Revelation 8

We study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel, and we are in Revelation chapter 8.

Revelation 8 · chapter mention

If you want to grab your Bible and turn there or swipe there on your device, special thanks to Tommy Bailey for leading us through Revelation chapter 7 last week.

Revelation 7 · chapter mention

And I'll remind you as we get started this morning that the whole purpose of the book is stated real clearly right at the front.

Revelation 1, 1 through 2, the revelation of Jesus Christ.

That tells us what the revelation is about, which God gave him to show to his bondservants.

So the source is there.

God the Father gave it to God the Son to show to his bondservants.

There's the purpose, the things which must soon take place.

And he sent and communicated it by his angel to his bondservant John.

Now we have the sort of means of or the chain of conveyance, a means of conveyance, who testified to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus, even to all that he saw.

And I love it that we hear that over and over again as we're in the these uh seven visions, which I'll put this up on the screen too, because we've broken the book up this way.

Vision one, chapters one through three, vision two, chapters four through chapter eight, verse one.

And so we have uh we're just about to read the opening of the seventh seal in this sacred scroll, and it's really, really exciting.

Uh, we've already studied the seven churches, as you see in vision one, vision three, uh, chapter eight, uh, verse two through chapter 11 will be all about these seven trumpets that sound.

And so this is the um the second of three cycles of God's judgment represented in the seven seals, the seven trumpets and the seven bowls.

Uh, chapters 12 and 4 through 14, the battle against Satan, that's vision number four, vision number five, chapters 15 and 16.

Um, and there we find the the cycle called uh of the seven bowls.

And uh vision six is chapters 17, 18, and 19, the downfall of Babylon, and then those great, grand and glorious last three chapters, 20, 21, 22, all about the new heavens and the new earth.

Isaiah 17 · chapter mention

So I'm very, very excited to get there.

Um, and I'm I I I keep finding myself uh jumping ahead a little bit.

So you have to forgive me if I if I if I do that sort of thing.

I don't mean to spoil anything, but in the end, well, I'll let I'll you you read ahead, all right?

That's the way we'll do it.

Um the revelation is the unveiling, as we saw in that first verse, of Jesus Christ.

It's the it's the revealing of Jesus.

It's not really about the dragons or the fire brimstone or any of that stuff.

It's about ultimately it's about Jesus.

And so these other things are symbols in motion, some of them.

Uh, some of the events, some of the uh characters that we're gonna read about.

They're really about pointing us, though, ultimately back to Christ.

Now, chapter eight, I'm gonna give you the outline in advance here.

It's the seventh seal, the silence of heaven, and the sound of trumpets.

If you'll open your Bible and turn with me there, let's go ahead and take a look at this Baker's dozen of verses.

The future camera that was looking ahead in chapter seven to the way it's all gonna be one day, where people from every tribe and tongue and people group and nation are gathered together before the throne of God to worship God together and in unity, in a unity of diversity that you can only explain uh because of the of the grace of God at work in our lives together, you know.

And uh what a beautiful, beautiful chapter that was last week.

And then it says, as it focuses back in on the lamb, he broke the seventh seal.

Uh-oh, here we go.

Now, this is you're gonna this is sort of climactic because we've done six seals and then we've taken a look at uh at the throne room of heaven and worship and what's going on there.

And so one would expect that this would be climactic right here, as as the lamb, Jesus, uh, who's also the lion, and he's called the root of David as well.

Um, when he opens that seventh seal, you just gotta be expecting you're leaning forward.

It's the last one.

The scroll is gonna burst open, and we're gonna find out what's in it and exactly what it says, and all of God's covenant promises.

We're gonna be reminded of all of that, and and all of the hope is just gonna come flooding out, and it's gonna be awesome.

But what happens?

The seventh seal, and there was silence in heaven for about a half an hour.

Wow.

And even that John would say something for about a half an hour, that's a fascinating thought to me.

Um, I I have trouble being quiet and being still for 30 seconds, much less 30 minutes.

And uh and here he says, when that seal was broken, that climactic moment, what happened was everything went quiet.

And it was as if nothing happened.

And yet something was happening.

And so he's gonna tell us.

I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them.

Assume that God's the one probably that gave them those trumpets, and he's the one that's uh assigning parts to the symphony that they're gonna play as we go along.

These seven angels that are standing before God, who are they?

They're not named.

Um, but some some Bible commentators think they're the archangels.

Uh some think that Gabriel's one of them because in Luke chapter 1 he appears to Zecharias, uh, and he says, I'm Gabriel and I stand before the Lord.

Luke 1 · chapter mention

You know, so he might be one of those.

I don't know.

Um, but the angels aren't the points, see, they're the pointers.

Another angel came, this is like an eighth angel, okay, and uh stood at the altar holding a golden censer, and much incense was given to him that he might add it to the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar, which was before the throne.

And so here is God handing out seven trumpets to these seven angels.

Here's God also making sure that this eighth angel adds much incense to mix it together with the prayers of the saints upon the golden altar, which was before the throne.

That's such a beautiful image, isn't it?

God has saved all the prayers of the saints.

We saw this image a little bit earlier, too, that they're on this golden altar and that they're rising to the throne of God like incense that would rise up.

And so God says, Here, add some more to it, mix it all together, and uh and it begins to rise to the Lord.

And the smoke of the incense with the prayers of the saints went up before God, verse 4 says, out of the angel's hand.

So you can kind of see that's very visual, isn't it?

Verse 5 the angel took the censer and he filled it with fire of the altar and threw it to the earth.

And there followed peals of thunder and sounds and flashes of lightning and an earthquake.

And the idea there is uh, you know, thunder, and and some of your translations will say not just soundings, but rumblings.

Um, you know that the thunder when it rolls through sometimes, it'll shake the glass, rattle the rap rattle the the whole house that you're in, right?

And then lightning flashing and an earthquake.

In other words, this will be uh a moment that is unavoidable and unstoppable no matter where you are, no matter what building you're in, no matter what country you're in, this is a moment when God is going to signal a change is coming.

Something is about to happen.

And he's waking up or making sure he gets everyone's attention because he really wants everyone to hear this.

And so, what is it that he wants them to hear?

The seven angels, verse six, who had the seven trumpets, prepared themselves to sound them.

So this is this is like the this is like the orchestra.

Tuning their instruments, right?

Getting make sure everything is A440, everything's right on pitch, and they're all in tune with each other, and they're watching for the conductor, the concert master, who will tell them exactly what to play, how loud to play it, when to play it, what the tempo is, and all of that, right?

This is so beautiful when you think about it.

And so they're tuning up, they're getting ready to sound their trumpets, and then we have the first four of these trumpets that will sound in chapter uh eight here, and then we'll have a little interlude before we get to uh the fifth, sixth, and uh seventh trumpets.

So for today, the first four, uh verse seven, and the first trumpet sounded, and there came hail and fire mixed with blood, and they were thrown to the earth, and a third of the earth was burnt up, and a third of the trees were burnt up, and all the green grass was burnt up.

Now you've heard a third mentioned here a couple of times.

It's going to be mentioned actually twelve times.

It's going to be a part of God's own self-regulation in meeting out his judgment in this cycle of the trumpets.

And that's interesting to at least notice.

I mean, why wouldn't God just go ahead and meet out all of his judgment and wipe it all out?

And sometimes maybe you have been impatient with God when it comes to justice, when it comes to him wrapping things up, when it comes to him setting things right, and you just wanted to do it all and do it now.

I've been that way, I have to admit.

I get I get exhausted uh sometimes by the just the weight of the world and the level of of rancor and acrimony that's out there.

People that have have sort of given their hearts over to think that all these other finite things are are the thing and they're not.

And and and yet it's created conflict, as we saw with the seven se with the six seals we've already studied uh previously.

Um it causes conflict and war and and it it leads us to a place away from God, not to God, not to God's shalom, to his peace, but away from that, to the unsettledness, the uncertainty, uh, and the and the and the chaos that is in the world as a result of sin.

Well, this first trumpet sounds, and hail and fire come and and they burn it burns up a third of the earth and a third of the trees, and all the grass is burned up.

The second angel sounded something like a great mountain, sounded its its trumpet, and something like a great mountain burning with fire, you can see it, was thrown into the sea, and a third of the sea became blood.

That's man, that's that's an amazing image when you think about that.

A mountain flying through the air, a flaming mountain flying through the air, hits the water, and the water turns not to blood.

You don't just see steam rising because the fire and the water, but it became blood.

Verse 9.

And a third of the creatures which were in the sea and had life died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.

And so here we have with the first one, the first trumpet is sounded, and the impact is on the environment itself.

And the second one, the impact is on commerce in the world.

Back in their day, are you kidding me?

That's how they used to get their goods and services and products around the Mediterranean by ship.

Um, fishing was huge for them in terms of food, and so a third of all of that commerce is just shut down in this measured judgment of God.

Verse 10 the third angel sounded, and a great star fell from heaven, burning like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of waters.

And the name of the star is called wormwood, means bitter, and a third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died from the waters because they were made bitter, and so the water, a third of it is poisoned.

A third of what would have been fresh spring water, you know, in our day and time that that would come in a bottle.

We'd buy a case of it at Costco or whatever.

And but a third of it becomes bitter or poisonous as a result of this star, this uh uh third angel that has sounded its trumpet, and this star that has fallen like a burning torch, like a comet coming at the world, and somehow or another, it just n it just hits all of the uh sort of natural resources, perhaps that's what that represents, right?

The resources that we can partake of.

This fresh water, if you will.

Well, the fourth angel sounded, and a third of the sun and a third of the moon and a third of the stars were smitten, so that a third of them might be darkened.

Remember, they would be natural sources of light back then for these folks.

They didn't have that giant flashlight with the mega battery that I have.

I can go outside and literally, you know, flash it at in the middle of the night and literally burn paint off a building because my flashlight's so powerful and strong, right?

So they didn't have that.

So for them, a third of the sun, a third of the moon, a third of the stars were smitten, so that a third of them might be darkened and the day might not shine for a third of it in the night in the same way.

And these four trumpets sounding, and this judgment that is being meted out upon the earth in all of these different categories.

If if my if my the way I'm ascribing these or describing these categories is right, or even if it's not, what's happening is a third of everything in the physical realm is being affected here.

Because God wants to get the attention of the world.

And then verse 13.

And I looked, John said, and I heard an eagle flying in mid-heaven saying with a loud voice, and here's a talking eagle, here's a here's a talking eagle saying, Whoa, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth, because of the remaining blasts of the trumpet of the three angels who were about to sound.

In other words, woe, woe, woe.

And what you've just experienced with a third and a third and a third and a third and a third twelve times, that's only the beginning.

Woe.

And woe is a word of warning, isn't it?

It's a it's stop.

And here's here's this, here's this flying eagle, this this talking bird.

I've I I I I love that.

You don't see a lot of that.

You got a talking donkey in the Old Testament, you got this talking eagle here.

But I love that about the the Chronicles of Narnia, for instance.

I'm reading uh the silver chair out loud to to Kim and I.

We're going through that again.

And and it's just it's just so great fun to hear these these owls, to-hoo, to-hoo! What do you do?

What do you do?

You know, all that, and uh, and puddle glum with his long arms and long legs and all these different creatures.

Um, quite imaginative.

But here is an eagle, and he's got a mission, he's got a purpose.

It's to, like the trumpet, it's to signal something.

And God has sent this warning to the world.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

And you know, when God says something once, it's important when he says it twice.

Jesus used to do that.

He did a couplet called, Truly, truly, I say to you.

And then he would say something, and he wanted them to know by saying it twice at the front, truly, truly, this is really true.

And here's the eagle saying, Whoa, one time, whoa, a second time, and woe a third time.

And he wants to say, for those who dwell on the earth, the three trumpets that are about to sound, those really are gonna give you pause.

If you haven't heard these first four, you will hear these last three.

And so, wow, what an amazing chapter this is, and the images are really powerful.

Let me give you uh a little bit of a uh a few thoughts on the seventh seal, the silence of heaven, and the sound of these trumpets.

Um chapter seven gave us that interlude, that pause that we needed.

We had looked at the first six seals uh as they had uh were wrapped around that scroll or that book that the lamb was holding.

And of course, the uh the cry had gone out who's worthy to un uh to break the seals and to open the scroll, and and and there was silence there too, and then John was weeping, and uh, and then uh and then he was told the lamb is worthy, the one who's the lion of Judah, the root of David, and the lamb of God, and pointed right at Jesus, the elder that said this.

He's worthy to do this.

And the reason he's worthy, folks, let me remind you, is because Jesus is all three of those at once.

He's the lion of Judah, the victorious king.

Um, he's the root of David, means he's he's he became one of us.

So he could represent us on the cross.

And when he was resurrected, oh yeah, he can offer us that resurrection too, as our representative head.

And and then he's the he's the Lamb of God, the Lamb who was slain and yet lives to reign forevermore.

And so the fact that Jesus is all three of those, that he gave his life for us, that he, the king of all of the universe, came, became the root of David, became one of us, and then laid down his life for us.

That's just mind-blowing.

That's eye popping, heart thumping.

I mean, that's the we think about all the different kinds of gods you've ever heard about.

That's the kind of God I want to worship, who loves me so much, loves you so much, would condescend to leave the comforts of heaven, would condescend to become one of us with all of that that entails, when you're the infinite God to to to stuff yourself down to become a a a human person, and then to offer your life like that in our place when he who knew no sin, Jesus, became sin that we might become the righteousness of God in Christ.

Oh, what a beautiful Savior, what a wonderful Redeemer He is.

And so He's the one that breaks the seventh seal.

And what happens as he breaks the seventh seal is so amazing.

It I mean, the hush that happens, the 30 minutes of silence that happens right after that is this silence of heaven after the climactic breaking of that seventh seal.

What was that like for John, who's probably still on his face, looking up like this and going, you know, the seal is broken and the scroll just kind of bounces open, I would suspect, in the lamb's hand there.

And John is just waiting for something, some huge noise or some heat, some big explosion, or some action to happen, and nothing happens.

And he probably looks around and looks at the 24 elders.

Surely one of them is going to say something.

Maybe one of the four living creatures will say something.

Maybe one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse will come riding back in and have a message for us or something like that.

Nothing.

Silence.

The silence of heaven.

You know, the world that we live in is a very noisy place.

Um if we're not talking, somebody's talking to us or at us.

Uh we're all incessantly advertised to.

We're pummeled with promotion all the time for products and services that we don't want, don't need.

We're all being talked at, influenced by, sold to, and what's being formed in us is a worldview.

And that worldview includes the idea that we must always be stimulated in some way.

And the difficult news is that we've really all become addicted to this noise, external and internal noise.

We've been trained, literally, all of us, we've been trained, watch it.

We've been trained to drop everything else and to drop our present moment with other people whenever we hear that notification go off in our phone or on our computer in the other room or on our laptop or on our tablet or on our watch.

And we have now been so trained and steeped in all of that that we can't be silent.

And our souls are exhausted for it.

Constant stimulation means constantly wired.

It's like being caffeinated all the time.

And our souls don't know how to be quiet.

And here for just 30 minutes in the heavenly realm, after that climactic breaking of the seventh.

Seal.

God chooses to say.

And then the next thing he talks about is the prayers of the saints.

This is awesome.

Alright, some of the commentators say the reason the Lord said hush for 30 minutes is so he could hear the prayers of the saints.

That might that might be one speculation.

I don't think God can't hear our prayers, even if there's noise going on all around us and all throughout the heavens and all of that.

I'm sure he could still hear us.

But maybe he wanted us to know that he could hear us.

Maybe he wanted us to know that he wanted to hear us, that he wants to hear us.

But something else happened there.

The angel is given much incense and told to mingle it with the prayers of the saints.

What's that about?

I'm speculating again, but we're going to have to do a bit of that in a book like this.

But I'm encouraged not only by the fact that God wants me to know that He wants to listen and He wants to hear the prayers of His people, but I'm also encouraged by the fact because my, you know, if there's any part of my spiritual life that needs work all the time at any point in my journey, it's my prayer life.

Much incense was added.

I need much incense added to my prayers.

And sometimes, maybe like me, maybe, maybe you're like me.

Sometimes I'm not sure I'm praying the right way or have the right words to say.

Sometimes my soul is so exhausted from all the noise, from all of the fears, or from all the frustrations, or from all the despair, from all of the rancor that's out there.

And I don't know what to say.

So I drop to my knees, and I'm so glad we have we have prayers like the Lord's Prayer and some of the prayers from the Valley of Vision that we use, and some of some of the prayers that we'll be using on our Wednesday night prayer gatherings that are coming up.

I'm so glad we have those to lean on.

We have those words.

But here I also see an image of God saying, here, uh, angel number eight, without a name, uh, mix this incense.

We're gonna add, we're gonna, not only are we increasing the amount of prayer, but I think the Lord helps us with our prayers.

Like He, like, like, like, like we, because we need that.

You see, even all the way back to David's time, uh, Psalm 141, he was crying, O Lord, I call upon you, hasten to me, give ear to my voice when I call to you.

May my prayer be counted as incense before you.

The lifting up of my hands as the evening offering.

You see, the image of that incense as our prayer is going up is not new to Revelation.

It's it's it's runs throughout the Bible like this.

And so when you pray, your prayers ascending to the heavens, ascending before the throne of God, he's taking time to hear them.

But I would even say it's more than that, Romans 8.26.

In the same way, the Spirit helps our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we should.

But the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words, and that's another way of saying the same kind of thing.

Here's the Spirit indwelling every believer.

And every time I drop to my knees in prayer and just say help, or just say, I don't know what to do, or just say, I'm sorry, or just say thank you, or just rejoice in his presence, whatever it is.

I run out of words, I run out of, I don't even know what I'm feeling sometimes.

Maybe you're like that.

And yet I can depend on the Holy Spirit to fill in all the gaps, to correct all of the language and all of the theology and all of the doctrine that I got wrong in my prayers.

And he just carries, the Holy Spirit just carries.

He intercedes on my behalf and on your behalf, and I love that.

God is being gracious to us even when we aren't able to pray correctly or at all.

God is just being gracious to us all the time.

Isn't that amazing, folks?

And then what happens is the angel takes the sensor, fills it with some fire from the altar, and throws it at the earth, and the earth gets this thunder and rumbling and lightning and earthquake.

All of that happens.

And it just reminds me of this Eugene Peterson quote, prayer re-enters history with incalculable effects.

Our earth is shaken daily by it.

Wow.

So prayer is effective.

In the pick, it's it's that's pictured here as the angel throws it back at the earth.

And all of the prayers of the saints, longing for justice, longing for the Lord to vindicate his good name and their faith and trust and hope in him, longing for all of that, those prayers are effective as God throws, as the angel, God has the angel throw that back at the earth, and it makes this rumbling and shaking of everything and signaling that the end is near and that everyone should pay attention.

And our earth is shaken daily by it.

I also hope in another way that I'm shaken daily by my own prayers.

I hope I'm before him and trembling in awe at how great and gracious and wonderful and mighty and majestic he is.

Um, if you've never been before the Lord and trembled, you may never have been before the Lord.

I mean, he's he is mighty, he is great, as we we will continue to see as we go through the book of Revelation.

What about the sound of these trumpets?

I've got to move quickly here.

Um, trumpets uh as a uh musical instrument are one thing, but uh I want you to know that they also had other purposes throughout the scriptures.

We read of trumpets being sounded to gather the people, to summon the people, that it's time to move out uh to signal the beginning of a battle or to change a strategy in the middle of a battle.

Uh, we find trumpets used uh daily for the daily sacrifices in the temple in the ancient uh Jewish world.

Um, trumpets were used to celebrate the feast, like uh uh Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur or to signal the year of Jubilee, trumpets would be sounded.

Uh, trumpets would be used to celebrate the victory in battle.

Um, trumpets would be used to welcome a dignitary, uh, someone who's coming from another uh kingdom, a king, a royal person or something.

And they they would just you know blow trumpets to welcome them in and to honor them.

And then, of course, trumpets were used at the coronation of a new king.

Um, yeah, it's really powerful when you think of all of that.

Trumpets are pretty amazing in our own day and time as well.

Um, the last trumpet I heard was in Arlington National Cemetery.

Uh, as the bugler played taps for my father-in-law, Captain Sidney V.

Wright, we uh back in December were up there for his funeral, and uh taps is such a beautiful and a moving piece of music.

Uh, I know you've heard it before.

Uh, but just to listen to a single alone uh bugler out there standing all alone in the pouring rain that day, and to hear Taps play the trumpet, just honoring the dignity of my father-in-law's service to the military, and and uh as he was laid to rest.

And I look forward to seeing him when another trumpet sounds, um the one we read about in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, uh, when the return of Christ uh the trumpet of Jesus uh sounds as he returns.

1 Thessalonians 4 · chapter mention

Well, these uh these trumpets as they're blown, and these plagues that come upon the earth as they do, uh in measured amounts, thirds, as we've seen, they also are reminiscent of what we read in the book of Exodus, too.

So the first trumpet uh parallels the seventh plague of the ten plagues in Exodus, as God is trying to convince Pharaoh to let his people, let the people of God go, the Israelites to let them go.

And uh God is genuinely, as he's using these plagues, he's genuinely trying to persuade Pharaoh that he, Yahweh, is the one true and living God.

See, in ancient Egypt, they had 70 plus different nature deities.

They were all limited by their role in nature, the God of the sun, the God of the moon, the god of the rain, and the god of the harvest, and all that sort of thing.

So finite.

Um, but the idea in Judaism and Christianity, in all monotheistic religions, that there's a God, the title God means supreme over all, you see.

And so the God of the Bible, the creator of everything that exists, everything.

He's God Almighty.

See, everything belongs to him, it's his by right of creation.

You belong to him, I belong to him by right of his creating us.

And so there he is, trying to, you know, God working so hard in the Old Testament, seeking to persuade Pharaoh and give Pharaoh a chance to turn.

But Pharaoh's heart is set against Yahweh.

His heart is hardened, we're told, over and over and over again.

And sometimes it's God hardening his heart.

Sometimes it's Pharaoh just hardening his own heart, but God is just giving him more of what he wants, you see.

His hardened heart is what he wants.

So the first trumpet parallels the seventh plague, the second trumpet, the first plague of Egypt.

Um, the third trumpet really the uh impact is on natural resources.

We see that in several of the plagues in Exodus.

Fourth trumpet, the uh result of darkness as the natural light.

This means of natural light are limited.

Uh, a third of it is blocked out, and that certainly parallels the ninth plague.

And the fifth trumpet, uh, the locusts, we'll read about that later, uh, parallels the eighth plague, and then there's the sixth trumpet and the seventh trumpet, which you'll see there on the chart, and we'll go back to that again as we go through the next few chapters on into chapter 11 before we actually get to the seventh trumpet.

What is God up to in all of this?

Um, is God just uh capricious or is God just mean-spirited when he's doing all this?

No, no, no.

He's seeking to get, just like with Pharaoh, seeking to get draw their attention, to get their attention so that God can communicate to them and reveal himself to them.

C.

S.

Lewis said it this way: God whispers to us in our pleasures.

He speaks in our consciences, but he shouts in our pains.

It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

So, megaphone or trumpet, you get the idea, don't you?

God wants to awaken us, especially those who do not yet believe.

So, once again, I want to remind you that the the focus of this book, Revelation, is not the trumpets, it's not the seals, it's not the fire and brimstone, it's not the lightning and thunder, it's not the earthquakes, it's not the dragons or the beasts.

The focus of this book is Jesus, the lion of Judah, the root of David, the Lamb who was slain and yet who lives now forevermore.

People have been singing about this God who's a redeemer for a long, long time, all the way back in Psalm 97, where King David sings, The Lord reigns, let the earth rejoice, let the many coastlands be glad, clouds and thick darkness are all around him, righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.

Fire goes before him and burns up his adversaries all around.

His lightnings light up the world, the earth sees and trembles, the mountains melt like wax before the Lord, before the Lord of all the earth.

Do you see what's being communicated here?

What God is revealing about himself through this inspired ancient song.

Yeah.

He is the God of all creation.

He's powerful and awesome.

Um, he's to be feared, but he doesn't want you to be afraid of him.

He's to be feared, revered, to be uh uh he he wants to show himself uh worthy and holy and righteous, trustworthy, because he's all of those other things, you see.

And he wants to lavish his grace upon you and upon me, and that's the great news about it all.

Uh the same God who will be our judge wants to be our savior.

Um the Lion of Judah is the lamb who was slain.

And because he became the root of David, he can represent us well.

John Piper says in Don't Waste Your Life, the more the Hubble telescope sends back to us about the unfathomable depths of space, the more we should stand in awe of God.

The disproportion between us and the universe is a parable about the disproportion between us and God.

And it is an understatement, and that is so true.

Why?

Because God created the universe, created everything out of nothing.

Any entity that can create all of this, ex nihilo, out of nothing, by the simple power of his word, is worthy of our praise and is able to save us.

Mighty to save is the way it's often said in the scriptures.

So when you see all of this going on in the world around us, when you think that times are so dark, that times are so despairing, that that there are wars and rumors of wars, cataclysmic events, worldwide pandemics, tornadoes, earthquakes, all of those things.

What should we be looking for?

Here's how Jesus said to his disciples.

For these things must take place first, but the end does not follow immediately.

So Jesus is also the one that said, No man knows the day or the hour.

So when someone might say, Well, what is this book Revelation telling us?

Well, here's what it's saying is that God is sovereignly in charge of all that happens, including the earthquakes, the lightning, the thunder, the drying up of rivers or oceans, the darkening, darkening of the celestial skies, any of that that were to happen, God is ultimately in charge.

And he has it under his control.

How do I know that?

Well, because here in Revelation, he's measured it out.

One third only.

Stop.

Sequence the way he wants to do it.

The timing is his.

How do I know that?

And uh, and why can't I figure out what the sequence is?

Well, all I know is that every time a trumpet sounds, something happens.

Every time a seal is pulled free from that scroll, something happens, including the something called silence that was so important in the beginning of this chapter.

And so these judgments and all these calamities are really just God turning up the volume, if you will, for a spiritually deaf world, so it can more so that it can better hear the divine summons of the gospel.

Let me say that again.

These judgments and these calamities are God turning up the volume for a spiritually deaf world so it can better hear the divine summons of the gospel.

Have you heard it?

Are you listening?

Or is your world too noisy?

Do you need to get some silence and get on your knees, get on your face before him and listen to him or cry out to him?

Know that he hears you.

Revelation 8 tells you and reminds you of that.

And if all your prayer can be is help, please know he will make every cry of mercy of your heart.

He will hear it all, and it will be more than enough.

He just wants you to turn to him.

He loves you that much.

God's partial judgment has already begun against evil.

It goes all the way back to the garden, but it continues to increase as the days grow darker and as time presses on, and that great day of the Lord grows closer, one day at a time.

So today, closer than yesterday.

That's right.

But God's partial judgment, while it has already begun and is increasing, God's grace and mercy are still, they continue to be, they are still on offer.

Why wouldn't you want to receive that from him?

What's holding you back if you're an unbeliever?

Psalm 62, 1 through 2 goes like this.

The songwriters, they express themselves so beautifully and so honestly.

My soul waits in silence for God only.

From him is my salvation.

He only is my rock and my salvation, my stronghold.

I shall not be greatly shaken.

You see what that says there?

It's not about self-svation.

The real world is that you and I can't save ourselves.

We need outside help.

And the great news of revelation, the great news of the whole Bible, is that God has offered outside help.

He's come himself.

He didn't even just send angels, he came himself in the personal work of Jesus, who became the root of David.

The line of Judah became the root of David, and then became the Lamb who was slain on our behalf.

So that you and I might know of God's great love, his grace, and his mercy, and that we might respond to him then in faith believing.

What does that look like in your life?

What does it look like in my life?

Um I love the way Frederick Biegner in The Remarkable Ordinary talks about loving God.

He says, I don't know what it means to love God really.

I'm not all that good at it.

But I think one of the things it means is, just as in the case of loving anybody else, you stop, you watch, and you wait.

And then his advice, this poetic old sage, Beakner, listen for God.

Stop and watch and wait for him.

Brothers and sisters, let's turn to him and wait on him.

And even if all we hear is the sound of silence, it might be the sound of him listening to us.