pillars of fire. He had a little scroll
open in his hand and he set his right foot on the sea and his
left foot on the land. And he called out with a loud
voice, like a lion roaring. When he called out, the seven
thunders sounded. And when the seven thunders had
sounded, I was about to write. But I heard a voice from heaven
saying, seal up what the seven thunders have said and do not
write it down. And the angel whom I saw standing
on the sea and on the land raised his right hand to heaven and
swore by him who lives forever and ever, who created heaven,
and what is in it, the earth and what is in it, and the sea
and what is in it, that there should be no more delay, but
that in the days of the trumpet call to be sounded by the seventh
angel, the mystery of God would be fulfilled, just as he announced
to his servants, the prophets. Then the voice that I heard from
heaven spoke to me again, saying, go take the scroll that is open
in the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on
the land. So I went to the angel and told
him to give me the little scroll. And he said to me, take and eat
it. It will make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth it
will be sweet as honey. And I took the little scroll
from the hand of the angel and ate it. It was sweet as honey
in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach was made bitter.
And I was told, you must again prophesy about many peoples and
nations and languages and kings. Amen. This is God’s holy word
for us. Sometimes on Saturday evening,
I’ll flip through channels and land on the Hallmark channel.
And one thing I have noticed is that they have somehow remade
the story of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen into every conceivable
movie. Then I did a little investigating
and I realized that Pride and Prejudice, the novel by Jane
Austen about a prideful, wealthy man and a prideful young gal,
Lizzie Bennett, and a prejudiced wealthy man, Mr. Darcy, has been
made over and over into not only many Hallmark movies, but many
books. There’s a book called Eligible.
There’s a book called Mr. Darcy’s Diary. There’s one called
The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet. There’s death comes to Pemberley
and I’m sure many of you have not only maybe not just read
but maybe you have seen Bridget Jones diary and the many sequels
that have come after it. And there’s something interesting
about this. It’s the same story. It’s just
told from a different perspective. It’s set in different periods
and different times and different places. It’s one thing to be
set in old Victorian England and another in 2018, 2019, the 21st century with technologies
and phones and emails, social media and that sort of thing.
But it’s the same story covered over and over again, just told
from a different perspective. And that’s what we land on in
the book of Revelation. It’s the same story told again
and again in a different way. And every time the storyline
is generally the same. There are six cycles of judgment,
There’s an interlude, a break, and then there’s the seventh,
the seventh and final, which leads into the consummation of
the coming of the Lord Jesus and the new heavens and the new
earth. In our last study, the seven bowls, we saw from earth’s
perspective, the end times. In our present study of the seven
trumpets, we’re seeing the end times from the perspective of
heaven. And so we’ll see the story told
and retold in different ways. And so tonight we look at the
interlude found in chapter 10 of the book of Revelation in
this second cycle of sevens. We’re in the seven trumpets.
Now, all of you know that a minister has a call from God to preach
the word. This call comes inwardly as he
sees that his desires to serve the Lord are moving towards a
professional, vocational, ministerial call. It’s affirmed by others
who know him and it’s ultimately affirmed by the church. The elders
see this and they send a man to school. A congregation, at
the right time, calls a man to be their pastor. The church,
individuals, wise counsel, all come into play. But ultimately,
it is God who calls a man to ministry. And usually when a
man is called to ministry, he’s young, he has seminary ahead
of him, and things are exciting. And he spends three to five years
in the ivory tower of seminary. And then the day comes, he gets
his first call, and he thinks it’s going to be wonderful. but
he goes from the ivory tower into the trenches. I remember
this well. About 16 years ago, I left Reformed
Theological Seminary, the most stimulating three years of my
life, and I go into a local church where at the first meeting, the
words I swear that I heard, others heard it too, they’ll stick by
me, was, well, let’s make Jimmy Bob an elder. We hadn’t seen
him in church in about three years, and if we make him an
elder, maybe he’ll start coming back again. And I thought, good
Lord, everything I have learned has just gone right into the
trash can. Well, as if that wasn’t enough,
I had two deacons at each other’s throats, and one deacon decides
to go to the other deacon’s house, and he knocked on the door, probably,
rather, beat on the door. When the other deacon opened
the door, they brandished a weapon, and it went from there I remember
maybe within my first year of ministry as an associate pastor,
being accosted at the back door by a lady who says, I got it
all wrong. I preached a passage from Galatians
where it says, we should take care of the needs of the saints
first and then go outside our doors to meet the needs of the
world. Oh, and she couldn’t get it through
her mind that God would want the church to take care of the
church first. and then go take care of the
poor out in the world. And she was pretty sure that
I was wrong. And as young as I was, I was real sure that I
was right. And that was that. But you can meet all kinds of
discouragements like this. You read the truth, you see the
practical application of it, but it’s met with opposition. It’s met with discouragement.
And so in every minister’s life, he needs to receive a second
wind. He needs to have a second commission.
He needs to have a second call to ministry as it were. He’s
been through difficulties. He’s able to tell you stories
after stories after stories. This last week I sent to the
elders a story. of the turnaround of First Baptist
Church in Durham. I know one or two of you have
mentioned that you have read it, but it is a story. And the things that that pastor
and his leaders went through to turn that church from liberalism
to being a good, conservative, Bible-believing, Bible-preaching,
God-honoring congregation are quite amazing. And sometimes
we say as members of the session, these stories you could not make
up. And so ministers go through these
hardships, they go through these troubles, and it’s worth it. But God needs to come and encourage
them and charge them again to storm the gates and to labor
and to work hard in ministry. And John gets that in chapter
10 of Revelation. John is an old man, remember?
He’s been the pastor at the church of Ephesus, which was started
by the apostle Paul, we read of in Acts. It was pastored later
by young Timothy. Paul’s protege and a convert
from his mother and grandmother’s ministry in the home to the little
one. He’s a pastor under the Roman Empire. And in chapter
10 of Revelation, we see his second call or his recommissioning
as a minister. And this comes to us in the story
of a mighty angel and a little scroll. and then a command to
John to preach the word. So we want to begin tonight by
thinking of the mighty angel in this passage. He represents
to us the presence and the power of almighty God. You see descriptions
in the first four verses of chapter 10 that are recognizable if you
know the book of Ezekiel and you know the book of Daniel.
Now remember several weeks back we learned that the church is
in the world and the world is full of trouble, trouble, and
more trouble. And here we have for John and
for us a Christophany, an appearance of the risen and exalted Christ. He stands with one foot on the
sea and one foot on the land. Now sometimes Our family will
make our way down to Willowbrook Park just below the house, and
we like to walk through the creek. Just the other day on my morning
walk, I decided I didn’t want to go this way. I wanted to cut
that way. So I walked across the creek.
But I remember watching the kids. You put one foot on a rock and
one foot on the land, and you feel you can conquer. And it’s
saying here that God is sovereign. He is sovereign over the land
and the sea. And Christ has one foot here and one foot there. His sovereignty is complete.
We sing sometimes the hymn, Christ shall have dominion over land
and sea. And that comes to us here in
this chapter. 10 of the book of Revelation,
Christ has dominion. And Christ is personified when
he speaks as a lion who roars. And when he speaks, his voice
is that of seven thunders. You know that when a lion roars,
it brings panic to its prey, that heart stops. And for that
moment of panic, that lion is able to pounce and to capture
and kill and eat its prey. And so the son of man here, the
Lord Jesus is the lion of Judah, the lion who roars. He stands
sovereignly over land and sea and he roars in judgment. over
this wicked earth. And anytime now, he will come
and he will judge and he will make all things new. His voice is like seven thunders. When he speaks, when he speaks,
he speaks with thunder clarity. And so this is a picture of the
mighty angel that we find in this chapter of Revelation, but
we also see a little scroll. We see a little scroll and in
it are judgments, in it are the works of redemption, in it are
the ways of salvation. And it’s a scroll that must be
proclaimed, it must be preached. There’s urgency because the six
trumpets have been blown and any moment, any moment, that
seventh trumpet will be blown and then judgment will come and
it will be too late. And so there’s this urgency in
reading and preaching and proclaiming this little scroll. And this
is where John gets his second call to ministry. This is where
men in pulpits today need a second commissioning. This is where
churches, this is where elders need to stop for a moment and
realize that we are the pillar and the buttress of truth. We
are an outpost of heaven that if we don’t preach, if we don’t
proclaim, if we don’t witness, then people will not hear. We
recognize from the book of Romans that without a preacher, without
someone to proclaim, people cannot and will not hear. Churches will
die out if they don’t reach out. And so we need to preach and
we need to teach and proclaim and bear witness to the gospel.
There are people in darkness and they need the light of the
gospel of the Lord Jesus. and so we must make it known. Now, this is interesting to think
of. Remember, John is first century
church. He’s some decades after the birth,
the life, the death, the crucifixion, the resurrection of the Lord
Jesus, but now he is putting to pen the last of the books
of the Bible, and so now full revelation is known. And here
we are 2,000 years later, all the books of the Bible, And we
have the full, whole counsel of God to preach and proclaim. More is known to us, more was
known to John than ever in the history of the church. And so
what is our job? We see the mighty angel sovereignly
standing over the earth. We see the little scroll and
in it are judgments and the way of salvation. Well, we’re to
preach the word. That’s the last thing this passage
teaches us. amid toil and tribulation and
tumult of her war, we sing. She waits the consummation of
peace forevermore. But while we wait for the consummation,
we preach, we teach, we proclaim, we warn, we tell of coming judgment. We open the contents of the scroll
and we make it known to the church and to the world. One thing to
consider, and this comes to us by way of John’s call to eat
the scroll. He eats it, and what does it
say in verse eight? Go take the scroll that is open
in the hand of the angel. It says, so he went, take it
and eat it. It will make your stomach bitter,
but in your mouth it will be sweet as honey. You know, we
love to read the Bible. We love to read of salvation
through faith in Jesus. But as we well know here in the
21st century, the church is wrestling with how do we read and preach
and proclaim the world, to the world, the gospel, the Bible,
the way of salvation, when it is so offensive? I mean, good
gracious, you bring up any cultural issue, any social issue, and
you read the Bible and you hold it up against these cultural
and social issues, and you remember that the church is to be prophetic
and to speak into these things. Just recently down the street,
I was told by a friend that in their church, the pastor, when
he got up to read the Bible, apologized before he read the
Bible and said, I must read this. It’s in the lectionary today.
It’s our passage to be read, but I apologize to you for it
will offend many, if not all of you with what it says. They
might as well lock their doors and turn off the lights and sell
their place because they have lost confidence in God’s word.
And I’ll tell you, dear friends, it’s not easy. It is not comfortable
to believe the whole counsel of God and to proclaim it in
a culture that says, well, God’s okay with this. Love wins. Love triumphs. It’s people we
love, not truth. And on and on we go. And it’s
not just the liberals. Dear friends, it is in the conservative
church as well. We dance around the truth. because
sometimes it’s too hard to confront people with it. And that is what
John means here. That is what Jesus means here. That is what God means here when
he says, take the scroll and eat it, and it will be sweet
to you, but you’ll have a tummy ache. Don’t you imagine there
are lots of ministers with a tummy ache when they say, oh dear God,
I have to preach that passage tomorrow. You know, we preach
our way through the Bible. We start at the beginning of
a book, and we make our way all the way to the end. And if a
subject comes up, it comes up. And if a subject comes up, we
preach it. But so many ministers today, they pick and they choose.
They skip across the creek, and they only touch the stones they
want to land on. And so they pick the easy ones,
the popular ones, and they avoid, at all costs, the controversial
ones. And so we are given a great illustration
here that we eat the word of God and it’s to us sweet. But
it can be bitter, as there are words of judgment, there are
hard sayings. But dear friends, the gospel
ministry, being a faithful Christian, it will bring opposition. It
will bring opposition from without. The world will look in on the
church and say, you Bible-thumping people. You are strange. You are weird. What you do is
odd to the rest of us. And that’s one thing, right?
We expect that. But what about when we get in
the church and from within the church, we begin to apologize? for the bitterness of scriptures.
We begin to apologize for the hard sayings. We begin to defend
our loved ones in the faith from the hard sayings of God’s word
because we love them in our relationship and would rather them not be
hurt. But you know what the reality of that is, if you really think
about it? It’s better to be a faithful friend who wounds for the long
haul. Isn’t it better to save someone
from their wicked ways and to hurt their feelings in the short
term in order that they may be with us long term in eternal
glory in heaven? This is the tough pull, the tug
of the scriptures. But what is God saying to John
here? What is he saying to the church
here? What is he saying to ministers here? We’ve got to show up. We’ve got to faithfully speak
for the Lord. We’ve got to leave the results
to the sovereign one who stands with one foot on the earth and
one foot on the sea. We need to be fearless. God is
with us. His word will not return void. Scripture is important that we
uphold it. The end is near and people must
know that judgment is coming. There’s a prayer. It comes from
the English church. It comes from the prayer book
of the Anglican church, the Episcopal church. And it goes like this. Blessed Lord, who caused all
holy scriptures to be written for our learning, grant us so
to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that
we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting
life, which you have given us in our Savior, Jesus Christ,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God
forever and ever. Amen. Did you catch that little
phrase in there? We’re to read, we’re to mark,
we’re to learn, but we are to inwardly digest the scriptures. It must be an allusion to Ezekiel. It must be an allusion in this
book of prayer to John here in the 10th chapter of Revelation. If we inwardly digest the scriptures,
yes it’s sweet as honey to our mouths and for sure it is bitter
in our stomachs as we know of the hard sayings and the judgments
which are in it. Dear friends, the churches in
the world And there can be never more a stark contrast between
what is taking place inside these walls and what is taking place
outside these walls. The church is in the world. We
do not discount or doubt that or deny it. But what happens
when the world comes into the church? What happens when the
light of the word of God is darkened by the world which comes in?
We lose our confidence in the scripture. We lose our confidence
in the way of salvation. We lose our confidence in the
way of holiness because culture has spoken, because the world
has a very loud voice, because it becomes expedient or politically
incorrect to do otherwise. And so this interlude, this chapter
10 of Revelation shows us that as we wait on the seventh trumpet,
the final judgment, we see heaven’s perspective, that the word of
God must be proclaimed. And so the challenge for you
is this. Press on, keep the faith, and
support your local preacher. Amen. Let us pray together. Blessed Lord, who caused all
holy scriptures to be written for our learning, grant us so
to hear them. to read them, to mark them, to
learn them, and to inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and
ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you
have given us in our Savior, Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns
with you and the Holy Spirit, one God forevermore. In this
we pray, amen.