OK, let me start tonight’s exposition with a touch of honesty…Everything I say to you tonight might be completely wrong! I am happy to admit each week that there are parts of the passage I don’t understand but this week, we come to a passage that is almost incomprehensible and there are so many different interpretations as to what it means that it is almost impossible to come to any firm conclusions. I would suggest to you that anyone who says that they understand this passage is either naïve or arrogant or far more clever than all Biblical commentators throughout history added together! But we are on a journey together and so we will journey through tonight’s passage and I will try and give as much illumination as I am able to as we go.

You’ll remember that, last week, John gave as an interlude, an intermission between the sounding of the sixth trumpet and the sounding of the seventh trumpet and, for the first part of tonight’s passage, verse 1-13, we are still in that interlude.

And last week, we saw that the message John had to give us was quite simple: that in the last days, in which we are living, before the final judgement, the task of the church is to proclaim the Gospel to the nations and to have a prophetic ministry, speaking out against social injustice. And John told us this would be a bittersweet experience because the Gospel of salvation and judgement is, itself, bittersweet.

And it seems to me that, in 11:1-13, John is carrying on with this theme and what he is saying to us is that the church in the last days will face persecution as it carries out its responsibilities for mission. Now, we need to be clear that John is specific about the fact that not every Christian will be persecuted in the last days but that there will be persecution and, in verse 1-13, the nature of that persecution is outlined for us. And then, in verse 15-19, the seventh trumpet is sounded and we will come on to that later. But first, let’s look through verses 1-13 and reflect on the persecution that the church faces in the last days.

Verses 1&2: “Then I was given a measuring rod like a staff, and I was told, ‘Come and measure the temple of God and the altar and those who worship there, but do not measure the court outside the temple; leave that out, for it is given over to the nations, and they will trample over the holy city for forty-two months.’”

We don’t know who gave John the reed but it would seem to be a stiff reed, the type that grows along the Jordan valley that was often used by surveyors for measuring buildings. And John is told to measure the temple, which is interesting because it’s the first time John is given an instruction to get involved personally in the vision activity: before this moment in Chapter 11, he had been a spectator of all that had gone on. But now he has a job to do: he is to measure the temple of God or, actually, in the Greek, it is the sanctuary of God, not the temple: the inner part of the temple, the holy of Holies.

Now, I won’t bore you with all the interpretations on this verse about how it is the Temple of Jerusalem that is being referred to because I don’t think that’s accurate: we need to retain our adherence to John’s vision as symbolic because, if we don’t, we will find ourselves getting in a real mess later in this chapter. And, up to now, we have seen that everything else has had deep symbolic meaning so there’s no need to shift gear at this stage…So what is the temple to which John refers here?

I think, given the context of what follows and what has come before, it is a reference to the church, the people of God. And, of course, Paul referred to the church as the temple of God in 1 Corinthians 3:16, 2 Corinthians 6:16 and Ephesians 2:21, so there is Biblical precedent for this idea. It is the temple of God – and the altar – that is to be measured and, as we have seen before, the altar is a symbol of the worship life of the people of God. So this command to measure is a command to measure the church that worships God.

But why measure the church? In 2 Samuel 8:2, we see that measuring in this way is for both preservation and for destruction. In that verse about David’s activity, we are told, “He defeated the Moabites and made them lie along the ground, where he measured them off with a length of cord; for every two lengths that were to be put to death one full length was spared.” Remember back to 7:3 where the church of God was sealed: “Do not damage the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have marked the servants of our God with a seal on their foreheads.” So I think that the measuring of the church is another metaphor for its preservation in the light of the seventh trumpet that is about to be sounded.

That is not to say that all Christians will be saved from persecution: we have already had many references in Revelation to persecution and martyrdom. But I think John is giving assurance that, even in the midst of persecution, the church will not be lost.

But, in verse 2, we are told that the outer court is not to be measured because that had been given to the nations or to the Gentiles (the Greek is the same word for both ‘nations’ and ‘Gentiles’). Now, this is a difficult verse to interpret because, at the Temple in Jerusalem, the inner court was reserved for the Jews and the outer court for Gentiles. But, in this part of the vision, it seems that there is a reversal of fortune for the two groups: the Jews are now in the outer court, under the control of the Gentiles, and the Christians have moved in to the inner court. So John challenges the view that the world is divided into Jews and Gentiles and divides the world instead into Christians and Gentiles. Christians – the Church – is the inner court to be measured and preserved and the nations – both Jew and Gentile – will not be measured and preserved.

But then John confuses matters further by bringing in a new metaphor in verse 2: the holy city. Some take this to mean the church but my hunch is that he is referring to God’s creation, the world because it is this that the unbelievers will trample over before the final judgement.

And they will do so, we are told, for forty-two months. Why that time period? Well, it’s a time period we come across many times in Scripture. Sometimes, it is called forty-two months, as here and in 13:5. Sometimes, it is called 1,260 days, as in 11:3 and 12:6. Sometimes, it is called ‘a time, times and half a time’; a ‘time’ being a year, ‘times’ being two years and ‘half a time’ being six months, as in 12:14 and Daniel 7:25 and 12:7. And, on all of these occasions when that measure of time is used in the Bible, it always refers to the period when those opposed to God will unleash their venom and evil activities. It was also the same period of time that Antiochus Epiphanes persecuted the Jews in Jerusalem and so I think John is saying that, just as Epiphanes’ persecution came to an end, so the forces of antichrist will not last for ever but, after a period of time, will be vanquished. Again, a message of encouragement for the early Christians – and for us too.

So we come to verse 3 and we should note that many commentators take verses 1-2 as one picture and 3-13 as a separate picture. There are some very good reasons for thinking this that I won’t bore you with now, mainly related to other Jewish apocalyptic literature. But it may well be that we are moving into a fresh vision here related to verses 1 and 2, but slightly separate…

Verse 3: “And I will grant my two witnesses authority to prophesy for one thousand two hundred and sixty days, wearing sackcloth.” Wow! A complex verse!

First, who are these two prophets? We don’t really know – and there are many, many different interpretations. Some say the witness to God in the Old Testament period and the witness to God in the New Testament period. Some say it is Enoch and Elijah. Some say Elijah and Elisha. Some say Moses and Elijah. Some say the Law and the Prophets. Some say the Law and the Gospel. Some say the Old Testament and the New Testament. There are dozens of suggestions…and I don’t have an answer, I’m afraid. But given the context of the verse, I am inclined to think that it has something to do with the martyrs of God who have stood firm in the face of persecution.

That being the case, why are there only two? What does that number represent? There’s two interpretations, which both prove useful: First, in Deuteronomy 17:6, there is a suggestion that any testimony is only valid when there are two witnesses so having two witnesses here in Revelation 11 suggests that the witness of the martyrs is valid. But a second interpretation, that I quite like actually, is that if you remember back to Chapters 1-3 only 2 of the 7 churches were deemed by God to be faithful: Smyrna and Philadelphia. So perhaps John is giving extra encouragement to the hearers in these two churches by giving them an exalted role in God’s plan here.

And we are not surprised that they are dressed in sackcloth because that is the symbol of mourning and our prophetic role in the last days is to mourn the godlessness of society.

And so, in verse 4, we find John mixing his metaphors: these two witnesses are now called the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth. Both these images are found in Zechariah 4. What characteristics of the persecuted but faithful church is John drawing out for us here?

First, the olive tree metaphor: there is a link between oil and the Holy Spirit of God so John is saying that the faithful church is the vehicle for the outpouring of the Spirit of God on the world and their dependence of the Holy Spirit for their faith. Second, the lampstand metaphor: we considered this in real depth when we studied Chapter 1 but we remember that the lampstand holds the light of the world.

So in these few verses we have a dynamic picture of the church as a persecuted but faithful body, reliant on the Holy Spirit for its continuance, pouring the Spirit out into the world and shining the light of Christ through its worship and activity. For a group of persecuted believers, this would have been a really encouraging picture and for us, as a small church in 21^st-century Britain, it is still just as encouraging today.

And God’s protection over his witnessing church is further confirmed in verse 5: “And if anyone wants to harm them, fire pours from their mouth and consumes their foes; anyone who wants to harm them must be killed in this manner.” This, of course, is a metaphor and not a call to jihad! The fire is the message of the Gospel, which is like a consuming fire of judgement for those who do not believe. And it’s interesting that John writes, “[they] must be killed in this manner” and the word ‘must’ indicates divine necessity and consequence: it is not a call to arms or a call to the crusades but, rather, an idea that there is a necessary consequence for those who reject the Gospel proclaimed by the church. And, in verse 6, the power of the prophetic Gospel is outlined and we are reminded, perhaps, of Moses’ ministry before Pharaoh, whose heart remained hard, despite the plagues and misfortunes that fell upon his nation: “They have authority to shut the sky, so that no rain may fall during the days of their prophesying, and they have authority over the waters to turn them into blood, and to strike the earth with every kind of plague, as often as they desire.” Again, I don’t think John is calling the church to a literal understanding of this, otherwise we truly would be called to act in vengeance on the world: rather, I think he is trying to express the power of the Gospel and the metaphorical impact of rejecting it, just as the Pharaoh did in the time of Moses.

Verse 7: “When they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the bottomless pit will make war on them and conquer them and kill them.” This is a hard verse for us to get our heads round because it tells us that God has set a period of time for the witnesses to testify and then, when their testimony is over, they will be killed. But that’s the reality of the persecuted church, isn’t it? The beast that comes up from the bottomless pit, which, we saw in Chapter 9, is political opposition to the church, does indeed conquer and kill Christians. And again, we are reminded that the two witnesses are a symbol for a large group of Christian witnesses and not just two individuals because the beast, we are told, “makes war on them” and no political authority “makes war” on only two people.

So we are reminded that some Christians will pay the ultimate price for their faith at the hands of evil political regimes and that they will be treated with shameful disdain, verse 8: “and their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city that is prophetically called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified.” The Greek is very difficult for this verse, and we have to guess the meaning, really: there is only reference to one body, not two, and there is no verb in the sentence so what it actually says is, “And their body on the street on the street of the great city” but I think it is right to assume that it is their corpses that are left on the street.

And what is the great city? Well, John tells us that it is the city “where also their Lord was crucified” and so we immediately think that it is Jerusalem but I am not convinced because, don’t forget, we are talking about metaphors here and the fact that he also refers to it as Sodom and Egypt draws our mind to cities where wickedness and oppression take place. Wherever wickedness and oppression happen, there the Lord is crucified. So rather than thinking of this as Jerusalem, I think it is a metaphorical reference to any and all cities where there is wickedness and oppression, where Christ is opposed in word and deed: it is there that the faithful proclaimers of the Gospel are killed and treated with disdain and made a laughing stock as their bodies are, metaphorically, left to rot in public view.

And I think the fact that this is a general statement rather than a specific reference to Jerusalem is strengthened by verses 9 & 10: “For three and a half days” – that time period again – “members of the peoples and tribes and languages and nations will gaze at their dead bodies and refuse to let them be placed in a tomb; and the inhabitants of the earth will gloat over them and celebrate and exchange presents, because these two prophets had been a torment to the inhabitants of the earth.” Again, this is metaphorical - and what greater way of heaping shame on someone than not giving them a proper burial but just leaving them to rot at the side of the road; food for the dogs and rats of the city.

And we need to be realistic about the missionary task in which we are engaged: for many, the words of life we bring are a torment to them. There are many who are angry at the Christian witness. There are many who feel judged, who feel their lifestyle is under attack and when they see the church fail, they will rejoice. John is being very realistic here: if the church is truly engaged in the task of mission in the last days, it will be truly uncomfortable and there will be casualties and the world will rejoice at these casualties.

But…

And verse 11 begins with the word, ‘But…’

“…after the three and a half days, the breath of life from God entered them, and they stood on their feet, and those who saw them were terrified”

What vindication!

What triumph for the church of God!

What does Paul say in Romans 8? “What can separate us from the love of Christ? Can affliction, or hardship? Can persecution, hunger, nakedness, danger or sword…we have been treated like sheep for slaughter and yet, through it all, we are more than conquerors through him who loves us.”

This verse in Revelation 11 is the ultimate encouragement towards the resurrection life. The church may be persecuted to the point of extinction, the world may gloat, the world may treat us with disdain, our corporate body may be fed to the dogs and covered with shame - but resurrection is ours in Jesus Christ and the church of Christ shall never be overcome and the people shall be terrified because the Spirit of God, the reviving, resurrecting Spirit is at work within us.

And that is Good News indeed!

And, as we saw in Chapters 1-3, in the letters to the seven churches there awaits for the faithful believers on a earth a great reward in heaven, verse 12: “Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, ‘Come up here!’ And they went up to heaven in a cloud while their enemies watched them.”

Justification indeed…

And immediately after the removal of the faithful church from earth, as they ascend to heaven, the final days before the horror of the final judgement begin, verse 13: “At that moment there was a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city fell; seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the rest were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven.” This is an interesting verse for a few of reasons…

First, the proportion mentioned is one-tenth, the only time this proportion is mentioned in Revelation: remember we are used to hearing about a third of things being affected or one quarter being affected. Perhaps the proportion of one-tenth indicates a less impactful consequence than the opening of the seals or bowing of the trumpets.

Second, we are told that seven thousand people are killed which, again, is an interesting number. However, when Revelation was written, the population of Jerusalem was about 70,000, so this seems to be another way of saying ‘one-tenth’.

Third, those left behind gave glory to God, whereas elsewhere we read that the survivors are hardened by the judgements of God. And I think that this new piece of information in Revelation gives us real encouragement in our mission activity because, taken alongside what we have read in previous chapters, it seems that some will hear the Gospel and reject it and become hardened but others will respond and give their lives to God. Our mission activity is never wasted: some respond and some don’t.

So we come to the end of the second woe and, in verse 15, we leave the intermission of Chapter 10 and 11:1-14 and we return again to the main narrative: the blowing of the trumpets. The church has been sealed and the martyrs have been raised and gone to heaven and those who will respond have responded and now, finally, we are ready for the sounding of the final trumpet.

We don’t need to spend too long on this because we know that it represents the final judgement and we don’t have to do too much interpretative work because most of that has been done with regard to the seventh seal a few weeks ago. But let’s follow the story through…

Verse 15: “Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven…” which, of course, stands in contrast to the silence in heaven when the seventh seal was opened.

“The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign forever and ever.” The rebellion is crushed, evil has been overcome and now is the time for God to reign over his creation.

Verse 16: “Then the twenty-four elder [who represent the church] who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshipped God…”

Verse 17: “We give you thanks, Lord God Almighty, who was and who is…” That’s interesting, isn’t it? Previously, we have heard “Who was, and is, and is to come” but now, he has come and so the final part of that phrase has become redundant.

“…for you have taken your great power and begun to reign. The nations raged, but your wrath has come, and the time for judging the dead, for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints and all who fear your name, both small and great, and for destroying those who destroy the earth.” The end has come – the final judgement is here and the church will be vindicated at last.

And we are left in suspension again at verse 19 as the day of judgement dawns but the details of it are not announced: “Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple; and there were flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake and heavy hail.” And all I want to say about this verse is to draw your attention to the Ark of the Covenant within the Temple, which is a symbol of God’s presence with his people and the unbreakable covenant of his love that will never be destroyed and is eternal. So even in this picture of the dawning of the last day, there is a picture of encouragement for all believers that we are children of the covenant.

So we come to the end of this section, which is packed with teaching for us. During the last days, we have a task to do: to go out in the bittersweet ministry of mission. As we go, we are protected by God and we are assured that the time of tribulation is limited. We go out in the authority of God and the truth is that some of us will be persecuted but we go in the power of the Spirit and carry the light of Christ and no-one can cause us ultimate harm. We may face political oppression and opposition, we may be treated with disdain and covered in shame and the world may rejoice at our failures. But, ultimately, we will be raised and experience resurrection and taken up to the heavens with God where we will sit on thrones and rule with him. And we are sealed by the covenant love of God, which protects us from the horror of the final judgement. And that is surely a gospel worth proclaiming!

The end of Chapter 11 marks the halfway point for us and certainly, from next week, we will see a marked shift in the way Revelation unfolds. We have reached the end of the first three perspectives on the world cycle: Chapters 1-3, Chapters 4-8:1, Chapters 8:2-11:19. So next week, we go back to the beginning again and await the insights God has for us then…

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This morning’s passage, from Acts 1, is a fascinating one because it gives us real insight into how the early church operated in the immediate aftermath of the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. And I think there are some very important lessons for us in this passage about how we are called to be church together in Linton. So let’s follow the story on the pewsheet and then, when we’ve looked at the detail, we can draw out a number of points that will inform us about our community life together.

The event happens immediately after the Ascension of Christ, which we celebrated here at St. Mary’s on Thursday evening. And the disciples had left the Mount of Olives, presumably in complete shock, bewildered by the turn of events, and they had returned to Jerusalem.

And a couple of verses before the reading on the pewsheet , we are told that they went to an upstairs room together to pray. Sometimes, it is assumed that they went back to the upstairs room where they had shared the Last Supper with Jesus in order to feel close to him again. But I think that’s unlikely, because Luke uses two different Greek words for ‘upstairs room’ in his account of the Last Supper and this return to an upstairs room in Acts. And in this story from Acts, the type of room he speaks of is actually the prayer room and study of a rabbi - not a general room for eating in.

And it’s only a small point but I think there’s something interesting in that because, in the light of the shock they were feeling with the crisis events of their life, they sought sanctuary in the traditional religious structures; a rabbi’s prayer room. And I think that there is an important point for our ministry at St. Mary’s here; that there are many people in our community in Linton who, when they go through times of stress and crisis, will seek sanctuary in the comfort of the traditional church and we need to be ready to welcome them in at that point; asking nothing of them, but only providing hospitality for them in their time of need.

So the disciples pray together in the context of the familiar: a rabbi’s prayer room. And, after a while, they decide that it is time to go public again and see what God has in store for this community he has drawn together over the previous few years. So we read on the sheet, in verse 15: “In those days Peter stood up among the believers (together the crowd numbered about 120 people).

And, as we might expect, there is something significant in the fact that there were 120 people present because, in Jewish Law at that time, 120 men gathered together was the requisite number to form and formalise a new community with its own council and leadership structures. So there’s something very intentional about Peter’s actions here: he recognises the need for order and structure amongst the people of God and he waits until the time is right and then begins to formalise the community of the church.

And then he stands up to speak. Now, I don’t mind these pewsheets we use but they sometimes interpret the Scriptures poorly and this is a classic example of that. On the pewsheet, it says that Peter’s opening word is “Friends” but actually, the correct translation is “Brothers”. And I think this is a significant point because the word ‘Brothers’ conveys a significant truth to us; that if we are all brothers together we can only hold that relationship because we are children of the same Father. So the name ‘Brothers’ doesn’t speak of the relationship that we share so much as the wonderful truth that we are all children of the same heavenly Father. It is our relationship with God that binds us together as a church: and it is that which differentiates us from a social club or any other organisation and if we lose a sense of that, we will inevitably lose a sense of our purpose as a community.

“Brothers, it was necessary for the Scripture to be fulfilled as was told beforehand by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of David concerning Judas…” So what had David prophesied concerning this event?

Rather unhelpfully again, the reading sheet omits verses 18 and 19, which give us quotes from two of the Psalms of David. The first is Psalm 69:25, which issues a threat against those who oppose the will of God and betray him. The second is from Psalm 109:8, which suggests that, for those who have opposed God, “let someone else take over his office”. It is sometimes thought that Judas was replaced purely because he had died but that is not really the case. When the apostle James was martyred in Acts 12:2, he wasn’t replaced, so it was not about filling a vacancy caused by death that was important. Instead, Judas was replaced because he had fallen away from the ways of God and it was important that all the leaders were known for their faithfulness to the cause of Christ.

And so, in the light of that, Peter proposes a qualification for finding a new apostle in verses 21 and 22: “So one of the men who have accompanied us throughout the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken from us – one of these must become a witness with us to his resurrection.”

The qualification was that the new apostle must have spent time with Jesus  and been a personal witness to his glory. When we think about the great heroes of the faith, we might think about those people whose names are written large in the history books: the Wesley brothers, Martin Luther, Mother Teresa, Charles Spurgeon, Richard Baxter and so on. People who had an extraordinary call on their lives and achieved extraordinary things. But if we thought a little more personally about that questions - who are the heroes of the faith to us - we may come up with a very different answer. For me, the heroes are those people who nurtured me in the faith when I was an arrogant and annoying teenager: local church people who never gave up on me. The heroes of the faith are some elderly people I have known in my life; people who have had a quiet faith but been faithful churchgoers, faithful lovers of Jesus for 40, 50, 60, 70 even 80 years, faithfully praying for the work of the local church. The heroes of the faith are some people I have known who have faced death fearlessly and with Christian dignity; a shining example of how to die well.

These, to me, are the true heroes of the faith. Ordinary people, living ordinary lives, doing ordinary things and yet, in their ordinariness, there was exhibited to me an extraordinary faith. And the reason for their extraordinary witness was because they had met with Jesus in the ordinariness of life and had found him in the mundane of daily living: they had spent time with Jesus and were witnesses to his glory. And this seems to me to be what lays behind the call of the replacement apostle: someone who had found the extraordinary God in the ordinary of life.

Two names were recommended: Matthias and Joseph called Barsabbas, also known as Justus. So the disciples prayed together: “Lord, you know everyone’s heart. Show us which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship…” And, knowing the tradition of Scripture, we might have expected a calling on God to perform a supernatural miracle, to show everyone who the next Apostle to be chosen. Writing on the wall or a thunderstorm or a voice from heaven: anything like that would have done…

But what happens? This reading says: “They cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias; and he was added to the eleven apostles”. How ordinary can you get? The apostles cast lots – a bit like flipping a coin - and that was that. We might have expected something more dramatic! But I think there is something for us to learn in the ordinariness of how Matthias was chosen.

Matthias was an ordinary man. We don’t hear anything extraordinary he ever did, before or after his call. Matthias was an ordinary man, chosen to be an apostle in a most ordinary way. Casting lots – a roll of the dice. An ordinary man, ordinary apostles, using an ordinary system of decision-making to bear witness to an extraordinary God.

And that, fundamentally, is what the church is all about. Here we are, ordinary people living in church community in an ordinary way. And yet, by doing so, we are bearing witness to the power of an extraordinary God. Because the qualification of discipleship, as we mentioned earlier is that we ordinary people spend time in the presence of an extraordinary God.

You and I have spent years living in the presence of God.

You and I have spent years knowing what it is to have Jesus as our Lord and Saviour.

You and I – ordinary people - know what it is to love and be loved by an extraordinary God.

And so the beautiful things about this story from Acts, the calling of Matthias, is that, actually, it is a story about our calling. Ordinary people being called by an extraordinary God. And that is why Paul was able to write in his letters that he could never boast in himself and his own achievements but that he could always boast in the awesome power of God. And so it is with us: we don’t boast in ourselves but we can boast in the extraordinary love and the extraordinary power of God whom we have had the privilege to call our Lord for so many years.

And the sacrament we will receive in a few minutes is, of course, the ultimate symbol of what we celebrate today; the ordinariness of bread and wine symbolising for us the extraordinary sacrificial love of God made manifest in the life and death of Jesus Christ. In the Eucharistic meal, we share the ordinary and the extraordinary come together in one moment, in one time, in one place. The bread and the wine. The body and blood of Christ. And so it is we celebrate our relationship with the living God, the extraordinary God, at work in the ordinariness of our lives.

So what do we learn from this passage as a church in Linton? To sum it all up, I think there are 5 points for us here:

1. St. Mary’s must be a safe place for those in crisis

Just as the disciples met together in the safety of the rabbi’s study, so we must work hard to create an environment at St. Mary’s where people will feel safe and at home during the most difficult times in their lives.

St. Mary’s is not my church.

St. Mary’s is not the PCC’s church.

St. Mary’s is not your church.

St. Mary’s is God’s church – and he welcomes in the hurting and the broken and our task is only to facilitate that.

2. St. Mary’s must be a community with a purpose

Just as Peter waited until there were 120 men present to form a community, so we are a community formed with a purpose, which is to worship God and tell others the Good News of Jesus. We have a Mission Action Plan to facilitate that work, that purpose, and we must continue to be intentional in unfolding the MAP.

3. St. Mary’s is under the authority of God the Father

We are not a social club, we are not a community organisation or a group that people join as if it were just another hobby. We are brothers and sisters together, sharing the same heavenly Father and we are under his authority in his church.

4. St. Mary’s must be a place where we share personal experiences of Jesus in our lives

We are witnesses to the gory of God in or lives. Each one of us has a story to share with others about how we have met with God in our lives. We must share those stories to encourage one another.

I wonder what we talk about over coffee at the end of the service? How much of our time is spent in general chit-chat and how much is spent sharing stories together about God at work in our lives? Perhaps we should spend more time asking one another to share stories rather than settling for a conversation that we could have anywhere else at any other time…

5. St. Mary’s must be a place where the extraordinary God is found in the ordinary of life

The miraculous is in our midst: an extraordinary God is at work in our ordinary lives and we should be seeking the hand of God in the simple things of life. The Word became Flesh: he didn’t become Superman or Spiderman! The Word became Flesh and we find the Word in the Flesh-ness of our everyday lives and we need to help one another find God in the ordinary.

So this passage from Acts seems innocuous enough: a little vignette to tide us over in the period between Ascension and Pentecost. But it is actually much more than that. Here we learn crucial lessons about what it means for us to be Church: basic lessons, fundamental lessons – but crucial all the same.

Our prayer is that as we continue to develop a church that is safe, that is purposeful, that is under the authority of the Father, that is a place of story-sharing, that is extraordinary in its ordinariness so God’s name will continue to be glorified. Amen.

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So tonight, we explore this little chapter in Revelation that has a simple message expressed through some simple imagery. And what John is doing now is similar to what we saw before…

If you remember back to the previous viewing of the world-cycle we had, in chapter 6, the opening of six of the seven seals and then, just before the seventh seal was opened, John gave us an Intermission – which was Chapter 7. And in Chapter 7, John made a detour to reassure his hearers that their eternal destiny was secured in Christ: and then the seventh seal was opened and the Day of Judgement came. Well, exactly the same thing is happening here. In Chapters 8 and 9, we have been taken to the next viewing of the world-cycle and six of the seven trumpets have been blown and now, in Chapter 10, there is another Intermission whilst John gives a message to the Church and then, in Chapter 11, the seventh trumpet will be blown and the Day of Judgement will be pictured again

So this week’s Chapter is an Intermission with a Story: an Intermission with a Message for the Church. And what is that message? Well fundamentally, it addresses a new question in Revelation that hasn’t been asked explicitly before, even though it has been hinted at in Chapters 1-3 and the question is simply this: “What should the church be doing during these last days?” What is our task? What is our responsibility?

And, as we work through the text tonight, we are going to discover that this passage is deeply indebted to the Books of Daniel, Ezekiel and Jeremiah in the Old Testament for its ideas and symbols. So, let’s turn to the text and see what God has to say to us tonight…

Verse 1: “And I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven…”

The identity of this angel is not absolutely clear but there are some hints we can work with to hazard a guess…A few commentators think that this is a reference to Christ but I’m not convinced that this is an accurate idea for a couple of reasons.

First, the reference is to “another mighty angel…” and so this draws our mind back to the “mighty angel” in 5:2 who quite clearly is not Christ.

Second, the description of this angel is very similar to the description of the angel in Daniel 10:6. In Daniel 8 and 9, the angel who had guided Daniel was named as the angel Gabriel, so it is commonly agreed that the angel in Daniel 10 is Gabriel too. That being the case, it is likely that the angel being described in Revelation 10 is the Angel Gabriel.

So this angel, who may be Gabriel, comes down from heaven and what can we learn from his appearance?

First, he is “wrapped in a cloud”, which indicates that he is sent by God because, in Psalm 104:3, we read, “[God takes] the clouds as his chariot”.

Second, we read that he has “a rainbow over his head”, which reminds us of Chapter 4:3 and, if you can remember right back to when we looked at that verse, we considered the rainbow as being a symbol of God’s mercy and grace. That is a reference, of course, to Genesis 9:16, where God says, “Whenever the rainbow appears in the cloud, I shall see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and living creatures of every kind on earth.”

Third, John tells us, “his face was like the sun” and its because of this part of the description that some commentators take the angel to be Christ, because of the description of Jesus way back in 1:16 where it says, “his face was like the sun shining with full force”. But, as I say, I don’t think this necessarily identifies him as Christ so much as makes a comment on his holiness and purity.

Fourth, we are told that, “his legs were like pillars of fire”, which reminds us, of course, of Exodus 13:21: “And all the time the Lord went before them, by day a pillar of cloud to guide them on their journey, by night a pillar of fire to give them light.”

So here we have an angel of the Lord, probably Gabriel, sent from heaven to earth and he embodies for us the characteristics of God: he is sent by God, he embodies grace and mercy, he is holy and pure and he walks with the church in their troubles, just as God walked with the Israelites as they escaped from Egypt.

And so we come to this rather puzzling verse 2: “He held a little scroll open in his hand.” What does this mean?

Of course, it’s the second scroll that has been spoken of in Revelation but this is a different one, “a little scroll”. The other scroll, as you’ll remember, was in Chapter 5 and contained God’s plan for the world. But, as we shall come on to see, just because it is a “little scroll’, that doesn’t mean that it is somehow less important or that the message contained within it is less important.

What is important, of course, is that the scroll in 10:2 is “open” and the tense that is used indicates that it has been opened and will always stay open: there is a permanent message contained in that scroll that has importance beyond the immediate hearers for the church throughout all time.

And verse 2 continues, “[the angel] set his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land” and of course that indicates the universal nature of his message; that it is for the whole church throughout the whole world. And, for the first hearers, this verse would have been such an encouragement too because it speaks of the cosmic nature of God’s authoritative word. There they were, in little huddles and congregations in Thyatira or Smyrna or Philadelphia, feeling weak and under threat and under resourced, being mocked by both Jew and Roman alike for their weak God who had succumbed to a criminal’s death on the cross but the reality is very different: here is a God who stands over the whole of creation, whose messengers have their feet planted in both sea and on land towering over the world with an open scroll.

The Christian God is not weak and impotent. He is sovereign and ruler over all creation.

And so we read in verse 3, this angel “gave a great shout, like a lion roaring”. This reminds us of two Old Testament passages: Firstly, Amos 3:8 which says, “The lion has roared; who is not frightened? The Lord God has spoken; who will not prophesy?” Secondly, Hosea 11:10: “They will follow the Lord who roars like a lion, and when he roars, his sons will speed out of the west.”

And back to verse 3 again, “And when he shouted, the seven thunders sounded.” Now this produces an interesting aside for us because if you read commentaries from quite a few years back on Revelation, the assumption is made that part of John’s original letter is missing: there are seven seals recorded, seven trumpets recorded, seven bowls of wrath recorded but there is no mention elsewhere of seven thunders so this must be a part of the original letter that has got lost. But I’m not convinced about that and most modern Biblical scholarship doesn’t accept that view, either. Instead, it is now understood to be a reference to Psalm 29, which lists the effects of the seven thunders of God.

So, in its totality, verse 3 seems to be drawing us back to the power and sovereignty of God: he is like a lion that roars, a deity who thunders.

And the sovereign, powerful Lord communicated a message to John and, we read in verse 4, he was just about to write the message down when God says to him, “Seal up what the seven thunders have said, and do not write it down.” Interestingly, only in the book of Revelation do we find this word, ‘Seal up’ in the whole of the New Testament: it is used here and again in Revelation 22:10. But in Chapter 10, John is told to “seal up” the words from God and in Chapter 22, he is told “not to seal up” the prophecy! The only other biblical instance of this idea comes in Daniel 12:4, where God says, “But you, Daniel, keep the words secret and seal the book until the time of the end.” It is a strange idea: why would God say something to John in a vision and then tell him not to reveal it? It’s not the only time in the New Testament we come across this idea: in 2 Corinthians 12:4, Paul says, “[I] was caught up into paradise, and heard words so secret that human lips may not repeat them.”

I think what is important here, is that these verses keep us humble: not everything is revealed to us. We do not have complete access to God’s plans and so we cannot be arrogant in our faith or our ideas for the future. Quite rightly, some things have remained hidden from us and God will either reveal them to those he chooses or he will choose not to reveal them at all: such is the sovereignty of God and we, as mere human beings, have no right to question that.

Verses 5 and 6: “Then 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 for ever 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.”

The raising of the right hand, of course is a gesture made when swearing an oath. We still do that today in a court of law – or at the Leveson Enquiry! - and it goes right back to at least the time of Deuteronomy 32:40: “I raise my hand towards heaven and I swear…” And the seriousness of the oath that is about to be taken is evident in the description of God in these verses: there is something powerful about this description and, again, the sovereignty of God and his awesome power over all creation are made explicit.

And just as importantly, I think the solemnity and measured nature of this description tells us something about the solemnity and measured nature of God’s judgement: there is no panic attached to it, it isn’t a knee-jerk reaction against sin. Crucially, it isn’t Plan B because things have not worked out well. Here is the sovereign Lord of all heaven and all earth and he isn’t a God who just reacts to the dire nature of the fallen world: he is sovereign, he is Lord, he is in control…

And what is the oath that is sworn by the angel? Verse 7: “There will be no more delay, but in the days when the seventh angel is to blow his trumpet, the mystery of God will be fulfilled, as he announced to his servants the prophets.” This must have been a real moment of excitement for those under the altar in an earlier chapter, who had cried out, “How long, O Lord? When will our blood be avenged?” Here is the answer: “There will be no more delay…”

Let’s just unpack the rest of this verse, because it is a complex one…

“There will be no more delay, but in the days when the seventh angel is to blow his trumpet…” The word ‘but’ means, ‘on the contrary’: “There will be no more delay. On the contrary…”

However, we are still not in a position to work out the date of when this will happen because then the angel goes back into an ambiguous description and, if you are interested in the technicalities of this verse, the tense used is the Present Active Subjunctive, which expresses possibility rather than actuality: So how this verse really reads is, “There will be no more delay. On the contrary, whenever the seventh angel might blow his trumpet…”

Do you see? There is still an ambiguity about when this might happen. “Whenever the seventh angel might blow his trumpet…”; so we can’t spend time trying to work out when this will actually happen in the light of the phrase: “There will be no more delay” because that phrase is immediately qualified by the angel. It’s going to happen – but we don’t know when…

And what is going to happen whenever the seventh angel might blow his trumpet? Verse 7 again: “the mystery of God will be fulfilled…” What on earth does that mean? Well, the way we use the word ‘mystery’ today indicates something we can’t understand. But in biblical times, the word ‘mystery’ meant something that was currently not understood but would be revealed. And that which is about to be revealed, of course, is the completion of God’s plan for his creation through the judgement on sin and death and the redemption of his people.

And we shouldn’t be surprised, of course, because as John reminds us, this plan had been revealed to the prophets from long ago: not that we should think of this just as the Old Testament prophets but all those who have spoken out the redemptive plan of God throughout history. As we read in Amos 3:7: “Indeed, the Lord God does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants the prophets.” This, of course, being the verse John was thinking about, when he wrote this part of his vision down.

And so we come to verse 8 in which the voice from heaven, presumably that of Christ, says to John, “Go, take the scroll that is open in the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land.” John has heard one message from the thunders of God and been refused the right to publish that message but now he is being given another message that he can take to the church. And this part of Chapter 10 would immediately have reminded John’s hearers of Ezekiel 2:8-9, where God says to the prophet: “’You must speak my words to them, whether they listen or whether in their rebelliousness they refuse to listen. But you, O man, must heed what I say and not be rebellious like them. Open your mouth and eat what I am giving you.’” I saw a hand stretched out before me, holding a scroll…then God said, ‘Eat what is in front of you; eat this scroll, then go and speak to the Israelites.’” And that’s exactly what happens here in Revelation 10:9: “So I went to the angel and told him to give me the little scroll; and he said to me, ‘Take it, and eat; it will be bitter to your stomach, but sweet as honey in your mouth.’”

And I suppose that what is meant here by John eating the scroll is that he is to make the message his own: by ingesting it and digesting it, the message on the scroll becomes part of him, it enters his innermost being.

So John eats the scroll, just like Ezekiel did, but the effect of bitterness and sweetness goes beyond the experience of Ezekiel but it is not dissimilar to that recorded by Jeremiah in 15:16,18: “When I came on your words I devoured them; they were joy and happiness to me…why, then, is my pain unending, and my wound desperate, past all healing?””

And, of course, here we come to the crux of the matter: John is given the Gospel to proclaim and the experience of Gospel proclamation is both bitter and sweet. We are not called to just proclaim a nice message of a cuddly God who loves us, a sort of picture-card-Jesus who is always warm and accepting. We are called to proclaim a realistic Gospel that speaks of both salvation and judgement and the reality is that this can be a bitter experience because there is a bitterness inherent in the Gospel for those who are not saved.

And that is true not just for the world – but for the Church too. We have seen already, especially in Chapters 1-3, that the Church must grapple with both joy and pain in its daily living. We are a Church that lives in the shadow of both the cross and the empty tomb: if we are to live, first we must die; to be raised with Christ, we must first be crucified with him.

So this idea of bitterness and sweetness speaks of the reality of the Gospel, both for the world and for the church.

And so we come to the final verse in this chapter, verse 11 in which we find the true meaning of the little scroll that is given to John: “You must prophesy again about many peoples and nations and languages and kings.” John was being given a huge responsibility; a great burden to carry: to prophesy the reality of the Gospel to the nations in the last days, and that is a task in which we all share.

We started tonight by reflecting on the question: “What is the role of the church in the last days?” The answer is given in verse 11: “Prophesy”.

That is our task.

That is our calling.

And it will be both bitter and sweet.

But, as we undertake the task before us, we must remember the rest of this chapter; that reminded us of the guiding presence of God: the God who is sovereign over all creation, the God who comes with the rainbow of grace and compassion and leads us as he led the Israelites in the desert. In Matthew 28, Jesus said, “I am with you always, until the end of the age” and it is crucial that we hold onto that truth as we undertake the bittersweet task of mission in these last days.

And, as Paul says in Romans 8: “If God is for us, who can be against us? We are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”

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Wow! This is quite some passage of Scripture, isn’t it? When people say they don’t understand the Book of Revelation and find its imagery scary, this is the type of passage they are referring to. I’m not going to say that we are now getting into the meat of the book because you will have gathered by now that each and every verse is meaty enough! But there is a definite change in emphasis and style from hereon in that means we have to grapple hard with the imagery if we want to stay focused on the intent of the book, which is primarily, as I said at the beginning, grace, compassion, mercy and encouragement in the face of trials. So…before we get into the text itself, let’s just remind ourselves of the context of this chapter.

We are now into the third of the world-cycle perspectives: the first was the Letters to the Churches, chapters 1-3, the second was the worship of heaven and the opening of the seals, chapters 4-8:1, and now we are viewing the same world perspective again but this time with the blowing of the trumpets. The first three trumpets brought to mind warnings of judgement that are worked out through the natural world: ecological chaos that threaten the created order. And we were reminded that as we pray, ‘Your kingdom come…’ we are ushering in judgement as well as salvation and we need to take responsibility for that.

And tonight, we are looking in detail at the next two trumpets to be blown and we have to say that the symbolism and imagery is quite scary and not easy to understand. However, once we get into the text, we will see – as we always do - that, actually, there is nothing to be frightened of at all because John is making a quite simple point in language that would have been culturally understandable to the first hearers. So, let’s relax into this text and see what God has to say to us through it…

Verse 1: “And the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit.”

Clearly, this ‘star’ is a metaphor – not a literal star - because we read, “He was given…” and that would not make sense for a literal star. And there are so many interpretations as to who is indicated by this star that we cannot afford to dogmatically state who we think it is. But we can dispel a few myths surrounding this verse. First, we cannot infer from this verse that it is a ‘fallen angel’. The word used here for ‘to fall’ is also used to say ‘descend’, so there is no theological basis for thinking of this as a fallen angel in the sense of an angel who has fallen away from God. The verse just refers to a being that descends.

We have already seen in Revelation that angels are referred to as ‘stars’. For example in 1:20 we read that, “the seven stars are the seven angels of the churches” but, in that instance, we weren’t thinking about spiritual angels so much as the messengers to the churches or the church elders. So it’s possible that this star in Revelation 9 is a spiritual angel or maybe a human leader. Some commentators, not without good reason, think that this star is Jesus; the Morning Star who descended from heaven to earth to engage in spiritual warfare against Satan. On the other hand, some commentators think that this star is Satan, who fell from heaven and wages war against Jesus. We need to be honest with ourselves and admit that the identity of this star is just not clear to us: it could be Jesus, it could be Satan, it could be a human, it could be a spiritual being.

But, actually, the identity isn’t that important because it’s not the focus of this verse. What is important to note is that the star “was given the key” and so what John wants us to understand is that, in all that follows, God is still sovereign, he is still in control because it is he who gives the key. God’s sovereignty and power is the focus here and we mustn’t lose sight of that, else we will give in to fear…

So the star is under the authority of God and opens the shaft of the abyss. The abyss is not a common metaphor in the Bible but when it is used it seems to be an idea that, in the Old Testament and New Testament denotes chaos and the place or existence of all that stands against God. There are allusions to the abyss in Psalms and Isaiah and Amos. And, in Luke 8:31, when Jesus casts the spirits out of the Gaderene swine, they beg him not to send them back into the abyss. Paul only uses the word once, in Romans 10:7 –  “Who will descend into the abyss?” and, for Paul, it is a place of the dead.

So here in Revelation 9, the abyss, the place of all that stands against God and life is opened at the will of God by the star and we then have described for us what comes from the abyss…

Now, as we come to look at the meaning of 9:2-12, we’ve got two ways of doing this. We can either work through verse by verse, examining the details of the symbolism and probably not get very far until we have finally worked out the identity of the locusts. Or we can have a working hypothesis as to who the locusts are and then interpret the detail from there. And it seems to me that the second of these is the better way of approaching this passage, otherwise we might end up with some very weird and wacky interpretations, which wouldn’t be very helpful at all…So, if it’s OK with you, I want to start this section at verse 11 and then work through verses 2-10 in the light of that because I think that in verse 11, John gives a really interesting word-play that reveals for us who these locusts are.

Verse 11: “They [the locusts] have as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit; his name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he is called Appolyon.” These are not natural locusts – they have a king and this is in clear contrast to Proverbs 30:27, which simply says, “The locusts have no king…” And the king – who is the angel of the abyss – therefore rules over all that stands against the true God and stands against life in God. John gives this king a name: Abaddon. In Hebrew, this means ‘Destruction’ and in Job 28:22, Abbadon and Death go hand in hand. So, this is a king who is opposed to God and those who live in him, a king who brings destruction, a king who brings death. Perhaps you are beginning to work out the identity of the locust king already…

And then John makes the identity clear through a very clever word-play in verse 11: “His name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he is called Appolyon.” Now John knows full well that the Greek translation of Abaddon is not Appolyon! The Greek translation of Abaddon is ‘apoleia’: he even uses the word himself in Revelation 17:8. Instead of using the word ‘apoleia’, he says ‘Appolyon’ and the name ‘Appolyon’ derives from the name of the god Apollo. Now, here’s the thing…The worshippers of Apollo used as one of their key symbols – the locust. And who do you think believed himself to be an incarnation of Apollo? Domitian!

Domitian believed that he was Apollo incarnate on earth, so the king of the locusts that John refers to here – is Domitian. And the locusts are those pesky Romans again!

Now we don’t have to be fearful of this passage, because we realise that what is being written about here is actually little or no different from what we came across in Chapters 2 and 3 of Revelation. The blowing of the first four trumpets showed ecological disaster. The blowing of this fifth trumpet shows ungodly domination and oppression by political authorities, symbolised as a plague of locusts coming to devour.

So now we are in a position to go back to verse 2 and work through the symbolism without any fear but with deeper understanding of what we are looking at.

Verse 2: “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 some from the shaft.” That which comes from the pit, from the place that opposes God is toxic. The air becomes darkened when the abyss is opened and we know from Ephesians 2:2 that the air was thought to be the place where demons lived: Paul had written in Ephesians, “You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient.”

And it is from this darkened, toxic, ungodly air that the locusts come, verse 3: “Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given authority like the authority of scorpions of the earth.” Again we notice here, as we did in verse 1, that the locusts are given authority in the same way that the star was given the key: they have no authority in and of themselves and so the Roman power had no authority in and of itself because, ultimately, it was under the authority of God.

And the authority of this locust army was like that of the scorpions of earth. Wherever scorpions are mentioned in the Old Testament, in 1 Kings and 2 Chronicles for example, they are metaphorical scorpions used to scourge and persecute and hurt. And so the locust army from the abyss is released and will scourge the world with its domination and oppressive rule.

Now verse 4 is crucial for us to realise that what is not being described here is persecution of the church but a more general ungodliness of rule by oppressive political authorities. “They were told not to damage the grass of the earth or any green growth or any tree, but only those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads.” This is an interesting twist, of course, because ordinary locusts harm vegetation but not people but these demonic locusts harm people but not vegetation. The first four trumpets dealt with ecological chaos and the meaning of this trumpet is around how oppressive political regimes wreak havoc on societies. And there is an irony here that the locusts of the abyss, which is all that is antichrist only attack their own…

We have read enough of John’s writings now to know that he never exempts Christians from the sufferings of the world and I don’t think that’s what he is saying here, either. But I think he is making the point that Christians cannot ultimately be hurt if they are sealed by God for salvation. Don’t forget that Chapters 8 and 9, the blowing of the trumpets was preceded by Chapter 7, which gave hope to all believers that our future is ultimately secured in the sealing we receive from God. Those who do not own Christ – and are not owned by him – have no such security and the locust army attack them mercilessly.

And the attack is outlined in verse 5: “They [the locusts] were allowed to torture them for five months, but not to kill them, and their torture was like the torture of a scorpion when it stings someone.” I think the time-span of the locust infestation is interesting because locust attacks normally only last for a few days before they move on but in this case, the attack lasts five months, which is the whole life-span of a locust. It seems to me that what John is saying is that the whole existence of the locust army is focussed on oppression and harm.

And the impact of oppressive political regimes is heartbreaking as verse 6 reminds us: “And in those days people will seek death but will not find it; they will long to die but death will flee from them.” When we look at oppressive regimes around the world today; Syria, Burma, Zimbabwe, our hearts break at the suffering the people endure such that they think they would be better off dead than continuing to live under such cruelty.

And so in verses 7-10, we have a description of these locusts: these political authorities who oppress with such great cruelty. I don’t think we need to labour each metaphor, searching for meaning but the general characteristics are laid out before us through the similes.

Verse 7: “In appearance the locusts were like horses equipped for battle” and certainly there is a large degree of violence that goes hand in hand with oppression.

“On their heads were what looked like crowns of gold” but notice the crowns are pretend, they are not real, and so is the supposed power and authority of oppression.

“Their faces were like human faces” and I think this refers to the way in which oppressive rulers often masquerade as rational, even compassionate people. And I’m thinking at the this present time of President Assad of Syria with his calm exterior, sharp suits, reasonable voice and beautiful wife: who would think he was the author of such evil and wickedness?

Verse 8: “Their hair like women’s hair, and their teeth like lions’ teeth”; again the paradox of beauty and ferocity co-existing in one ruler or one regime.

Verse 9: “They had scales like iron breastplates”, which seems to be a reference to body armour and so it is that oppressive regimes seem almost impenetrable and almost impossible to overthrow.

“And the noise of their wings was like the noise of many chariots with horses running into battle”, a reference perhaps to the words of violence and threat that they utter so regularly.

Verse 10: “They have tails like scorpions, with stingers, and in their tails is their power to harm people for five months.” We’ve considered the analogy a few minutes ago of their scourging and violence, which seems to be what consumes them and their desire to rule.

So that’s quite a detailed description of the fifth trumpet but it’s important that we get a handle on this because it is certainly one of those passages in Revelation that causes so much fear and misunderstanding. But, as we’ve come to expect from John, he is speaking very practically to his first hearers with symbols they would understand. They would certainly know what it was to live under a cruel and oppressive regime and many of our brothers and sisters around the world do so today and we need to pray for them and do what we can to crush the locust regimes that cause so much harm and pain to so many…

So as verse 12 reminds us, there are still two woes to come and we will look at the next woe now, verses 13-21.

This feels to me to be a very confused and chaotic part of John’s vision but maybe that’s because it is describing that which is confusing and chaotic in nature. My understanding is that if the fifth trumpet was describing oppressive political regimes then this sixth trumpet is describing the ravages of war. Not any specific war in particular, of course, but all wars throughout history and especially those that we endure in these last days.

So, in verse 13 the angel blows his trumpet and John then writes, “I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar before God…” I think what John is doing here is bringing us back to the same point that we thought about last week. The prayers of the martyrs were offered on the altar in 6:9. The prayers of all believers were laid on the altar in 8:3 and so we are being reminded that the judgements that are being outpoured are in response to the prayers of the people, “Your kingdom come…”

And the voice says to the angel, verse 14: “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” OK, just a few thinks to say about this verse.

First, there’s no reason to think that these are the same four angels who we thought about in 7:1 because the purpose of each is very different.

Secondly, I think there is something malign and evil about these four angels in verse 14, not just because they unleash horrific wars on the world, but also because they have been bound which is to suggest that God has limited them and restricted their activities until he is ready to have them released.

Thirdly, why are they bound at the Euphrates? Well, this was the Eastern boundary of the Roman Empire and the Romans viewed the Euphrates with fear, because their enemies lay beyond but the Jews viewed it with hope, because potential deliverers lay beyond! I think I’ve mentioned the Parthians before who defeated the Romans in skirmishes along the Euphrates in 53 BC and again in AD 62 and the importance of the Parthians will become clear in a minute. But they are a good example of the Roman fear of Beyond-the-Euphrates and the Jewish hope of Beyond-the-Euphrates. We will come across the Euphrates as a symbol in a few weeks time, so we can go into more detail then…

And then we come to this crucial verse 15, which again stresses for us the sovereignty and authority of God: “So the four angels were released, who had been held ready for the hour and day and month and year, to kill a third of humankind.” Two things to say here about the authority of God.

The first is that the release of the angels is tied to a specific, pre-ordained moment. This is God’s timing, he is in control. Again, we come back to what we thought about in previous weeks, that it is not saying God is the author of war and all that is evil but that, through the consequence of war, God can visit judgement, which is a very different concept altogether: he uses moments of evil to defeat evil, just as he did with Christ’s death on the cross.

And secondly, we notice that, again, only a third are killed: a sizeable minority, but a limited amount. Even in this chaotic moment, God is still sovereign and still Lord of all.

In verse 16, we read that the “number of the troops of cavalry was two hundred million” and then John adds this curious phrase, “I heard their number”. There is something important about the number of troops, otherwise John wouldn’t have said, “I heard their number”; he would have said, like he did in 5:11, myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands. I don’t really understand this verse, to be honest because the only other two times when this number of 200 million is mentioned is both with regard to the strength of God’s power. In Psalm 68:17, that’s the number of chariots God has when he rides from Sinai. And in Daniel 7:10, it is the number of angels who serve him. So why these antichrist forces match God’s power, I don’t know: I rather wish John had given them a slightly lower number, say, 199 million - and then I could preach about how God’s strength is greater than that of antichrist: but he didn’t, and so I can’t…

Verse 17, I just want to make one small comment, by way of detour…John says, “And this is how I saw the horses in my vision…” It’s only a small detail – but I want us to hold on to this - that it is only a vision: these are not literal creatures, they are symbols and so we don’t need to fear ever seeing these things: not in their actuality, anyway…

And so, as John did with the locusts, he now gives a vivid description of the horses and riders. And it’s interesting that John starts this verse by saying, “This is how I saw the horses…” and then immediately he says, “The riders wore…To John, the riders and the horses are one and the same: together they are a mighty war machine and this fits in with the picture of Parthian warriors of the period, who came from over the Euphrates, and both rider and horse would wear brightly coloured body armour. So even this rather frightening image is something the first hearers would have understood.

It certainly seems as if it is something akin to Parthian warriors he is describing here, right down to the detail in verse 19 where he writes, “their tails were like serpents” because the Parthian horsemen twisted the tails of their horses to give them the appearance of snakes. And, again, it was a Parthian skill to shoot arrows backwards as they rode past the enemy. So perhaps that fits in with the allusion at the end of verse 19: “with [their tails] they inflicted harm.”

And finally, we come to verses 20 and 21. All this tribulation befell the people of earth but still they did not repent. We are reminded again, like last week, of the plagues in Egypt, that didn’t even soften the heart of Pharaoh. Just like the Egyptians back then, the sounding the trumpets does not seem to make any impact on the understanding of so many…John says, “They did not repent of the work of their hands or give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood…and they did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their fornication or their thefts.”

A few weeks ago, we thought about the six seals that were broken open: warnings from God through cataclysmic events and people did not repent and so the seventh seal is opened: the Day of Judgement. And that is exactly what is mirrored here: the six trumpets have been sounded, warnings from God through cataclysmic events and people do not repent and so it remains only for the seventh trumpet to be sounded and we can guess what that will be but we will have to wait a few weeks before we get to that moment…

So Revelation 9 is a complex and frightening passage of Scripture unless we seek to understand it in its historical and cultural context. These two trumpets are describing to us the warnings from God that come through oppressive political regimes and the tumult of war. That is not to say that God is the author of either of these things but that he uses the fallen nature of humanity for his own purposes.

Even in the midst of the horror of oppression and war, there is to be found the limiting sovereignty of God, his grace and mercy and an opportunity for repentance.

I think, in response to this passage, we do well to ensure our own security as being sealed by God. But there is also a responsibility to engage with issues of social justice: speaking out against oppression wherever we find it and naming it for the evil that it is and doing all we can to prevent the horror of war; engaging our MPs and political and church leaders to speak out against it as ultimately demonic.

We cannot just sit here and say, “Oh well, these are signs of the times”. When we pray, “Your kingdom come”, we need to be agents for the ushering in of his kingdom. We need to unmask the powers for what they are, we need to alert others to the evil of war and oppression and do all we can to stand firm for God in these dark days.

We must not think of compassion as a noun but as a verb.

In Joshua 24:15, we are given a stark choice: “If serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

Who will you serve?

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It’s always a real challenge to preach a sermon on prayer because for me, on a personal level, prayer is such a struggle. And when I preach on prayer, one of the things I want to avoid is to draw examples from the spiritual giants in prayer: the likes of John Wesley and Hudson Taylor and Smith Wigglesworth, whose lives were devoted to prayer and God did great things through them. Because if you’re anything like me, you hear about those people in sermons and end up more depressed than before. I know I could never match John Wesley and get up at 4.00 in the morning to pray. I am no rival to Paul Yonggi Cho in South Korea, who spends 6 hours a day in prayer. I admire these guys – but I don’t have their perseverance in prayer.

And perhaps it seems silly, but I don’t want to hear about these great prayer warriors so much as the weak and frail and vulnerable pray-ers who struggle to remain faithful: and yet God still uses them and hears them and answers their prayers and gives them great victories. Perhaps we are all weak in our prayers but God still loves us and still honours us when we pray and he will bless our efforts.

And this passage from Exodus 17 gives us real encouragement. It’s an amazing story about how Moses dealt with the problem of the Amalekites who came to attack the people of Israel.

Now if you’ve ever read these parts of the Old Testament, you will know that battles and wars were not uncommon amongst the nations and tribal people: Israel was pretty well used to physical attack from others. But the Amalekites were a different kettle of fish all together. The Amalekites were vicious beyond all words. They were tough and they were brutal. The Amalekites were nomads, living out in the desert regions and the way they survived was to attack neighbouring people and kill them and take their possessions and cattle and anything of worth.

And so one day, they looked around them, and they saw the Israelites and they thought their luck was in: easy pickings, no problems here; one attack and Israel would be history. And so, completely unprovoked, without any warning, as we read in verse 8: “The Amalekites came and attacked the Israelites at Rephidim”. The Israelites probably didn’t know what had hit them.

And, actually, life can be like that for all of us: every now and again, without any warning at all, when it seems to be all clear sailing, life throws up a major battle for us. Maybe someone we lobe becomes ill and dies. Maybe we are made unemployed. Perhaps we contract an illness – or our marriage hits the rocks. It happens, doesn’t it? Without any warning at all, our lives become blighted by a major catastrophe the size and might of the Amalekites. And we are left reeling in shock and distress and we look at the problem that faces us and we think: “How on earth am I ever going to cope with this one?”

And we are tempted to think, “If I was a spiritual giant like Wesley or Hudson Taylor, I’d be OK – I could pray my way out of this one…” But I’m not Wesley. I’m not Hudson Taylor. I’m just me: frail, vulnerable, fragile me: tattered and torn at the edges, not knowing which way to turn.

Well, I guess that’s how Moses felt too. But the way he handled the situation and the example he leaves us here gives us some direction on how to cope prayerfully with the crises we face in our lives today. And there’s three points I want to pick up from this passage:

And the first is this: 

Perspective

Moses put his crisis into perspective. Have you ever tried one of those Magic Eye puzzles that look like a mass of coloured dots and you need to see them in a particular way to see the pattern emerging? But to see the pattern, you need to adjust the way you look at the puzzle. You have to look at the picture a certain way to see the pattern emerging. And that is true of the crises we face in life too.

Maybe you are facing a particularly tough situation at the moment and you are trying to find a way to deal with it but when you look at it, it seems just a big mess, utter confusion. But if we want to see the real issue at hand in our lives, if we want to deal with our crises prayerfully, we need to do two things.

First, we need to make some practical planning. In verse 9, Moses says to Joshua: “Pick out some men to go and fight the Amalekites tomorrow”. Now that seems to me an eminently sensible thing to do. The Amalekites are out there, ready to attack, so the logical thing to do is to prepare an army to defend. And so Moses takes Joshua to one side: not just any old military leader. Joshua was the best man for the job, the top military leader in Israel. And Moses tells him to make plans to sort the situation out.

Now there is a school of thought amongst some Christians that is scathing about making plans for the future. I have come across it many times in life, not least when those I loved dearest were suffering from a terminal illness and some Christians would say, “Don’t worry about doctors: Just pray. God will bring healing.”

Let me tell you what I think. If you are in a crisis at the moment, the lack of making proper plans is not a sign of godliness: it’s a sign of ignorance and stupidity. If your marriage is hitting a tough spot: you need to do something positive about the situation. If you are ill or someone you love is ill: you need to see a doctor. The Bible does not condone lack of practical activity as a sign of godliness.

We are all called to take some degree of responsibility for our lives and that is exactly what Moses did when he was faced with an Amalekite attack. He didn’t sit around waiting for a thunderbolt from heaven to wipe out the Amalekites: he sorted out his leaders, he sorted out his strategy, he sorted out his troops and he got them ready for a counter-attack.

But that’s only half the story, of course because then we go on to read the rest of Moses’ words: “I will stand on top of the hill holding the stick that God told me to carry”. Now this is where Moses and I have something in common. If I looked out over the desert and saw the Amalekites there, I too would have volunteered to get out the way and go and stand on a nearby hill. But the difference is that I am a coward and Moses was a man of action.

You see, Moses knew that when facing the might and strength of the Amalekites, practical planning just wasn’t enough…And when we face our crises in life too, practical planning just isn’t enough…

We need to back our activity up with some serious prayer: Moses knew that Joshua was the military man and that he was the prayer man. So he goes off to pray whilst the battle commences.

But there’s something very important to notice here: that when Moses prays, he doesn’t do it from the front line but backs off some distance and goes up a hill to pray. And this is where perspective comes into things. Because if we want to pray for a solution to the problems we face, we need to be prepared to back off a bit, to try to distance ourselves a bit so that we can get a proper perspective. The secret to praying for a solution to a particular crisis in life, I think, is having the ability to stand back from the problem so that we can see things a bit more clearly.

Standing on the front line with the troops is not the best place to pray for the battle. Standing on a hill, some distance away, where you can see the whole game-plan is a much better way to pray. It’s a tough call but we need to find a little bit of space each day to distance ourselves from our problems so we can hear God’s voice more clearly.

Praying in times of crisis is all about Perspective: practical planning, yes, but matched with a bit of distance, away from the tumult of battle so we can hear the still, small voice of God a bit more clearly.

So much for Perspective. The second example Moses gives us here is that he experiences real Power when he prays. 

Power

Verse 11: “As long as Moses held up his arms, the Israelites won, but whn he put his arms down, the Amalekites started winning.” The truth is – there is real power in prayer: it’s not some fairly-tale, it’s not make-believe, it’s not fate, or luck or co-incidence. When we pray, things happen: people are healed, situations are altered, churches grow, grief is dealt with, spiritual battles are won.

Prayer is real. Prayer is powerful. Prayer works.

But for some mysterious reason that I can’t explain, the other side of the coin is true as well. When we cease praying, we inhibit the power of God at work in our lives. But, as I said at the beginning, the beauty of this story is that it shows Moses not as a prayer warrior but, like us, as a frail, vulnerable and weak human being. Moses got tired – and his arms dropped - but God could handle that and what solution did God provide? Two wonderful companions – Aaron and Hur – to help him along. Verse 12: “When Moses arms grew tired, Aaron and Hur brought a stone for him to sit on, while they stood beside him and held up his arms, holding them steady until the sun went down.”

To be honest with you, there are many times when my arms drop in prayer. And I cannot tell you how much I value the ministry of other Christians being Aaron and Hur for me: sitting me down and encouraging me to go on praying and go on walking with God when all I want to do, sometimes, is give up. And I know that some of you carry burdens far greater than mine but let me tell you two things:

First, if you bring those burdens to God, he will lighten your load and give you the strength you need to carry on. Jesus loves each one of us so much. He longs for us to turn to him in prayer for help and he will never let us down.

Secondly, whatever cares and worries you are carrying today, this church is full of Aarons and Hurs who will help you carry the load. If we share our problems with each other, we will be sure to find support and strength from other people who will love you and accept you just as you are.

We must not despise the love and acceptance which is on offer today from God and from each other.

So then, in praying for strength in times of crisis, we need to get a right perspective: planning for all eventualities, backed up with serious prayer and we need to understand the power of prayer and the power of a community of Aarons and Hurs who will stand with us.

And finally, my third point, which we don’t have much time to unpack now, is the response of praise when we see our prayers answered. 

Praise

Verse 13: “In this way, Joshua totally defeated the Amalekites”: not a temporary setback but total defeat. And what does God tell Moses to do after this? Verse 14: “Write an account of this victory, so that it will be remembered.”

When God answers our prayers, we need to remember his goodness to us. And what is important about living in community together is sharing our experiences of God answering prayers so that we can encourage one another with the victories that God has won in our lives. If God is answering your prayers, share the news with one another then, in our darkest hours, we can all remember and be encouraged. And that encouragement will lead us to praise God, which is the only appropriate response to answered prayer. Verse 15: “Moses built an altar and named it, ‘The Lord is my Banner!’” Answered prayer results in praise and praise builds the Kingdom of God.

So we are out of time – but the lessons from this passage are clear: Moses and the Israelites were facing an enormous crisis, bigger than anything they had faced before, and their prayerful response claimed the victory God had for them.

Perspective.

Power.

Praise.

And the same is true for us today.

What burdens do you carry tonight? What is the emotional baggage that weighs you down? Follow the example of Moses: put the problem into perspective, experience the power of God, praise God for his goodness. That is the way for us to live out our lives as new creations is God.

We need to rest in the promise that God has for us, whatever our personal situation, whatever Amalekite-sized problem we face. Moses’ final words in this passage, in verse 16, says it all: “The Lord will continue to fight against the Amalekites for ever!” That is God’s promise to each one of us tonight.

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Last week, John took us on a slight detour as he gave us this comforting picture of the 144,000 and the Great Multitude. If you remember from earlier weeks, when we looked at Chapters 5 and 6, the seals were being opened which were the judgements of God on the earth and there had been six of the seven seals opened and, just before we came to the seventh seal, John takes us back into heaven to see the 144,000 and the Great Multitude; to reflect on the fact that those who are sealed by God to salvation have nothing to fear from the final judgement. And having given us this reassurance, he is now ready to describe to us the opening of the seventh seal, which is the final judgement of God on his fallen creation.

We begin in Chapter 8:1 with this very puzzling statement: “When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.” This is an interesting idea: why was there silence for half an hour?

Some commentators have taken this to mean that there is a pause in heaven as the angels and archangels are taken back in awe at what is about to happen in the final judgement: that this is a pause, if you like, of awe and wonder as the whole of heaven awaits the events to come. Others have been a bit more creative – and more interesting – in suggesting that the silence is a return to the original silence before the creation of the world in anticipation of the new creation after the final judgement. I’m not persuaded by this argument – but I like it…It’s based on a Jewish apocalyptic book called 2 Esdras, which says that, when the Messianic era comes to end, “the world shall be turned back to primeval silence for seven days, as it was at the first beginnings, so that no one shall yet be left. And after seven days the world, which is not yet awake, shall be roused, and that which is corruptible shall perish.”

I’m not sure that either of these are particularly useful interpretations, though, because the first 5 verses of this chapter are clearly related to the notion of prayer so I think we need to look for an interpretation that links silence and prayer. And we find this link in Judaism when we look a set of writings in the Talmud called Hagigah. In this book, there is an examination of the seven heavens and the fifth is hallmarked by, “companies of ministering angels, who utter song by night, and are silent by day for the sake of Israel’s glory…” And the idea here is that the angels sing by night but during the day they are silent so God can listen to the prayers of the people.

Now this is an idea that fits in with the pattern of Revelation so far. In Chapter 4, we were taken into the worship of the angels and the worship of the whole of creation before the throne of God and now, John tells us that there is silence in heaven and, by-passing verse 2 just for a moment and looking at verse 3 we read: “Another angel with a golden censer came and stood at the altar; he was given a great quantity of incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar that is before the throne.” So, in good Jewish tradition, heaven falls silent so God can hear the prayers of his people. Let’s just look at this description in a bit more detail…

“Another angel with a golden censer came and stood at the altar.” What we actually read in the Greek is that the angel “took his place” at the altar; there is something very deliberate about this action, almost a liturgical action, something profound, something pre-ordained - a deliberate movement towards the altar. “He was given a great quantity of incense to offer with the prayers”. Now, we have come across incense before, in 5:8, but there is a subtle difference between the two references. In 5:8, we read, “The twenty-four elders fell before the Lamb, each holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.” There, the incense is the prayers of the saints. But in 8:3, the incense is offered with the prayers of the saints. It’s a subtle difference – but an important one because I think what we see in Chapter 8 is the worship of heaven and earth coming together as one before the throne. In chapter 5, the prayers of the people came as incense before God. In chapter 8, the prayers of the people and the incense come before God; the prayers from humans, the incense from angels.

And in that verse, we are reminded of just how important our prayers are to God. They come before him with “a great quantity of incense” and our prayers are laid on a golden altar, which is, of course, a symbol of great worth. That is very encouraging for us. Sometimes, when we pray, we think we are making little difference; our prayers seem inconsequential almost as if we are wasting God’s time with our petty requests. But it’s a lovely thought that, every time you pray, an angel carries your prayer to the throne of God and incense is wafted in heaven and your prayer is left before the throne on a golden altar. Verse 4: “And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God from the hand of the angel.” If that doesn’t transform the way you view your prayers, nothing will!

But now we get a sense of the responsibility of our prayers and this is quite an awesome spiritual truth, so get ready…Verse 5: “Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth; and there were peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake.” Now, what we have here is the beginnings of the pouring out of the judgements of God…in response to the prayers of the saints. God brings his judgements to the earth as a response to your prayers and mine…Now this is a complex reality for us to comprehend, so let’s work through it.

If you remember back to 6:10, the saints were under the altar and they cried out, “Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long will it be before you judge and avenge our blood on the inhabitants of the earth?” You may remember that these were the prayers of the martyrs, asking God to do what was right and justify his sovereignty in the light of unrighteousness on earth.

Perhaps we can summarise that prayer in three words: “Your kingdom come…” And what do we pray regularly, if not every day in our lives through the Lord’s Prayer? “Your kingdom come…” Now, this is a phrase that rolls off our lips very easily and it becomes a habit for us – we give little thought to what we are saying but, actually, it’s the most powerful prayer-phrase in the world. Because when we pray, “Your kingdom come”, we are asking God to bring judgement on ungodliness in the world to cleanse the cosmos from all that is antichrist and to bring his reign to absolute completion. And we need to take responsibility for the fact that when we are praying “Your kingdom come…”, we are actually praying for the intensification and final completion of every spiritual battle in the cosmos. These are not trite words: we need to take responsibility for what we pray for.

And what we see in Chapter 8 is the end result of what we are praying for when we say, “Your kingdom come…” That prayer, when it leaves our lips, is carried up to heaven and, with the incense of the angels, laid on a golden altar before the throne of God. And if we don’t want God to act on it, we shouldn’t pray it. Because God acting on it will inevitably mean the bringing of judgement as well as salvation. And that’s what we see here…

Now, we skipped verse 2 but we need to go back to it: “And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them.” Who are these angels and what are these trumpets?

Seven, as we have seen over and over again in Revelation is the number of completion and wholeness so the fact that there are seven angels is a symbol of the fact that the whole of the spiritual realm is engaged with what is about to happen. But, just out of interest, there is a Jewish book called Tobit and in Tobit 12:15, there is a verse that says, “there are seven angels who present the prayers of the saints and enter into the presence of the glory of the Holy One.” And in another Jewish book, 1 Enoch 20, these angels are given names: Uriel, Raphael, Raguel, Michael, Saraqael, Gabriel and Remiel. Maybe those are the seven angels referred to here, maybe not but they are given seven trumpets. Why trumpets? Well, in Judaism, trumpets symbolised two things…

First, they symbolised warning of a coming war and a summoning of men to battle. For example, in Judges 3:27, we read, “When [Ehud] arrived, he sounded the trumpet in the hill country of Ephraim; and the Israelites went down with him from the hill country.” In Nehemiah 4:18, we read, “Each of the builders had his sword strapped at his side while he built. The man who sounded his trumpet was beside me.” And so, in Israelite theology, the sounding of a trumpet is a warning of the battle that is to come and so, when Zephaniah describes the coming Day of the Lord, he writes: “That day will be a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish, a day of ruin and devastation, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of trumpet blast and battle cry…” And a final example from Joel 2:1, where he too describes the Day of the Lord: “Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near…”

But secondly, the sounding of the trumpet also heralds joy as well as warning. In Numbers 10:10, the instruction is given, “On your days of rejoicing, at your appointed festivals, and at the beginning of your months, you shall blow the trumpets…” In Leviticus 23, we read of the Festival of Trumpets, a great Jewish occasion. Plenty of other examples could be given but the idea is clear…You and I – and every Christian since Christ taught us - has prayed, “Your Kingdom come…” and, as a result of that prayer, the Day of the Lord comes and, for some, it is a Day to be warned about and for others, it will be a day of joy and gladness and celebration.

Now, I just want to pause here for a moment and just reflect on where we are at  in terms of the overall structure of Revelation. I’ve said a few times that I believe the structure of Revelation to be the same period of history, from the first coming to the Second Coming viewed seven times from seven different perspectives. The first viewing was Chapters 1-3 and the perspective was that of the church on earth and the various sufferings and crises we would encounter. The second viewing was from Chapters 4-8:1, which was the judgements of God but the emphasis there was actually on the Lamb of God who opens the seals, which taught us that God has a plan for his world and it is being unrolled through the Lamb of God. Now we come to the third viewing of the same period, which will take us through Chapters 8-11 and so there is a sense in which the Trumpets mirror the Seals.

Now, this is important because some people read this part of Revelation thinking that the Seven Trumpets are the contents of the Seventh Seal. That is not true. The seventh seal is opened and there is silence in heaven: 8:1 and that in itself is the seventh seal, the Day of the Lord, which will be described in detail elsewhere in Revelation. It would actually have been more helpful if 8:1 was actually 7:18, because it is the end of that section rather than the beginning of the new section, which is 8:2-11:19, but that’s the way the Bible is structured and we are stuck with it…

So we come to this third perspective on history, symbolised by the blowing of the seven trumpets and we can look at the first four of these now. Now there is a logical split between the first four and the last three trumpets - or actually, the split is four, two and one - because the first four relate to the forces of nature and the last three to people. So let’s look at these four trumpets…

Verse 7: “The first angel blew his trumpet, and there came hail and fire, mixed with blood, and they were hurled to the earth.” Now, with the blowing of the trumpets, we are going to be taken back to the plagues that fell on Egypt during the time of Moses. And this first trumpet corresponds to the final Egyptian plague, Exodus 9:23: “Then Moses stretched out his staff towards heaven, and the Lord sent thunder and hail, and fire came down upon the earth.” There is no mention of blood in Exodus but it does fit in with another Jewish Text, the Sybilline Oracles, verse 377: “Fire shall rain on mortal men from the fields of heaven, fire and blood, water, meteor, darkness, heaven’s night…”

Clearly what is being suggested here is that cataclysmic changes in weather and the forces of nature that create damage and cause bloodshed will be a sign of the end times. But the warning of this trumpet, as we would expect is a limited warning, verse 7 again: “A third of the earth was burned up, and a third of all the trees were burned up, and all green grass was burned up.” A significant proportion is damaged – but not the whole earth: this is not the end, it is just the beginning of the end and even now, if the warnings are recognised for what they are; there is still time for repentance and a turning to God.

Then, in verse 8, the second angel blows his trumpet and, we read, “something like a great mountain, burning with fire, was thrown into the sea.” Again, this takes us back to the Sibylline Oracles, verse 158: “Then shall come a great star from heaven into the divine sea, and shall burn up the deep sea…”

Of course, the point of this second trumpet is that it stands in contrast to the first: the first one burnt up the land and this one burns up the sea. And, as with the first trumpet, the impact is on a third: “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.”

This warning draws our minds back to two Old Testament passages. The first is the first plague of Egypt, Exodus 7:20, “Moses lifted up his staff and struck the water in the river, and all the water in the river turned into blood, and the fish in the river died.” There are obvious differences between Revelation and Exodus here but the parallels are clear as well. But perhaps the first hearers would have thought about Psalm 46:2: “We will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its water roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult.”

Then the third trumpet sounds, verses 10-11, which is a clearer parallel with the first plague in Exodus 7: “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 the springs of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many died from the water, because it was made bitter.”

Now, this verse from Scripture became very famous 26 years ago this week because on 26 April 1986, as many of you will remember, there was the Chernobyl disaster and, as many Christians were quick to point out ‘Chernobyl’ is the Ukrainian word for Wormwood. Well, as usual with Christians who try to find hidden meanings in Scripture, they were nearly right, but most wrong! Chernobyl actually isn’t the Ukranian word for Wormwood - it is actually the Ukranian word for the plant family ‘artemisium’ and one of the plants that comes within that family is the bitter plant, Wormwood. Secondly, the Greek word for the plant is not Wormwood but Apsinthos, which is regularly translated as wormwood because whenever it is used in Ancient Greek literature, it is a symbol for bitterness. So the emphasis of the verse is actually on the bitterness of God’s judgement rather than John prophesying an event that would happen 1,890 years after writing the letter, which, to be honest, would be a pretty pointless thing to write about to Christians under persecution from the Roman Empire and struggling to survive in the face of Jewish aggression.

And to back that up, we want to look, as always, to the Old Testament, which is the source of so much of John’s vision and, as we do so, we come to Jeremiah 9:15 where God promises punishment on all those who have turned to idolatrous worship: “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God if Israel: I am feeding this people with wormwood, and giving them poisonous water to drink” And again in Jeremiah 25:15-16, “I am going to make them eat wormwood, and give them poisoned water to drink; for from the prophets of Jerusalem ungodliness has spread throughout all the land.”

Now this seems to me to be a far more rational explanation of Rev 8:10-11; that the imagery is steeped in the Old Testament idea that God will bring warning and judgement on those who have been tempted into idolatry: it certainly fits with everything we have read so far…

The most interesting thing to me about this verse, which I have no answer to, is why John says, “many died from the water…” but he doesn’t say “a third of the people died from the water…” I just have to hold my hands up at this point and say “I have no idea!” and I haven’t found any decent explanation in commentaries either…

Then, verse 12, the fourth angel blows 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 was darkened.” This brings us back to the ninth plague in Egypt, Exodus 10:22: “So Moses stretched out his hand towards heaven, and there was dense darkness in all the land of Egypt for three days.”

Clearly John was no astronomer because the implications of this trumpet don’t actually make any sense: “A third of the day was kept from shining, and likewise the night”. The reality, of course, would be that the intensity of the light would be impacted by a 33% reduction, not the length of time light shone. But John isn’t trying to make an astronomical point here: he is dealing with symbol and metaphor…And the metaphor he is drawing on is that those lost in sin are living in darkness and only the light of Christ will be enough to bring them to salvation so the hope is that people in darkness will recognise their need for light and turn to Christ accordingly.

And so we conclude our study tonight with 8:13: “Then I looked, and I heard an eagle crying with a loud voice as it flew in midheaven, ‘Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth, at the blasts of the other trumpets that the three angels are about to blow!”

Interestingly, this seems to be the only time in Jewish literature when an eagle brings a message of woe and warning. The only possible interpretation I can think of for this anomaly is that the word for ‘eagle’, which is ‘aetos’, can also mean ‘vulture’ and that reminds us of Luke 17:37, where Jesus says, “Where the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.” And certainly Jesus uses the same word in the plural, ‘aetoi’, there, so perhaps that is some insight that may be useful.

But regardless of that fact, the eagle or vulture cries, “Woe, woe, woe”: one ‘Woe’ for each of the remaining trumpets yet to be blown.

And there is one interesting biblical twist to be noted here when we compare this verse with Hosea 8:1. In Hosea, we read, “Set the trumpet to your lips! One like a vulture is over the house of the Lord, because they have broken my covenant and transgressed my law.” In both Hosea and Revelation, there is a warning of impending judgement for ungodliness and unfaithfulness to God. But in Hosea, the trumpets warn of the vulture that is coming and in Revelation, the vulture warns of the trumpets that are coming…a nice little twist on the use of Scripture by John.

So there we have Revelation 8 – another complex and very challenging section, with much to contemplate…

It is our prayers, when we say “Your kingdom come…” that hasten the Day of Judgement: what we ask for, we will receive.

But that Day will be preceded by warnings from God that are limited in their impact, so there is still time for people to repent.

What do those warnings look like?

There is impact on the created order; the land, the sea and the rivers, and we must take that ecological chaos as a warning from God. We can read specific incidents into this passage from Scripture - and that has been done many times throughout history - the destruction of Pompeii, the Black Plague, the onset of AIDs, Chernobyl, the Fukushima disaster and so much more…And whilst these may be the type of event that John is referring to, we do a disservice to this portion of Scripture if we try to pinpoint any one of these events as an actual working out of Revelation 8. It is naïve to say that Revelation 8:10 is Chernobyl. It is naïve to say that Revelation 8:7 is Global Warming and so on…

But we do learn from this passage that we are in the last days; however long that period will last: 2,000 years or 20,000 years we don’t know. But the onus is on us to keep praying for the coming of God’s Kingdom, to make sure that our hearts are right with God and to tell others the Good News of God’s salvation so that they too may be ready to meet with him when that seventh seal is finally opened and we all face the judgement seat of God in heaven.

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So we return to the Book of Revelation after an Easter break and I hope you remember where we have got up to so far. We have explored the history of the world, as it were, from the first coming of Jesus to the second coming. Firstly from a church perspective in Revelation 1-3. Then we have moved to a heavenly perspective on the same period of history in Revelation 4 looking at the worship that is going on in heaven, in Revelation 5 thinking about how the divine plan is unrolled by the Lamb and, in Revelation 6, we thought about the opening of the first six seals and the consequential judgements of God on the world. And we left Chapter 6 with the sixth seal being opened that brought us to the brink of the Day of Judgement.

But now John takes a little interlude before the opening of the seventh and final seal. The end of Chapter 6 showed the people on earth in fear and terror and panic, hiding amongst the mountains and the rocks trying to avoid the wrath of God. But then, rather than completing this story, John takes us back to heaven to introduce us to the 144,000 and the Great Multitude. And he probably does that to bring us comfort again as he has done continuously throughout the Book of Revelation. It’s as if he is saying that Christians have nothing to fear from the Day of Judgement, that we have the assurance of salvation and he wants to take us deeper into that idea in Chapter 7. So the first thing to say about tonight’s passage is that it is one that should inspire comfort, not fear: to comfort us and provide reassurance is the purpose of this passage.

OK, so let’s move into the text itself.

Verse 1: “After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth to prevent any wind from blowing on the land or the sea or on any tree.”

The angels, as we have seen already, are God’s agents to the world: sometimes they are human beings, as the angels of the churches in Chapters 1-3, sometimes they are spiritual beings, as in Chapter 4. I think what we have here is a reference to the spiritual beings and the point John is making is this: the spiritual agents of God stand over all creation; there is no part of creation that is outside God’s control: they are at the four corners of the earth. And their role is to prevent any wind from blowing on the land until the appointed time, which comes later. So what is meant by these four winds? Well, there are a couple of possible interpretations.

First, wind is often used in Scripture as a metaphor for destruction. For example, in Jeremiah 4:11-12 we read, “At that time this people and Jerusalem will be told, ‘A scorching wind from the barren heights in the desert blows towards my people, but not to winnow or cleanse; a wind too strong for that comes from me. Now I pronounce my judgements against them.” So perhaps John is saying that Christians will be spared from the destruction of the world that is about to take place because the angels are holding the winds back for a period.

The second interpretation is very similar and draws us back to the imagery of Chapter 6 with the four horsemen of the apocalypse. We need to go to Zechariah 6:5-8 to follow through with this idea. In Zechariah, four chariots were sent out; one with a red horse, one with a black horse, one with a white horse, one with a dappled horse and they went to the four corners of the world. Zechariah asks the angels what these chariots are and an angel replies, “These are the four winds of heaven, going out from standing in the presence of the Lord of the whole world.” So perhaps John is drawing on the Zechariah imagery here and combining it with the idea of the four horsemen of the apocalypse and stating that the judgements they bring are being held back for a period of time by the spiritual angels of God. And, by being held back, no damage can be wrought upon the earth.

Of course, there is not an exact parallel with Zechariah because the reference there is to the winds of heaven and John, in Revelation 7, refers to the winds of the earth, so either interpretation is possible. But I think the idea is clear: God’s judgement is coming – but it is a controlled judgement and will only happen at the right time.

And, to reinforce the notion of comfort for believers, in verse 2 we read that another angel comes, this time from the East. In Scripture, there is a prevailing idea that blessings come from the East. The sun rises in the East. The Garden of Eden was in the East. The wise men came from the East. In Ezekiel 43:2, we read, “I saw the glory of the God of Israel coming from the East” and it was a predominant idea in Jewish writings that the Messiah would come from the East. So the idea that an angels comes from the East would have inspired a sense of comfort, even relief in the minds of the first hearers of Revelation. Here are the judgements of God, symbolised by the wind, being held back by the angels whilst another angel comes from the east.

And this angel has the seal of the living God. The Book of Revelation comes from a pre-literate era when most people couldn’t read, of course, and so a seal was an important sign of ownership. Members of a guild would have a seal like a tattoo on them. Members of religious organisations would have had the same. Cattle were marked with the seal of the owner. So here is an angel coming from the East, a sign of blessing, and the fact that he is marked by the seal of God means that he is coming on behalf of God and the blessing he is about to bestow is, in fact, the blessing of God. Again, a great symbol of reassurance and compassion.

But what is the blessing that this angel brings from God just prior to the final judgement? Verse 3: “Do not harm the land or the sea or the trees until we put a seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.” Now this is quite a complex verse and I’m afraid we need to go back to the Greek to get to the heart of it. The meaning, in general, is clear: God will put a seal on his people prior to the final judgement to give us protection through his ownership. That much is clear. However, there are two important things to say about this process.

First, the Greek doesn’t say “servants of our God” - it says “slaves of our God”. And by using the word ‘slave’, the idea is one of utter devotion and complete submission to God, the giving up of any personal rights, ambition and even identity. Those who are to be sealed are those who are completely and utterly devoted to God, those who have given their whole life over to God and find their true identity in him. So we have a stark reminder here of the sheer importance of taking our life of faith seriously and not playing at being a Christian.

But secondly, we need to consider the phrase ‘until we put a seal on…’ because the tense and mood of this comment is important. If you’re interested, it’s an Aorist Subjunctive but the names not important so much as the idea, that an Aorist Subjunctive indicates an event that may or may not happen depending on the faithfulness of the individual to make it happen. So for example, in Romans 6:4 Paul writes, “we should walk in newness of life” - that is an Aorist Subjunctive: whether or not we walk in newness of life is dependent on our response. And the same idea holds true here: the angel of God, bringing blessing from the East will seal those whose way of living takes seriously the call on us to be faithful slaves of God.

Will you or I be sealed before the last day? It’s up to us and the extent to which we take seriously our walk with God. That’s not to say that we need to be perfect – of course that’s not possible but our intent must always be to follow to the best of our ability and to seek to find our identity in Christ. It’s a huge responsibility that is laid on us in this verse: we can’t afford to be complacent in the faith and this re-iterates what we read a few chapters ago when the Risen Christ stressed how much he loathes lukewarm faith.

And so we arrive at perhaps the most famous part of this passage and one of the most famous symbols in Revelation: the number of those who will be sealed is 144,000. What does this mean? Now, we could spend ages on this, probably a whole sermon series exploring the various options, and I don’t want to get too hung up on it because to do so would be to follow the populist route of treating this section as if it were any more ‘special’ than everything else we have encountered in Revelation so far. It is not any more – or any less – special than any other part. It is yet another symbol for us to work through.

Why is it that that number of those sealed by God is 144,000? Some commentators have suggested that 144,000 represent the Jews who are saved, either metaphorically or literally. They compare that to the Great Multitude in verse 9, which symbolises the Gentile believers, of whom you and I are a part. But I don’t think that’s a plausible explanation because it still suggests that only the Jewish believers have the seal of God on them whereas we will see later, in 9:4, that the whole church is sealed by God. The whole church of God is the New Israel. Other commentators have suggested that the 144,000 represent the whole church throughout time because there were 12 Tribes of Israel and there were 12 Disciples and if you multiply 12 by 12, you get 144 and multiply that by 1000, which is a number for completeness then you get 144,000: the church throughout all time.

To be honest, I’m not sure which interpretation is correct and I don’t think we need to get too hung up on it, for two reasons. First, because despite how the calculation is made the meaning is clear: the 144,000 represent those sealed by God before the tribulation and grasping that fact is the most important thing. But secondly, by getting hung up on the calculation, we miss two very important things about the list of the tribes of Israel that is in verses 5-8.

The first is this: The list of tribes begins with the tribe of Judah and this is the only time in Scripture when the list of tribes begins with that one. Now, of course, we know that Jesus descended from the tribe of Judah and so John is making a theological point here about who is head of the Church. The starting point of our salvation, metaphorically, is the man from the tribe of Judah.

The second point is this: One of the tribes is actually missing from the list: there is no mention of the tribe of Dan and Dan has been replaced, in verse 6, with the tribe of Manasseh, which actually wasn’t a tribe at all but a sub-section of the tribe of Joseph! So what is the significance of omitting the tribe of Dan? Throughout Jewish theology, Dan has represented idolatry. In Numbers 2:25, we are told that Dan dwelt in the North and just as blessings come from the East, so it was thought that spiritual darkness came from the North. And you may remember the story from 1 Kings 12 where King Jeroboam tried to get the people to worship his golden calves and the only people who would were the tribe of Dan.

So, historically, people have made a meal out of trying to work out where the number 144,000 comes from but, in so doing, they seem to have missed the real point of the list which is this: the salvation of the Church derives from Christ, represented by Judah and salvation is not an option for any who are lost in idolatry.

So if tonight, you were waiting for an answer to ‘why 144,000’? I’m sorry to disappoint you! But I think there is something far more profound for us to learn here…

Given the context of these verses, we face a real challenge here: the sealing of the saints is very much dependent on our willingness to take the Christian life seriously and live out our ‘slave-ship’ to God: verse 3 and that inevitably means looking to Christ as the source of our salvation, verse 5, and rejecting any form of idolatry – verse 6. There we are – simple as that! Nothing mysterious at all…

So we come on to verse 9: “After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no-one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.” In this verse, I think John is drawing us back to the covenant made with Abraham, right back at the beginning of human history, Genesis 15:5 when God says to Abraham, “Look up at the heavens and count the stars I if indeed you can count them. So shall your offspring be.” The church, which no one can number, is the fulfilment of the Abrahamic covenant between God and humanity.

Now, I want to dispel a myth here; that this great multitude comprises of those who have been martyred and this seems to be a classic interpretation of this verse but there is no Biblical evidence for that. Never once does John hint that this should be interpreted as the martyrs and we mustn’t get confused by verses 13 & 14, which says: “Who are they – where did they come from?” and the angels answers, “They are those who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” But surely that is all of us? That certainly fits in with what we have read previously in Revelation! All of us who are sealed by God before the tribulation are numbered here; we are all wearing robes of white, we have all been purified by the blood of the Lamb: that’s what we learnt from Chapters 3 and 4, isn’t it?

And so in verse 9, we get a sense of the universal nature of the Church: every nation, tribe, people and language included. And, of course, as we read in Chapter 4, we are standing before the throne in heaven and in front of the Lamb, which is to say our eternal destiny is to be in the presence of God. We are clothed in white – we’ve already though about how that represents both victory and purity but it’s interesting that the word for ‘robe’ used here is not our ordinary day-to-day clothes but celebration garments. And we are told that the great multitude were waving palm branches, which, of course, brings us back to Palm Sunday and the idea that the Palm Branch is a symbol of victory and so they are waved by the church in front of the Messiah to acknowledge his victory over sin and death. Palm Sunday redeemed.

And so, in verse 10, we read that the church in heaven cries out: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” And that’s a significant cry because we will see it paralleled at two other points in Revelation, in 12:10 and in 19:1. In 12:10, the cry is made when Satan is ejected from heaven. In 19:1, the cry is made at the overthrow of the anti-Christ. So here, in chapter 7, the whole church rejoices together in the victory of the Messiah over Satan and all that is antichrist. And, as we would expect, the whole of creation, the whole of heaven and earth joins in with the church in this victory song: verse 11, “All the angels were standing round the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshipped God…”

We’ve considered verses 13-14 already so we conclude with verses 15 to 17, which offer us a beautiful description of our eternal destiny in heaven:

“They are before the throne of God”. Where else would we possibly wish to spend eternity?

“They serve him day and night in his temple”. What a privilege to join with the angels in being a servant of the living God.

“And he who sits on the throne will spread his tent over them.” The word used here for ‘spreading his tent’ is related to the Hebrew word ‘shekinah’, which indicates the glory of God that rests on the people of God as a symbol of his presence with them so this is a very intimate phrase about God’s eternal care for us.

“Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat upon them, nor any scorching heat.” This reminds us of the promise in Isaiah 49:10 that is made to the people of Israel for when they returned from exile in Babylon: “They will neither hunger nor thirst, nor will the desert heat or the sun beat upon them.”

“For the Lamb at the centre of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water.” Again, a reminder of Isaiah 49:10, which continues: “He who has compassion on them will guide them and lead them beside springs of water.” God will provide all our needs for all eternity.

And then, finally, this beautiful phrase, “And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” We are brought back to Isaiah again, this time 25:8, which says, “The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces.” There will be no sorrow in heaven, no mourning, no sorrow; quite literally, an eternity of bliss.

So here we have quite an incredible chapter of Scripture. We began it with some fear and trembling: Chapter 6 had ended on the brink of the Day of Judgement with people running scared and trying to hide from the wrath of God and we were bound to ask the question: “Is that us? Is that to be our destiny? Is that the terrible fate that awaits us?” But, in his pastoral concern, John takes a detour from the narrative to assure us that, for those in Christ, there is quite a different destiny awaiting us.

God has it all under control: the angels are holding back the winds of destruction and in the meantime, all those who seek to serve the Lord are receiving the seal of salvation. And the seal will be placed on all those who take their faith seriously, those who place Christ in the highest authority and do not give in to idolatrous living. Those marked out for salvation will come from each and every nation and together we will celebrate the victory of the Messiah for all eternity. All creation will join us in the worship of God. We will spend all eternity in the presence of God, serving him and enjoying his compassion and care for us as he meets our every need and takes away all suffering and sorrow.

Now that is a message of real encouragement and hope. But, of course, there is a challenge for us too: we need to attend to our own lives and reflect on our desire to follow the way of Christ and commit ourselves to the life of discipleship. As I said earlier, that is not the same thing as saying we need to be perfect or that, when we get things wrong, we are somehow unworthy of salvation: that’s not what I am saying at all and that is certainly not what this passage is saying. Ultimately, this passage is not about our efforts – about us needing to earn salvation. It’s a passage about the gracious compassion of God who seals all those who acknowledge his sovereignty. Our task in life is to sit under that sovereignty and enjoy the grace of God. Jesus says in John 10:10, “I have come that they may have life in all its fullness”. That fullness of life begins here on earth and continues for all eternity and we praise God for the offer of his seal on our lives and we respond to that.

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“Mary turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realise that it was Jesus. ‘Woman,’ he said, ‘why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?’”

Graveyards are strange places, in that they bring up different emotions for different people. For the recently bereaved, they can be places of grief and sadness. For the historian, they are places of interest and data collection. For the Church Gardening Group, they are a place of toil and pleasure in equal measure. For children, they can be playgrounds; great for hide and seek. Graveyards bring up a range of emotions in us, depending on our life experience.

Mary Magdalene came to the graveyard that Sunday morning with a mixture of emotions about graveyards. Only a week before, she had been standing in another graveyard; the one where a tomb housed their friend Lazarus. Now that had been a visit to a graveyard she would never forget: Lazarus had been ill for a while and Mary and Martha, his sisters, had called on Jesus to come and heal him but Jesus had dallied on the way, taking too long to arrive and by the time he got there, Lazarus was dead. Mary and Martha were beside themselves with grief and were angry that Jesus hadn’t responded quicker. But little did they know what incredible miracle was about to happen: Jesus drew near to Lazarus’ tomb and called him out and, within a matter of minutes, their brother stood before them, back from the dead. Jesus had wowed the crowd by raising Lazarus from the dead: an incredible display of his authority and power.

The graveyard was a good place to be that day! The graveyard was a place of victory, a place of miracles, a place of uncontained joy.

But that was seven days ago.

A lot can happen in seven days…

The triumphal entry in Jerusalem had soon resulted in opposition: the crowd had turned, the mood had soured and then the atrocities of Good Friday dealt a crushing blow to the hopes and dreams of Mary and her friends.

How could it all have gone so wrong?

Had the last three years been for nothing?

What about the brave new world that Jesus had promised? What about the least becoming first? What about this new world order where the meek would inherit the earth? What about this promise of life in all its fullness? These words seemed to ring hollow for Mary now as she stood in the graveyard.

Last week, she had been in a graveyard that spoke to her of victory and joy. This week, she stands in a graveyard that speaks to her of defeat and loss.

How could it all have gone so wrong?

And so Mary moves towards the tomb of Jesus and grief consumes her heart. John reminds us of that in verse 1 when he comments, “It was still dark”. The sunrise had yet to happen, both physically and metaphorically: for Mary, in body and soul, “It was still dark”. And she arrives at the tomb and, to her horror, the stone has been removed, lifted out of the groove in which it had been placed. Mary is beside herself in fear and sadness: this is the final humiliation, the final betrayal by the authorities. What has Jesus done that they should treat him with such lack of respect? It was more than enough to have him arrested. It was more than enough to have him put on trial. It was more than enough to have him publicly flogged and tortured. It was certainly more than enough to have him crucified. But now it seemed that grave robbers have taken the body and who wouldn’t bet their last denarius on the Roman authorities being behind this despicable ruse?

So she runs off the tell Simon Peter and John the terrible news and she is convinced that Jesus’ body has been mistreated in death just as badly as it had been in life: in verse 42 of chapter 19 we read, “They laid Jesus in a tomb” and there is a gentleness about the verb; laying out the body, so compare that with the violence of verse 2 of our reading, “We don’t know where they’ve put him”.

Simon Peter and John run to the tomb. John gets there first, he bend over, he peers inside – but he didn’t dare to go in. No such bashfulness with Simon Peter: always a man in a hurry, he reaches the tomb and goes straight inside and sees the linen cloths which had been wrapped around Jesus’ body.

For the first time, there is an indication that something very special has taken place. When Lazarus was raised from the dead, he came out of the tomb still wrapped in his linen cloths but this scene is now looking very different. The cloths are neatly folded, the napkin for the head is in a separate place. This is a carefully laid out scene, designed to show the disciples and followers that something unique has taken place. Lazarus had been resuscitated but Jesus has been resurrected, and the two events are quite different…

And grasping that point, that Jesus was not merely resuscitated but resurrected is at the very heart of the Easter story and what we believe as Christians. Because in the next verse, John says of himself, in the third person as usual: “He saw and believed”. There’s two things to note about this comment…

First, it seems he is comparing himself rather favourably with the disciple Thomas who, in a few verses time, says: “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.” What a contrast between the faith of John and Thomas.

But I think there’s something even more profound about this comment, which takes us to the very heart of the passage this morning…

John is confronted by an empty tomb – and he sees and believes. He doesn’t even have to see the risen Christ to believe: the empty tomb is enough…And I think that’s a key point for us all as Christians, and for those of us here today who may not consider ourselves Christians, that the empty tomb is enough: the empty tomb is the basis of our faith. We don’t need to see great miracles to believe. We don’t need to have profound answers to prayer to believe. We don’t need writing in the sky or a vision of Jesus to believe. The empty tomb is enough…The empty tomb is the greatest miracle of all. The empty tomb is the most profound answer to humanity’s deepest question. The empty tomb is God’s message to us.

The empty tomb is enough…

“He saw and believed”.

And John stresses this by the way in which he uses the word ‘saw’ in verses 5 and 6. In verse 5, we read that John bent over, looked in and saw the strips of linen, the word used for ‘saw’ here has to do with the eye – to physically see. But in verse 6, we read that Peter went into the tomb and saw the strips of linen but the word used for ‘saw’ in this verse is different and it has more to do with contemplating an event. And then, in verse 8, we read that, “He saw and believed” and now a third Greek word for ‘saw’ is used, which has more to do with spiritual insight and understanding. And so, in these three verses, John uses one idea, ‘to see’ and he uses three different Greek words for that action to describe the spiritual journey that each one of us goes on in the light of the empty tomb of Jesus.

We see the facts.

We contemplate the facts.

We understand the spiritual implication of those facts.

The journey of faith into which we are all called this Easter Morning: see, contemplate, understand.

But as we go through this process of seeing, contemplating and understanding, it would be wrong to suggest that the empty tomb gets rid of all our doubts, that the empty tomb makes it easy to believe: of course it doesn’t. All of us continue to have doubts and wrestle with poor understanding about God. And that’s exactly what we see in this Easter story.

The disciples leave the tomb and go back to where they had come from, with confusions running through their minds. And Mary is left alone at the tomb – weeping and mourning her loss. We might well ask how the disciples, 11 men brave and true, can leave a woman at a graveside in great distress particularly as the word John uses here for crying indicates wailing and sobbing but that’s by the by…Mary stays behind and, in her grief, bends over and peers inside presumably to see if it really is true or not…And what she sees shocks the life out of her!

Now there are two angels in white, seated where Jesus had been laid: how much more weird can her day become? Perhaps, though, she didn’t recognise them as angels: in Scripture, angels are always differentiated from human beings  by their powers, not by any significant change of form. And here, we are not told that the angels looked any different from humans but only that they are clothed in white just as the men who visited the disciples at the ascension of Jesus were dressed in white. “Woman, why are you crying?” they ask.

And as soon as she answers, she turns round and sees Jesus standing there but she doesn’t recognise him and he asks her the same question but also adds a vital second question: “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you seek?”

What a profound question! Perhaps the same question could be asked of each one of us today: we have bothered to get out of bed this Easter morning and we have bothered to come to church. Why? Who do you seek?

And, as Jesus asks here this question, she thinks he’s the gardener and her utter devotion to her beloved Lord shines through in her response: “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him”. Mary never pauses to think how she will move the corpse of a full-grown man; she just wants to do what is right by Jesus because she loves him so much.

And, in response to this overwhelming sign of devotion, Jesus reveals his identity to her. And there is a real intimacy to this moment: when Jesus reveals himself to us, he calls us by name: “Mary”, “Steve”, “Nanette”, “Darren”. We hear Jesus call us by name – and it is enough.

Who do you seek? The Messiah who calls you by name this morning…

And then Jesus gives Mary a command: “Do not hold on to me…” Some have taken this to mean that Mary is not allowed to touch the resurrected body of Jesus but I don’t think it means that at all…The tense Jesus uses here suggests a repeated or continuous action, so I think he is speaking metaphorically to Mary and to us: Don’t cling on to Jesus of Nazareth, do not think that the earthly story of Jesus is all there is to it: it’s amazing how many people do that, how many people revere the earthly Jesus as if he were a good man or a fine prophet or a moral example to us all. And he was all those things – but he was more than that: he still is more than that…

We are not to cling on to our ideas of the earthly Jesus but we are to allow him to ascend to the Father. And he has to ascend to the Father so the story can be completed: once he ascends, the Holy Spirit can be sent and, eventually, Jesus can return again in judgement and salvation.

So Mary runs to the disciples with the news and proclaims to them: “I have seen the Lord!” And surprise, surprise, a fourth Greek word is used here for ‘to see’ and the tense used implies that the seeing will have ongoing implications for her future.

So this passage takes us on a spiritual journey; a journey through which we see more and more clearly. First, we see the physical evidence of the empty tomb. Second, we contemplate the evidence of the empty tomb. Third, we develop spiritual understanding and insight about the resurrection. Finally, we see the implications of that for our future lives.

Jesus said to Mary, “Who do you seek?” Jesus says to each one of us today, “Who do you seek?” “What do you see?” “Have you grasped the implications of the resurrection?”

Where are you on the journey of faith? Have you seen? Have you contemplated? Have you understood? Then complete the Easter story in your own life and grasp the implications of the resurrected Christ for your own life. Because the resurrected Christ brings us forgiveness. The resurrected Christ brings us wholeness and healing The resurrected Christ brings us a new identity and fullness of life.

The Easter story is not one to be confined to the history books: it is a living experience for each one of us as we learn to truly see Christ for who he is and the impact he can have on our lives.

Who do you seek? Who do you see?

In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus simply said: “Seek and you will find”.

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Jesus has been mocked and tortured and beaten. He has been spat on and forced to go through a mock trial. He has been whipped and brutally crucified. He has died and his side has been pierced with a sword.

The deed has been done…

It’s over…

It would have been Roman custom to leave the body of a crucified man to hang on the cross for a few days to come. This would act as a deterrent for others who thought it a good idea to challenge the authority of the ruling Empire and, of course, it would give the vultures something to feed on. But this is Passover weekend and the Sabbath is approaching, a day of solemnity, and it would be an affront to God to have the body of a Jewish man hanging in such a way. So the request is made to have Jesus’ body removed and buried.

Pilate acquiesces: anything to keep the Jews happy. And it’s not just Jesus’ body he allows to be removed. In verse 31, we read that all the bodies of the crucified men were removed for burial. Even in this act of removal and burial, Jesus was just one of the corpses: numbered amongst the dead – nothing special about him at all.

But perhaps there was something special about the request, given the fact of who made the request and who carried out the act of burial…

In verse 38, we read that the request was made by “Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, though a secret one because of his fear of the Jews.” Who was this Joseph?

In the Gospels, he is identified as a member of the Jewish Council that had originally put Jesus on trial and handed him over to Pilate. But in Luke 22:50, we read that, even though he was a member of the Council, he had not agreed with the decision to hand Jesus over. Joseph, from the Judean town of Arimathea, which is just north of Jerusalem, was counted as a disciple of Jesus. He must have lived with a terrible burden for who knows how long: his public role as a member of the Council would have been to denounce and oppose the ministry of this strange carpenter from Nazareth about whom the people made such strong claims. And yet, in his heart, he suspected something altogether different: perhaps this man truly was the Son of God. Perhaps he truly was the Messiah the Jews had been waiting for. Perhaps he truly was the light of the world.

And so Joseph had been forced into the agonising position of being a secret disciple, a disciple of the shadows, a disciple who had to live in the dark for fear of what stepping out into the light would do to his reputation.

Joseph was a disciple in the dark.

But now Jesus is dead and Joseph’s courage is strong: perhaps he is so appalled by what has happened that he just doesn’t care what people think anymore. Or perhaps his love for Jesus is so overwhelming, and he is so wracked with guilt that he never came out of the shadows and proclaimed his allegiance openly, that he realises he has one last opportunity to do right by Jesus. So Joseph, with great courage, goes to Pilate, and requests the body and the request is granted.

The disciple in the dark is now stepping out into the light…

But a corpse is a heavy weight to carry: certainly too much for one man and Joseph will need help. Who is there to ask? Perhaps Peter will help, or John, or Thomas, or Andrew. Oh, they can’t: they’ve run away, haven’t they?

So the disciples in the light are now in the dark as the disciple in the dark steps out into the light…

And emerging from the shadows with him is Nicodemus. We’ve come across Nicodemus before, of course. In John 3, Nicodemus came to visit Jesus and we are told that, like Joseph, he was a leader of the Jews. Like Joseph, he too was frightened of what his peers might think of his so in John 3:2, we are told that he “came to Jesus by night…”

And this disciple in the dark had proclaimed an early belief in Jesus, as we read in John 3:2 where Nicodemus says to Jesus: “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” Jesus then engages Nicodemus in conversation and his words are very poignant for the disciple who comes to him in the dark: in 3:21, Jesus says to Nicodemus, “Those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”

Nicodemus, this disciple in the dark, had pondered these words in his heart for the last three years and now Christ has been crucified and he has decided that it is time to come out of darkness into light and undertake a deed that will be clearly seen by others.

The disciple in the dark is now stepping out into the light…

There are enormous social pressures on all of us when it comes to matters of faith. It seems that Christians always have to apologise for holding beliefs as if we are somehow intellectual Luddites standing against the Dawkin-esque flood of rational realism. We need to apologise for holding to fantasy beliefs about virgin births and dead men walking and seas being parted as if these stories exist on the same level as leprechauns at the end of the rainbow and Mr Benn finding a new identity in the Tailor’s Changing Room [I think I’ve just shown my age with that last simile!] The social pressure is such that we may feel forced, like Joseph and Nicodemus to be disciples in the dark, to believe in Jesus, to love Jesus, to honour Jesus but behind closed doors and under the cover of night. How else can we maintain our relationships with others? How else can we maintain our reputation as being a rational human being? How else can we hold down our jobs?

The temptation is to be a disciple in the dark…

But Jesus has been crucified and now it is time for us to join with Joseph and Nicodemus and reject the example of the twelve apostles and step out from the darkness into the light…

So Nicodemus comes with Joseph to collect Jesus’ body and he brings with him the spices for burial, a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about one hundred pounds. Now, there is nothing extraordinary about the spices he brings; these would have been the usual spices to prepare a corpse for burial. But what is extraordinary is the sheer quantity of spices he brings. One hundred pounds of spices is quite incredible by anyone’s standards! What is Nicodemus thinking?

Perhaps his demonstration of extravagance is a public statement: like Joseph, who missed the boat by staying in the shadows as Jesus lived, Nicodemus missed the boat by doing the same. They both feel guilty – they both want to make amends - and they will both do so in the most public way possible: “Those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.” And the extravagance of Nicodemus mirrors two other stories of extravagance that he would have been well aware of.

First, Nicodemus would have remembered the wedding in Cana; an event that happened just before he came to Jesus the first time. At Cana, Jesus had set the precedence for extravagance by turning water into 180 gallons of wine. Now that is extravagance! That is a symbol of extravagant love!

And Nicodemus would no doubt have heard how, just 6 days earlier, Mary had taken 300 denarii worth of perfume anointed Jesus’ feet and wiped them with her hair. Judas had been fuming at this, of course, but Jesus had rebuked him, saying, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.” Now that is extravagance! That is a symbol of extravagant love!

But Mary hadn’t saved the perfume for the day of Jesus’ burial, it had all been used up, so maybe Nicodemus is replacing the gift by purchasing 300 denarii worth of myrrh and aloes. Now that is extravagance! That is a symbol of extravagant love!

Jesus had shown extravagant love at Cana and on the cross.

Mary had shown extravagant love in Bethany.

Now it is time for Joseph and Nicodemus to show extravagant love.

It’s never too late: it’s not too late for Joseph and Nicodemus and it’s not too late for us…

So Joseph and Nicodemus, the disciples in the dark, step out into the light and they take Jesus body and lovingly wrap it in linen cloths, a reminder of the swaddling cloths that embraced Jesus at his birth. And they take the corpse to the new tomb and lay Jesus there.

We know the ending of the story – but Joseph and Nicodemus didn’t. As far as they knew, that was it…they had taken the risk, they had stepped out from the darkness into the light and now they would have to answer for their action.

They waited with bated breath…

And tonight, we wait with Joseph and Nicodemus, we wait with bated breath to see how the story unfolds tomorrow.

But, in the meantime – as we wait - we have the opportunity to join with Joseph and Nicodemus and step out from darkness into light. That is what this whole service is about: the light dispels the darkness and we are invited into that experience for ourselves: “Those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”

For us, our public profession of faith was made in our baptism vows. For some of us, that may have been recently, for others that may have been many years ago. But in a few moments time, we have the opportunity to renew our baptism vows and, as we do that, we are joining with Joseph and Nicodemus and metaphorically, we are stepping out from darkness into light. We stand together as one body and we publicly proclaim our faith in Jesus who is our light, who is the light of the world. And, as we confess our faith, as we step out from darkness into light, we commit ourselves afresh to a lifetime of living in the light.

We don’t want to return to the shadows. We want to bathe in the glorious light of Christ for whatever time is left to us here on earth and for all eternity.

For us now, this is a Joseph moment.

For us now, this is a Nicodemus moment.

We are no longer disciples in the dark: we are disciples of the light.

And our lives from this point forward will bear testimony to the light of Christ within us.

“Those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”

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 “The philosophers have only interpreted the world; the point is to change it”, some words from an early work by Karl Marx. And, of course, he is right and we need to guard against this ourselves. Because it is one thing to theorise and analyse, to have head knowledge only of our standing before God, but quite another to do something about it. The point is to change the world. Mahatma Gandhi said that the world can only change one person at a time, so we each have an individual responsibility to seek change within ourselves.

But we are aware that, as well as seeking change within ourselves, there is the need to work for change within the structures of society. Governments the word over do little to alleviate suffering. The church is too caught up in its internal discussions to make a real difference. Individuals are concerned primarily for personal well-being and gain - looking after Number One.

The point is to change the world.

The point is to change within ourselves before God.

The point is to change within society before God.

And if we earnestly desire that movement towards God, for ourselves and society, we must begin with the Cross of Christ. There was a Conference of Latin America Bishops in 1968 and they made this statement: “The centre of God’s salvation is Jesus Christ, who by his death and resurrection transforms the universe and makes it possible for man to reach fulfilment as a human being. This fulfilment embraces every aspect of humanity; body and spirit, individual and society, person and cosmos, time and eternity.”

If our desire is to make a better world, starting with ourselves, we must begin with Jesus Christ.

And, most specifically, we must begin with Holy Week. We know the story of Good Friday, we know the Passion Narratives, we read them almost in a blasé fashion because there are no surprises for us. But if we want to guard against the warning of Karl Marx and become doers, not merely philosophers, we need to engage with the story and allow it to determine in us a response that takes seriously our own needs and the needs of the world.

I don’t know what emotions Matthew’s account brings out in you. I feel immensely frustrated by Jesus because he’s so submissive to what goes on: I almost want to slap him, to shake him, and tell him to get his act together. The whole account is of a man who remains silent: Matthew only attributes one sentence to Jesus from the time of his humiliation at the hands of the soldiers to the time he dies.

Jesus is stripped of his clothes, he is mocked and humiliated, they spit on him and he remains silent.

Jesus is taken out to be crucified, they cast lots for his clothes, they pin a sarcastic sign above his head and he remains silent.

The passers-by mock him, they taunt him, he is abused by the robbers on the crosses next to him and he remains silent.

For three hours in agony he hangs on the cross and he remains silent.

And he dies.

And he’s put into a grave where he lies for three days and he remains silent.

We think often about the Words from the Cross but what comes over most powerfully from Matthew’s account is the silence of the cross. A silence that pervades the whole story. A silence that was interpreted by the other players in the story as weakness and defeat but, in reality, it was the very opposite as the Christian writer, Robert Benson, said: “It is in silence that God is known”.

The silence of the Passion story is where we find God. A God who endures everything for the love of each one of us. A God who submits himself to the very worst that we have to offer. A God who becomes weak so that we may know salvation. And somehow, the silence of Jesus shouts loudly against the violence done to him. He doesn’t need to justify himself. He doesn’t need to protect himself. He doesn’t need to speak out in his own defence. Because what Jesus stands for is truth and the truth will always prevail…

Winston Churchill said that, “Truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it, ignorance may deride it, malice may distort it, but there it is.” And that’s what we see in the cross of Jesus Christ. The Roman authorities resented Jesus and in their panic they crucified him. The passers-by were ignorant and they derided him. The chief priests and the scribes were full of malice towards Jesus and they distorted his teachings. But Jesus remains silent because when the panic and the derision and the malice have given all they’ve got, truth still stands and Christ will be raised on the third day.

And there is a model in that for ourselves if we want to respond to the Passion Narrative in Holy Week, that any change within ourselves, within society must begin with silence. Not a weak sort of silence. Not a silence that gives in to sin but a silence that allows God to speak.

Too often, we try to justify ourselves: we offer excuses to God for the things we do wrong, “It wasn’t my fault – I was pushed into it”. We offer excuses for Jesus to others as if we were ashamed of him and he needs our defence. We offer excuses for the way the world is, blaming others for the wrongs in society and never accepting our own part. But we need to learn to be silent to allow God to speak for himself. If we are silent before God, he will reveal to us our sin and shortcomings. If we share Christ with others and then wait in prayerful, loving silence, the Holy Spirit will convict them of the truth.

The writer of Ecclesiastes says, “There is a time to keep silence and there is a time to speak”. We need to know the difference. Because it is often in the silence that God makes himself known and when God makes himself known, things change…

But, of course, the cross isn’t just about silence: Christ speaks on the cross and Matthew records one saying: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” In this one sentence, we have the ultimate cry of desolation, the feeling that, in this moment of supreme suffering, even God has deserted Jesus. And all the physical agony and pain that Jesus had to bear is as nothing compared with the emotional anguish of feeling so very alone. Perhaps some of us have experienced similar moments of despair, when life has reached such a pit of nothingness that we even feel that God has turned away from us. It is a common human experience and, of course, Jesus is only echoing here the words of David in Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? My God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night but I find no rest.” How many of us have experienced that depth of desolation? Many of us, I’m sure…

But it seems to me that, if the cross of Christ means anything, it is testimony to the fact that, no matter how desolate Jesus felt, no matter how desolate we may feel, God had not forsaken him and God does not forsake us. In fact, the very opposite is true: we can turn to the cross and see Jesus hanging there and look on his suffering, and his feelings of desolation and remember the sacrifice of love he makes there and all the filth and sin he had to carry and know that, even then, God had not deserted him.

And the proof comes three days later with an empty tomb.

God is not a deserter, he is not some patron saint of oppressors and persecutors. God remains faithful to us, despite our sin and betrayal, despite our pride and ambition, despite the fact that we so often forsake him. Even though sometimes we cry out in our human frailty, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” we can be assured by the empty tomb that God does not forsake us.

But this is Holy Week – Easter Day is still some days off…and we are left today with the words of Jesus: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And, of course, it is a cry of human agony and if we allow it to speak to us and shape our Christian love, then we will change, and the world will change. Jesus is the model of what it means to carry the feelings of forsakenness for other people.

And here is a challenge to us as we stammer our prayers to God for others, that if we want to be truly Christlike, we too need to carry the forsakenness of others to empathise with the pain and suffering of those we pray for…

…To come alongside the refugee and the persecuted Christian, those who are bereaved and the terminally ill, the homeless and those who have no hope…

…To stand with all those who feel forsaken by God and cry out to him with anguish in prayer…

When we pray for the needs of the world, we are not presenting God with a shopping list. We are standing alongside those in need just as Jesus stood alongside us at Golgotha. “Philosophers have only interpreted the world; the point is to change it”. Holy Week and Easter provides the means for change; change within ourselves, within others and within the structures of society that reflect so little of God. That change begins with silence, allowing God to speak to us and convict us, knowing that the silence of truth shouts louder than the noise of all that is Anti-Christ.

But that change also involves speaking out, acknowledging our own feelings of forsakenness and speaking out to God and to those in authority on behalf of those in the world who have no voice for themselves.

The cross is silence.

The cross speaks out.

The cross makes real change possible.

Let us recommit ourselves this week to the God of the cross who speaks to us, even in the silence; the God who stretches out his arms to us in sacrificial love asking us to do the same and saying, “Follow me”. Amen.

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In Chapters 1-3, we viewed the period of history from the first coming of Christ to the second coming of Christ from the perspective of earth: thinking about the pragmatic problems facing the church in the light of persecution, false teaching, immorality and so forth. In Chapter 4, we were invited by Christ into heaven and throughout that chapter and chapter 5 we have been witnessing the same period of history, but this time from the perspective of what is going on in heaven. And the Scroll has been taken by the Lamb, the Scroll that represents the divine plan for humanity, and he is about to open the seals to unroll the history of the world, as it were. And so Chapter 6 is a sort of amalgamation of perspectives: we are still looking at what is going on in heaven but we are seeing the impact of that heavenly activity on the earth. I hope that makes sense…

And what is revealed to us very clearly in this chapter are the divine judgements meted out on the earth by God before the salvation of the world at the second coming. This is a passage that speaks of God’s judgement on a broken and sinful and disobedient world. This is an intense passage and we may find it frightening if we do not consider it in the context of what is to come, which is salvation, so we need to bear that in mind as we work through it. Yes, God does visit this world in judgement, we know that, but there is a day of salvation drawing near, the Second Coming when Christ will return and draw all creation back to himself.

This is a chapter that is deeply rooted in Old Testament imagery and also New Testament imagery too. The idea that there would be judgements on the earth before the consummation of God’s Kingdom Rule is a key theme throughout the Old Testament. For example, in Amos 5:18, the prophet says, “Woe to you who long for the day of the Lord! Why do you long for the day of the Lord? That day will be darkness, not light.” Again, in Isaiah 2:12, we read, “The Lord Almighty has a day in store for all the proud and the lofty, for all that is exalted – and they will be humbled…” Now, this idea of judgement preceding the consummation of the Kingdom is an idea that we find in the Gospels too, most especially Mark 13 and, as we shall see, Revelation 6 and Mark 13 run in parallel together because each of the seals mirrors a particular type of event that Jesus warns us about in that section of Scripture.

OK, we’ve got a lot of text to get through tonight, so let’s move straight into it…

In verse 1, the Lamb opens the first of the seven seals and one of the Living Creatures says, “Come” or, actually, the same word is used in Greek for “Come” and “Go”, so he could be giving the order for the riders on their horses to Go. But whether it’s “Come” or “Go”, there is a real sense of authority about the order because it is a voice like thunder and not, therefore, a voice to be argued with!

And then we get to verse 2 which, I have say, is one of the most perplexing verses in Revelation: “I looked, and there before me was a white horse! It’s rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest.”

Now, if you put 10 theologians in a room, you would end up with 12 interpretations of what this verse means! Who is the rider on the white horse? I have to be honest and say that I’m not absolutely sure: there are two interpretations that, it seem to me, have real weight behind them even though they are both very different. So I want to outline both of them to you and you can make up your mind on it but I will tell you my preference for what it’s worth…

The most popular interpretation is that the rider on the white horse is Jesus Christ

and there are some compelling reasons for interpreting it this way. The horse is white – and so far in Revelation, white has always symbolised purity. The rider is given a crown and in 14:14, the son of man is described as having a crown of gold on his head. Thirdly, with only two exceptions, whenever the word ‘conquer’ is used in Revelation, it is always to do with Christ as conqueror: we will come onto those verses another time - but it also fits with another part of John’s writings, in his Gospel 16:33 where Jesus says, “I have conquered the world”. There are other reasons too…In Revelation 19:11, we read that the King of kings and Lord of lords rides a white horse and judges and makes war and wears crowns on his head. And this rider comes before the other judgements of God and in Mark 13:10 we read that, “…the gospel must first be preached into all the world”. These are some very good reasons to interpret the rider on the white horse as Jesus Christ.

But this interpretation is not without difficulties. The first difficulty is that the Lamb is identified as Jesus and the Lamb is playing a different role in this scene, so how can Jesus be both Lamb and rider? Also, the rider does bring death and some would have a difficulty interpreting Jesus into this role.

What other interpretation might overcome these problems? I think there is a more useful one…

Some have interpreted the rider as a generalised statement about nations who conquer in warfare. Certainly in Matthew 24:7, when Jesus is talking about the end times, he says that, “Nation will rise against nation” so it is a very plausible interpretation especially as the rider carries a bow, which is a weapon of war. This interpretation would certainly fit with the social context of the time: the Roman Empire would have been seen as a conquering force from without, and there are other verses we will come back to, particularly in Chapter 13, where a similar image is used. And it would be an idea that fits with the Old Testament too, particularly through the writings of the prophets who see other nations conquering Israel and Judah as the judgement of God for their infidelity to their calling as the Chosen People of God: Assyria and Babylon, for example. That’s not to say that God rejoices in conquering warfare and the defeat of one nation to another but only that he is able to use that human activity as a means of bringing his own judgement to bear. And, when we move on to the second seal, it seems to me to make more sense to interpret the first seal in this way than as a symbolic representation of Christ the conqueror.

So, it’s up to you…The rider on the white horse may be Jesus Christ, the conqueror or it may be the overwhelming power of nations who conquer other nations and, in that way, are used by God to bring judgement. I have my own preference, which is the second of these, but you can make up your own mind on this one…

Let’s move on to verses 3 and 4:

The second horse was fiery red and its rider was given a large sword to take peace from the earth and make men slay one another. Now, if we have interpreted the first rider on a white horse as an outside power making war, invading and conquering nations, then this second horse and rider can be read to complement that

as internal, civil wars whereby people attack and slay one another. Again in Mark 13:12, Jesus wants about this type of internal civil strife: “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child. Children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death.” The horse is red, which may signify for us bloodshed and the word used here for sword is an interesting one, ‘machaira’, which was a particular type of sword, a short Roman sword used by civil authorities to execute rebels.

So these first two horses symbolise for us the heavenly perspective on what is described from an earthly perspective in Mark 13 with regard to the violence in the world between the first coming of Christ and the second coming of Christ. This is a period of history that will be hallmarked by nation rising up against nation and internal civil disorders where people groups will fight against themselves. And whilst God is not the instigator of violence: that is a result of fallen human nature, he is able to use these situations as judgements on our broken world.

Verses 5 and 6:

The next horse to appear is black and its rider holds scales in his hand and the voice says this most unusual statement: “A quart of wheat for a day’s wages, and three quarts of barley for a day’s wages, and do not damage the oil and wine!” I think what is being described here is the onset of famine as Jesus warned about the last days in Mark 13:8, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines.” The fact that the rider has scales in his hand suggests that food will be rationed and carefully weighed out. In Leviticus 26:26, God says, “When I cut off your supply of bread, ten women will be able to bake bread in one oven, and they will dole out bread by weight, but you will not be satisfied.” And again in Ezekiel 4:16, God says, “I will cut off the supply of food in Jerusalem. The people will eat rationed food in anxiety and drink rationed water in despair, for food and water will be scarce.” And what of the quantities that are mentioned here? A quart of wheat was what it was deemed necessary for a working man to eat each day, so here is a day’s wages for one day’s food. And all that would be left for the man’s family would be inferior barley, which was understood to be the poor man’s food and even three quarts for a day’s wages – even if he had the money would be a starvation diet for them all.

And then we get the curious phrase, “Do not harm oil and wine”. Some people have interpreted this to mean protection for the church, which uses oil for anointing and healing and wine for the Eucharist. But I don’t think that’s a plausible explanation because the reality is that, when famine happens, as we see all too often Christians suffer just as much as anyone else. My sense is that this indicates that, even in times of famine, there are those in authority and the rich who manage to continue enjoying the luxuries of life. We see it in recent times and today when we contrast the living conditions of the people of Zimbabwe with that of Robert Mugabe, the wealth of Saddam Hussein’s palaces and feasts when his people were starving and struggling through want, and the continued wealth and comfort of President Assad whilst the people of Syria struggle to survive. Wheat is unaffordable, barley is unaffordable, but the oil and the wine remain unaffected.

Verses 7 and 8:

The next rider comes on a pale horse and is given a clear identity: “Its riders name was Death and Hades was following close behind him.” This is an interesting verse: why should Death be singled out like this? Surely the three two horses are bringing death with them too? I think there’s a play on words here because when the Old Testament is translated into Greek, the word ‘death’ is the same word as is used for ‘pestilence’. A good example of this is in Ezekiel 14:21 where God says, “How much worse will it be when I send against Jerusalem my four dreadful judgements – sword and famine and wild beasts and plague.”…and the word ‘plague’ could equally mean ‘death’. So the first rider represents wars between nations, the second rider represents civil strife between citizens, the third rider represents famine and the fourth rider represents plague and pestilence. For those of you with one finger in your Bible at Mark 13, you will see that Jesus doesn’t mention pestilences in that passage but the parallel passage in Luke is in chapter 21 and in verse 11, Jesus’ words are recorded in this way: “There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places” so the idea is still there in Jesus’ earthly discourse.

And, of course, Hades follows on close behind the pestilence as people die and are condemned into the netherworld of Jewish belief.

So there we have what are known as the four horsemen of the apocalypse: not a mysterious passage to be scared of in and of itself but merely an outlining of the events we are all too familiar with: that between the first coming and the second coming of Jesus, our world will be hallmarked with events of misery – war, civil disorder, famine and plague. It is not a happy picture, to be sure, but it is a statement of the reality of the world as we look around us today.

And there are two more seals to open that have a different feel to them completely…

Verses 9 & 10:

“When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. They called out in a loud voice, ‘How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?’”

This idea of the souls of the righteous crying out to God takes us right back to the beginning of Scripture. You remember the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4 and in verse 10, God says to Cain, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.” A really evocative picture there. And here, right at the other end of the Bible, the saints are crying out to God again asking when their spilt blood will be avenged. We are not surprised to see a parallel in Mark 13, of course, because in verse 9, Jesus warns his followers and says: “Be on your guard. You will be handed over to the local councils and flogged in the synagogues…All men will hate you because of me.” And in Matthew 23, Jesus issues this scorching warning to the Pharisees: “Upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Barakiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.” Clearly God will judge the world for the way in which it has slain the martyrs.

But why does this verse say that the souls of the martyrs are under the altar? Well, there’s probably two ideas coming together here…The first is from Leviticus 4:7

where instructions are given about sacrificing animals on the altar and it says this: “The priest shall then put some of the blood on the horns of the altar of fragrant incense that is before the Lord in the Tent of Meeting. The rest of the bull’s blood he shall pour out at the base of the altar…” So here is the idea that the souls of the martyrs are under the altar in the same way that the blood of sacrificial animals is under the altar. But there’s also a Jewish text by Rabbi Akiba from the time that speaks of being buried under the altar in the temple as a symbol of resting for all eternity under the glory and power of God. And I think it’s interesting that the word used in verse 10 for ‘Lord’ is not the usual one used of Jesus, as in Lord Jesus, which is ‘kurios’, but it is the word ‘despotes’, from which we derive the word ‘despot’ and so there is an indication here of absolute authority and power in God as he comes to judge the world for the deaths of the martyrs.

The prayer that they offer God is for the avenging of their blood which seems like a strange, even selfish thing to ask for but actually, what they are asking for is the vindication of truth and holiness not revenge for their early deaths. The fact that they address God as ‘Sovereign Lord, holy and true’ is a clear indication of that priority and they know that truth and holiness will only be finally vindicated when Christ returns again, so theirs is a call for the Second Coming when God will be finally glorified throughout the whole of creation.

And they are given, we read in verse 11, a white robe and told to wait a little longer. The significance of the white robe is given in 7:14: “They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb”. And they are told to wait a little longer because, of course, the return of Christ is ever more imminent as each seal is opened…

And so we reach the sixth seal and the opening of that gives an awesome image in verses 12-14:

“There was a great earthquake.” Mark 13:8, “There will be earthquakes in various places”.

“The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair”. Mark 13:24, “The sun will be darkened”.

“The whole moon turned blood red”. Mark 13:24, “The moon will not give its light”.

“And the stars in the sky fell to earth”. Mark 13:25, “The stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken”.

“And the stars in the sky fell to earth, as late figs drop from a fig-tree when shaken by a strong wind.” Mark 13:28, “Now learn a lesson from the fig-tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that it is near, right at the door. I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.”

You see how Revelation 6 is so clearly the symbolic enactment of Jesus prophecy in Mark 13?

So the opening of the sixth seal brings about this cataclysmic impact on creation but we need to be clear that this is not the Second Coming of Christ: it is what precedes the Second Coming; the seventh seal is yet to be opened.

So the first six seals being opened describe to us the nature of the world between the first coming and the second coming of Christ and how God uses these things for judgement: There are wars, there is civil disorder, there is famine, there is pestilence, there is martyrdom, there is chaos in the created order. And given that reality, it is not surprising to read in verse 15: of people hiding in caves and amongst the rocks of the mountain trying to escape the judgement of God on their lives. And, of course, we read in Mark 13:14, “When you see the ‘abomination of desolation’ standing where it does not belong…then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.”

Now, we shouldn’t be surprised that when John describes the fear of people in the face of God’s judgement there are seven categories of people mentioned! “The kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and every slave and every free man…” The whole of the human race tries to avoid the judgement of God, the whole of the human race tries to hide from God. Have we learnt nothing? Have we not got any further forward than Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden? In Genesis 3:8, we read: “Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.” Adam and Eve were ashamed of their nakedness and hid and even in the last days, all humanity will be ashamed of its spiritual nakedness and will again try to hide from God. But for those who have not owned Christ, we read in verse 17 that the great day of [God’s] wrath has come and will they be able to stand in the face of it? I fear not…

So that’s the text of Revelation 6 but before we finish, I just want to make one or two general points to guide our understanding.

And the first is crucial, that when we read of these judgements through war and civil disorder and famine and pestilence and martyrdom and cosmic disorder, we must be absolutely sure that these are judgements on the world - not judgements specifically related to individuals.

I hope I don’t need to say this to you because you are all wise enough to understand but there are some Christians who don’t get that point. So, they might see the Tsunami and Earthquake in Japan and believe that this is God’s judgement on a Buddhist and Taoist nation. You and I both remember when HIV-AIDS was discovered and some Christians proclaimed it as God’s judgement on the gay community. Some will look at civil disorder in the Middle East and see that as God’s judgement on the Islamic world. Others may look at areas of famine in the world and believe that God is judging those people for some sin. That is absolutely not what this passage is saying! These are not individual judgements wrought by God on individual people: this is a description of the fallen nature of God’s good creation and through the consequences of the Fall, we gain a sense of God’s displeasure at sin. God does not send war or famine or plague to punish people; they are a result of the fallen nature of the world and, by definition, contain within them a judgement on fallenness. We need to be clear about that.

And second, I don’t think the opening of the seals is in any sense chronological. There are some Christians who try to plot the history of the world through the opening of the seals in an attempt to determine when the second coming will happen. The first seal indicates the rise of the Parthians. The fourth seal indicates the Black Plague. The fifth seal indicates martyrdom under Communist regimes. The sixth seal indicates global warming and so on…I think this is a mistaken approach: the perspective we have is one that shows us what is happening in heaven and its impact on the earth and heaven, of course, sits outside of time, so we can’t try to attach any chronological order to the seven seals. They are all happening at one and the same time and we need to read them only as signs of the age.

And thirdly, if we are to get anything out of this passage tonight, I hope it is a renewed desire to pray for a broken world and to do what we can to alleviate suffering and social injustice. We live in a broken world and there are many who are, metaphorically, running to the mountains and, as Christians, we are called to live and minister amongst the brokenness. Christ came to this broken world and gave himself sacrificially for it. We too must live sacrificial lives as we seek to meet the needs of the hurting and vulnerable.

And personally, I pray for the day when the church across this nation will discover again a hunger and passion for the pursuit of social justice. We need a church that will speak out against unjust wars. We need a church that will seek to be a reconciling presence in the midst of civil disorder. We need a church that will do more than throw a few quid towards the starving but actually challenge the institutions that perpetuate a world order that not only tolerates the existence of famine but actually creates it. We need a church that will have a real healing ministry for the sick and dying. We need a church that draws attention to the plight of the martyrs of this century not just celebrating in festival worship the martyrs of years gone by. We need a church that will stand for ecological justice and change its practices towards the re-greening of the earth.

That’s the type of church we need - this passage from Revelation makes that absolutely clear. It is up to us how to respond to that and think about the difference we can make…

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It is hard for us to imagine the scene as Jesus makes his way into Jerusalem through the narrow, dusty streets packed to the edges with pilgrims, tourists, soldiers, politicians, bystanders, market tradesmen, young and old. It is hard for us to imagine the smells, the noise, the sense of excitement. It is hard for us to imagine what it would have been like for Jesus and the disciples as they slowly make their way through the adoring crowd, soaking up the adulation and praise, being fully in the moment…

It is hard for us to imagine…

This moment had been a long time coming. For the disciples, it had been three years coming. For Jesus, it had been thirty-three years coming. For the Jews, it had been centuries coming: the arrival of the Messiah whom God had promised, the one who would establish the Kingdom Rule of God, the one who would conquer, the one who would be victorious.

This moment had been a long time coming…

This was no ordinary Rabbi, this was no ordinary prophet. This Jesus of Nazareth was chosen, was special, was unique. And so the crowd shout out, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!”

The crowd are excited and excitable: the prospect of overthrowing the Roman rule is an unspoken undercurrent running through the assembled people and the Romans knew it too…Jesus Christ – who had raised Lazarus from the dead a few days earlier surely had the power to overthrow the Roman authorities! The Jews were the people of God: surely God was working now for their liberation?

The Jewish people were filled with enthusiasm and optimism. The disciples were filled with enthusiasm and optimism and there is an electric atmosphere running through the Holy Week narrative.

Here is Jesus being welcomed in by the people; welcomed in – because they expect Jesus to give them what they want. And we know, don’t we, how the crowd would turn against Jesus when he didn’t deliver what they wanted…

There is something deeply tragic about this scene. It reminds me a little bit of the footage we have all seen of John F Kennedy being driven through the ticker-tape parade and we know that he is about to be shot. It reminds me of the footage we have all seen of 9/11, the people on the streets going about their everyday business but we know a plane is just about to fly into the Twin Towers. It reminds me of the footage we have all seen of Japanese people walking calmly down the street but we know there is a huge tidal wave just minutes from engulfing them. We watch that footage – and it doesn’t matter how many times we see it, there is still a feeling of helplessness because we know the tragedy that awaits. And that same feeling arises in us as we consider each year the Palm Sunday story. We read of the crowds cheering but we know the ending, we know the tragedy that awaits…

And the ultimate tragedy is that this Jesus, this Messiah, is not the Messiah the crowds want; he is not the Messiah that the disciples want, either…

Is he the Messiah we expect, is he the Messiah we want?

Of course, it’s easy to say ‘Yes’ to that question. But we need to attend deeply to the question. Because this is the Messiah who calls us to walk in his footsteps, the Messiah who calls us to die to self, the Messiah who calls us to a living sacrifice, the Messiah who demands complete sovereignty over our lives.

Is this the Messiah we want?

Do we truly want to die to self?

Are we truly prepared to give up all for God?

Are we truly prepared to sit in obedience under God’s rule, no matter what?

Perhaps we might be more attracted to a different Messiah; a Messiah who allows us to pursue our own ambitions and goals, a Messiah who can be found in a nice church with nice worship, a Messiah who is happy to negotiate with us what we can and can’t do. Now that’s an attractive Messiah! But it’s not THE Messiah…

The truth is that the Gospel Story, the Passion Narrative, is not a nice story at all. It is a story of pain and blood and rejection and humiliation and sacrifice. It is a difficult story to stomach. We are invited into an experience of resurrection, certainly, but first we must go through the pain and humiliation of death.

We are quick to come to the Messiah with our requests and petitions, we are quick to proclaim ‘Hosanna’ when things go well for us, but we are prone to falling from that ideal when much is demanded of us by God.

Today, we know the ending of the story and yet, even from this privileged vantage point, I’m not sure that our spirituality is much more developed than the Palm Sunday crowd. Certainly, we know Jesus better than that crowd did and we have a deeper understanding of the purpose of his life and death. We are able to theologise more and tie up the loose ends of the story, we are able to cross reference Scripture passages and develop a more coherent expression of faith that is born out of the Anglican heritage of Scripture, Tradition and Reason. We may be able to comprehend better than they what it means to be a follower of Christ and what a call on our lives may look like.

But fundamentally, we still stand with the Palm Sunday crowd today.

There is a tendency for us all to be driven in our relationship with Jesus by our personal hopes, by our expectations of what he can give us. There is a tendency for us, even after all these years, to be governed by an ideal of what we want the Messiah to be for us rather than focussing in on what the Messiah actually is to us…

And that is why we need to soak ourselves in Holy Week with the Passion Narrative. That is why I urge you to come to as many of the services as you can: not because it’s a nice thing to come to church but because this is the week, this is the ultimate week, when we can be reminded over and over and over again about our own fallenness and weakness and our desperate need for a Saviour. We need to hear the story, we need to engage with the story so that we can receive the Messiah as he is, not as we would wish him to be…

Paul reminds us in Romans that we are united with Christ; we are united with him in death and resurrection. So, this Holy Week, we need to get our minds around two deaths: the death of Jesus and the death of us. We cannot have one without the other. The services throughout Holy Week are not merely a nice opportunity for us to come together in worship: they are a preparation for death – our death in Christ on the cross.

Holy Week, quite simply, is an opportunity for us to Die Well.

What are your expectations for Holy Week this year?

Please ask yourself that question: what are your expectations for Holy Week this year? A week’s holiday? A week to get the gardening done if the weather stays fine? Or a week to face to reality of your need for a broken Messiah? A week to prepare for your own death in Christ on the cross?

This year, Holy Week will be what you make it…the decision is yours alone.

But what if we decide today to give 7 days over – just 7 days - to finding out what the Messiah expects from us rather than the other way round? What if we had the courage to really give this week over to God to speak to us of eternal things…Who knows what God would do in our hearts…

The Psalmist wrote, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me…” This week, we are invited to leave the Palm Sunday crowd and walk in the valley of the shadow of death: Jesus’ death – our death in Christ on the cross. If we commit ourselves to do that, we will fear no evil, for God is with us. And if God is with us, anything is possible and our lives may never be the same again…

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Last week, we moved on into the second section of Revelation. We left behind us the earthly perspective on things and moved to a new perspective: what is going on in heaven. And, if you remember, this section lasts from Chapter 4 through to Chapter 8 so this week, as we look at Chapter 5 we are still examining the events of heaven. And the scene focuses not so much on the throne of God as the Scroll and the Lamb. So, what is going on in this passage and what can we learn from it?

The scene opens in verse 1 with these words: “Then I saw in the right hand of him who sat on the throne a scroll with writing on both sides and sealed with seven seals.” This is one of the most widely interpreted verses in the Book of Revelation: what is this scroll? what is written on it? what are the seals? We need to spend a bit of time on this.

Now, I don’t want to get too technical with Greek and so on because it can become boring for you all but we need to go a bit in depth here because this verse is complex and the meaning is only understood through the language, so forgive me if I bore you for the next five minutes! The word, ‘sat’ is interesting because of the tense that is used [present middle participle] and it indicates something you do for your own benefit. “I brushed my hair”. “I fed myself” – these would be reasonable equivalents. So there is a sense in which God sits on his throne for his own glory and we must always remember that everything in heaven and on earth is geared up for the glorification of God - even his own activity. As we were reminded in verse 11 of Chapter 4 last week, God is “worthy to receive glory and honour and power” and his own existence on the throne is indicative of that fact.

And in his hand is a scroll, written on both sides and sealed with seven seals. It is a scroll we are talking about here, not a book, even though the word could mean either, because this is in accordance with other prophetic ideas in Scripture. For example, in Ezekiel 2:9 we read: “Then I looked, and I saw a hand stretched out to me. In it was a scroll, which he unrolled before me. On both sides of it were written words of lament and mourning and woe.”

And it was not unusual for prophetic scrolls to be sealed and for the seals only to be broken when the time had come for their fulfilment. For example, in Daniel 8:26 we read: “The vision of the evenings and mornings that has been given you is true, but seal up the vision, for it concerns the distant future.” And again in Daniel, 12:9: “Go you way, Daniel, because the words are closed up and sealed until the end of time.” So there is undoubtedly a prophecy being spoken of here.

But I think there is something else going on too. The word ‘written’ is in a perfect tense, indicating a completed action and it was a use of the word often associated with a legal document whose authority continues into the present: a contract, if you like. What we have here in the right hand of God is a legal document outlining the future destiny of mankind.

The practice of creating a legal document on a scroll and sealing it had been one that went back into antiquity but the practice had ceased by the time John was writing with the exception of legal documents outlining the rights of soldiers in the Roman army and so John’s hearers would have been familiar with the idea.

We read that there is writing on both sides of the scroll: that’s not a very accurate translation. What it really says is, “within and on the back”. But regardless of that, the idea being indicated here is that the scroll is full and therefore what has been written in and on the scroll is comprehensive. The destiny of mankind has been comprehensively written by God.

And the scroll is sealed…The word ‘sealed’ is in the Perfect tense, which indicates a past action with firm, continuing results for the present and future: it is a strong tense. So, when Jesus addresses Satan in the wilderness he says, “It is written”. There is something final and authoritative about that statement. In Ephesians 2:8, Paul says, “You have been saved”, it is a final, authoritative statement of fact. And so we read here: the scroll is sealed. This is a past action that has an authoritative air about it: a strong idea indeed. And it is sealed, we are not surprised to read, with seven seals. In Roman times, a last Will and Testament would have been sealed with seven seals and there would have been seven witnesses to the sealing.

So, in this one verse, we have a lot of information. God is sat on the throne, reflecting his worth and glory. He holds within his hands the full, comprehensive destiny of mankind sealed in a scroll that acts as a legal document, binding in every respect.

And so given the weight of this idea, we are not surprised to read verses 3 & 4: “And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice, ‘Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?’ But no-one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it.” This scroll is the destiny of humanity; the power of God over the world. So who would have the power to open that? No-one! Because the idea is not just opening a scroll - it is more powerful than that… Since this is a legal document, the opening of the scroll indicates the enacting of what is written within it. When a solicitor opens a last Will and Testament, implicit in the action of opening it is the authority to make its contents a reality. So who can open the scroll? Who can put God’s plans for humanity into effect? Is there anyone in heaven or on earth or under the earth who holds that kind of authority or power? Of course not! Only God can put into effect the will of God!

Not only is there no-one powerful enough to open the scroll, there is no-one worthy to even look inside it. Which one of us is so holy and so pure and so undefiled

that we are worthy to be allowed into the deepest mysteries of God? Which one of us is so perfect that God should confide the deepest secrets of his plan to us? None of us are that holy and pure. None of us are worthy…

And so, as a consequence, we read in verse 4: “I wept and wept because no-one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or look inside.” The word meaning ‘wept’ here is a strong word: a wailing or crying out: the type of crying associated with professional mourners at funerals. And I don’t think the weeping is because the scroll couldn’t be opened so much as a weeping over the state of the world: that in all creation, not even one is found worthy…it is a weeping over the fallenness of God’s world that is indicated here.

But the weeping is brought to a conclusion after an elder spoke to John, verse 5: “Then one of the elders said to me, ‘Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.” This verse draws the hearers back to their Jewish heritage because both these titles – the Lion of Judah and the Root of David – were titles given to the long-awaited Messiah. In Genesis 49:9,10 we read: “You are a lion’s cub, O Judah…The sceptre will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs and the obedience of the nations is his.” And in Isaiah 11:1,2 we read: “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a branch will bear fruit. The spirit of the Lord will rest on him…”

So this verse is a real encouragement to us: not one person in all creation is worthy to roll out the plan of God for his creation, except one: the Messiah who has conquered. He is able to open the scroll and the word used for ‘open’ here is a word to mean ‘unroll’. So in the hands of the Messiah, the destiny of humanity and God’s creation is unrolled before him.

But how has this Messiah triumphed? How has he conquered? The answer is in verse 6: “Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the centre of the throne…” Now here’s an incredible theological truth. The Lamb is, of course, Jesus Christ the Messiah, who was slaughtered, and we would expect an animal that had been slaughtered to be lying down. But no…this slaughtered lamb is standing; he has been resurrected. In only incredible sentence, a deep theology of Christ is unveiled. Here we have the crucifixion and the resurrection: the slaughtered lamb standing. Here we have the power of life over death: looking as if it had been slain, but now lives. Here we have the centrality of Christ’s death on the cross to the Christian faith: standing in the centre of the throne. In this one sentence, the whole of the Book of Revelation is summed up: the whole book, essentially, is about victory through sacrifice. In the first three chapters, the churches were called to sacrificial living so that they could win the victory. And here we have proclaimed the deepest mystery of God, the most incredible of truths, that Christ models for us victory through sacrifice: the Lamb that was slain stands again – and is at the centre of the throne! And the Lamb is the centre of our faith – the object of our adoration and praise, which is why he is encircled by the four living creatures representing the heavenly realms and the twenty-four elders representing the church on earth. You see the power and intensity of John’s theology here? We could contemplate this one verse for a whole year and still not plumb its depths…

But this Lamb, of course, is no ordinary Lamb: “He had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.” In the Old Testament, horns were a symbol of power and of royalty. In Deuteronomy 33:17, for example, we read: “In majesty he is like a firstborn bull; his horns are the horns of a wild ox.” So the Lamb who was slain, the Messiah Jesus Christ, is royalty, the King of kings and all-powerful because there are seven horns. And he is also omniscient – all-seeing because he has seven eyes. And these seven eyes are the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit who is sent out into the whole world. As we say in the Nicene Creed: “We believe in the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son”.

There’s just one final historical and theological reference I want to make before we move on, because it’s important. And that’s to do with an extra proof, if we needed it, that this Lamb is the Messiah. Because we may argue that a victorious Lion of Judah would be a better symbol of the Messiah than a slain Lamb. But there is a final text we need to reference, that is not in the Bible but is a Jewish writing called the ‘Testament of Joseph’. In Chapter 19, he speaks of the people of God as the flock of God and says that a deliverer will arise from out of the flock to rescue them from all their enemies. And this is what he writes in verse 8: “And all the beasts rushed against the lamb, and the lamb overcame them, and destroyed them and trod them underfoot. And because of him the angels and men rejoiced, and all the land…His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, which shall not pass away.” A well-known passage from Jewish literature which helps us to understand the power of John the Baptist’s statement in John 1:29: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”

OK, we’ve done enough on that…let’s move on…

Verse 7: “He [the Lamb] came and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne.”

Now there’s a really interesting point here that is very easy to miss: “He came…” Even though he was in the centre of the throne in verse 6, he is encircled by the elders and the four living creatures. And, in verse 7, there is the suggestion of movement towards God from out of the midst of the elders and living creatures. Now this, to me, seems to represent the Ascension of Christ: that, after the Lamb had been slain and stood again, he moves back towards God the Father.

And, as he moves back towards the Father, he takes the scroll. Now I won’t bore you with the Greek verbs here but the word ‘took’ it is not phrased as we might expect [aorist] but indicates a very dramatic act [perfect active indicative]. There is a real drama with what is happening here. John actually writes, “He came – and takes from the right hand…”: this is a moment of high drama! In fact, this is such an awe-inspiring moment that the whole of heaven and earth is moved in praise and adoration, verse 8: “And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb.” What other possible response could there be to the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension of the Messiah? All we can do is join with heaven and earth in praise and worship!

And the nature of their worship is described in verse 8: “Each one had a harp…” ah, so this is where the image of angels with harps comes from - the praise of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit!

“…and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.” The word used for bowl here indicates a shallow dish and in Judaism, angels were considered to be the ones who carry our prayers to God. It’s a lovely image…If you worshipped at St. Mary’s during Epiphany this year, you will remember that we used incense in a shallow bowl during our times of intercessory prayer at the 10.00 service. That was to symbolise what is happening in this passage here: the incense being the prayers of the saints, carried up towards heaven. Incidentally, we will be using incense tomorrow night at our 7.30 Patronal Festival but it will be used in a different way: lots of incense around the altar, symbolising the mystery of God in our midst. Come along – it may be something you haven’t experienced before and it is a beautiful thing to be part of…

Then we come to verse 9, which opens with a very interesting phrase: “And they sang a new song…” This is a phrase that the first hearers would have recognised and related to because it is used often in the Psalms. And it relates to celebrating the mercy of God and his deliverance from distress and suffering. For example, Psalm 40:1-3: “I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord.” And again in Psalm 98:1: “Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvellous things; his right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him.” And so, as John’s hearers listened to this description of the heavenly realms breaking into a new song, they would have been encouraged once again that God is merciful and compassionate and would rescue them from all their sufferings. And the beauty is, of course, that every time you and I receive mercy from God: forgiveness of sins or healing or deliverance, heaven breaks out into a new song. That is such a comforting image, isn’t it?

But there’s also something of a more cosmic scale going on here because certainly the heavenly realm joins in a new song for our individual salvations but there is more to it than that…We will come back to this idea of a new song in 14:3 and 15:3 and on both those occasions it has to do with the salvation of the world and the renewal of creation and given what we read in Chapter 4, I think that is implicit here too. This is a new song of praise for the redemption of all God’s people and the renewal of his whole creation through the death, resurrection and ascension of Christ.

Verse 9: “You are worthy…”, the same phrase we had in 4:11. “…to take the scroll and to open its seals…”, no other has the right to do that: but why does the Lamb have the right? “…because you were slain…”, a reference back to verse 6 “…and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.” This is the image of the market-place in which Christ bought us for God and, in so doing, didn’t just redeem us as individuals but created the people of God, the church for all time. “You made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God…”, notice they don’t sing, “You have made them kings and priests…”: there is only one King! But we are a kingdom and we are priests too, called to serve our God in acts of worship and reconciliation. “…and they will reign on the earth.” There is an interesting shift of tense here: “You were slain”, “You purchased”, “You made them” but – “They will reign…” Christ has done all the work for us on the cross where he was slain, where we were purchased, where we were restored, but there awaits for us a glorious inheritance in the future at the consummation of the new heaven and the new earth when we will reign with him.

This is such an incredible truth – such an awesome, inconceivable reality - that heaven and earth is absolutely bowled over by what has been achieved through Christ, verse 11: “Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand…” There is no number in Greek to describe the sheer quantity of angels that John saw that day. The only words he has to use are, ‘myriad on myriads’ and ‘thousands on thousands’ Can you imagine such a scene? And these countless swarms of angels surround the throne and they surround the living creatures and they surround the elders and all together, they burst into song: “Worthy is the Lamb…” - there’s that phrase again! “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and praise!” And, in these words, we are taken back again to 4:11, where the living creatures and the elders are already singing this song. Heaven is a cacophony of praise and worship!!

And, as if that wasn’t enough, verse 13: “Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing…” Here we have the whole of heaven and the whole of earth, every angelic being, the whole church and every part of creation, joined as one voice to praise and worship God as a result of what Jesus has achieved on the cross. This is immense! This is awesome! This is beyond all comprehension!

And all of heaven and all of creation joins together to say: “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honour and glory and power for ever and ever!” And in verse 14, the four living creatures say – “Amen!” - so be it! And the elders, the church of God throughout history, falls down to worship…

Now, if you were in Ephesus or Sardis or Smyrna or Philadelphia or Thyatira or Pergamum or Laodicea, if you were a faithful, struggling Christian feeling the weight of persecution and false worship and under pressure from the Emperor Domitian and all the false teachers…wouldn’t this just be the most incredible image to cheer you up? And if you are here tonight feeling down in the mouth or depressed or think you are struggling alone in the faith, isn’t this an image to revive your flagging spirits? This is not an image to fill us with fear or uncertainty, this is not an image to leave us feeling anxious, this is an incredible image to stir our spirits and raise us up.

In this one chapter, we are confronted by, the authority and power of the Father, the incredible sacrifice of the Lamb, crucified, raised and ascended, the authority of Christ to roll out the plan of God for the world, the working out of history through the prophecies of the Messiah, the royal power of Christ, the omniscience of the Holy Spirit of God, the prayers of the people coming to God in heaven, the redemption and mercies of God which cause heaven to burst into song and the sheer cosmic nature of the redemption of the world. This is a quite incredible portion of Scripture and we are left astounded at the imagery. All we can do, in response, is to play our part with the elders and fall down and worship God. Which is what we should do with every breath we take, every part of our being and the whole of our earthly lives.

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Tonight, we leave the letters to the seven churches behind us and move into a new section in the Book of Revelation. This section runs through from Chapter 4 to 8:5 but there is within this section two sub-sections: the first is Chapters 4 and 5 and the second is Chapter 6 through to 8:5. So how are we to view the relationship between this section and the intense letters to the churches that have come before? How is the Book of Revelation structured?

Well, there are many different opinions about this, of course. Some people understand the Book of Revelation to be linear: outlining the history of the world, as it were, from Chapter 1 through to 22. Others understand some parts of the book to be pre-Rapture and other parts post-Rapture, which is to say before and after the second coming of Jesus. And still others see cyclical patterns throughout the Book. Well, I can’t tell you the definitive answer: I can only tell you what I think and how I see it is like this:

This week, in the news, there has been some uproar about the NHS Bill and the role Nick Clegg is playing. Those newspapers which are Labour-biased will say that Nick Clegg is betraying the NHS and the cornerstone of our modern free society. Those newspaper that are Tory-biased will say that Nick Clegg is being weak and betraying the coalition ideals. Those newspapers that support the Lib Dems will say that Nick Clegg is doing his best in a difficult situation and that he is pursuing a progressive agenda and preventing the Tories from going too far. Now, the rights and wrongs of that situation are irrelevant. What I want to point out is that there is one political situation and at least three different perspectives to understand it. The newspapers are all writing about the one ‘event’, as it were but each one brings a fresh perspective. And when we put all the perspectives together, we might get something approaching the truth of the situation.

Now, my understanding of the Book of Revelation is this: that the same period of history is examined from different perspectives. The period of history between the first coming of Christ and the second coming is explored from a different perspective 7 separate times (and that number is not a surprise to us because we could argue from the fact that 7 indicates ‘completeness’ that this is a complete picture of the history of the world in that period). And each time that period of history is examined, there is something new to see, a new perspective - a different and fresh take on reality, if you like.

So the first section – which was Chapters 1 to 3 was an examination of the Church from an intensely ‘earthy’ perspective: here are the issues facing the church throughout history; worship, doctrine, prophecy, suffering, persecution, poverty and so on and Christ has given us counsel on how to deal with these issues. And now we come back round in a circle and look at the same period again in Chapters 4 through to 8:5 but, this time, we are looking at that period from a heavenly perspective. What is happening in heaven during this period? Who is God in the heavenly realm? What do the tribulations on earth look like from a heavenly perspective? These are, I think, the questions being addressed in this section.

And there is something of a cosmic and universal scale we are moving into now. It’s no coincidence that, from 4:1 to the end of the Book of Revelation there are no more mentions of the word ‘church’. The only time that word will be used again is in 22:16 where it is written, “I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches” - a sort of conclusion to the whole vision. There are allusion made to the church, particularly in Chapter 19 where we read about the Bride which is a metaphor for the church, but the earthy, pragmatic approach is now dispensed with and we come to a more cosmic approach to matters.

And the new section is marked quite clearly in 4:1: “After this I looked, and behold a door standing open in heaven.” John is taken into a new vision, a second vision. The first vision in Chapter 1 was of Christ and resulted in the issuing of the seven letters to the churches. The second vision is again a vision of God and results, as we shall over the coming few chapters in the unfolding of events preceding the second coming of Jesus Christ. And the scene opens with an invitation that is not dissimilar to the invitation that closed last weeks letter. To Laodicea, Christ had said, “Behold! I stand at the door and knock” and now John writes, “Behold! A door standing open in heaven…” The invitation is clear: for those of us who invite Christ into our lives, we are invited in to the vision of heaven.

And as soon as we enter in, we are taken straight back into relationship with Christ: verse 1: “And the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, ‘Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.’” Christ stands at the door and knocks – and we invite him in and the result is a reverse transaction: we are transported to the heavenly realm – where Christ invites us in! It is the perfect illustration of a mutual relationship that we can share with Jesus: we invite him, he invites us, we open the door, he opens the door.

And the invitation is itself very interesting: “I will show you what must take place after this”.

First, we are struck by the phrase, “what must take place”. The vision John sees is a vision of the future but it is a necessary future: it “must” take place – it is necessary. John is not writing about matters of chance here, things that may or may not happen: they will happen and they must happen because they are part of the divine plan.

And these things must happen “after this” - but after what? Presumably Christ refers to the events that will happen after the period of the seven churches which is to say, he is about to reveal a vision about things that will culminate in the second coming. As we work through chapters 4 and 5, we see that time itself is concertinaed; there is no past, present and future because there is no past, present and future in heaven but the events are happening at this present time and the events that describe the second coming will happen in the future as we perceive them from an earthly perspective.

Verse 2: “Immediately, I was in the Spirit” - a phrase which mirrors 1:10, when John was ‘in the Spirit’ on the Lord’s Day when he received the first vision. And he goes on to say, “and there before me was a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it.” It is interesting, isn’t it, that John’s first impression of heaven is a throne: not walls or a temple or angels or noise or activity but a throne. And, of course, he wants to emphasise to us that the focus of heaven is the sovereignty of God, the power and the authority of God. And, in our walk with God, as we seek for the Kingdom of God in our lives, the focus must always be on the throne of God and his authority to rule over us.

And then we arrive at verse 3, which has this interesting description of God. It’s not a description of what God looks like: how could we possibly handle such a description? Instead, John describes God by way of metaphor, in terms of colours and jewels in a way not dissimilar to his description of Jesus Christ in Chapter 1 where he described him in terms of metaphors relating to his personality. So let’s unpack verse 3 a little…

“And the one who sat there had the appearance of jaspar and carnelian.” Jaspar is a clear, translucent jewel so he is referring to the purity that emanates from the throne of God. Carnelian is an interesting jewel because it was also known as Sardius and came originally from Sardis and it was a red stone and in those days, the colour red often symbolised anger and divine judgement. Purity and the right to judge: these are the primary aspects of God’s personality that John encounters in the heavenly throne room.

But there’s something else about the fact that Jaspar and Carnelian are used here. In Exodus 39, there is a description of the robes the High Priest should wear and verses 8 to 21 describe the breastplate of the High Priest. And on the breastplate, there are four rows of jewels, twelve in all, we are told, to represent the twelve tribes of Israel: the people of God. And the first one is Carnelian and the last one is Jaspar. So we have held close to the heart of the High Priest the people of God, represented by the tribes of Israel, from the first (Reuben) to the last (Benjamin). In the same way, God holds us close to his heart in heaven and his identity is inextricably bound up with us, his creation.

And then, in the second part of verse 3 we read: “A rainbow, resembling an emerald, encircled the throne.” The rainbow encircles the throne – it is not just an arc above it and the rainbow in Genesis 9:16 is a symbol of God’s mercy and grace. So the throne of God is encircled with grace and mercy. But it is described like an emerald but the jewel referred to in the original Greek is a translucent jewel that will refract the rainbow and spread its colours out on everything else. So here is a symbol of God’s mercy and grace that spreads out over his whole creation.

So, in totality, verses 2 and 3 paint an incredible picture of God: his authority and power is the focus of heaven, he is pure and he has the power to judge but he holds his people close to his heart and grace and mercy flow from his throne. It’s a beautiful picture of God, isn’t it? And, after all the difficult words we have heard in chapters 1 to 3, it is wonderful to be presented with a picture of the love and compassion and grace and mercy of our God who does not forget the covenant he has made with us and has no intention of obliterating the earth again.

Verse 4: “Surrounding the throne were twenty-four other thrones, and seated on them were twenty-four elders. They were dressed in white and had crowns of gold on their heads.” OK, let’s work backwards through this verse to interpret it…

The twenty-four elders had crowns of gold on their heads and we are reminded of an earlier reference to this because the Christians at Smyrna were promised crowns if they persevered. Now, there are two words for ‘crown’; one is ‘diadem’, which refers to the crown worn by those in government who have authority over us and the other is ‘stephanos’, which refers to the crown of victory given to the athlete who has run and won the race. And the word used here is ‘stephanos’: the crowns are being worn by the twenty-four elders who have won the race and received the crown as their reward.

And we are told that they are dressed in white, which reminds us of the letter to the Christians at Sardis who were told they would walk in white garments if they too persevered. So the twenty-four elders are those who have won the race, those who have persevered and they sit on thrones, which reminds us of the letter to the church at Laodicea where the Christians were promised the right to receive a throne if they persevered.

The twenty-four elders on the throne, dressed in white and wearing crowns are the people of God who have persevered in the faith and have overcome trials and temptations and have remained faithful. God willing, the twenty-four elders are you and me…

But why do they number twenty-four in total? There are many different views about this and, as I have studied the Greek this week as well as Jewish history in order to find an interpretation, I confess that I have changed my mind about what I previously believed! So I don’t want to say that I am offering a definitive truth here - only my own opinion.

A common interpretation is that the twenty-four elders represent the people of God throughout all time. There were 12 Patriarchs, representing the people of Israel in the Old Testament. There were 12 disciples, representing the followers of Christ since New Testament times. Add the two together – the Old Testament faithful and the New Testament faithful and we get twenty-four elders: the people of God throughout all history. There is a lot of support for that view and I have certainly held that belief for the last 25 years.

However, I think I am now persuaded of an alternative explanation that comes from 1 Chronicles 24 and 25. In 1 Chronicles 24:4, there are twenty-four elders who were called to carry out the priestly functions in the Temple. And in 1 Chronicles 25, there were twenty-four elders chosen to look after the worship in the Temple. Given how the rest of Revelation 4 pans out, and the activity of the twenty-four elders, it seems to me plausible that they represent all of us who have persevered and that our ministry for all eternity will be to praise and worship God and to interceded for the world in prayer before the throne of God. Again, an amazing concept: that we are called to an eternity of worship and prayer in the throne room of God! And it certainly accords with 1 Peter 2:5, where Peter says: “You are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”

Verse 5 and 6: “From the throne came flashes of lightning, rumblings and peals of thunder. Before the throne, seven lamps were blazing. These are the seven spirits of God.” The flashes of lightning and peals of thunder are reference again to the authority of God to judge. They draw us back to Exodus 19:16, when Moses was on Mount Sinai: “On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, with a thick cloud over the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast. Everyone in the camp trembled.” And it’s an idea that we find in other Biblical visions of the authority of God too, for example: Ezekiel 1:13, “Fire moved back and forth among the creatures; it was bright, and lightning flashed out of it.” Psalm 18 is another portion of Scripture that draws a link between the storm and the almighty power and glory of God. And there are other passages we could look at if we had more time…

And before the throne are the seven spirits of God. We have looked at this in chapter 1 several times and seen that this refers to the Holy Spirit, so we don’t need to go into that again now: but just to note the stress that this passage is intensely Trinitarian; Christ invites John into the throne room, the Father is represented on the throne and the Spirit is before the throne.

And then we come to verse 6, which is very interesting and actually has no precedent in the writing of any other Biblical prophets: “Also before the throne there was what looked like a sea of glass, clear as crystal.” John is clear that this is a metaphor: it is “what looks like a sea of glass” and we come across this metaphor again in Revelation 15. But I think there’s two things going on here…

In the Bible, the sea is often used as a metaphor for chaos and disorder, which is why the stories of Jesus calming the storm and Jesus walking on the water are so important because they speak of Jesus bringing order out of chaos. And, when we get to Revelation 21:1, we read that there is no sea in the New Jerusalem meaning that there is no chaos or disorder in heaven. But here, in Revelation 4, the sea is like glass: there is a purity about it and it is ordered and beautiful so the metaphor might be slightly different. I think what is being signalled is the distance set between God and creation: there is a distance between the Creator and the Created and we need to always remember that distance and treat God with the respect he deserves. God is unique and holy and set apart and the sea of glass reminds us of that.

But around the throne are four living creatures and the description of them in verses 6-8 is fascinating…The vision of these four creatures has similarities to the visions recorded in Ezekiel 1 and Isaiah 6 - but are not exactly the same. As we might expect, there are many interpretations as to what these are and we can only hazard a guess. But the fact that there are four would likely reflect the whole of creation: North, South, East and West – the four corners of the world. In Ezekiel 10, we read of the cherubim as having four faces: a calf, a man, an eagle and a lion so these are probably cherubim. And in Isaiah 6, we read in the vision of the seraphim, that they each had six wings. So it seems likely that what is being described here are angelic beings used by God to care for the whole of creation with their bodies covered in eyes, because God is all-seeing, all-knowing.

And now we come back to the heart of activity in heaven: The angels never cease praising God. ‘Holy, holy, holy’ is what they cry out day and night and, as they do so, the twenty-four elders, representing God’s people fall down in constant praise. So here we have, in symbolic language the whole of heaven and earth joining together in constant praise for God, the people of God and the angelic hosts of heaven worshipping continually.

And the ascription they offer to God is interesting: “Who was, and is, and is to come”. What is being stressed here is that all of creation and all of time itself is defined by the nature of God. The past was God-filled: “Who was”. The present is God-filled: “Who is”. The future can only be understood within the notion of the one “who is to come”.

And so, when the twenty-four elders, the people of God, worship him, they lay their crowns in submission before Almighty God and say: “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.” It is fascinating that this is an ascription to the glory of God that is seeped in Old Testament imagery – except for one phrase: “Our Lord and God” is not a phrase that was used in the Old Testament but it is a phrase the hearers in the seven churches would have known because it is the title that was given to the Emperor Domitian! So even here, where we think we have left the pragmatics of the world behind and entered the heavenly realm, there is still a very clear statement about the authority of God over the rulers of the world and the Emperors. There is only one “Lord and God”: and it’s not Domitian!

And there’s one more thing here which is particularly interesting, I think: “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power.” The verb “receive” is in the aorist tense, which usually suggests a single action. We often read this verse as meaning that God receives, continuously, glory and honour and power through our worship of him but I don’t think it is saying that. Instead, it is saying that there will be a single act through which he will receive glory and honour and power. And that single act that will glorify him clearly has something to do with creation because the whole verse says, “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.”

I think what is being hinted at here is that one day, when Christ returns, the whole of creation, the whole universe will be restored and renewed and, in that act of restoration and renewal, the name of God will be glorified and honoured.

So this is a quite incredible chapter of Scripture with so much going on in it and so much to take in. We learn that there is a different perspective to view things from, a perspective not our own, but a heavenly perspective. We learn that those who overcome and persevere in the faith will be ushered by Christ into the very throne room of God. We learn that ours is a God of mercy and judgement who carries the people of God close to his heart. We learn that God’s mercy is from everlasting to everlasting and that he is separated from us in holiness and glory. We learn that the people of God will be spending an eternity of praise before the throne of God and that we are joined in praise by the angels and archangels and all the company heaven, forever praising him and singing, “Holy, holy, holy”. We learn that, one day, all creation will be restored and the glory and power of God will be visible for all to see.

This is a passage of deep encouragement to us all. It is a passage that stresses love and mercy and compassion over judgement and assures us that, no matter how chaotic may seem from our perspective, there is a purpose and a plan and a future worth living for. The word of Revelation to us tonight lets us know that we are not alone but that we join with the whole church and the whole host of heaven in worshipping our God and King.

And that is our eternal destiny. Praise be to God!

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This story that we heard read from 1 Samuel about Hannah presenting her son in the temple is a beautiful story: a story of a loving mother who gives her child over to God and dedicates his life to the Lord. It’s a shame that we didn’t have the first 19 verses of that Bible passage read because it really is an incredible story, so let me paraphrase it for you if you don’t already know it.

Hannah was one of the wives of Elkanah, his other wife was called Penninah. And Elkanah had children by Penninah but Hannah was unable to have children. Now Elkanah was deeply in love with Hannah and he was distressed for her inability to have children and the way in which people gave her hard time about it.

And one day, Hannah went to the temple to pray about her condition and she was crying as she prayed and she prayed silently but her lips were moving and the priest who was there, Eli, thought she was drunk and he scolded her. But she told him the situation she was in and promised that, if she did bear a son, she would dedicate him to God. Eli gave her a blessing and continued to pray for her and, to cut a long story short, Hannah fell pregnant by Elkanah and gave birth to Samuel. And it’s at this point that we join in the story with the reading on the pewsheet.

And, in its context, we see that this is a story about pain and healing and the power of God to meet with us in our anxiety and sorrow.

Hannah was a woman with a broken heart, a woman whose life had not turned out how she thought it would, a woman who was living with the pain of regret. As a child, no doubt, she had dreamt of meeting the man of her dreams and settling down into a happy life and having children and watching them grow into adulthood: the sort of dream we might all have when we are young. But we all know, don’t we, that life rarely turns out how we thing it will: we encounter tragedy, we encounter pain, we suffer loss and we know what it is for our hearts to break when the fairytale of childhood is ripped apart by the stark reality of the rawness of life.

So there is a sense in which Hannah acts as a metaphor for all of us who have encountered tragedy in our lives and those of us for whom life has not turned out how we thought it would when we were children – or younger than we are today.

I’m sure that many of us here today know what it is to have a broken heart. So what do we do with a broken heart?

The example of Hannah to us in this story is that we take our brokenness to God. Hannah, in the first part of this story, went to the Temple and poured out her pain to the God who listens and hears us. Even when it seemed that there could be no happy ending for her, she went into the house of God and poured out her agony and distress to him.

Where do we go when we are in distress? The temptation, of course, is to lose ourselves in the agony, to hold it all within and to be eaten up inside with stress. But Hannah shows us a better way. We have a God who wants to hear us and share our pain and agony, a God who wants to hold us in our broken-heartedness, a God who wants to bring us comfort.

And Elkanah gives us the same example. Here was a man who had a broken heart because he was watching the person he loved most suffer. Perhaps you have experienced that – or are experiencing that now: and there is no greater agony than watching the person you love go through sufferings that you can do nothing about. There is a broken-heartedness about watching the pain of someone else, knowing that you are powerless to do anything about it. And Elkanah, who felt such deep distress for Hannah, never stopped worshipping God either. He went to the temple on a regular basis and made offerings to God and no doubt poured his heart out to God on behalf of his beloved Hannah.

This is a story of two broken hearts: Hannah who knew the pain of not being able to conceive and Elkanah who knew the pain of watching his loved one suffer. And both of them brought their agony to the Lord in prayer.

Whatever the historic value of this story the idea of a barren womb is an important metaphor in Scripture because we see something quite incredible through the stories we encounter.

First, we encounter Sarah who was unable to have children. Then, we encounter Rachel who was unable to have children. Then we encounter Ruth who was unable to have children. And in the New Testament, we read the story of Elizabeth who could not have children and then finally, Mary who even though her condition was different, she was a virgin and therefore not in a position to have children.

5 women who could not have children. 5 women in whose lives God performed an incredible miracle. And what do we see?

Sarah gave birth to Isaac – one of the patriarchs of the faith. Rachel gave birth to Joseph – who transformed a nation. Ruth gave birth to Obed – the grandfather of King David. Elizabeth gave birth to John the Baptist. Mary gave birth to Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour. It’s quite incredible that the greatest men in biblical history  were born out of a miraculous work of God in a most intimate way.

And that gives us real hope for ourselves, that it is exactly at the place where our heart breaks the most that the deepest healing can come and God can work his greatest miracles in our lives. Our brokenness is the very place where we can encounter God’s miraculous grace.

Some people have carried a broken heart for many years over an event or series of events that happened in their lives. Some people have a broken heart for the way life is today and the circumstances they find themselves in. And, in our pain, we rightly ask of God, “How much longer is this going to go on?” We feel the pain of David in Psalm 22, echoed in the words of Jesus on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And life can often feel like that, can’t it? It can feel like we are forsaken by God. But both David and Jesus – like Hannah and Elkanah - brought their feelings of brokenness to God in prayer and both of them, in their own way received the miracle of God’s presence and healing and victory in their own lives.

Today is Mothering Sunday when we can give thanks to God for the Mother Church and we can give thanks to God for our own mothers too. But it’s also a day when we can reflect on the Mother Heart of God, our Father God who meets us in our broken-heartedness with motherly affection.

God wants us to bring our brokenness to him. God can cope with our tears and our anxieties. God can cope with our fears and our anger. Jesus says, “Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest”. Our Father God shows motherly affection in meeting us in the darkest places of our lives. And, as he did with Hannah, as he did with Elkanah, as he did with David and as he did with Jesus, God will tend to our needs and meet us with grace and compassion and mercy and will pour out healing love into our hearts.

For Hannah, there was the miracle of a reversal of fortune: the womb that once was barren carried a child and that was part of her healing. For Jesus, there was no such reversal of fortune: he still had to walk the way of the cross and die but his healing came three days later as he was raised to new life. As God meets us in our brokenness, we may receive a reversal of fortune or we may be given the strength to bear what currently seems unbearable but we can be confident in the motherly affection of our Father God who will not forsake us or abandon us at our time of need.

In the Beatitudes, Jesus says, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” If you are in a place of mourning today, a place of brokenness, feeling frail and vulnerable and lost, bring it to the Lord in prayer and he will give you the comfort and the strength you need to face your pain.

God promises to soothe our sorrows. The heart of our Father God is overflowing with Motherly affection and we come before him now, confident of his love and care and compassion and we know that he sees us and he hears us and will restore us once again.

Praise be to the God of all comforts, for he has met with us this morning and brings us healing and peace.

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Tonight, we are coming to the last of the seven letters. The messenger has journeyed more than 200 kilometres round the circular route, the main road running around Asia Minor and on the way, he has stopped off at churches varying in size and power and wealth and faithfulness, varying in doctrinal purity and style of worship, varying in passion and the pursuit of God. And, to each of these has been delivered a highly personalised message yet together, a group of messages that speak as powerfully to us today as they did to the first hearers. We have had major aspects of our own corporate and personal faith challenged and we have been encouraged too. And we’re still only on Chapter 3 – there’s another 19 Chapters to go yet! So, our messenger is on the last leg of his journey and he is now about 160 kilometres from Ephesus, at the town of Laodicea.

Compared with Philadelphia, which we looked at last week, we know quite a lot about Laodicea. Laodicea still exists – and is known today as Laodikya. It was originally situated on a hill between some valleys next to two rivers, Asopus and Caprus. But the rivers themselves were not that helpful because warm, tepid water ran through the streams that were full of lime - and limescale clogging up city pipes and plumbing was part of the ongoing problems of the city.

When the town was built originally, it was known as Diospolis, which means ‘City of Zeus’ then it became ‘Rhodas’ until, eventually, it was renamed Laodicea in honour of the wife of Antiochus II, who was called Laodice. So Laodicea became Laodicea about 255BC or thereabouts.

Laodicea soon became a very prosperous town. It was really well situated for trade and became one of the most influential economic centres in Asia Minor. Like some of its neighbouring towns, there was a flourishing wool trade there and they produced a particular type of black wool for clothing and the money rolled in. You remember the earthquakes of AD 17 and AD 60, when some of the cities received financial support from the Roman Empire and taxes were halted in order to help them rebuild? Well, Laodicea was offered the same assistance – but declined it: they felt they were rich enough to sort out the mess themselves!

Laodicea was a well-advanced cultural centre. Archaeology has shown that the city had plenty of Greek art adorning its walls and there was a strong emphasis on literature, poetry and writing too as well as beautiful sculptures and monuments. The infrastructure of Laodicea was impressive: a stadium, a gymnasium, a number of theatres, subterranean passages for chariots and horsemen, an impressive gate into the city, colonnades and sarcophagi and an aqueduct, using the most modern technology.

Science wasn’t neglected and there was a large medical school in Laodicea and it was famous for producing an ointment for the eyes to bring healing to bad eyesight.

And Laodicea was so rich and influential, such a strong banking centre that they even minted their own coins in the city and the inscriptions on the coins showed an allegiance to Zeus, Aesculapius, Apollo and the Roman Emperors, of course.

Laodicea was what was known in the Roman Empire as a ‘free city’. As well as adherence to the Empire and the Greek gods, there was a large Jewish population in the town too and the rich Jews sent 9kg of gold each year to the Temple in Jerusalem towards its upkeep and ministry.

Not surprisingly, Laodicea had a strong church flourishing there. It is mentioned in Paul’s letter to the Colossians and it is likely that Epaphras, from Colossae set the church up in Laodicea and that it met in the house of Nympha. Paul certainly wrote a letter to the church in Laodicea because, in Colossians 4:15-16, he writes: “Give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea, and to Nympha and the church in her house. After this letter has been read to you, see that it is also read in the church of the Laodiceans and that you in turn read the letter from Laodicea.” Sadly, that letter seems to have been lost now. But the church at Laodicea flourished. There was a line of early Bishops there; which still exists for the Catholic Church and it was also the venue for an early church Council.

So here we have a picture of a church located in a wealthy and proud city renowned for its banking, its clothing industry and its healing eye ointment but whereas the other churches have been a mirror image of the city, the opposite seems to be true at Laodicea. As one writer on Revelation, Michael Wilcock, has said, the city and the church “are contrasted. The church is the image of the city reversed in a black negative.” We’ll see what he means as we move through the passage.

So what message does Jesus have for the Christians there? Well, I warn you now, it’s not pretty…Let’s turn to the letter and see…

The Letter

Verse 14: “To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation.” From the very beginning, Jesus is affirming himself as the embodiment of the truth of God. “These are the words of the Amen.” Amen means something like, “So be it” and it is also the title ascribed to God in Isaiah 65:16, which reads as ‘the God of truth’ or, in some versions ‘the God whose name is Amen.’

Jesus presents himself to the Laodiceans as the guarantee of the truth of God into their situation. And then he strengthens that claim by making it a second-time but with different words: “The faithful and true witness”. These words may have felt encouraging to the Laodiceans when they first heard them but, in reality, Jesus is setting himself up as faithful and true in direct contrast to the Laodiceans who are unfaithful and false in their witness.

And then Jesus describes himself as ‘the ruler of God’s creation’ or, more accurately in the Greek, ‘the beginning [or first] of God’s creation’. Again, this is a claim to his authority but I think there’s something particularly clever about Jesus’ use of this phrase given the fact that he was writing to the Laodiceans…

Two things we’ve already noted: First, there was a large Jewish population in the city and presumably many Jewish Christians. A key text in Jewish spirituality is Proverbs 8 and in verse 22 of Proverbs 8, we read: “The Lord brought me forth as the first of his works, before his deeds of old.” So this is a self-description of Jesus that spoke into the very heart of Jewish spirituality. But also remember that the church in Laodicea had received Paul’s letter to the Colossians and how does that letter start, verse 15? “[Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.”

So in describing himself this way in Revelation 3, Jesus is reminding the Laodicean believers of their dual heritage: their Jewish heritage and their distinctly Christian heritage. He is drawing them back to the beginning of their faith, reminding them of their roots so when he comes to critique their present practices, they will know just how far they have fallen…

Just as an aside, we might think that this self-description is not linked to the vision in Chapter 1 but that’s not the case because the link is subtly made. When Jesus describes himself as the beginning of God’s creation, what he means is that he is the source of God’s creation, which is the same idea as him being the Alpha as in 1:17, where he says, “I am the first and the last.” So the link is made, but with a subtly different use of language.

And so we move on to verse 15, which starts with those words that are now so familiar: “I know your deeds”. These words have sometimes been spoken in compassion and sometimes they have been spoken in anger. And when they have been spoken in anger what has normally followed is a litany of all the things the churches have done wrong: accepted false prophets, tolerated false worship, having the name of being alive whilst being dead and so on…But there is no such litany here; it reads almost as if Jesus is exhausted and tired and is at the point of giving up with this church. “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other!”

In fact, the comparison is stronger in the Greek: “You are neither very cold or boiling hot”. The Laodiceans don’t reject the Gospel - but they don’t embrace it with passion either. The Laodiceans don’t do anything particularly immoral - but they don’t have any zeal for God either. The Laodiceans don’t reject Jesus – but they don’t seem to embrace him either. They are not cold and they are not boiling hot: they are just lukewarm…

The Laodiceans would have known all about that. The waters in the rivers and springs of Colossae, where their sister church was, ran pure and icy cold. The waters in the rivers and springs of the Hierapolis, geographically nearby, ran boiling hot, like geezers. But the rivers and springs from Laodicea, Asopus and Caprus, were lukewarm and tepid and full of limescale. What a terrible comparison to draw with their faith! The cold waters of Colossae brought refreshment but the Laodicean church couldn’t provide that. The hot waters of the Hierapolis brought healing but the Laodicean church couldn’t provide that either. They were lukewarm and full of spiritual limescale, clogging up the pipes of spirituality. A damning judgement from God…

And Jesus says to them: “I wish you were either one or the other!” He would rather be in dialogue than an honest atheist than a lukewarm Christian! Jesus will embrace a non-believer before he will embrace a self-satisfied religious man. Be either cold or hot – but don’t be lukewarm.

And so we read perhaps the harshest words of Christ in the Bible, in verse 16: “So, because you are lukewarm – neither hot nor cold – I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” Now, let’s unpack that phrase a bit…

“Spit you out of my mouth” - that is a rather polite translation. The idea, really, is about vomiting us out of his mouth, the idea is that lukewarmness makes Jesus, literally, sick to his stomach and he will throw up at the thought of a lukewarm Christian. That’s hard to hear, isn’t it? Excuse the pun, but it’s difficult to stomach…The idea that we lukewarm Christianity makes Jesus want to throw up is a hard thing to listen to: but it’s what the Scripture says…

So, if you’re anything like me, this passage will fill you with fear: whenever I read it, I begin to get anxious and fret that maybe I make Jesus sick to the stomach, maybe I am too lukewarm in my faith, maybe Jesus is going to vomit me out of his mouth. But even in the midst of such a harsh statement, there is still mercy and grace and compassion. Jesus says, “I am about to vomit you out of my mouth”. “I am about to…” There is still time for us to change, there is still time for us to become pleasing to God; the judgement is not an inevitability if we repent and follow him with passion. If we renew our faith and our zeal for God, Jesus will not vomit us out…we search our hearts and we make the changes necessary.

And, if we understand the verse in that way, we can read the rest of the letter to the Laodiceans not as the reality of judgement but as an urgent appeal for repentance. And so it is for us: Jesus is urging us to repent of our lukewarm faith so that we can be embraced by him in love. It is never too late with God…

And, in verse 17 and 18, Jesus speaks into their situation in words they would know well. “You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.” The Laodiceans, living in the heart of the banking sector of Asia Minor, living in the shadow of the cloth mills, living in the shadow of the eye ointment factories, would have known what it was to be rich, to be well-clothed, to have good sight: what more could they possibly want or need?

But Jesus contrasts their faith with the city itself. They may have banks and clothes and eye ointment in abundance but, verse 17: “You do not realise that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.” Wow! What a contrast! Now we understand Michael Wilcock’s phrase that, “The church is the image of the city reversed in a black negative.” There is such complacency about the Laodicean Christians. They thought they had it all: but, in reality, had nothing. But such is the grace of God that he urges them to change their ways and, if they do, they will receive all they could possibly need and more.

And then Verse 18, one of the most incredible verses of Scripture, I think: “I advise you…” That is such a good phrase, isn’t it? “I advise you…” If Jesus advises us to do something, we’d have to be pretty stupid not to do it, wouldn’t we?

“I advise you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so that you can become rich”. We are talking about genuine wealth, spiritual wealth, not the type of short-term gain they can get from the bank.

“[I advise you to buy from me] white clothes to wear, so that you can cover your shameful nakedness”. Forget the specialised black wool from the factory: what you need is white clothing. And there’s a few Biblical themes here: We are reminded of the idea that white symbolises purity, we are reminded of Adam and Eve and the shame of their nakedness when they fell, we are reminded of passages in the Old Testament where nakedness is a sign of God’s judgement, for example:

Ezekiel 16:35: “You prostitute, hear the word of the Lord!..you poured out your wealth and exposed your nakedness in your promiscuity…I will bring upon you the blood vengeance of my wrath and jealous anger.”

Nahum 3:5: “’I am against you,’ declares the Lord Almighty. ‘I will lift your skirts over your face. I will show the nations your nakedness and the kingdoms your shame.’”

The wealth from black wool is not enough for the Laodiceans: Jesus offers them purity and forgiveness and restoration.

And then again in verse 18: “[I advise you to buy from me] salve to put on your eyes, so that you can see.”

There are far too many Biblical metaphors in verse 18 for us to look at fully: it’s an incredible verse in and of itself. But we are reminded of the wealth of faith: Jesus talks about that in Matthew 6:19-20: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasure in heaven…” We are reminded of Isaiah 55:1, where God says: “Come, buy wine and mil without money and without cost”. We are reminded of the many stories where Jesus healed the blind and in restoring their sight, used that as a metaphor for seeing God.

We can only scratch the surface of this incredible verse tonight but if you want some homework this week, why not sit with this verse for a week and a good Bible concordance or Google some words from it to see the wealth of Biblical teaching that lies behind it.

And when we get to verse 19, we are confirmed in our belief that this passage is not about judgement so much as Jesus urging us into a new future with him: a future that has passion and zeal for the faith as its hallmark.

“Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent.” Do you feel rebuked by God tonight? Do you feel disciplined by God tonight? I know I do! And that is a sure sign that he loves us and wants what is best for us. He has not rejected us, he has not vomited us out of his mouth. Instead, he speaks harshly to us in order to stir up our spirits so that we can enjoy life in all its fullness with him. This passage is not intended to make us fearful or depressed, this is a passage born out of love and compassion - tough love, yes, but love all the same.

And, again, this is an idea that fits well with the Jewish spirituality of the first hearers. Proverbs 3:11-12: “My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline and do not resent his rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in.” And the writer to the Hebrews, in 12:10-11, says: “God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.”

Jesus speaks harshly to the Laodiceans – and perhaps to us tonight but these harsh words are the gateway to a new and better life, the gateway to a life of fullness, shared with Jesus Christ himself.

And so we should understand the context of Rev 3:20, which I think is probably the most misquoted verse in Scripture! “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.” How many times do we hear that verse used in evangelism? How many times do we use this verse as a call to non-Christians to come into a relationship with Jesus?

It has nothing to do with that!

This verse is about the Laodiceans. This verse is written to professing Christians who have become lukewarm. This is not a call to faith for the first time, this is a call for lukewarm Christians to repent of their lack of passion and open the door again to the Saviour who we have become apathetic about. Perhaps this is a verse for you – it is certainly a verse for me!

And the language used in this verse reminds us of the Last Supper and the moment when Jesus shared a meal with those for whom he was about to die. And so, as believers, we realise again just how important it is to come to Holy Communion on a regular basis so we can re-enact our response to this call and see Holy Communion as a deeply spiritual moment when we are earnest and repent and are re-opening the door of our lives to Jesus so that we can eat with him and he can eat with us.

But this verse, of course, looks forward as well as backward. It reminds us of the Last Supper but it also gives us hope for the Supper that is to come, Luke 22:29-30: “And I confer on you a kingdom, just as my father conferred one on me, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.”

And that reference to Luke 22 brings us nicely onto the next verse, Revelation 3:21: “To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne.” Jesus is drawing our minds back to his Luke 22 discourse here: the sitting, the eating, the drinking, the receiving of a throne: it’s all here…

Jesus is drawing together the Present and the Future, saying that how we respond Today will impact how we are Tomorrow. Will we open the door tonight? Will we allow Christ to sit and eat with us tonight? If so, there will be a throne waiting for us in the Kingdom and that is an amazing promise…

In fact, we cannot imagine any higher honour to be bestowed on us. So isn’t it incredible that Jesus offers the highest honour to the Laodiceans: the church that seems to have fallen the furthest? How amazing is God’s grace? We read of Christians who are lukewarm and apathetic, Christians whose lack of passion make Jesus sick to his stomach and yet, he offers them forgiveness and grace and mercy on such a grand scale that they will receive the greatest honour of all. The Last shall truly be First…

So, if tonight, you have felt convicted of a lukewarm attitude towards Jesus, there is still waiting for you forgiveness on a grand scale and the greatest honour Jesus could possibly bestow: a seat in the throne-room of God for all eternity.

“Be earnest and repent.” That is Jesus’ advice to us and what folly if we refuse to follow it…

And that completes the first three chapters of Revelation, the first section, if you like. And what a journey we have come on! We have thought about the trials and persecutions of the Apostle John on Patmos and seen a beautiful vision of the risen Christ. We have been taken on a journey around Asia Minor reflecting on the spiritual state of seven churches, which is the whole church and is each one of us: Sometimes purpose-driven, sometimes persecuted; Sometimes adhering to truth, sometimes embracing false ideas about God; Sometimes worshipping in purity, sometimes tolerating false worship; Sometimes persevering, sometimes lapsing into apathy and lukewarmness; Sometimes arrogant, sometimes humble; Sometimes rich, sometimes poor; Sometimes loving, sometimes full of hate and harsh criticism. The first 3 chapters of Revelation have acted as a mirror being held up to our own churches and to our own souls. We have received commendation and critique, forgiveness and judgement, discipline and tolerance. But, in the midst of all that, the Spirit of God continues to walk amongst us, urging us to look back and remember, urging us to hold on to what is good, urging us to move into a more beautiful future with God.

These 3 chapters have been a spiritual rollercoaster but I hope that, in their totality; they have brought us deep encouragement in our faith because they form one of the most beautiful and incredible sections of Scripture.

Next week, we will move on to the second section of the Book of Revelation, which comprises Chapters 4 through to 7. We will be encountered by creatures and elders, lambs and scrolls, seals being broken open, 144,000 people from the tribes of Israel, a great multitude in white robes and the threat of rocks falling on the rulers of the earth. The adventure of Revelation is just starting!

But in the meantime, we take tonight’s passage with us and we pray that God would open our ears so that we may hear what the Spirit says to the churches…

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In every church I have ever served as parish priest, the same moment of timid enquiry has happened: sometimes after me being there 6 months, sometimes after a year but sooner or later, the same question has been asked of me by a slightly nervous Warden or Treasurer…“Steve, do you mind if we sell raffle tickets?”

And this nervousness about Raffle Tickets, or Tombolas seems to be a universal concern amongst churches, not least because of this passage about Jesus turning over the tables in the Temple. It seems that this is how we interpret this passage: Jesus doesn’t want the church to be turned into a marketplace so he is inevitably unhappy with raffles and tombolas and bric-a-brac sales and, in fact, any fundraising events that happen within the four walls of the church building. Because it’s OK to have those events in the Church Hall. Jesus doesn’t seem to mind that: in fact, he commends it because that is known as ‘Good Stewardship’. But as soon as we put those events on within the four walls of the church building, suddenly, Jesus’ pleasure turns into unimaginable wrath…

Or so we may think…

But is that really what this passage is about? I don’t think so…

There are very few passages that appear in all four Gospels so when they do, we realise just how important that story must be. The story of Jesus cleansing the Temple does appear in all four Gospels but there is an important difference we need to note. In the Synoptic Gospels – Matthew, Mark and Luke - the story comes during Holy Week right at the end of Jesus’ ministry. But in John’s Gospel, the story comes right at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Now we know that each Gospel writer had a different intention in putting their story together and we know that Matthew, Mark and Luke were more historically accurate and that John tends to use stories about Jesus as metaphors and symbols. And so it is not a historical error for the story to be in two different places in the life of Jesus.

In reality, the event probably happened during Holy Week. It is likely that this event was the last straw for the religious authorities and it was for this reason that they decided Jesus had to be killed because he was now threatening the very fabric of the religious institution. But John puts it at the beginning of his Gospel because the Cleansing of the Temple, for John, is a metaphor for the ministry of Jesus in its totality. John’s understanding is that Jesus came to renew the Jewish faith to challenge our institutional views of God and to bring both passion and purity back into the worship of God.

So let’s review this story and see what we have to learn from it in our context today.

Jesus went up to Jerusalem for the Passover. This was the custom for all Jewish males, to go at least once in their lifetime to Jerusalem for the Passover. So when Jesus arrived in the city, there would have been thousands of people there, a huge crowd crammed into the narrow city streets and an incredible bustle and noise in the temple itself. A chaotic scene – but a highly excitable and thrilling experience for everyone there. And, of course, it was a time for peak business for all the religious artefact traders; selling lambs and oxen and pigeons for sacrifices and appropriate food to eat for that season and all the other bits and pieces that would be associated with Temple worship.

And Jesus walked into the Temple into the midst of all the chaos and the noise and the hustle and the bustle. And he looked around him at the pilgrims and the prayerful the tradesmen and the touts and his emotions rose to fever pitch. It would be wrong to suggest that Jesus got caught up in the heat of the moment. We read in verse 15 that Jesus made a whip of cords. He took time to reflect and time to make the whip: the actions of temple cleansing were not done in the heat of the moment. He had time to reflect and think through what he was going to do.

And then the anger of Jesus becomes evident: he drove out the sheep, he drove out the cattle, he scattered the money all over the floor, he overturned the tables, he threw out the dove sellers. No-one was spared the anger of Jesus in that moment. And then he shouts, “How dare you turn my Father’s house into as market!”

This act of Jesus is an act of disruption: not disrupting the events of that day in the Temple but an act of disruption that cut to the core of the historic Jewish faith and all it stood for. This is a moment of crisis: not for the dove sellers and the money changers: there would always be more doves to sell, more currency to trade. This was a moment of crisis for the people of God.

Jesus was saying that the old way of doing faith was no longer appropriate, that the heart of faith had become lost in the ritualism, that it was passion for God that had sold out, not pigeons for sacrifice. Jesus is confronting the people of God with a deeply uncomfortable truth: this was a moment for them to re-assess. Was it enough for them to be tied to their ritualism or did they need to find the heart of their faith once more?

It’s important to say, though, that Jesus was not opposed to Jewish tradition and not opposed to the rituals of Judaism per se. Jesus was a Jew, born and brought up steeped in the law and the ways of the synagogue. And it was because he was a committed Jew that Jesus overturned the tables in the temple.

He was acting in the line of the prophets, in the line of Micah who, hundreds of years before had written: “Will God be pleased with thousands of rams, with 10,000 rivers of oil…God has told you what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?”

Jesus was acting in the line of the prophets, in the line of Amos who challenged Israel with these words: “’Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them,’ says God, ‘but let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.’”

Jesus was acting in the line of the prophets, in the line of Jeremiah who proclaimed: “Do not trust in the deceptive words, ‘This is the temple of the Lord’. But act justly. Do not oppress the alien, the orphan and the widow. Do not go after other gods. Then I will be with you in this place.”

Micah knew, Amos knew, and Jesus knew that true faith cannot ever be expressed through empty rituals but that the rituals we undertake must be an expression of the real worship of our lives: Justice, Kindness, Humility, Non-oppression, Care for the Marginalised, Faithfulness and Righteousness. If our worship does not engage with these attitudes and actions, it is not true worship.

God is not primarily interested in beautiful worship, he is interested in pure worship - and the two are very different indeed: though not mutually exclusive.

But, by the time Jesus visited the temple on that day, the Jewish nation had lost sight of the difference. The purity rituals had become rituals of discrimination: Jews in the Inner Court, Gentiles in the outer court, Men in this section, Women in that section, Sacrifices the poor could afford, sacrifices the rich could afford. In the beauty of the ritual, the heart of purity had been lost and that had made Jesus angry and, as a prophet, he had to make a stand…

A theologian called Marcus Borg has said, “In the message and activity of Jesus, we see an alternative social vision: a community shaped not by the ethos and politics of purity, but by the ethos and politics of compassion.”

Jesus stood in the line of the prophets, calling for his religious institutions to forsake exclusive purity and forsake a desire for beauty and embrace instead compassion and acceptance and love for the marginalised. And if we are take worship seriously as a church in Linton, we must be sure that what we do on a Sunday is only reflective of the values we hold the rest of the week. We must not be primarily concerned with beauty in worship, although that is not to be despised of course, but it must never be our primary concern.

Instead, our true worship is worked out Monday to Saturday as we care for the vulnerable and the weak and the hurting, as we share the Good News of God’s love with our neighbours, as we model the forgiveness and patience of Christ within our families. That is our worship; that is the worship God requires of us - and what we do on a Sunday is a summing up, a bringing together of all that.

In a few moments time, we will be sharing in Holy Communion and we will hear the words of Christ at the Last Supper: “Do this in remembrance of me.”

Do what in remembrance of him?

Participate in a religious ritual just because that’s what we always do at the same time each Sunday? Surely not!

If that is what we are engaging in, I think Jesus would walk right down the aisle, throw the bread and the wine to the floor and overturn the table we gather round.

Do what in remembrance of him?

Show compassion to one another. Forgive one another. Tell our friends and neighbours the Good News of salvation. Pursue justice and mercy this coming week as we protect the rights of the vulnerable. Challenge the politics of greed and over-consumption in our materialistic world.

Do that in remembrance of him. And then the bread and the wine, which symbolise our union with Christ, will be filled with meaning.

Jesus said, "I give you a new commandment that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another."

We are to join with Christ in the line of the prophets and pursue true worship, truly pure worship, rather than seek comfort in beauty. Ironically, the pursuit of purity will inevitably mean that this church must get dirty but that is the way of Christ, that is the way of the cross.

Should the church sell raffle tickets or hold a jumble sale in these four walls? Do you think God really cares? As Micah reminds us, “What the Lord requires of you is to do justice, and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?”

Fulfilling that command must be our priority, our life’s work. Once we’ve got that sorted, we can worry about the morality of raffle tickets then…

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So tonight, we come to the letter to the church at Philadelphia, the sixth of our seven letters. We have considered Ephesus, the purpose-driven church, Smyrna, the persecuted church, Pergamum, the compromised church, Thyatira, the corrupt church, Sardis, the dead church. And tonight, we move road the circular road in Asia Minor and stop at Philadelphia, the faithful church.

Last week, we had a very hard message indeed to hear that challenged us to the very core. This week, there is a great deal for us to learn, of course but the anger of Christ has dissipated and, instead, we have a letter of real encouragement and blessing to this small band of faithful Christians in Philadelphia.

As always, we shall give some thought to the social context first before moving on to the content of the letter.

The Context

To be honest, there’s not much we can say about the historical context for this letter. Philadelphia still exists but it is now known as Alasehir, about 65 miles from Izmir.

Philadelphia was a fairly new city at the time John was writing. It had only been built in 189BC by King Eumenes II and he had called it Philadelphia, which means ‘brotherly love’ in honour of his brother Attalus II. Attalus took over the rule of Philadelphia when Eumenes died and in turn it went to his son, also called Attalus, Attalus III but that Attalus didn’t have any children so he bequeathed it to the Romans when he died in 138BC.

Philadelphia became an administrative district under the Romans and was best known for being a sort of regional post office. The Imperial Postal Service ran from Rome in the East right across the region and, because of the road system there, it was something of a crossroads through which many would travel. And it also had a flourishing grape industry, which was strong because of its location on a fertile plain near the Hermus River. Philadelphia was a prosperous city and it was a centre of worship for the god Dionysius.

Last week, when we were thinking about Sardis, we thought about the earthquake in AD 17 which damaged the city and the same thing happened to Philadelphia. It was badly hit and the emperor Tiberius relieved it of taxation so that it could be rebuilt by the citizens there.

Other than that, we know very little about the city during the period when this letter was sent to them. But we have a picture of a city and a people who lived in Philadelphia who were aware of their own weakness and the vulnerability of their situation despite the relative wealth from their grape industry.

And, in a sense, that was reflected in the church there, which was small and vulnerable as this letter from John suggests. And yet, as we will see, God had great plans for this small and struggling fellowship of believers. So let’s have a look at the letter and see what we have to learn from it…

The Letter

Verse 7: “These are the words of him who is holy and true, who holds the key of David. What he opens, no-one can shut, and what he shuts, no-one can open.”

Now this is a really interesting self-description by Jesus. So far, with the other letters, Jesus has described himself in terms that relate to the vision of him that we considered in Chapter 1. But this one is different. The description that Jesus gives of himself here has no relation to the self-description in Chapter 1.

Before we look at the description itself, I want to note, almost as an aside, that I think it’s important that at least one of these self-descriptions is not drawn from John’s vision because it shows us that John’s vision of Christ was incomplete. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is so transcendent and mysterious and so far removed from us in holiness and might that there is no way we can ever know him fully. If all the self-descriptions to the seven churches related to the vision in Chapter 1, we would be left with the belief that it was, in some sense, a complete vision and that everything we needed to know about Jesus was contained within it. But that is not the case. Even when we have had a vision of Christ, there is still more for us to see, more for us to learn…the depths of Christ are unfathomable. God is far greater than we could ever imagine.

So what do we learn about Jesus from this self-description?

Verse 7: “These are the words of him who is holy and true…”

Holiness is a word used time and time again in the Bible to describe God. In Isaiah 43:3, for example: “I am the Lord, your God, the holy one of Israel”. In Revelation 4:8, the living creatures in heaven cry out, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty”. We could go through dozens of verses…Very often, we think about holiness as relating to behaviour: we live holy lives, meaning we behave in pure ways. Well, there is a sense in which that is true if we want to think of holiness as a moral category. But if we want to think of holiness as a theological category, which are to do here, then it has a slightly different meaning. “Holy”, as a theological idea, means ‘set apart’. To call God ‘Holy’ is not to say that he behaves well! To call God holy means that he is set apart: he is separate from all creation, he is not created, he always was - from all eternity. The holiness of God is found in the fact that he is radically different. He is not the same as us, he is not the same as anything within creation: he is holy, he is set apart.

And so, in verse 7, we read that he is “holy and true”. And the same logic applies here: the idea of ‘true’ meaning ‘not a lie’ would be a moral category but we want to think of ‘true’ as a theological category and so ‘true’ in this self-description means ‘not an imitation’.

Jesus is saying to the Christians at Philadelphia: “I am God; I am set apart in my authenticity”. And, in saying this, Jesus is again making a claim for authority and power. The Philadelphians would have known all about false gods, particularly in the Temple of Dionysius, and Jesus is saying that he is not the same as these other gods: they are false, they are imitations, they are created whereas he is true, he is authentic, he is uncreated and set apart. And in his authenticity, in his ‘set-apartness’, lies his authority and power.

“These are the words of him who is holy and true, who holds the key of David”. In Chapter 1:18, Jesus said that he held “the keys of death and Hades”, so is that what he is referring to in this verse as the holder of the key of David? I don’t think so…It seems to be an allusion to Isaiah 22:22. In Isaiah 22, God talks about Eliakim, son of Hilkiah, and he says: “I will place on his shoulder the key to the house of David; what he opens no-one can shut, and what he shuts no-one can open.” So who was Eliakim? He was the Finance Minister to King Hezekiah and, as such, was the chief power under the King and exercised complete authority in the House of David. And so Eliakim is a Type for Christ: in the same way that Christ was known as the New Moses and the New Adam, so he was the New Eliakim too. All authority had been given to him by the King, his Father in heaven and he holds the key to the House of David, which is eternal life. And interestingly, the name ‘Eliakim’ actually means ‘God will establish’ and so it is through Christ and in the name of Christ that the Kingdom of God will be established on earth. “These are the words of him who is holy and true, who holds the key of David”.

“What he opens no-one can shut, and what he shuts no-one can open.” The idea of a door being open or shut was a common one in the Scriptures and the believers in Philadelphia would have been well aware of it. And always it relates to the idea of mission and evangelism: In Acts 14:27, the Paul and Barnabas are in Antioch and we read, “They gathered the church together and reported all that God had done through them and how he had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles.”. In 1 Corinthians 16:8-9, Paul says: “I will stay on at Ephesus until Pentecost, because a great door for effective work has opened to me.” In 2 Corinthians 2:12, Paul writes: “Now when I went to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ, [I] found that the Lord had opened a door for me.” In Colossians 4:3, Paul says: “Pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message…” So in this letter to the Christians at Philadelphia, Jesus is referring to their mission activity and saying that it is he, not them, that has ultimate control over it: He is the Lord of the harvest and the harvest will be reaped according to his will.

And there is a deep sense of release for us in that because it means we don’t have to shoulder the burden or carry the responsibility for mission and church growth. Our task is to proclaim the Gospel of Christ. Full stop. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to lead others to respond to that message. It is not our responsibility. All we need to do is remain faithful in proclamation and God will grow his church according to his will. He has the keys – not us. He opens doors – and no-one can close them. He closes other doors – and no-one can open them. Jesus Christ is Lord of the harvest: all we have to do is sow the seed and be available to him at harvest time to bring the crop in to the barns into the house of David, of which Jesus holds the key…

But we must also be mindful that ours is a God who both opens and closes doors. It is perhaps painful when a door has been open for a long time and the Lord closes it. It can be frightening when the Lord opens a new door and we have no idea what will happen if we step through it. I wonder what doors are opening for us in Linton? I wonder what doors are closing to us in Linton? We need to develop non-attachment to those doors which once were fully open and are now closing…We need to develop courage to step through those doors which once were closed but now seem to be opening for us…

Verse 8: “I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no-one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.” “I know your deeds.” We have heard that before, haven’t we? Jesus said the same to the church at Ephesus, he said it to the church at Thyatira, he said it to the church at Sardis…and we know that sometimes it has been said with love and compassion and sometimes it has been said with a hint of anger and disappointment. But here, in verse 8, we can see that Jesus is showing compassion to the believers at Philadelphia and commending them for their commitment to him and their works.

“I know your deeds…I know that you have little strength…” Here is a church, a congregation, perhaps small in size with few resources, struggling in their witness to the world - but Jesus sees them: he knows them he knows their deeds and he knows that they are feeling weak and fragile and vulnerable. But he commends them for their faithfulness: “You have kept my word and not denied my name.”

And this phrase, ‘have not denied my name’ is interesting because it uses a particular tense [aorist middle indicative] that suggests there have been specific occasions in the past when their faith was tested and they chose to stay true to Christ and resist the temptation to deny his name. Here was a church that would have had a much easier life if it had gone with the flow and taken the easy-route: but, instead, they chose to stay true to Christ despite the difficulties of doing so. And, as a result, there is a great promise given to them: “I have placed before you an open door that no-one can shut”. The word ‘open’ is in the Perfect Tense, which indicates a continuous action, so this door is open to them and will continue to be open to them. It is ‘a door standing open’. Even in their weakness and fragility, there is an opportunity for mission; an opportunity that will not be snatched away from them, an opportunity that God is not going to close to them just because they are too fragile at that time to maximise the opportunity. Our God is gracious, compassionate – and patient and he works with us in our weakness. Doors are open to us – and we may not feel able to walk through them right now - but he won’t close them; he’ll wait for us to be ready as long as the intention and the desire remains within us and doesn’t give way to complacency and apathy, as it did at Sardis.

And now we get to verse 9, which is very interesting: “I will make those who are of the synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews though they are not, but are liars – I will make them come and fall down at your feet and acknowledge that I have loved you.” What on earth does that mean?

In Isaiah 60:14, there is a prophecy to the Jews, which gave them a real expectation for the future: It says, “The sons of your oppressors will come bowing before you; all who despise you will bow down at your feet and will call you the City of the Lord, Zion of the Holy One of Israel.” The Jews had an expectation that they would remain the chosen people of God and that the Gentiles would one day come and bow before them and give them the glory and the honour. But in this passage of Revelation, Jesus reverses that and he says that the Jews will come and bow down before the Gentile Christians and will give them the glory and the honour. Jesus turns the tables and says that Christians are the true Jews and that those who have rejected him and held on to the old ways of Judaism are actually not the true Jews!

Some have argued that this is a verse that prophecies the conversion of Israel: that, one day, the Jews will realise their error and come to faith in Christ. Well, there may be passages of Scripture that argue for this (Romans 9-11 may be one of those passages) but we can’t infer that from Revelation 3:9. Instead, it reads more like a judgement on the Jews rather than a coming to faith on their part as if the time will come when they will realise their error but that it will then be too late for them to repent.

Verse 10: “Since you have kept my command to endure patiently, I will also keep you from the hour of trial that is going to come upon the whole earth to test those who live on earth.” This verse stands in direct contradiction to Jesus’ words to Smyrna: if you remember, back in 2:10, he told the Christians living there that they would have to endure persecution for a period of ten days. But the Christians at Philadelphia will be spared their suffering. We might read this as the same persecution which one church will endure and the other will be spared from but I don’t think that’s the case because the description of both of them are so different. Smyrna will suffer persecution to test the church. But the hour of trial mention in 3:10 is one that is coming to test the whole world, all those who live on earth. We will come across this phrase ‘the inhabitants of earth’ or ‘those who live in the world’ on two more occasions in Revelation: in 6:10 and in 11:10. And on both of those occasions, it refers to those people who are enemies of the Church who rejoice in its sufferings and even engage in acts of persecution themselves. And calling it ‘the hour of trial’ reminds us of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. In Mark 14, he is praying for release if it is God’s will and then, in Mark 14:41, he goes to his sleeping disciples and he says, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Enough! The hour has come…” Again, a link is made between this time of testing at the hands of those who hate the church and hate its Christ.

And so, because the Philadelphians have patiently endured and remained faithful, they will not experience the visitation of God on them in judgement which is a fate waiting to befall all those who persecute Christ and the church. And this protection of the true Church from judgement is a theme we will return to again over the coming weeks when we study Chapters 7, 11 and 12.

In verse 11, Jesus confirms that he is coming soon, which would have been wonderful news for the Philadelphians and would have encouraged them in their frailty and vulnerability. And they are promised a crown in the same way that the Christians at Smyrna were offered a crown, so we don’t need to go back over that metaphor again tonight.

And then, in verse 12, we have this curious phrase from Christ: “Him who overcomes, I will make a pillar in the temple of my God.” What an interesting phrase! What does it mean? Well, we are taken back again to the story of Eliakim in Isaiah 22. Eliakim, the holder of the key of David who had authority amongst the people of Israel and was a Type for Christ. But maybe he is more than just a Type for Christ, maybe he is a Type for all faithful Christians too. You remember in Revelation 2:26, in the letter to Thyatira, we were promised a share in Christ’s authority? Jesus said, “To him who overcomes and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations…” So, holding that idea in our minds, let’s re-visit the prophecy about Eliakim

in Isaiah 22:14 but this time, reading the next sentence too…“I will place on [Eliakim’s] shoulder the key to the house of David; what he opens no-one can shut, and what he shuts no-one can open. I will drive him like a peg into a firm place; he will be a seat of honour for the house of his father.” Eliakim will be like a peg in the house of his father but in the next verse we read: “’In that day’ declares the Lord Almighty, ‘the peg driven into the firm place will give way; it will be sheared off and will fall, and the load hanging on it will be cut down.’” Eliakim will be a peg in the house of his father and the load hanging on him is Israel but the peg is not strong enough and the load will fall. But the Philadelphians will not be a peg in the house of their father: they will be a pillar in the temple of God, they will be strong and secure and there is a permanency about them because, as we read in Rev 3:12, “never again will [God] leave [the temple].” Just as the Philadelphians had been told in verse 9 that they were the true Israel, now they are being assured that the blessings promised to Israel were now the blessings promised to them. But whereas the blessings to Israel had sheared off, the Philadelphians could rest assured in the permanency of their blessing.

If you ever look at the results of archaeology from that time and that region, you will see that Pillars often had inscribed on them the name of the person it was built to honour. And that’s the idea we see here in verse 12: “I will write on him the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which is coming down out of heaven; and I will also write on him my new name.”

Three names are inscribed upon us: The name of God is written on us: because we belong to him, perhaps in the same way we write the name of our child in their PE kit! The name of the city of God is written on us: because that’s where we belong, perhaps in the same way we write our address on our luggage labels! The new name of Christ is written on us and what is that new name? I have no idea! And that’s the beauty of it because Jesus will constantly be revealing new things about himself to us for all eternity. We can never know everything there is to know about Jesus. There is always more to be revealed to us, which is symbolised in his new name…

So there we have the letter from Christ to the Philadelphians, a letter, as we have come to expect, packed with revelations for us.

God is set apart from us in holiness and authenticity: he is the power and the authority over all creation.

God is the Lord of the harvest: he opens doors and he closes them.

God knows our weakness and our vulnerability in mission but he meets us where we are at, and encourages us.

If we remain faithful to him, we are part of the new Israel, the people of God and we will escape the judgement that is coming to the enemies of God and we will receive the crown of life and we will share in Christ’s power and authority in heaven.

And we are assured that we belong to God, that we are citizens of heaven and that there is waiting for us an eternity of fresh revelations about the person and nature of Jesus Christ.

So however weak and vulnerable we may feel right now, as individuals and as a church, we are to take great comfort from this passage and rejoice in the compassion of Jesus Christ, who is coming soon.

“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

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Here’s a poem by Stewart Henderson called ‘Splintered Messiah’:

I don’t want a splintered Messiah

In a sweat stained greasy grey robe

I want a new one

I couldn’t take this one to parties

People would say ‘Who’s your friend?’

I’d give an embarrassed giggle and change the subject.

If I took him home

I’d have to bandage his hands

The neighbours would think he’s a football hooligan

I don’t want his cross in the hall

It doesn’t go with the wallpaper

I don’t want him standing there

Like a sad ballet dancer with holes in his tights

I want a different Messiah

Streamlined and inoffensive

I want one from a catalogue

Who’s as quiet as a monastery

I want a package tour Messiah

Not one who takes me to Golgotha

I want a King of Kings

With blow waves in his hair

I don’t want the true Christ

I want a false one.

Today’s Gospel reading is a momentous story: a pivotal moment in the life of Jesus and his disciples, the moment it all changes…

The disciples are with Jesus in Caesarea Philippi, a village about 25 miles north of the Sea of Galilee. And it was a fascinating village because it was sort of the ‘retirement village’ for Roman officials: the Bournemouth of the Roman Empire, I suppose! And it was built in a valley surrounded by hills at the foot of Mount Hermon. Since the time of Alexandra the Great, it had been a capital of the cults: Caesarea Philippi was thought to be the birthplace of the god Pan and there were temples and idols aplenty for Pan built into the hills and likewise, there were idols to the god Ba’al Hermon and a temple dedicated to Zenodorus.

So, as the disciples walked with Jesus through the village, they would have looked around them at all the temples and the idols and the images of the gods and it was at that moment that Jesus chose to ask them a simple question: “Who do you say that I am?” In the midst of all the gods of the known world – who do you say that I am?

And Peter turns to Jesus and says, “You are the Christ”.

Perhaps Peter had known that truth for quite some time. Perhaps it was a realisation that came upon him as they walked past the temples and the idols in the village. But either way, this was a moment of realisation and declaration about the nature of Jesus Christ whom they were following. And we can imagine the quickening of hearts and the sheer intensity of the moment as the disciples confront Jesus with this truth that has dawned upon them.

And Jesus doesn’t deny it and probably the disciples wanted to go out and shout the news to everyone, to introduce them to the Messiah of God and announce this good news to the whole world. But Jesus says something very puzzling in verse 30, we read: “Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him.”

It was a stern response from Jesus: some version of the Bible say, “He rebuked them not to tell anyone about him” and they probably felt disappointed that they had to keep this a secret. So he wanted them to keep quiet about his identity but he went on to talk to them, and this is where our reading starts, about how the Son of Man would suffer and be rejected and be killed. And somewhat perversely we read in verse 32: “He said all this quite openly”. Keep quiet about the good news. Speak openly about the bad news.

And Peter is indignant about this and we read that he began to rebuke Jesus. Now it’s his turn: and the same word is used here to describe how Jesus had warned the disciples just a few moments ago and how Peter is now warning Jesus.

But then it’s Jesus’ turn again: the same word is used again in verse 33: “But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter”.

This is a heated exchange between Peter and Jesus; full of rebuke and warning on both sides.

And we can fully understand the human emotions involved here…Peter had spent many months with Jesus watching him heal the sick and cleanse the lepers and cure the blind and raise the dead and challenge the religious authorities. Peter had spent many months with Jesus watching the sheer strength of his ministry and the authority of his word. And now he was being confronted with a future filled with weakness and passivity and vulnerability. And Peter didn’t want that, he didn’t want a Splintered Messiah, he wanted a strong God. Like others in Israel, he was expecting a mighty leader from the line of David to overthrow the Romans and restore Israel politically.

With hindsight, it is easy to see that error but the reality is, we are uncomfortable with a Splintered Messiah. We all want a strong God too…When we are hurt in life, when we suffer loss, when we have to put up with thoughtless words from others, when we are sick or dying, we want a strong God. We want a God who will heal us or justify us or turn our darkness into light, we want a strong God.

But the problem is that we see strength from a very human perspective, not from a divine perspective. We understand strength to be the same thing as might, to be the same thing as vindication in the eyes of others. We understand strength to be victory. But that is a frail, human perspective.

In the eyes of God, strength looks very different. For God, strength is measured in vulnerability, in sacrifice and by our willingness to endure all things in the name of God. That was the example Jesus – the Splintered Messiah – was about to show for his disciples and that is how he wants us to live our lives too. Verse 34: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

How we trivialise that call on our lives. How we manage to turn such a scandalous phrase into something so tame and so parochial. “We’ve all got a cross to bear”: isn’t that such an easy saying to trip off the tongue? But it is an incredible call on our lives from the man who was walking towards Jerusalem to be tortured and hung on a cross to die.

Our Splintered Messiah.

I wonder if Peter felt let down at this point: I suspect so…Up until then, there was a certain glamour in following Jesus: he was hanging out with the coolest superhero in Israel, the crowds flocked to them, the miracles never stopped coming, the teaching was amazing, and no doubt Peter enjoyed bathing in the reflected glory of Jesus.

But now, that all changes…The glamour is gone and Peter is left with the cold, stark reality of the pain of discipleship and the agony of realising that if he truly wants to follow Jesus, he can’t have it all on his own terms. There is a real cost to discipleship. It is Splintered Discipleship. We can’t have God on our terms. We can’t create a cosy religion or a comfortable way of being.

We profess a Splintered Faith. We are members of a Splintered Church. There is a real cost to discipleship: and it hurts. There is a painful truth in this passage, that if we truly want to follow in the way of Christ then our individual lives and our corporate church life will become more complicated. It’s an uncomfortable truth but it is a truth governed by the knowledge that, as Jesus says here, “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

And so this is a passage, fundamentally, about our life, our identity: Where do we find our identity, as individuals and as a church? If we find our identity in our preferences or our comfort zones, then we will lose our identity because that is the nature of an impermanent, shifting world. That’s what Peter was discovering. But if we find our identity, our life, solely in Christ and in the gospel, we will save our identity because Christ and the gospel are eternal.

I am constantly challenged every day of my life: and perhaps you are too, to differentiate between what is of God and what is of my ego and sometimes, I can dress my ego up in such a way as to fool myself that my preference is of God. But I need to constantly be trying to lay aside the things of the ego and allow God to be at work in me. It’s a cliché – but I must desire less of me and more of God: as I die, so he can live.

And that is what this passage is about and what this period of Lent is about. Jesus was calling Peter into a place of self-reflection: to reflect deeply on whether he wanted Christ or whether he wanted his own idea of Christ, Does he want to be a disciple of Israel’s superhero? Or does he want to be a disciple of the Splintered Messiah? And we too are called into that same process of self-reflection throughout the period of Lent. What does it mean for us to die to self? What does it mean for us to die to our own ego? What does it mean for us to lay down our comfortable images

of Christ and the church for the sake of Christ and for the sake of the gospel?

Our lives are Splintered. This Church is called to be Splintered because the splinters of carrying the cross of self-sacrifice must scar our bodies, scar our corporate body. We are called to constantly die to our egos and live to Christ and it hurts because the splinters dig deep. “Whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.”

We can’t anticipate Lent by talking of Good Friday today. We can’t anticipate Good Friday by talking of Easter Morning today. We can’t anticipate Easter Morning by talking of the Ascension today. But we know how the story ends: The Splintered Messiah will ascend to the heavens, taking his splintered and scarred body into the presence of the Father where he will be glorified, because of his splinters, for all eternity.

I wonder if we can be courageous enough this Lent to embrace the splinters and the scarring and the pain of ego-death and self-sacrifice, knowing that we too will be resurrected in Christ and brought into the presence of the Father for all eternity? As Jesus says in this passage: “Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” But the risen Christ, in Revelation 3:5 has this to say: “He who overcomes will…be dressed in white. I will never blot out his name from the book of life, but will acknowledge his name before the Father and his angels.”

Our Messiah was Splintered but he overcame and was acknowledged by his Father in heaven. You may feel Splintered today. This Church may be Splintered today. But we rejoice in the splinter-marks of the cross in our bodies, in our corporate body and, if we remain steadfast, we too will overcome and our name will be acknowledged before the Father and his holy angels.

I want a Splintered Life.

I want a Splintered Church.

I want a Splintered Messiah.

Amen.

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OK, we’re working our way steadily through the Book of Revelation. We’ve studied the historical context. We’ve looked at the vision of Christ in Revelation 1. And we have looked at Chapter 2, the first 4 of the 7 letters to the churches: Ephesus; purpose-driven but lacking in love; Smyrna: persecuted by the Jewish population; Pergamum: under the influence of the Nicolaitans; Thyatira: tolerating corrupt worship, under the sway of the metaphorical Jezebel.

And tonight we move on to Chapter 3 and we come to the fifth church letter, this time sent to the congregation at Sardis. As always, we’ll look a bit at the cultural context and then move on to see what the letter itself has to teach us.

The Context

Sardis still exists but is known today as Sart and it had been a very important city:  the capital city of the ancient Lydia Kingdom. Sardis was planted in the middle of the Hermus Valley at the foot of a mountain and so it was built up on the side of the mountain like a huge citadel.

Sardis had an interesting history because it had been attacked many times because of its key location at a junction of 5 major roads in the Hermus Valley and because of the ingenuity of its build: it seemed to be an impregnable city, well-defended. And in AD17, it was partially destroyed by an earthquake but soon rebuilt.

Recent archaeology suggests that Sardis had perhaps the most elaborate synagogue in the Western diaspora at the time. And the sheer quantity of mosaics and Greek inscriptions that have been found suggest that the Jewish community was well integrated into Roman, civic life. And this is reinforced by the fact that the synagogue was part of a larger complex that included baths and a gymnasium.

Sardis was a key industrial location; the dye industry and manufacture of wool lay at the heart of its economy and it was also renowned for carpet making.

The stream Pactolus flowed through the market place and it was known to carry ‘golden sands’, which was actually gold dust from the nearby mountains and so Sardis was a place where people could literally pan for gold in river flowing through the city streets. It’s interesting right at the end of the Book of Revelation, chapters 21 and 22, that John describes a vision of the new Jerusalem, our eternal home and in 21:21 he writes, “The great street of the city was of pure gold” and in 22:1-2 he writes, “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life…flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, down the middle of the great street of the city”. That was a description of the new Jerusalem that would have meant a great deal to the people of Sardis reminiscent of a renewed version of where they already lived.

Anyway, with the city streets flowing with gold and the dye and the wool and the carpets and the strong fortifications, it seems that Sardis stood rich, proud and self-sufficient.

But all that was actually a grand exercise in self-deception because the reality was that Sardis was a city in decline. It was a city that lived on its past glories and paid little attention to the fact that it was declining. Its glory period was in the 6^th-century BC when it was ruled by King Croesus and it was an extremely wealthy city: you’ve heard of the saying, “Rich as Croesus”: Sardis is where it comes from.

And the people of Sardis still lived as if they were in the days of Croesus. They were too self-confident. And it was that self-confidence that had resulted in its two major downfalls. First, in 549BC, Sardis had been captured by the Persians and again by the Seleucids in 218BC and both times, the armies had attacked at night and come through a crack in the rock wall. But the people of Sardis were so complacent, they hadn’t bothered to put sentry guards on duty.

So here was a city that lived on past glories that was self-confident and complacent and in terminal decline, even though they refused to admit it. And the Jews in the city had become complacent in their own worship and were closely aligned to the ruling Roman authorities.

Sardis needed to wake up!

OK, let’s have a look at the letter

The Letter

Verse 1: “To the angel of the church in Sardis write: These are the words of him who holds the seven spirits of God and the seven stars.” As always, this self-description of Jesus refers back to the vision in Chapter One and there are two aspects to note:

“..him who holds the seven spirits of God”. As we thought about way back in week one, this is a reference to the Holy Spirit. There is only one Holy Spirit, equal and wholly present in every church throughout time, and he is referred to as the seven spirits to indicate the truth that the Holy Spirit dwells in each and every church in equal measure. And you might remember that it is also a reference to the prophecy about the Holy Spirit of God in Isaiah 11.

And the seven stars are the angels of the churches; the leaders of the churches, or the messengers and, again, the reference to seven is a symbol of completeness referring to all churches throughout time. And what is interesting, of course, is that Jesus describes himself again as the one who “holds” the seven spirits and the seven stars”. This again is a symbolic representation of his authority and control. The Holy Spirit of God is the Spirit of Christ and is sent by Christ into the world. In John 14:26, Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as the Counsellor and says that the Father will send him to us in the name of Jesus. Jesus holds the Spirit of God who will be sent in his name.

And then, immediately, Jesus is into the main issue of the letter. To Ephesus, he had commended them for their toil and works. To Smyrna, he had commended them for their perseverance in the face of affliction. To Pergamum, he had commended them for remaining true to his name. To Thyatira, he had commended them for their perseverance. But to Sardis, there is no such commendation. Jesus comes straight in with his critique, verse 1: “I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead.”

“I know your deeds”. It is notable, of course, that when Jesus is speaking to the Christians in Ephesus and Thyatira and says “I know your deeds”, there is something reasonably warm in his words. But here, as he speaks to Sardis, that warmth has gone. “I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead”.

This is such a sharp condemnation that cuts to the very core of their being. Sardis was a church that was highly regarded throughout Asia Minor. It was probably a bustling church, full of activity, not unlike Ephesus in that regard. But the reputation did not reflect the real truth of the spiritual state of the church.

And perhaps we come to the nub of the problem when we reflect on the self-description of Jesus to the church at Sardis as the one who holds the seven spirits. It seems that the church at Sardis may have been busy and active but they were not reliant on the Holy Spirit in their ministry. This church, the people in the church, were not filled with the Holy Spirit: like the city of which they were a part, they were relying on past glories, not present spiritual realities. A bit like when your car runs out of petrol: if you are on a slope, you can keep moving forward for a while but not through the power of the engine so much as the reserve of energy still to be dissipated. The car looks like it is projecting forward but there is no power.

A church that relies on its past glory and does not operate in the power of the Spirit can look alive and bustling and active for a while, maybe quite a long time but it is dying, it is emptying itself with each dying gasp and will eventually be seen for what it is…

Jesus is critiquing the church in Sardis because it had become a shrine to the good old days and the Christians were still living in Memory Lane!

It is a dangerous thing for a church to just go through the motions and to become a museum to the past. It is not what Jesus wants for his church. Instead, he wants the church to be a lively, vibrant community reliant on the ministry of the Holy Spirit

pursuing God in the Now, not God in the Then…

“You have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead”. This is a study in contrasts and is the complete opposite of how we should be as Christians. And I do mean the complete opposite: as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 6:9: “We are known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on…” The complete opposite of the church at Sardis, regarded as alive but dead whereas Paul describes the Christian as being regarded as dead but living on…

Perhaps the Christians at Sardis looked down the road to their brothers and sisters ion the church at Smyrna who were being persecuted and suffering and pitied them as though they were dead. Yet it was to the Smyrneans, not the Christians at Sardis that Jesus said: “He who overcomes will not be hurt at all by the second death”.

Sardis: the church that had a reputation of being alive, but was dead.

Sardis: the dead church because they were not moving in the power of the Holy Spirit.

And then comes the stern warning in verse 2: “Wake up!” or as the Greek has it, “Be watchful!” “Be watchful” is a better translation than “Wake up!” because to wake up would be a one-off act but the phrase used is in the Present Tense, indicating a continuous action. So, it’s not a one-off thing they need to do, like “Wake up”; it’s a continuous state of being they are being called to: “Be watchful!” And this would have spoken deep into the psyches of the people of Sardis; the city that twice in it’s history had been captured for the very reason that they weren’t being watchful! No sentry guard at night – and twice the enemy armies had infiltrated the city. Their complacency had cost them politically and Jesus is now saying that their complacency will cost them spiritually too.

And Jesus goes on to advise them: “Be watchful! Strengthen what remains and is about to die”. Even in this advice we see the compassion of Jesus. Just now he had said to them, “You are dead” but now he tells them to strengthen what remains and is “about to die”. So, even at this late stage, they are not fully dead. In the grace of God, there is still a chance for them to repent and get back on track.

The phrase, “what is about to die” is quite difficult to translate because it suggests that actions from the past will impact on what happens in the future. So the sense there is that the impending death is as a result of their complacency that goes back over a long period of time. And complacency is like that, isn’t it? It creeps up on us over a period of time and, in the end, the state of complacency feels so normal that we don’t recognise it as complacency anymore. Perhaps that is what had happened in Sardis…

And then in verse 2, Jesus continues: “I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God”. I just want to unpack this sentence a bit:

“I have not found…” The way this is written indicates the fact that Jesus has undertaken an examination in the past of their actions and he has come to a decision about them, which continues into the present. A bit like saying, “I don’t like brussels sprouts”: the idea is that I tried them once and I continuously don’t like them. So Jesus is here re-iterating his role as judge with authority and power over Sardis: he has examined their works and he has come to a judgement about them.

And what is the judgement? “I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God…” Again, the sense is that the deeds of the past have not been complete and they are still not complete at the present time: there is a continuous incompleteness about the works of the church in Sardis, almost as if their complacency has become a habit, a way of being.

It’s interesting, isn’t it, that the church of Sardis was not being persecuted by the Jews, it was not facing economic hardship at the hands of the Romans, it was not struggling against false teachers. There was nothing to trouble them at all because they had become so complacent and easy going and apathetic that they had no enemies! One commentator has said that Sardis was a church at peace. The problem is that it was the peace of the graveyard! They just trundled along, untroubled and untroubling to the world…And God has seen that, he has observed their deeds over a period of time and his judgement is that they are as good as dead.

It’s a sad and sorry state of affairs in Sardis.

So Jesus goes on with a recommended course of action in verse 3: “Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; obey it, and repent”.

They are to “remember” – and this is a present imperative, which suggests the need to hold in their minds: again, it’s not a one-off act of remembering they are being called to but a fundamental change to the way they think: “Remember…hold in your mind…stay mindful of…”

“Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard…” Actually, what the Greek says is “Remember, therefore, how you have received…” so it is not so much the message itself they need to remember but the manner in which it came to them. Perhaps Christ is calling to mind the authority of the disciples, perhaps John himself, and reminding them of the passion they had when they first received the Gospel from the first believers: the Christians of Sardis are part of a historic movement and they need to stay true to the passion of that movement.

“Obey it, and repent.” Obedience is, of course, an ongoing activity and perhaps Jesus is calling them to obey the teaching of the disciples who first brought the message to them. The church at Sardis was nurtured in the faith with passion and were called to a state of being filled with the Holy Spirit. They need to hold on to the reality of that history and make it their present experience by living out the Spirit-filled passion of the first disciples in their own walk with God.

Verse 3 continues: “But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I come to you.” The people of Sardis have been caught out before by the two invading armies and by the earthquake in AD 17 and all of these social events crept up on them like a thief. They know how that feels…And Jesus reminds them that he, too, will come in judgement on them.

Now this is not a reference to the Second Coming of Jesus because Jesus says he will come like a thief if they don’t wake up but the Second Coming is going to happen whether we are awake or not. This is a reference to Jesus visiting them in judgement prior to the Second Coming and they have the opportunity to avert that judgement if they change their ways and obey the historic faith that was delivered to them by the first believers.

And so we move on to the second part of this passage, verses 4-6, which are a bit more encouraging, I hope!

Verse 4: “Yet you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes. They will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy.”

This is an interesting passage for a number of reasons. First, Jesus says, “You have a few names in Sardis” and I think this contrasts nicely with the idea that the Sardis church as a whole has the name of being alive, but is dead. There are some names that are fully alive in their midst.

And they have not soiled their clothes…In Asia Minor at the time, dirty clothing in worship was taken as being an offence to the deity being worshipped and those who had dirty clothes were ejected from the Temple. But those names in the church whose clothing is clean, they are the ones whose worship is acceptable to God.

And “They will walk with me”, which is to say that they will live in a continuous relationship of intimacy with Jesus.

“Dressed in white”, we may think at first glance that this means they are pure but given the next sentence, that’s a bit unlikely. It’s more likely to refer to the fact that they have been justified by God and that their sins are forgiven. We are reminded of Isaiah 1:18 in which God says: “Come, let us reason together. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.” There were many wool-workers in Sardis who would have understood this…

“They will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy”. Well, none of us are worthy to walk with Christ – in our own merit: we become worthy when we walk in the power of the Holy Spirit and we receive the justification of God and the forgiveness of our sins.

Verse 5: “He who overcomes will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out his name from the book of life, but will acknowledge his name before my Father and his angels.” That is such a beautiful promise to receive. The Book of Life in the Old Testament was a register of all the names of people who held citizenship within the people of Israel. That is why the Book of Numbers was so important, for example

because it tells of the census that was taken at Kadesh Oasis. And we know, particularly from the Christmas story about the importance of the census for the Roman Empire and the need to have your citizenship recorded. And here in Revelation 3, we find a metaphor, of course, that God holds the Book of Life which records the names of all those who are citizens of heaven and here we have the assurance that our names will never be blotted out if we have been justified by God.

And that is a really important point for us to understand: that we can never lose our salvation because our salvation is not dependent on our behaviour but solely on the gracious justification of God. Salvation is a gift – it is not ours to lose but only God’s to give and that is why it is so important for us to understand that the notion of being dressed in white in this passage is not about purity of behaviour but justification. If we did not understand it like that, we would be left with the conclusion that our names only remain in the Book of Life if we remain pure and undefiled in terms of behaviour. But that’s not the truth: our names remain in the Book because we are justified and counted worthy through the grace of God. And Jesus will acknowledge us before his Father and the angels: what wonderful news is that?

So, this letter to the church at Sardis is packed full of challenge for us. And not least is the challenge to us to reflect on our need to rely on the power of the Holy Spirit in our own lives and in our church. It is not enough to rely on past glories – the church is not a museum; we must constantly be seeking out the presence experience of God and be moved by a passion to see where he will lead us and where he wants to take us. We must be constantly watchful and remember how it is that we received the faith and seek to be faithful to the historic tradition that has been delivered to us without becoming slaves to that tradition itself. We are to beware of complacency. We are to beware of passivity and self-satisfaction in our churches and be constantly moving into God’s future. If we do that, we will know what it is to be justified by God and will be counted worthy of spending an eternity with him and nothing can ever take that away from us.

“Be watchful” is the message: avoid complacency and walk with Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit.

“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

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