Faithful Witness

This transcript has been automatically generated

So in Revelation chapter 10, chapter 10, verse 1. Verse 1: Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head, and his face was like the sun, and his legs like pillars of fire. He had a little scroll open in his hand, and he set his right foot on the sea, and his left foot on the land, and called out with a loud voice like a lion roaring. When he called out, the 7 thunders sounded. And when the 7 thunders had sounded, I was about to write, but I heard a voice from heaven saying, seal up what the 7 thunders have said, and do not write it down.

And the angel whom I saw standing on the sea and on the land raised his right hand to heaven and swore by him who lives forever and ever, who created heaven and what is in it, the earth and what is in it, and the sea and what is in it, that there would be no more delay, but that in the days of the trumpet call to be sounded by the 7 angels, the mystery of God would be fulfilled, just as he announced to his servants the prophets. Then the voice that I heard from heaven spoke to me again, saying, Go, take the scroll that is open in the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land. So I went to the angel and told him to give me the little scroll. And he said to me, Take and eat it; it will make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth it will be sweet as honey. And I took the little scroll from the hand of the angel and ate it; it was sweet as honey in my mouth, But when I had eaten it, my stomach was made bitter.

And I was told, you must again prophesy about many peoples and nations and languages and kings. Then I was given a measuring rod like a staff, and I was told, rise 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 the holy city for 42 months. And I will grant authority to my 2 witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth.

These are the 2 olive trees and the 2 lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth. And if anyone would harm them, fire pours from their mouth and consumes their foes. If anyone would harm them, this is how he is doomed to be killed. They have the power to shut up the sky that no rain may fall during the days of their prophesy, and they have power over the waters to turn them into blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague as often as they desire. And when they have finished their testimonies, the beast that rises from the bottomless pit will make war on them and conquer them and kill them.

And their dead bodies will lie in the streets of the great city that symbolically is called Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord was crucified. For 3 and a half days, some from the peoples and tribes and languages and nations will gaze on their dead bodies and refuse to let them be placed in a tomb. And those who dwell on the earth will rejoice over them, and they will bury and exchange presents, because these 2 prophets had been a torment to those who dwell on the earth. But after the 3 and a half days, a breath of life from God entered them, and they stood up on their feet, and great fear fell on those who saw them. Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, Come up here!

And they went up to heaven in a cloud, and their enemies watched them. And at that hour there was a great earthquake, and a 10th of the city fell. 7,000 people were killed in the earthquake, and the rest were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven. Thank you. Welcome back.

Good morning. Who knows who that is at the top of page 6? Louis Armstrong? No, it’s not Louis Armstrong. No.

Is he a lesbian? No. Wynton Marsalis. Anyone heard of him? Oh, well done.

Someone has. He’s one of the biggest names in jazz. Music, is a trumpeter, won loads of Grammys. A few years ago, a journalist wandered into a jazz bar in New York, tiny bar during the quietest season of the year, and the journalist thinks, oh, the trumpeter looks a bit like Wynton Marsalis, but it can’t be him because why would he be playing this little venue? 4th song in was a solo from the trumpeter, and they all began to realise it was actually him.

So as the solo reached its climax, the crowd were hanging on every note. Place was totally captivated until just as Wynton reaches the most dramatic point, someone’s mobile phone goes off. And this was in the days of, you know, the really annoying— journalist remembers writing in his piece of paper, magic ruined, as people started groaning and giggling and going back to their drinks. But then he wrote, this happened, frozen at the microphone, Marsalis replayed the silly phone melody note for note.

Then he repeated it and began improvising variations on the tune. The audience slowly came back to him. In a few minutes, he resolved the improvisation, which had changed keys once or twice and throttled down to a ballad tempo. He ended up exactly where his original tune had left off before the phone interruption. The ovation was tremendous.

Now, that’s not a very true analogy to the magnitude of anything we’re about to talk about, um, but it’s quite a cool storey, isn’t it? And it does kind of make me think of Revelation. Magic ruined yesterday’s passage. Remember that horrible picture of a formerly perfect world in ruination? And yet, just as the master jazz artist weaved the song back to the rightful tune, so God is weaving the storey back to his perfect resolution.

By the end of Revelation, an even better resolution than the very good creation he began with. It’s a beautiful plan, but what is God waiting for? That’s a question we inevitably ask in this big middle section of Revelation as we circle the airport. So we first arrived at the end of the world in chapter 7. We get there again at the end of chapter 11, and this passage lets us pause on something that was mentioned but not developed in the first circuit.

What’s God’s purpose in holding back coming to sort out all the mess? I mean, there’s enough mess. Jesus is the first and the last, and that means he can tell us the purpose of the delay because he defines the purpose of history from first to last. And Jesus says the purpose of the delay is witness. John bore witness to the word of God, chapter 1.

Jesus, the faithful witness, 1:5. Those martyrs in chapter 6 killed for the word of God and the witness they had borne. Those same martyrs asked How long? They didn’t really get an answer on how long. They got a brief answer on why so long.

Why so long? For witness. See, the entire next phase of history is deliberately on hold while we, the church, witness. And I wonder if that’s how we tend to think of the days that we live in. First though, we need to think about John’s powerful testimony.

We’ll look at chapter 10 briefly. It focuses on a recommissioning of John himself. So not only commissioned to write down the visions at the beginning of Revelation, his own ministry actually becomes part of the unfolding storey. When you get ordained in the Church of England, you get ceremonially presented with a Bible. I love that symbolism.

First thing you get handed the tool of the trade. And something like that is going on here as John is presented with a scroll and told to eat it, verse 9. The Church of England have some strange rituals, but they don’t tell you to do that with your new Bible. This is mirroring Ezekiel’s commissioning. At the start of Ezekiel, he was given a scroll, he was told to eat it, he found it was a sweet message.

Of course he did, it was the Word of God. But as with John, Ezekiel found it had a bitter aftertaste because he knew many would refuse to hear. And I think chapter 10 is partly putting John’s ministry in context. Little old John exiled on Patmos— it’s the equivalent of the Shetland Islands. Lovely to be there, but try advancing your global movement from there.

Not only does John come in the weighty tradition of the Old Testament prophets like Ezekiel, did you see who he’s commissioned by? 10:1, then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head, and his face was like the sun, and his legs like pillars of fire. Remind you of anyone? The face? That voice?

This is just his mighty angel. Big Jesus.

Soon there’s going to be no more delay. 10:6 tells us that. But first, he who has the globe under his feet here commissions John with a message of global proportions. Verse 11 of chapter 10: I was told you must again prophesy about many peoples and nations and languages and kings. Here’s what’s interesting though.

Does John again prophesy about many peoples and nations and languages or kings, or does the church do it? This is us into chapter 11 and point 2. And I don’t know how you felt as chapter 11 was read. The first time I read it, knowing I had to preach on it, I thought, ah, I mean, there’s just a tonne of imagery here, loads of Old Testament connections. Some things are very clear though, let’s get those on the table first.

Chapter 11 is about the church’s witness in the delay before justice day, so it’s definitely about witness. Verse 3, I will grant authority to my 2 witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth. It’s definitely the church who are witnessing during this period. Verse 4, these are the 2 olive trees and the 2 lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth. Remember what the lampstands are in Revelation?

Anyone? You can shout out. The churches, yeah, shining in a dark place. Why 2 though? Aren’t there 7 churches?

Who are these 2 witnesses? Well, lots of end times bingo has been played with this one if you’re old enough. People used to think the 2 witnesses were Billy Graham and John Stott. If you’re young, you might think they’re Kanye West and Justin Bieber, you know, 2 pop star Christians, this must be the last days. No, numbers are symbolic in Revelation, and 2 is an important number to do with witness right through the Bible.

So you might remember from the Old Testament, you needed 2 witnesses to make a case. That’s what witnessing is. It’s kind of legal thing, testifying to the truth of something. And then Jesus in Luke 10, do you remember he sent disciples out in twos on a mission trip? So 2 witnesses here seem to represent the entire church, the lampstands, on mission in a dark place.

And notice in this chapter the church seems to have taken the baton from Jesus John, you, John, must prophesy about many nations and kings. Well, the witnesses prophesy, verse 6, their ministry in chapter 11, now going global, verse 9. And you may have noticed the church’s ministry has the flavour of Jesus’. So verse 8, dying where he was crucified, rising, verse 11, after 3 and a half days— sounds a bit like his resurrection. Ascending on a cloud, verse 12.

Remember Jesus ascending in Acts 1? Faithful witness seems to follow the pattern of the faithful witness. And I think it’s kind of— this chapter is basically the Great Commission in 3D HD. It’s like the book of Acts but as if it was painted by Picasso. So that picture— anyone got on their phone that picture I said?

Uh, did you— you sent that picture, didn’t you? Did you see the picture that Drew sent around the other day? Did anyone recognise it? Anyone know what it was? Uh, Guernica.

Have you seen it? Have you been? Uh, I don’t, because it’s not in this country, is it? I think it’s in Barcelona, isn’t it? I haven’t seen it in person.

Madrid. Madrid. Yeah. Have you seen it? Yeah, it’s massive, isn’t it?

What is it, about the size of that wall? Yeah, yeah. Um, and it’s regarded as one of the most powerful pieces of anti-war art ever produced. It was painted in the context of the Spanish Civil War, and if you look at that picture, you can see it’s clearly not a chronological narrative of that conflict. It’s all kind of weird stuff and evocative stuff going on in every corner of the picture.

It’s designed to evoke thoughts and feelings. It paints a vision of something that’s real But it’s a reality beyond simply what the physical eye can see. And I think that’s important to bear in mind as you read a chapter like Revelation 11. Don’t try to track it chronologically through church history as if verse 1 is the first century and verse 13 the final century. The point is, what’s the overall feel being painted here?

How does it feel to be Jesus’ lampstands on mission? Well, partly it feels like being engaged in power ministry as we testify in verse 5. It’s a bit like Jeremiah’s words which were breathing fire. Verse 6, the stuff that happens is a bit like Elijah, a bit like Moses with the plagues. We are the modern equivalent of them as we powerfully proclaim the kingdom.

But it also feels like being a torment to the people of the earth. The witnesses wear sackcloth, verse 3, Probably to signify that their message was a call to repent. And lots of people hate hearing a message that they need to change, that they’ve got God wrong. So much so here, they’re actually planning a party to celebrate when they see the martyrs’ bodies in the street. Did you think verse 10 was really weird?

They’re exchanging presents about it. Happy Dead Christian Day.

To picture your colleagues celebrating because you’ve left the team. Finally, the Christian’s gone. Cheering when the Christian group gets barred from sending the invites round. How does it feel to be the church on mission? It feels like a total roller coaster ride of highs and lows.

And the 7 churches were already experiencing that. So tribulation in Smyrna, Faithful witness in Pergamum, but Antipas the faithful witness was killed, remember, among them there.

Sometimes in church history and church geography it can feel like different places in the church are sitting in different of the spaces here at different times. So China is quite an interesting example, isn’t it? The Boxer Rebellion, 1900, hundreds of Christian missionaries slaughtered the church in that country completely on its knees, looking very like verses 7 and 8. Well, today it can feel more like the Chinese church is in the power ministry phase of the earlier verses with tribulation. What’s next for the church in this country?

How would I know? But we know there’s a clear destination: resurrection life, day of vindication, and many turning to give God glory. Did you notice that by verse 13, the language of giving glory to God, that’s only used of his people in Revelation? See, this is the reason the 7th trumpet of 11:15 hasn’t sounded to end the world yet. More people being added to the God glorifiers.

The mission of the church from John and the apostles right up until the end is Witness. And I just wonder if that’s how we view the days that we live in.

Partly it sharpens up the application to the 7 churches. Smyrna, they were told not to fear because if you get consumed by fear, you won’t be able to do the one thing Jesus has left us here to do. Be faithful unto death, they were told. That’s not a weird masochistic request. Is directly connected to our job of witness.

I wonder, is fear— is fear holding back our job of witness?

Or Pergamum, if you’re in the world but too of the world like some in Pergamum, you won’t be able to do the one thing that Jesus has left us here to do, because compromised witness is no kind of witness. Is compromise polluting our witness?

And this sharpens up the answer to the question, how long? See, how long? Why the delay? Jesus is not holding back so that Kev can get a decent summer holiday first. He’s not waiting to end the world so that you can get that promotion or have those children or buy that house.

Of course, lots of those things will happen in the normal run of life, but none of them is the reason that Jesus has put the next phase of history on hold. Revelation 11 is the reason. My witnesses, he says, and they will prophesy.

So you’re no fool if you’re organising your life, trying to organise it around these things. But how hard we find faithful witness, don’t we? And I wonder what you’re feeling As you hear this, maybe you’re feeling scared. Me too. Well, there’s 2 witnesses.

We do it together as the church with all of our different gifts, personalities, opportunities. And please don’t mishear this. This is not talking about witnessing as a very narrowly defined kind of practise, like, you know, going door knocking or something like that. It’s witness in the broadest sense. There is an outward momentum here.

The witnesses, the 2 witnesses on mission in Luke 10, all of us the prophets in Acts 2, do you remember? All of us Spirit empowered. And here there’s something public, proactive, it’s towards the nations in that way. So I think it’s a good question for you guys together as a 10 AM to be thinking How are we reaching out together in witness, in amongst— remember in Pergamum?

And personally, for each of us, this is not a narrow guilt trip about any particular activity you have to be involved in. It’s a big broad challenge. If the witness of the church is the reason for this delay, what’s your life about?

And actually, when you look at in Acts, it’s about loads of different things. It’s about speaking informally about Jesus. It’s about gathering around teachers. It’s about prayer, practical support for gospel work, responding to people’s questions, taking new opportunities to send missionaries and plant churches. It’s about inviting.

It’s about being publicly known. As Jesus is? If the witness of the church is the big reason for the delay, what’s your life about?

And I hope we can talk about that honestly at the end because we mustn’t pretend we’re further on than we are. I think it would be easy in a group like this to assume that everyone else in the room is some stormtrooper evangelist when your battle is that you haven’t even yet told your colleagues you’re a Christian. Let’s pray for each other, pray with each other for emboldenment by God’s Spirit for our shared ministry and our individual ministry in our part of the mission field, which is what it is.

Maybe you feel, I don’t know what to say as a witness. Well, don’t worry, John and the other apostles have told us what to say. It is the apostles who are the witnesses, and that’s another reason for for those sermons and small groups and quiet times, why they’re so important. Mission training. That’s the link here between chapter 10 and 11.

See, there is no faithful witness that is not faithful to John and the other apostles’ witness. What if people reject us, you might be thinking? Well, some definitely will, is the message here. And it’s so painful when it’s close family and friends. Who find the news that Jesus is Lord a torment.

Witness is always associated with persecution.

Maybe they’ll turn to God anyway, perhaps you’re thinking that, but, but will they? Look at one more verse at the end of chapter 9, back in chapter 9.

9:20. See, this was the stage in the cycle where they’d had all the world in torment stuff. It was meant to make people repent. The rest of mankind who were not killed by these plagues did not repent of the works of their hands, nor give up worshipping demons. Verse 21: Nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries.

See, all these tumultuous things that happened and it didn’t cause people to repent. But at the end of chapter 11, many do after the earthquake. What’s the difference? Well, this time in between there’s been witness. See, COVID-19 wasn’t actually God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

We are, as we speak into the brokenness with a message of repentance and a call to Worship. I wonder, how do your friends cope with their anxieties, with their mortality? Have you asked them?

Maybe you just feel exhausted by our shared mission of witness. Well, that’s honest, but we have a calling. You and I are the prophets of God in our generation, the prophets of the 10 AM, the prophets of Euston. They’re meeting this morning. So when I’m out with the dads from my son’s rugby club, am I thinking of myself as the prophet in the room?

I mean, who else is praying for them? Who else is going to tell them about Jesus? It’s a demanding calling for sure, and I think it’s demanding on our beliefs before anything else. So do I believe faithful witness is worth the cost? Do I believe that the delay will eventually give way to justice?

Can I picture a day when the great multitude will gather around the throne because God used persistent public witness of fumbling but faithful servants like us. How long, O Lord? We cry with the martyrs. Soon is the answer, but until then we’ve a job to do, so we better get on with it. Shall we pray?

Father, we’re sorry that we so quickly forget what’s really important in this phase we live in, and we thank you for this mighty calling. What, what a thing to be your witnesses, your prophets in our generation.

And we ask that you’ll help us to be faithful unto whatever it takes for the name of Jesus to ring out from us around our city.

Amen. Great, so yeah, chance to ask any questions from what we just heard, or I guess from the weekend so far as well.

Yeah, over to Jeff. Yeah, I don’t know if this is going to be an awkward question, but sure it will be. Obviously there’s been a lot of books and theology books written on this whole millennialist stuff, pre-millennialist. Do we need to worry about that when we read Revelation, or is that just sort of theologians that discuss in their spare time? Yeah.

Thanks, we haven’t really talked about that, have we? And people talk about pre-mill, post-mill, a-mill, millennium, Millennium Falcon— that’s something different.

I think yes, and the millennium obviously in that, in those words means 1,000 years. I think maybe the more simple way to think about it is some people think that most of the stuff in Revelation has already happened, and some people think that most of the stuff in Revelation hasn’t yet happened. So that obviously— and that’s, that’s really at the root of a lot of the debate between premillennial, uh, who think that most of it hasn’t yet happened, and postmillennial, who think that most of it has. Now, if you think about what seen in Revelation, if you think most of it has already happened, we’re in a phase of more positive kind of triumphalism. If you think that most of it hasn’t already happened, you know, you think buckle up, uh, basically.

And that’s, you know, so it’s more of a— it either creates more of a negative outlook on the, the next phase, uh, that we’re going to be in. I think what’s sometimes called amillennialism or idealism is the approach that’s saying, actually, what this is describing is— surprise, surprise, I think this is, you know, this is where I would land— it’s describing cycles that describe the whole of human history from Jesus’ enthronement until his return. Um, I think what I’d say is don’t, don’t despise people who are very tied particularly to premillennialism. Actually, most of, most of, if you root back this, if many of us will come from conservative church backgrounds of some kind, either in this country or America or Asia, and premillennialism would have been the majority approach actually in those churches. And that partly comes from literal, that partly comes from fighting the fight on literalism in good ways in other parts of the Bible where we want to say, yeah, this is historical literal.

I think maybe they haven’t then taken the genre seriously enough with Revelation, where I think it doesn’t read best as literal chronological, all to come in the future in that way. But don’t have that as a friendly conversation with premillennial friends because they’re actually trying to read the Bible carefully And maybe they do that better in other parts of the Bible than some of us. So sorry, that’s quite a long-winded answer. Happy with that. Yeah, I’ve got 2 questions, take what you want.

I guess the first one, both about prophecy. So the first one is Revelation, you know, as prophecy itself, how does that relate you know, is it similar in genre, for example, to Isaiah? Would we read those 2 books in a similar way? And the second is the prophecy spoken about in this section that we’ve looked at today. How might that relate to prophecy that we see earlier on in Scripture?

You must have known that Guernica painting, Art Byrne. No ports in it, I don’t think. Maybe there were.

Yeah, good question. There’ll be some similar— I don’t think it’s exactly the same as Isaiah, but in some ways, yeah, to the extent that sometimes the way the Bible describes things is cyclical, you know, you’re going around the same thing again. That happens a lot in the prophets, doesn’t it? Cycles towards the last day, and then we do that again and again. So yeah, that’s clearly an established pattern in Scripture.

I suppose we have to ask why is why that. And I don’t know totally. I mean, I need a lot of repetition and things described, the same thing described in different ways for me to, to really get it. I mean, my heart, the, you know, my, the lies and wrong things I believe are very repetitive in my heart. So some God needs a lot of repetition to get things into me that are true.

And then the other aspect I think is that, is the fact that things are described in this almost exaggerated way, a bit like the Guernica painting that make you sort of sit up and notice something that you wouldn’t if you just had a kind of very almost more scientific description. You can evoke kind of moods and shock and things through this kind of, you know, kind of Guernica painting style. So again, that’s an established pattern in the Bible. So it’s great that God speaks to us in these kind of different genres and ways that are maybe different authors connect with. Yeah, that’s really helpful.

I noticed you’ve got on your kind of tools for reading your questions, one of the things here is the Old Testament and the New Testament are the next best commentaries. Yeah. Things like, you know, it’s not going to be a surprise that language from, you know, almost quotation, allusion to things in Isaiah and other parts of the Bible. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah.

And those, by the way, those tools, I mean, I didn’t explicitly reference them. But when I got to this passage in Revelation, this was the point where I was sitting with all these commentaries open thinking, my goodness, how do I come up with 20 minutes from this? And actually I thought, don’t panic, go back to these basic tools. And actually it was helpful for me just to go back to the basics and think, okay, let’s go through these things and see where we get with chapter 11. And not— I mean, there’s an absolute tonne of Old Testament stuff in there because it’s just saying everything about we’re prophets, let’s wrestle out, reference everything about prophecy almost and shove it into chapter 11.

But it’s not just that it then helps us understand what it means, it makes the point, I think it was Simon said in the discussion time yesterday, actually it makes the point that Revelation is the culmination of something, you know, and all of this Old Testament stuff and New Testament stuff coming together here, same God who’s at work.

Hey, Lads. More kind of general question, like, so presumably John had a pretty good understanding of what he was talking about. What do you think is the sort of benefit of, as in, like, the Spirit has given us this quite difficult book with lots of picture language and imagery rather than John sort of distilling it for us into a sort of Pauline-type letter? Yeah.

Like, and we sort of tend to ignore it. And what— so why do you think perhaps the Spirit has chosen in infinite wisdom to give us what on the face of it appears to be such a difficult thing to understand? Yeah, I think, I think it’s partly— well, I think we need to, I suppose, confess it’s partly hard for us to understand because we’re less familiar with the Old Testament, probably. And the New Testament, I suppose, the more we, you know, search the Scriptures and your revelation will become clearer, I think. But I think partly the answer to Rich’s question is, I suppose we’ve already got those other things, we’ve already got that in the form of like Acts is the kind of historical journey of the mission of the church and then it described in the New Testament letters.

I suppose what this is doing is going back to some of the stuff we said yesterday, it heightens the spiritual dimension and seriousness of all of this. You know, you guys are the prophets of God in your generation. You know, do you really think that as you witness to Christ, what you’re doing is power ministry that is actually going to lead the nations to turn and worship him? So it, you know, adds that kind of dimension of, wow, this is, this is really what’s going on in the universe. You know, look up and look to the spiritual dimension, the fact that it’s a battle with Satan, you know, describing it in this way sharpens us to, well, how important our teaching is and all of that.

So, oh yeah, this is a very tech— just tech-specific question. You might have gone with that already, but why, why does John have to be recommissioned at the beginning of chapter 10? And then if you could remind us, what is the words like fire in the place? Again? What does that mean?

Yes, where’s the thing about the plagues?

Well, just that it’s a bit like Mo— it’s one of those, I was saying, you know, the prophets are all referenced, you know, let’s like reference Zechariah, Jeremiah, yeah, he breathed fire, Moses, he did the plagues, let’s just get all the prophets in the mix to make the point prophecy is the thing that these guys are doing. As to why does John need to be recommissioned, I think it’s because of the passing on of the baton actually that John is the one recommissioned. It makes the point I think really, really clear that the witness of the church is absolutely and only this witness, so we have no separate witness other than the witness that John was commissioned with, so I think it’s making that point for us.