Revelation 15

We study through books of the Bible here at the Village Chapel, and it's my joy and privilege to be leading us through Revelation chapter 15 today.

Revelation 15 · chapter mention

So if you want to grab your Bibles or swipe there on your devices, that'll be awesome.

You can follow along with the text.

Just eight verses today.

But as we get ready to dive into all of that, I want to remind you that Revelation is not a prophecy jigsaw puzzle for you to, you know, where the burden's on you to fit it together and make sure you got all the pieces.

I don't know how many times I've done jigsaw puzzles and there's a piece missing, you know.

And uh sometimes we read a book like this and and it it's difficult and it's hard to understand in all of that.

And uh if we were if the burden was on us to to put it together just right, I don't think any of us could live up to that task.

Uh, it's also not a numerical code for us to crack or some kind of a you know strange thing where every number means something.

There are a couple numbers that mean something.

Um, but Revelation was uh uh a combination of apocalyptic literature, prophetic literature, and epistolary literature.

That is, it's like a letter, in other words.

And indeed starts out in uh chapters two and three.

Seven letters go to seven churches, really representing that number seven, representing sort of completeness, uh, the perfect number, if you will.

And so we see seven recurring throughout the book.

144,000 occurs several times, and and that uh seems to indicate uh all of the people of God, Old Testament and New Testament times, Old Testament being 12 tribes of Israel, New Testament, the 12 disciple apostles, and uh all of those who are sort of the offspring of the woman that we read about uh really the woman being the church.

And um so all of God's people times 12 times 12 is 144 times a thousand, meaning the the number of fullness in the Bible.

And so that's a those are numbers that are important as we go through Revelation.

But uh we get caught up, I think sometimes, some folks do, and end up in a little bit of mischief uh when we try to find everything to have a parallel.

The problem is that we tend to view it all and in and interpret it all in light of our current circumstances or our current world.

And the problem with that, of course, is that for 2,000 years, people have been doing that same thing and coming up with different things.

Oh, this is, you know, this country or this world leader or that world leader or whatever.

And it's not always the case, but God is indeed telling a story.

And it's the story uh about how he is a sovereign God who has been in pursuit of a people he can call his own, and he's made it possible for us to become his own in the person and work of Jesus.

This is first and foremost the revelation of Jesus Christ, as we're told right in verse one.

And so we uh we aren't being led to worry about the future, we are being led to be overwhelmed with wonder and to respond in worship.

And uh, we see that throughout the book.

We'll see it in this chapter as well.

Here's a God that offers salvation as a gift to us, and it's just a beautiful thing.

Sinners, though we are, God's love is so overwhelming, his grace so lavished upon us all that he's drawing us, calling us by name to come to trust and hope in Christ.

Revelation was written toward the end of the first century, and just as it was then, uh, so it is now.

We are a broken people living in a broken world.

We stand in need of outside help and we're desperate for inside hope.

Those suffering injustice cry out for rescue.

Those who are confused cry out for clarity.

Those who are being oppressed need justice.

Impoverished people need help with basic resources, just as it was then, just as it is now.

Bullied people need fairness, and broken-hearted people need comfort.

Just like John did back in the first century, um, I will seek to persuade anyone who will listen to me not to deny the realities of our darkness and our brokenness, our vulnerability and our weakness.

Don't deny that.

I don't think Revelation as a book, I don't think the Bible as a 66-book library does that.

But rather it uh calls us, you know, don't deny that.

Don't sweep, don't try to sweep your brokenness under the rug at all.

Um, but rather in the middle of all of our vulnerability, weakness, and need, um, turn to the one who loves us, turn to the one who can make us whole, the one who offers us salvation as a gift, not based on our merit and our performance, but based on what Christ has done on our behalf.

And so I want us to look to Christ as we study through the books of the Bible, especially Revelation, for I believe that Jesus is our only hope in life and death.

Revelation is like a circular ascending staircase.

And we've seen these cycles of seven, seven seals, seven trumpets.

And now we're moving into the passages that deal with the seven bowls or the seven cups, if you will.

And I believe these are all really telling the same story, as opposed to some folks who might interpret this as a sort of sequential group of things.

No, I think these are telling the same story in different perspectives, different using different metaphors.

And it's a powerfully ascending intensity, that's true.

But each of these cycles of seven really do end up with some sort of reference to the great day of the Lord when he comes and wraps up human history.

And a day we look forward to.

Why?

Because he's going to set all things right, and that's our hope, you see, in Christ.

Whether in life or in death, we hope in him.

Why?

Because he's the one that defeated our last and greatest enemy, death itself.

So we can trust in him.

There are lots of ways to outline a book like Revelation, uh, and there are many legitimate ways to do it.

We've chosen to do it this way: uh, seven sort of vision categories, if you will.

Chapters one through three, the seven churches, uh, chapters four through chapter eight, verse one, the seven seals, uh, verse two of chapter eight through chapter 11, the seven trumpets, uh, verses or chapters 12 through 14, the battle against Satan, the beast, or the dragon and the two beasts, the beast from the sea, the beast from the land.

And here we start today in chapter 15 and chapters 16.

We'll have the seven bowls or cups or goblets, however, you want to interpret that particular uh word.

And then the downfall of Babylon we'll read about in chapters 17 through 20, and then those remarkable last two chapters about the new heavens and the new earth, uh, chapters 21 and 22.

And I keep reading ahead, of course, myself, and maybe some of you have too, uh, because I love the way it ends.

And Revelation indeed is a book that leads us to wonder and leads us to respond and worship.

Now, back in the 16th century, uh the ancient text of the New Testament, um, the book of Revelation itself was divided up into what we call verses.

And so there are 404 verses.

And within those 404 verses that we call the book of Revelation, uh, there are probably uh close to 300.

I think the number is actually 278 references or allusions to the Old Testament or passages in the Old Testament.

So this book is really connected with really the entire Bible.

And that's what I love about studying it.

I love it that Revelation here, the last book in the 66 books of the Bible.

This is God's final word to his church.

And man, it's a word of hope.

It tells the truth, it tells us the stark reality, it's it's a sobering reality, but man, it ends in great hope.

And so I'm looking forward to that.

God has made it possible for sinners like me and sinners like you to be reconciled to him, though he is almighty and holy and righteous.

Um, he invites us to come.

And he invites us based on grace through faith in Christ to receive salvation as a free gift.

So let's read the eight verses we call chapter 15 and see what we have here from the Apostle John.

I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvelous, seven angels who had seven plagues, which are the last, because in them the wrath of God is finished.

And so once again, we have this view toward God being completely in charge of everything, God being the one who has the final word, the last word, um, God being the one who in his righteousness and in his holiness will set right everything that's wrong.

And the wrath of God is uh is not just him being cantankerous or capricious.

The wrath of God is his consistent, settled opposition to everything that has gone wrong in this world as a result of sin and our rebellion.

Um, he created us with the opportunity to reject him and to turn and go our own way, and we did that.

And now to set things right, see, God has sent his Redeemer Jesus into the world to pay the price for all our sins and to take the wrath of God in our place on the cross, and then add to that after Jesus was dead, buried, and wrapped up in a tomb, God raised him up again and uh and proved that Jesus has the power over life and death itself.

And so he's victorious in every way.

And we look to him.

Why wouldn't we put our hope in him?

You know, and so here what we have is in verse one of chapter 15, this opening of yet another vision, another time where John says, and I saw, and he'll say it three times.

I saw, I saw, I looked, I think is the way it goes in this chapter.

Uh, verse two, and I saw, as it were, a sea of glass mixed with fire.

Isn't that interesting?

Um water, a big, large body of water mixed with fire.

That's interesting.

We've read about a sea of glass or the crystal sea before a little bit earlier.

But this is in the heavenly realm, and that's what that reminds us of.

And John says, I saw first this sign of these seven angels with seven plagues, which are the last.

And so he's he knows that it's it's gonna be it's gonna be tough and difficult because of the plagues, but it's it's the final and last word of God in terms of meeting out his wrath against all that's broken and wrong in this world.

And then comes this vision of a sea of glass mixed with fire.

And read on with me those who had come off victorious from the beast and from his image and from the number of his name, remember 666, we learned about that number, and how it was sort of the uh perpetual number of not measuring up.

It's never 667, it's a triple failure.

It's the number of man uh trying to be self-sufficient apart from God, and so it is a number 666.

And there are those, though, who can stand and who, because of the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony, who are victorious over the beast and over the dragon as he goes down swinging.

He's trying to take as many people with him and destroy as many and distract as many believers as possible.

But they um they are victorious, and now they're standing on this glassy sea.

And uh there it is as they're as they look down inside.

I don't know if you've ever been in one of those boats that has a glass bottom and you can look down into the ocean, you know, that sort of thing.

But here what we have is is uh a group of people standing on the glassy sea, and they're able to look down into the water, and it looks like it's mixed with fire, water and fire.

I wonder if the fire was red, I wonder if it was yellow or white, how hot it was, or was it blue?

I wonder if they thought back to their Old Testament when the children of Israel were delivered out of slavery and bondage in Egypt in a somewhat lesser deliverance, because it was in space-time history, um, because their deliverance was about a zip code and uh and political oppression and all that sort of thing.

But um, God set them free nonetheless as he promised to do and brought them into the promised land.

But they stood beside the Red Sea, and God parted the waters, and they walked across on dry land, you know.

Pretty remarkable.

And I wonder if these folks standing on the glassy sea post the Old Testament, post the writing of the New Testament, with things like Peter walking on the water because Jesus invited him to come out and stand on the water with him and walk on it.

And I wonder if they're standing around there looking at the glassy sea down below their feet, and the fire and the water is mixed.

Yeah, there they are standing.

Why?

Because they're before the throne of God and they're in the heavenly realm, and they've been victorious from the beast and from his image and from his number.

They're not marked by the number 666, they're marked by the name of the Lamb and of His Father, we were told in the last chapter.

And so there they are, standing on the sea of glass, holding harps of God.

Now, see, I can't let that go.

I mean, I used to be a musician.

I ran around all over the country having, you know, collecting guitars and playing guitars and things like that.

And what would the harps of God be like?

And what would it mean to borrow one of the harps of God?

I remember one time I went into the house of um one of the guys in town.

I'll just leave his name out, but one of the guys who's like an A-list player, and down he took me down into his guitar room, and uh, and I'm kind of a strummer, not really a player, you know what I mean?

So he took me down into his uh his uh den of guitars, and I'm not kidding you, hundreds and hundreds of guitars.

Had me sit down right in the middle of his little setup, his rig, if you will, and uh he said, What would you like to play?

I said, I'd like to know how to play anything, but uh uh in terms of what kind of guitar, I said, Man, I'd like to play a 12-string Reckenbacher.

And he pulled one out, he had probably four or five of them and let me play it.

And that's just awesome.

But to think about borrowing the harps of God, the heavenly harps, what would that be like?

Kim used to play auto harp, 36 strings.

Took about a day and a half to tune that thing, you know what I'm saying?

Uh, with all of those strings.

But yeah, this is the harps of God, and these are the people of God standing on the glassy sea of God.

And they're playing this music.

They sang a song of Moses, it says in verse 3.

The bondservant of God.

And again, here's this connection with the book of Exodus and uh what happened at the at the crossing of the Red Sea, you know.

They sang the song of Moses, but not just Moses.

Watch this.

Verse 3, the bondservant of God, that's who Moses was, and the song of the Lamb.

And then they sing this song.

It's recorded here in verses three and four.

So the people in the heavenly realm are singing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb of God.

Man, that man, here we are in Nashville, Music City, songwriter, you know, central.

And a lot of you guys co-write.

Does this mean Jesus and Moses are doing a co-write on this song and that's what they're singing in heaven?

Or is is this were they already singing the same song?

Was it the God inspired Moses to already sing the song that would be in the heavenly realm, later sung in the heavenly realms in the eternal present now?

I don't know.

It's fascinating to think about, though, isn't it?

And here we are with the folks, all of them, on the glassy sea, singing the song of Moses.

What in the world did that song have to say, and why is it so eternally famous this way?

Here's the song of Moses and of the Lamb.

Great and marvelous are your works.

And it sounds exactly like Exodus chapter 15.

Exodus 15 · chapter mention

Here we are in Revelation chapter 15.

Revelation 15 · chapter mention

Great and marvelous are your works, O Lord God, the Almighty, righteous and true are your ways, thou King of the nations, who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name.

For you alone are holy, for all the nations will come and worship before you.

For your righteous acts have been revealed.

Wow.

So what we see here is that uh Revelation chapter 15 and 16 kind of are going to be uh uh sort of of a piece, if you will.

Revelation 15 · chapter mention

And chapter 15 is gonna be preparatory and interpretive, and that's what we're studying today.

Next week, Pastor Tommy is gonna lead us through chapter 16, which is more prophetic and descriptive of all that's going to happen as God's righteous judgment is meted out upon a sinful world.

So chapter 15 is connected to these Old Testament reflections on the Exodus event and as well on the liturgical tradition of the ancient Jewish synagogue, when they would recall all of those great and mighty deeds of God and how he brought them out of slavery in uh in Egypt.

Our chapter that we're currently in has two major divisions.

The first describes the victors who have emerged triumphant from the suffering and death and uh that they that the dragon and the beast try to enact on God's people, um, and also their worshipful response to God who has saved them, all in these verses that I've just read.

That's all there.

The second part of the chapter describes the emergence from the heavenly temple of the seven angels clothed in white and gold who are given the seven bowls, the seven cups, or the seven goblets, if you will, of the final plagues of God's wrath.

The temple is then filled with smoke as a symbol of God's power and glory, and no one is permitted to enter it until the angels had finished pouring out God's wrath, surely a sign of the absolute holiness of God, and of God having the last and final word.

Look at verses five through eight with me, and then we'll come back and make a few comments.

After these things I looked, after this song of Moses was sung, after the sea of glass, after the crystal sea, however you want to say it, I looked and the temple of the tabernacle of testimony in heaven was opened.

So again, John is bearing witness to what he's seeing in these visions.

And the seven angels who had the seven plagues came out uh of the temple, clothed in linen, clean and bright, girded around their breasts with golden girdles.

And so they're this is priestly garb.

This would describe priestly garb.

And these seven angels um are coming out, and they've got these seven plagues there that are given to them by the four living creatures.

One of them, verse seven, says, gave to the seven angels seven golden bowls, full of the wrath of God, who lives forever and ever.

And verse eight, and the temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power.

And no one was able to enter the temple until the seven plagues of the seven angels were finished.

Wow, this is pretty powerful, pretty awesome.

And again, preparatory.

Um, it's queuing up for what we're going to study next week.

And uh, but I do want to make a few comments about it right here.

First of all, like I said, it's so connected to the Old Testament.

You see uh phrases in that song of Moses and the song of the Lamb.

You see phrases there, and you can look them up in your own Bible if you have a uh a margin that has uh notes and things like that.

You'll find these in there.

But uh references to Exodus uh chapter 15 to Psalm 139 to Amos 4, Deuteronomy 32, really uh powerful here, Psalm 2, um, Jeremiah 10, Psalm 86.

I mean, this is how connected uh the book of Revelation is to the Old Testament.

And this is how connected John the Apostle himself, as he Um, uh, writes all of this down.

What he's seeing, he understood it too.

He knew.

Uh what's really fascinating about John is that when we talk about the Song of Moses and the Song of the Lamb, John has met both of them.

He walked with Jesus.

John is one of his closest disciples.

But you may remember that he also met Moses on the Mount of Transfiguration.

Yeah, Moses and Elijah both appeared there with Jesus.

And Peter, James, and John were all there.

So when John is in this vision, this heavenly vision that he's having, um, and he hears the words, the lyrics of this song that they're singing, and he he he knows the Lamb and he knows Moses.

This is so personal and so real for him.

You can see how he would remember all of this.

This is really powerful.

He may not have heard the victors over the beast sing these actual words, but it was revealed to him that they were praising God for his mighty deliverance and for vindicating both of them and God's righteous judgment upon the enemies of God.

He saw, he saw, we're told twice.

And they were singing, we're told.

So I think John did hear it.

I'm pretty sure he did.

But we have in verses one through four is the story of worship in heaven.

Again, we've had it before, but it's good to continue to see that in spite of all of these cycles of seven seals, seven trumpets, seven bowls, cups, or goblets, in the middle of all of that, God's people are always praising God, and God always deserves and is worthy of our worship.

And so I love the snapshots of that.

I long for the day, and I know it's coming soon when um the village chapel will be able to regather, even though we've been in this period of time uh with this pandemic, and we haven't been able to gather in person.

But I'm so looking forward to the foretaste of what heaven will be like that I will find in the regathering of God's people together to sing, to sing his praises.

So looking forward to that.

And I'm so grateful for the technology, our tech team enabling us, giving us the ability to sing um, even though we're in separate spaces.

Um, but the Lord is doing for us what the internet can't do in uniting our hearts, in holding us fast himself, and in holding us together as a church.

Well, these who worship in verses one through four and the witness that we see in verses five through eight, what kind of things can we learn here?

Worship.

Those who had overcome were standing on this sea of glass.

Um, and I love it again that there's fire and water mixed there.

And uh uh these paradoxes, these mixed metaphors that we see throughout Revelation, um, just again fuel the wonder because as you're trying to figure out what it would that look like or what does that mean, we just like John, he he continues to say, like and as.

When he sees something, he doesn't really know what he's seeing.

And he often will say, like or as.

I saw something like, or I heard something as a, you know, and he does it over a hundred times, folks, in just 22 chapters.

Over a hundred times he resorts to like or as.

Why?

Because he's overwhelmed with wonder and responding in worship.

Um, and if there's one thing I think we can all gain from reading the book of Revelation, which is just in the reading of it and the hearing of it from chapter one, we know there's a blessing.

Even though it may sound confusing to us, some of these images and that sort of thing, but the really big picture stuff.

And if you keep your eyes focused on Jesus, what you continue to see is that God is sovereign over everything.

And the Lamb of God has come, the Lamb who was slain, who lives again and reigns forever, is in pursuit of a people he can call his own.

And one day he intends to set everything right.

So that's what makes people respond with the kind of song we read in verses three through four.

Let me just put a little outline of that up on this on the screen for you to see.

Look at what they're singing about.

What what what is the ultimate worship song contain?

Praise to God for his works, for his ways, for his name, for his nature, uh, and for his revealing himself to us.

And so we see all of this, don't we?

God's works are what?

Great and marvelous.

Those are really amazing um adjectival modifiers.

I love that about our God.

His works are great and marvelous.

Whether you're talking about creation, where he spoke everything into being, just by the power of his word, or whether you're talking about the fact that he holds everything together, like Colossians 1 tells us, um, this is an amazing God.

And he can do anything that can be done.

Um, his ways are righteous and true.

And how I long for that, I know you do too.

We all do.

I think when we get quiet, when we get still, and we're not so focused on what's going on in our particular moment in history.

Uh, we long for um the whoever it is that has the ultimate authority and power to have that kind of character and to have that kind to to execute their power and authority in that kind of way.

His ways, they're righteous and they're true.

So God's trustworthy.

He's great, he's marvelous, and he's trustworthy because of his ways and his character.

His name, I love it, it's in that song as well.

He's called the Lord God the Almighty.

In other words, there's no one else, no conceivable entity in all of reality, physical or metaphysical reality, that you can think of that would be greater than this God.

The Almighty, not the part mighty, not the summighty, but this is the Lord God Almighty.

And if the if the title God means anything at all, that's exactly what it means.

He's completely transcended, high above us, other than us in every way.

And we're told that throughout the Bible is our ways are not his ways, our thoughts are not his thoughts.

He's so far, high, and above us.

And yet he has drawn near to us.

Isn't that awesome?

And even in our creeds, you know, when we say, I believe in God the Father, or we believe in God the Father Almighty, we put those two words right next to each other: Father and Almighty, near, relational as father, intimate.

Loves us.

We can go to him, we can run to him, and he won't cast us out.

Father.

No matter what kind of father you had, or what kind of father I had, this is the father we've always wanted and needed.

But he's also almighty.

He's the father almighty.

And those two words put next to each other are such a great, awesome um uh juxtaposition that blows your mind.

He's father, but he's almighty.

That's just great.

His nature, as we see up on the screen, he is holy, um, altogether separate, unique in every way, pure, um, righteous.

He's the king of the nations, that's part of his nature as well.

He has all authority.

And see, only someone who is truly holy can really handle that kind of thing.

We fail miserably when we're entrusted with power and authority.

All of us do.

I know I know it's really easy to look around the world and and and point to leaders and and different people who have failed, and that's true, they have not denying that.

But yet I have to admit, the same thing is inside of me, maybe in smaller ways, but not any less dark, not any less uh me trying to just do it myself and be in charge of myself and usurp or replace God myself.

Um, and then comes the convicting work of the Holy Spirit.

And so He, God's revelation, He reveals Himself to us, and He's irresistible, and His deeds are irreversible, His purposes uh and His ways are unavoidable, and this is good news.

Why?

Because of who He is, because of His nature and His character.

And this is not merely fanciful escapist fiction, folks.

This is theological conviction.

These are the convictions of God's people about the God who is there and has not left us alone in a darkening and disorienting world.

These are the convictions about who will have the last word, who will have the final say in all of reality, and how things can actually be set right, because we all know things aren't right.

And as hard as we work and as hard as we try, we have mixed motives ourselves.

We don't do things perfectly ourselves.

We get angry, we get, you know, completely myopic.

We can only see our particular moment in time and space and history, and how we have been offended and we're trying to control the outcomes and all that sort of thing.

Only God could actually be trusted with all authority because only God is holy like this.

The song of Moses and the song of Jesus is a song of worship.

Why?

Because God is worthy of our worship.

It overflows with praise and thanksgiving to God for his mighty deeds, his righteous ways, his powerful name, his love for truth and justice, his generosity in revealing himself to us.

This song tells us we don't need to be afraid.

The outcome is sure.

We may not be able to see it in our moment right now, but God has the reins.

God is trustworthy, and he will set things right.

That day will come and it will be glorious.

And T.

Wright says in Small Faith, Great God, being a Christian is not a matter of vague ideals and wishy-washy ideas.

It is a matter of thousands upon thousands of God's ransom people singing uninhibitedly the song of their deliverance.

And so that glassy sea song, man, that's that's us, man.

Let's sing it.

Let's sing it out now.

You know, why wait until we get onto the glassy sea?

Let's start singing now of our God and his redeeming power.

Carl Truman, this is a lengthy quote, but I'm gonna put up on the screen a couple slides.

We need to grasp once again who God is in his fullness.

We need to grasp who we are in relation to him.

And we need teaching and worship, which gives full-orbed expression to these things.

And this will only come when we in the West grow up, ditch the designer gods we built from our pick and mix Bible, where consumer, not creator, is king.

And we've and we learn to give the whole Bible its proper place in our lives, thinking and worship.

So well said.

And that will be available for download.

You, you know, you're gonna want to get that.

Michael Horton, another theologian of our own day and time.

Our sense of purpose as individuals and as a church depends largely on how clearly we grasp certain truths about who God is, who we are, and what God's plan for history involves.

And that can think of no better way to get all of that set up straight than the book of Revelation.

All right, I gotta hurry.

The last couple of verses, or the last few verses there, verses five through eight, are about witness.

And the Christian faith really is both a come and see and a go and tell faith.

That happened at the tomb.

Um, the angels invited those who rushed to the tomb to see whether or not Jesus was still there.

And um, and they said, come and see, he's not here, he's risen.

Go and tell his disciples.

Uh, this is awesome.

Our faith is that way.

It's come and see and it's go and tell.

It's both.

And here's John doing exactly that.

He's telling us what he's seen.

And he's passing that around to all of the seven churches in Asia Minor.

And by extension, God preserves this word for us to encourage us, to overwhelm us with wonder and lead us to worship.

Look, no matter what is going on in this broken world, while we are still here, we need to see our primary role as witnesses of the realities of what God has done in the person and work of Jesus.

But we're not to remain silent witnesses, just like Jesus.

We're to witness both in word and in deed.

Now, a lot of Christians, a lot of pastors, a lot of theologians, and all that sort of really great about talking all the judicial side of our salvation.

And that's important.

Without that, there isn't the change, there isn't the transformation, there isn't the new life in Christ.

Please understand that.

But it issues forth in a new way of being.

We're called new creations in Christ.

We're it's said that we're born again.

See?

It's said that we are beginning to be conformed to the image of Jesus.

In other words, the way Jesus sees others, we see them the same way.

The way that Jesus comes and sacrificially lays his life down for others, we would do the same thing.

Why?

Because we want to be just like Jesus.

We're his disciples or his apprentices, as Dallas Willard used to say.

And we would love nothing more than to delight our Heavenly Father by living our lives in such a way that would bring glory to the name of Jesus in all of our personal relationships, our family, our friends, our social media habits.

When we post or tweet, is it the kind of thing Jesus would say?

In our work, in our productivity, in our recreation, in our play, in our earthly citizenship.

Do we exhibit joy in the midst of all the acrimony and the rancor that's out there in the culture of confusion that is confused mostly because it's just worshiping idols and immorality, which we read about here in the book of Revelation?

We're constantly being called to turn away from our idols and our immorality of all stripes, all kinds, right?

And so do we experience, do we express, do we exhibit as the people of God who have been transformed by the power of Jesus and the Holy Spirit at work in our lives?

Um, the kind of humble confidence in the midst of this culture of confusion and fear and despair.

Um God, the only one who has defeated our last and greatest enemy, death itself, is the only one that can really change us and transform us.

And so we keep going back to Him, worshiping in the midst of all that's going on, continuing to worship Him.

There'll be those, though, who will let things slide, who will sort of, you know, they were just in it for the culture of it, or they weren't really trusting God.

They didn't really understand who God is and who they really are in relationship to God.

And um I just want to encourage you to stay fixed on Jesus as we go through the book of Revelation.

Because otherwise, all of those other idols that we might substitute in for Jesus, and whether that whether that's money or fame or politics or whatever it might be, those idols will crush us.

They will break our hearts over and over and over again.

And I speak from experience.

Um and I know it's gonna happen to me again, but I'm gonna remember to repent and return, as Acts chapter 3, verse 19 reminds us.

Acts 3:19

I love Charles Spurgeon.

He said there are many sorts of broken hearts.

Christ is good at healing them all.

So I don't know where you're at.

I don't know what's disappointed you in this world in which we live or in your world.

But listen, whenever it is that God determines, the time has come to wrap things up, and yes, to bring his judgment on all that is wrong and evil and resists God and God's ways.

God will do so comprehensively, as we learned last week.

Thorough, as thorough as smoke filling the temple, permeating every crevice, crack in the floor, everything.

It will be like that.

Um, but it's because God, who is pure and holy and righteous and true, by his power will bring about with irreversible certainty the new heavens and the new earth.

And I, just like you, look forward to that.

I want there to be justice, I want there to be fairness, I want there to be no more disease, no more viruses, no more despair, no more acrimony.

In light of all of these wonders, Jesus Christ is the only one worthy of our praise, our honor, and we give him glory.

Danny Webster is part of the Evangelical Alliance over in the UK.

He says this, the story of Jesus' birth reminds us that in the political maelstrom of the present, we too are taught to fear not.

In a world of uncertainty, Advent, and he was writing about Advent, but look, Revelation is about his second Advent.

So in between times, we're going to be thinking about both of those, looking back on his first Advent, looking forward to his second coming.

In a world of uncertainty, Advent reminds us to trust in God's authority, not in our own.

As we trust in God and his goodness and faithfulness, we provide a witness to our world that we can find peace, whatever anxieties today or tomorrow may hold.

And then that wise sage, Eugene Peterson, in his beautiful book called Reversed Thunder, on the, which is about his thoughts on the book of Revelation, he says, the persistence of the prayer, how long, issues apparently from a deep, unshakable conviction that God will bring an end to injustice, even though he shows no signs of calling the courtroom to order.

How did this conviction get so deep into God's people?

How did it acquire its unshakable anchorage?

And so, folks, we keep, until he comes, we keep saying, How long, O Lord?

And reminding us ourselves that he has promised, and based on his character, we can trust and believe in his promises.

Frances Jane Crosby, despite becoming blind shortly after birth, wrote more than 8,000 hymns and gospel songs during her lifetime, including one that we sang earlier, Jesus Keep Me Near the Cross.

I love it.

Other songs by her, uh Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior.

Many of you have sung that before.

Blessed Assurance, one of my favorites, one of my mother-in-law's favorites.

Remember singing that as we stood around her bed as she passed into glory.

And also the one that we're about to sing, To God be the glory.

Crosby, who passed from this life into the next, into glory in 1915, has been called the queen of gospel songwriters, the mother of modern congregational singing in America.

To God Be the Glory was first published in 1865, but it really didn't catch on.

It wasn't until 1954, and I can remember this because it was the year, believe it or not, I was born, in 1954, Cliff Barrows, song leader for Billy Graham, was handed a copy with a suggestion that that song might be added to the songbook for the London Evangelistic Crusade back then.

And that young preacher, Billy Graham, here's a couple pictures of him.

It was received so well in London that Barrows included that song, To God Be the Glory, again later that year, 1954, in the Evangelistic Crusade held at Vanderbilt University in the then new gymnasium here in Nashville, Tennessee.

The opening lyric reminds me just a little bit of the song of Moses and of Jesus.

To God be the glory, great things he has done.

So loved ye the world that he gave us his son.

Yielded his life and atonement for sin.

You're going to sing it in a minute, but I want to read it because I think you need to let it sink in more.

Yield his life and atonement for sin.

He paid the price.

Open the life gate that all may go in.

Praise the Lord.

Praise the Lord.

Let the earth hear his voice.

Praise the Lord.

Praise the Lord, witnesses.

Let the people rejoice.

Listen, John, the apostle in the book of Revelation, he had been looking and seeing.

As instructed by Christ, he had been writing it down and telling everyone he could in the first century.

Let's do the same thing.

Let's talk about God's great and wonderful works.

Let's look at and see God's righteous and true ways, that he's almighty, that he's the ruler of all nations, that he will be the one to determine the course of history.

And let's trust in him.

I gotta be honest.

Sometimes I'm not looking or seeing God.

Far too often I'm looking at the moral bankruptcy of our culture, or I'm looking at the corruption of politics on all sides.

And the false narratives of an unbridled media complex.

Way too often I'm not looking at or seeing what God might be up to because I'm looking at other things.

And so here we are called in Revelation 15 to look at God.

Look at how powerful and wonderful are his works and his ways.

Let's draw near to him.

Let's take a good look and let's see how great and marvelous his works are.

And then let's become witnesses of the good news of the gospel in both word and deed, just like John did, and just like Jesus himself did word and deed.

And then let's look forward to the day when we're standing around on the glassy sea, looking down at the water and uh fire, and remembering the deliverance of God on our behalf to God be the glory.