A world in turmoil

This transcript has been automatically generated

Revelation 6, um, verse 1. Now I watched when the Lamb opened one of the 7 seals, and I heard one of the 4 living creatures say with a voice like thunder, come! And I looked, and behold, a white horse, and its rider had a bow, and a crown was given to him, and he came out conquering and to conquer. When he opened the 2nd seal, I heard the 2nd living creature say, Come! And out came another horse, bright red.

Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword. When he opened the 3rd seal, I heard the 3rd living creature say, Come! And I looked, and behold, a black horse, and its rider had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the 4 living creatures saying, a quart of wheat for a denarius, and 3 quarts of barley for a denarius, and do not harm the oil and wine. When he opened the 4th seal, I heard the voice of the 4th living creature say, come.

And I looked, and behold, a pale horse, and its rider’s name was Death, and and Hades followed him. And they were given authority over a 4th of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth. When he opened the 5th seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. They cried out with a loud voice, O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth? Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete who were to be killed as they themselves had been.

When he opened the 6th seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake And the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale. The sky vanished like a scroll that is being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful And everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand? Thanks, Cassandra.

Shall I pray? Our Father, please give us ears to hear what the Spirit of Jesus says. To his precious churches. Amen. When I was a young solicitor over in the city, I once went on a business trip to Manchester with my then boss.

We actually flew from Heathrow to Manchester. I’m not sure why. By the time we faffed around at the airport, we could have been halfway there on the train from Euston. But the flight feels like it takes about 10 minutes. You don’t even have time to eat your complimentary bag of pretzels.

And then on the return flight, again, it’s very quick. It was back to London, to the outer outskirts of London took about 15 minutes, but then we spent the next 45 minutes circling the airport. I don’t know if you’ve ever had that. It never happens at the small places like Southend, you know, it never happens there. It’s always the big airports.

Someone who knows about these things told me that actually it’s all planned and there’s probably other planes circling above yours and a couple below as well as you wait to get in. Now, this is not a talk about the need for a 3rd runway, in case you’re wondering where this is heading. It’s just something about this big middle section of Revelation that we’re now gonna dive into. And there’s some more detailed notes on your sheet. Sorry, I’ve left mine down here.

See, the thing is, if you are doing that thing at the airport and you look out your Boeing 747 and think, there’s the Shard, Battersea Power Station, there’s Wembley, and then hang on a minute, isn’t that the Shard again? Battersea Power Station? Wembley? It’s a bit disorienting if you think that you’re on a linear path and don’t realise that what we’re actually doing is circling. And I think we’ll get confused in this big middle section of Revelation, which is chapters 4 to 15.

We’ll get confused if we treat it as linear and don’t realise that we’re actually circling around the same territory several times. So I’ve put on the sheet there what I think is the rough basic shape of each tour. So 3 times in this big middle section. We begin in heaven where Jesus is on the throne. We then swoop down to the earth where there’s turmoil but witnessing going on before the great day of God’s wrath.

And it’s back up to the throne room where God’s people are gathered in worship. Now obviously this is us getting into the trickier part of the book. It was very tempting to stick with the 7 churches and the letters. That would have been fine. But what I’d love to do for the rest of the weekend is try and give us a window into the rest of the book that I hope will enable you to land anywhere in Revelation in your own time and hopefully get a sense of roughly what’s going on.

When I say cycles, don’t get me wrong, this is not The Lion King, the circle of life, Buddhist reincarnation, or anything like that. There is chronology within each cycle, and there’s development as we get towards the end of the book. So by chapters 16 to 22, we’re no longer circling in the same way, and those final chapters are more of a focused description of final judgement as various of the big beasts are taken out, and then the description of the new creation. So something like that, I think, for the structure of Revelation. And unlike that frustrating circling at Heathrow, there’s a sensible purpose in this.

God is trying to get us to take in a view of the world from heaven’s perspective, where there’s a throne and a Lamb, and there’s a Satan. And isn’t it just very difficult for us to see the world from that point of view? Take it that’s at least partly why we need to circle around the same territory a few times, and each time we’ll focus on different aspects on each particular tour. We need to see the world from God’s point of view if we’re going to conquer. That picture on your hand out there, that’s Nike Greek goddess of victory, where we get the word Nike.

She’s the patron saint of overpriced sportswear. And you can kind of see— I think you can see the swoosh, can’t you, in the contours of her wings? Well, the word nike means to conquer. It comes up in every single letter to the churches. To the one who conquers, Jesus repeats 7 times.

Carries the sense of a battle won. And I don’t know, maybe we’re more comfortable describing the Christian life as a journey or a race, that kind of endurance. But we’ve seen already there is a fight to fight, an enemy to overcome. Suffering and seduction would drag the churches down. God wants us to see the way things really are to help us to conquer to be part of his great victory which will surely come.

Chapters 4 and 5 are a beautiful picture of Jesus exalted to the right hand of God with all authority. He’s being worshipped. That’s the start of the first tour. And yet 6:10 is one of those verses that’s so real and gritty, it makes sure that we never get so caught up in the visions that we’ve gone far away from the reality of life on the ground for those 7 churches. Don’t think that we’ve moved on from the 7 churches.

So 6:10, they cried out with a loud voice, O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth? How long? It’s not a grumpy question here. How long is not the question of the atheist, because, you know, they wouldn’t be talking to God because they don’t believe in him. How long is not the question of the agnostic who’s got no particular reason to think that the world is anything other than random and often disappointing, even if there’s something out there.

How long is the question of people who know he is the sovereign Lord. And the martyrs are not whinging, they’re convicted. They know that there is a throne, and that’s great. But how long will the evil be allowed to rage down here? The Lord is worshipped in heaven, holy and true.

Wonderful. But how long till his holy justice is done on earth, is what the martyrs are saying in verse 10. And in Revelation 6, heaven speaks right into the turmoil of the world that we know. So let’s just orient ourselves with some clear things. So end of chapter 6, tells us that very clearly we’re exploring the events running up to the great day of God’s wrath.

You see that very last verse, verse 17? That’s about to happen at the end of chapter 6. So at the beginning of chapter 6, as the Lamb opens the seals of the scroll, he’s basically unfolding the script of human history running from the time of Jesus being enthroned in heaven up to Judgement Day, Justice Day. So this is really a one-pointer, this talk. I’ve put the other points on the sheet there just so you know where we would have gone if we’d had longer on the rest of this tour.

But the big thing is really picture a world in turmoil.

The first 4 of the seals of the scroll are opened at the start of chapter 6, and they reveal the horrors of the way things are. So 4 horsemen galloping around the globe wreaking havoc. Verse 2, I looked, and behold, a white horse, and its rider had a bow, and a crown was given to him, and he came out conquering and to conquer. Conquest of nations. The United Nations has not stopped the conquest of nations.

By other nations, wars, battles of the superpowers, new empires emerging and then themselves conquered.

Verse 3, when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, come! And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword. People being violent towards other people all over the world, even in places where they feel they’re quite sophisticated.

The 3rd rider is holding the scales that seem to represent economic hardship. Verse 5— cheque out the cost of living crisis in verse 6: And I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the 4 living creatures saying, a quart of wheat for a denarius. In other words, a day’s wage. For a loaf of bread.

4th horse, death and Hades on the rampage. End of verse 8, famine, pestilence, wild beasts on the earth. So here is a picture of life in the run-up to Judgement Day, and I’m afraid God’s people are not immune because the 5th seal makes it clear that they have their own specific category of chaos, slain for their faithful witness, is the 5th seal. And Open Doors reckon that before you go to bed tonight, at least 10 more people have died somewhere in the world for being Christian. Actually read something the other day that said Open Doors are hugely conservative in their estimates.

It’s about a plane crash, maybe quite a big plane crash full each week of martyred Christians.

And the point is not to use the details here to play, play a game of end times bingo. The, the price of coffee in central London feels like a wage— day’s wage now, doesn’t it? Um, the point is not coronavirus infection rates reach a certain peak, tick, in the same week as Russia invades, tick, and inflation hits 10%, full house, you know, it’s going to be the end of Friday. That’s not the point. Now, the horsemen describe the world after Jesus has been enthroned, before the day of his wrath, 6:17.

And right through this era, there’s conquest, there’s unrest, injustice, scarcity, disease, martyrdom— all of these things riding forth to pummelled creation in the first century. And the 21st. These 4 riders unleash stuff that is brutal and graphically described. But horrible as this picture is, it does describe the normal way of this world, doesn’t it? Over the last 2,000 years, we’ve lived a very charmed life if we think civilizations progress substantially in restraining any of these beasts.

A guy called Yuval Noah Harari wrote a book called Homo Deus in 2017 to rave reviews. He argued that the ancients only turned to God because they couldn’t control the world they lived in. We don’t need to pray to any god or saint to rescue us, he says.

Hello! This is his quote: We don’t need to pray to any god or saint to rescue us. We know quite well what needs to be done to prevent famine, plague, and war, and we usually succeed in doing it. Homo Deus, the book title, it doesn’t mean we don’t need God, it means humanity now is God. That was 2017.

Well, a couple of years later, of course, in the pandemic, we saw scientists, medics, governments, good old-fashioned community spirit all did wonders. But weren’t we also shocked at what humans could do to each other, say about each other? They said even before COVID we were already a more pessimistic generation than the one before. We created the global village that allowed the virus to thrive. What will be the next unintended consequence?

See, we might restrain one of these horsemen for a short for a while over here, you know, fewer continents, fewer wars on the continent of Europe than usual for a certain number of years. Great. But then a new strain runs amok, and then eventually the conquest horse has broken loose even in Europe again. And it’s a bit like, you know, that whack-a-mole thing you get at the fairground where they’ll put, you know, we whack one down and another one pops up over there, and you whack that down, there’s another moley over here. It’s like that, except this is no fun because each time it’s these 4 horsemen rearing their heads.

Imagine having 4 stallions rampaging around your sitting room. Good luck trying to restrain them.

They used to talk about the Pax Romana back then, the peace of Rome. We are so stable and prosperous now. We are an economic miracle. Homo Deus. Well, it didn’t last.

Peace and order and the end of disease, they’re great ambitions to shoot for. Just don’t think Rome is going to be able to sustain them for you, or London.

And obviously we have progressed in some ways. We’ve got iPhones now. Is that progress? I don’t know. But these Four Horsemen, they seem to represent the four corners of the earth.

All of these things are all is on the rampage somewhere, and they’ll all pop back up in your corner eventually.

And that’s why COVID was the great humbler for our generation. Though I say it was the great humbler for our generation as if I’m sure that nothing else like that would ever happen in our generation and lifetimes. Why am I so naive to assume that?

Right back at the beginning of Revelation, John was told write down not just the things that are to take place after this, but the things that are chapter 1. So what are the things that are? Well, this world running up to the end will always be chaotic and disappointing and very fragile.

Yet notice something: these intruders only operate under permission. Some terrible permissions are granted. But it’s not that as the Lamb unseals the script of history, start of chapter 6, he’s not unleashing Pandora’s box. Jesus is in control of the turmoil, and I’ve slipped into calling it chaotic, but it’s not. It’s only apparently uncontrolled chaos.

So verse 4, that rider permitted to take peace— permitted to take peace. Just as much as the Lord allows.

Death, verse 8, given authority just as much as the one who holds the keys to death gives it permission to rage. War in Ukraine will last precisely as long as he licences.

So if we did the 3 tours, we’d fly— we’re not going to do this, but we would fly again over the world that is 2 more times in this middle section, and it’s even clearer as you fly over the world that is the next time that a cursed world is part of God’s present judgement. Chapters 8 to 9, turmoil on the earth is meant to make people repent, to realise that the world’s not the way it’s supposed to be because we are not the way we are supposed to be. And then in the 3rd cycle, when you come back to the world that is It’s even clearer that Satan is in the mix, permitted to deceive and persecute in this phase before final justice.

One of Richard Dawkins’ latest books is targeted to teenagers, actually. You might have come across it, Outgrowing God. He argues that you can’t pin this down, but that there’s something in the air that means we’re getting better. He means morally. Something in the air is his phrase.

I’m not a scientist, but something in the air doesn’t sound very scientific, does it? And actually, it’s a very selective and short-term view of the world. It is a wonderful world sometimes, some places, and maybe we’ve been blessed to live in days that are relatively nice and boring, but don’t be fooled about the things that are. This is a tumultuous world. It’s shot through with violence and disease.

It’s a world where Satan prowls and deceives and persecutes. And this is meant to be encouraging? Are you finding this encouraging on a sunny Saturday morning? Well, it is encouraging because those suffering churches like Smyrna— yes, life is painful, but it’s not out of the Lord’s plan. Stay faithful unto death.

And those compromised churches like Pergamum we looked at earlier— be very sceptical of anyone guaranteeing you the peace of Rome or the approval of London or a post-COVID boom. What happened to that?

The big thing to be emboldened by here is that the things that are happen in a world where Jesus rules the kings of the earth and where every person and system and event operates on reins under his permission.

And actually, that’s what begs the martyrs’ question that we began with in 6:10, because if he is the sovereign Lord, how long? They want justice. Bring the new creation. How long?

6:11, then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been. Now, there’s a both/and in the original here, so justice won’t be done until God has finished adding to the number of his servants generally, And until the number of the brothers who are going to be martyrs is complete. Now that’s obviously not an easy answer to the question, how long? But it’s what happens, because by the end of this circuit, chapter 7, there’s a great multitude from every nation gathered. Because 7:3— have a look at 7:3— God delays the judgement.

Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees until we’ve sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads. That’s quite an Exodus-ish way of describing salvation. And again, this has been the storey of history too. Persecution rife, these horrible horsemen rampaging, and gospel rescue. Advancing unstoppably in every empire and age.

Now tomorrow we’ll look at our purpose in the delay, it’s witness. But just a thought as we finish, remember that before being witnesses we were all the ones witnessed to. And I say that because I think it’s just very humbling personally to remember that God has allowed a world like this to on, including some horrible tribulation for his saints. God has allowed a word like this to run on to give me time to be washed and sealed. That was really kind of God, wasn’t it, to delay his justice so that you might be added to the number?

This cycle ends with us back in the throne room of chapters 4 to 5, but the difference in chapter 7 is as well as the elders and the 4 living creatures. We’ve now got you and me and all the nations safely delivered to the throne room out of the Great Tribulation, and we’re part of the chorus in chapter 7. We’re having every tear wiped away. You cannot live through a Revelation 6 type of world without accumulating your share of tears, and I’m really sorry if there have been quite a lot of tears for you personally. Recently.

7:17 is what makes faithfulness worth it. Will you have a look at verse 17 of chapter 7? Because you need this verse.

For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Come, Lord Jesus, eh? Come really soon, please, Lord Jesus. Amen.