"The Lamb’s Harvest" Pastor Nick Tawa August 9, 2026

You can return to your seats, but remain standing please.

Morning.

This this morning's passage comes from uh the book of Hebrews, chapter 14, verses 12 and 13.

You're welcome to listen, close your eyes, or follow along in the Bible.

Uh you're welcome to use the pew Bible if if you wish.

And I don't have the page number, so that's okay.

All right.

And I'm using a Kindle because I can see the read the word.

It's big enough.

Here is a call for the endurance of the saints.

Those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus.

And I heard a voice from heaven saying, Write this Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.

Blessed indeed, says the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them.

This is the word of the Lord.

You may be seated.

Resurrection.

So this is the central image of the book of Revelation, this slain lamb.

And we know it's symbolic because this lamb had seven eyes and seven horns.

And so it's meant to be taken figuratively, representative of a greater reality that in many ways transcends our ability to understand the world with our five senses.

So that's chapters four and five.

Chapters six to twenty, which is kind of where we're at now, it's this big chunk of scripture.

And simply put, this is judgment.

This is cycles of human empire repeating itself and God speaking into that with language of judgment, with imagery from the Hebrew prophets, and in the language of what is called Jewish apocalyptic literature.

So this is common in the first century.

We can go back to the last slide, just real quick.

But the point of all of this is that it culminates in chapters 21 and 22, which is where God restores and recreates his good creation.

So the point is to not get lost in the judgment imagery.

The whole point of the book is not that God is this vengeful, violent dictator, but rather he is restoring and fighting for his good creation.

So this is important as we kind of journey through the next few weeks.

Next week I'm gonna be teaching on chapters 15 and 16.

Uh Pastor Nick Quent is gonna come after that, and he's gonna be teaching a little bit more extensively on this image of Babylon.

What is Babylon in the book of Revelation?

I'm gonna be talking about uh the thousand-year reign in Revelation chapter 20.

Revelation 20 · chapter mention

And then we we hit the end zone, the finish line uh when we talk about the new creation.

So um, in a nutshell, that's the next month or so of teaching here.

Again, if you're visiting, sorry, um it's rough.

It's it's a little bit challenging, it's language that we're not used to.

So uh today we are in Revelation chapter 14, and I have sat with this for a long time.

Revelation 14 · chapter mention

There's some really shocking imagery here.

And what I want to provide before we jump into the text is seven guideposts for understanding this imagery in its original context.

Uh so this uh these are seven points.

It's not exhaustive.

I've picked these and adapted them from resources that I've recommended.

Uh I think they're on either on our website or in our email posts.

Uh so if you're interested, I can provide these sources.

And I picked seven because it's a number of completion, it's all over the book of Revelation, and I'm kind of OCD like that, so I want to maintain that pattern.

Nothing magical about these guideposts.

Um, let me briefly kind of go over these these guideposts.

So we can go to the next slide.

Uh so first, this is written from the perspective of this insignificant, oppressed, religious minority.

There's no political power, there's no military power, it's not a democracy, you can't go out and vote and say, hey, we're gonna change the tide here.

This is a group of people that didn't matter to anybody of any significance.

And one of the commentaries provides uh this really thoughtful uh piece of instruction.

And I'm gonna read this verbatim.

The moment the text is appropriated by a group who are themselves in a position of oppressive power, its effect is reversed from being a text of liberation to becoming a tool of oppression.

And its use in this way contradicts the core message of the text itself.

So I think this is so profound.

Revelation, I think, makes so much more sense in their ministry context than it does in a post-Christian Western context.

We have hundreds of years of Christian influence, for better or for worse.

A lot of it is for worse.

And so it's hard for us to comprehend where these early Christians were coming from?

What did it mean that they had no voice, that their lives were threatened, that there was this monstrous government that was over them.

And so that's the first thing for us to keep in mind.

Guidepost number two.

Empire, and it's not just the Roman Empire, but any oppressive human empire, brings about its own demise.

We know this historically.

This is a fact.

And this in and of itself demonstrates God's justice rather than mere vengeance.

And I think this is an important reflection.

And this goes all the way back to the Exodus in Egypt.

That empire implodes in and on itself.

And that in and of itself is an act of God's judgment and God's justice.

Number three, this image of the slaughtered lamb, which I mentioned, shows God's life-giving, nonviolent triumph over evil.

This is how God establishes the new creation.

And amidst all of the violent imagery, this is at its core.

So we pay attention to what John the Seer is doing through this really sophisticated genre of ancient literature.

Number four, the lamb's final conquest.

And again, this is imagery of warfare to match the violence of empire.

But it comes not through military conquest, but through God's word.

In this final vision in Revelation chapter 19, Jesus comes as a warrior, but the sword is not in his hand.

Revelation 19 · chapter mention

It's coming symbolically from his mouth.

And if you are familiar with evangelical circles, you know that the word of God is central to what we do.

But it's so much more than the written word that we call the Bible.

It is the word of God that created the world.

This is the word of God that Jesus embodied in his flesh and blood.

And it is the word of God that will persuade, will judge, and will redeem all of creation in ways that are really hard for us to fathom, again, with our five senses and with our limited perspective.

Number five.

Oh, back one, sorry.

God instructs his people to persevere through faithful and patient witness, not violent action.

So this is a passage that Kevin read for us.

And in fact, this is a thread that we see throughout the book of Revelation.

That amidst all of the chaos, all of this really shocking imagery, the question to pay attention to is what does this mean for God's people?

How does God instruct his people to live?

And this is the thread that we see: be faithful, be consistent, follow Jesus even into death, into the new creation.

Number six.

The imagery of God's judgment is highly symbolic.

And I know this is obvious, but we need to be reminded of this time and again.

Because I think the pitfall of American evangelicalism when it comes to reading the book of Revelation is sort of looking at the most shocking of images and then making it literal or twisting it to fit our particular context as if we are the very center of this text.

As if John was writing just to us as 21st century American Christians.

We need to understand that this symbolism points us to a greater reality.

In the same way that the temple in the Old Testament was a symbol, it was a representation of the real thing.

Doesn't mean that it wasn't real, doesn't mean that it wasn't weighty, doesn't mean that it wasn't terrifying in some ways, but it pointed to something more.

Again, we look at the symbol of the slain lamb.

It represents Jesus, who represents God.

There's something deeper going on here.

And lastly, so number seven.

Again, this isn't exhaustive, but I like the number seven, so we're gonna stick with it.

The overarching story of the book of Revelation is not judgment, it's not vengeance, it is restoration and it is salvation.

How is God going to redeem his people and his creation?

That's the story.

Alright, so that's the framing for the text.

We're gonna jump in.

Revelation chapter 14 is sort of this interlude between this larger drama that's happening.

Revelation 14 · chapter mention

And so it's kind of this commercial break that John is providing for his readers.

And it's broken into three different acts, and we're gonna fairly briefly go through each act.

So the first act starts in Revelation chapter 14, verse 1.

Revelation 14:1

Then I looked, and there before me was the Lamb standing on Mount Zion, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his father's name written on their foreheads.

So we talked about this a few weeks ago.

This is a symbolic number that represents the people of God.

It doesn't mean that there's only 144,000 people who will be saved in any form.

This is symbolism.

And it's calculated from the 12 tribes of Israel squared times a thousand, which is a number that kind of expresses this large, uncountable figure.

And again, it's not math that makes sense to a modern Western mathematician.

This is ancient Hebrew symbolism.

And this represents the people of God.

And I don't have a slide for this, but there's this line that ties into the ancient Psalms that says, they sing this new song.

And it's a song that only the people of God would know.

And this is fascinating to me because I'm tone-deaf, I can't sing, and so it's like, wow, what's this song that only special people get to sing?

But this is, again, imagery that comes out of the Hebrew tradition of the Psalms, that although God is timeless and God's truth is timeless, each generation he gives a new song.

And the question for any generation, ours included, is what song are we learning?

What is this song that stirs up not just our minds but our hearts and our affections?

Amy Chow wrote a song this past year in order to bring together what is God doing here?

And I admire her courage because the Christian music industry has become this multi-billion dollar industry.

And so it makes it hard for local songwriters, people in our congregations, our contexts, to take what God is doing here and to write a new song.

So I think there's something really, really beautiful about that.

And so that's the image here.

Who is the people of God?

What does faithfulness look like?

What does it mean to be different, to be set apart?

The description here comes from verse 4.

They followed the Lamb wherever he goes.

They were purchased from among mankind and offered as first fruits to God and the Lamb.

So this imagery of being purchased is that of being bought from the slave market, rescued from darkness, death, and sin.

And it's a little bit jarring, but it makes sense in the ancient world.

That God gave his life through his son and ransomed you, paid your way, bought you into his family, that you would be called sons and daughters of God.

And that is the gospel.

Scene two is this there's three angels, and this gets a little bit funky.

So the first angel is this.

This is verse six.

Then I saw another angel flying in mid-air.

And he had the eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth, to every nation, tribe, language, and people.

I love that.

That fourfold phrase appears seven times in the book of Revelation.

And it's this vision of this diverse, multi-ethnethnic, multilingual community of God's people.

And at that time, in the first century, this was almost unthinkable.

At the time, Christianity was mostly just a Jewish sect.

And so now, to think about the woos in East Asia, to think about the gospel being spread to the ends of the earth.

Outside of the bounds of empire and culture and language.

It begs this question: who is this God?

And what is this gospel that is being proclaimed?

Verse 7, he said in a loud voice, Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come.

Worship him who made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and the springs of water.

I love this contextualization.

That it's as simple as this.

Don't fear Caesar.

Don't fear death or poverty.

Fear God.

There's this one God, and how is he described?

Well, he's the one who made the sky and the land.

The sea and the springs of water that give you life.

You don't have to have the Bible memorized.

You don't have to have a doctorate in theology.

Just look around.

Who created the skies?

The land?

Who gave you the water to drink?

The food to eat?

Worship that God.

The second angel.

A second angel followed and said, Fallen.

Fallen is Babylon the Great, which made all the nations drink the maddening wine of her adulteries.

What does that mean?

Nick Quinn's going to talk about that in two weeks.

So we'll come back to this whole image of Babylon and how it represents not just Rome in their context as sort of this code word, political satire, but it represents the cycles of human oppression and human empire that we see going on to this day.

And so there's a really profound reflection in this whole image of Babylon, which Nick Quint will talk about.

So here's the third angel.

And this gets a little bit trippy.

Verse 9 a third angel followed them and said in a loud voice, If anyone worships the beast in its image and receives its mark on their forehead or on their hand, they too will drink the wine of God's fury, which has been pulled, poured full strength into the cup of his wrath.

They will be tormented with burning sulphur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb.

And the smoke of their torment will rise forever and ever.

There will be no rest, day or night, for those who worship the beast in its image, for anyone who receives the mark of its name.

Now, I understand if you grew up in evangelical America, this makes you think of 666 and the mark of the beast on things like chips in your hands and on your license plates, your addresses, and it creates kind of this paranoia.

And I don't know, that could be true, but in its original context, what John is speaking into is the oppressive economic systems of Rome.

And for all those that participated in the temple worship, in the deification of the Caesars, and all that pointed people away from the truth and the goodness of the one true God.

And John is writing again in the vein of Jewish apocalyptic literature, which, in comparison, the shocking, violent imagery here, is actually quite moderate.

But there is this tension that I think we hold when it comes to understanding and grappling with the wrath of God.

And so I think it's important for us to remember that the wrath of God is a means to an end.

The wrath of God, the judgment of God, is a byproduct of who God is, first and foremost, in that God is love.

God inherently in who he is is love.

In order to protect that which is good, in order to protect that who God loves and what God loves, wrath becomes a necessary component of this larger story.

And I admit that when we look at the imagery, when we try and play it out to its end, and we ask questions of death and hell and judgment, I'll be really honest, there are questions that I cannot answer.

Questions that I believe are beyond me.

And so that's probably not the greatest thing for a pastor to say, but I just want to be honest with you that as I grapple with texts like these, there are unknowns.

But it does make sense on some level that there is this need for justice in a broken world.

This gets really significant.

Verse 12.

So this calls for patient endurance on the part of the people of God.

So this is 144,000.

This is the tribes, tongues, nations, peoples.

This is us.

This calls for patient endurance on the part of the people of God who keep his commands and remain faithful to Jesus.

So he makes it explicit here.

Faithfulness to Jesus.

Who was Jesus?

What did he command?

What was his way?

Love your enemies.

Pray for those who persecute you.

The kingdom of God is here.

What did Jesus teach?

How did Jesus live?

How did Jesus die?

That is faithfulness to Jesus.

Then I heard a voice from heaven say, write this.

And I like this because there are other points where it says, don't write this.

And it's like, well, why is he saying don't write this?

Like, why are you being so confusing?

But I love that it says, write this.

Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.

And I understand this sounds a little bit morbid, but here's one of these promises that we hold on to.

Not that God will bless us in all that we do, not that we will always have food and jobs and that our kids will turn out perfect.

But rather, blessed are those who die in God.

Because death is not the end, because Jesus has conquered death.

Therefore, taking away that fear that leads to so much human violence, it provides us with that assurance.

Yes, says the Spirit, they will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them.

So there's this profound imagery of rest.

That those with the mark of the beast, those who are enslaved to the empire and the unjust, oppressive economic systems of the day, they have no rest.

They work like slaves in Egypt.

But when God sets his people free, labels them as his own, he says, now you will have rest.

That is why we practice Sabbath rest.

Not as this rigid command, but as this gift, as this window of grace into the life that we will one day have.

That's Sabbath rest.

And there's something deeply good in that practice.

So that's the second scene, the three angels.

Fourth scene.

This comes from an agrarian society.

So there are two images here that we're called to pay attention to.

The first is a wheat harvest, the second is a grape harvest.

So I'm going to read the first section.

I looked, and there before me was a white cloud, and seated on the cloud was one like a son of man with a crown of gold on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand.

So this is the image of Jesus dating back to the Hebrew prophets.

Then another angel came out of the temple and called in a loud voice to him who was sitting on the cloud, take your sickle and reap, because the time to reap has come, for the harvest of the earth is ripe.

So he who was seated on the cloud swung his sickle over the earth, and the earth was harvested.

So in an agrarian society, this is a time of great joy.

This is a time of year where you waited all year long.

The sowing, the watering, the tending, the waiting, and there was no guarantee.

This was a time of famine.

This was a time of pests.

There was a time where if you had a bad crop, your family may starve.

And so the yearly harvest was this time of great joy.

And this is the image that we are given here.

Jesus used this imagery when he sent his disciples out.

He said, The harvest is ready.

You can see it.

Look, it's ready.

Bring people to me.

Harvest those who are receptive to my word, to the gospel.

It's a time of joy.

Simultaneously, we read again in verse 17 another angel came out of the temple in heaven, and he too had a sharp sickle.

I do have slides for this.

Still, another angel who had charge of the fire came from the altar and called in a loud voice to him who had the sharp sickle.

Take your sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of grapes from the earth's vine, because its grapes are ripe.

The angel swung his sickle on the earth, gathered its grapes, and threw them into the great winepress of God's wrath.

They were trampled in the winepress outside the city, and blood flowed out of the press, rising as high as the horses' bridles for distance of 1,600 stadia.

So, uh conversion-wise, that's about 180 miles.

So this is the exact opposite.

Some would argue that this is the same God, the same event.

One is a harvest to restoration, the other is a harvest to destruction.

And in an agrarian society, the image of a wine press is that you have this huge vat holding these grapes.

And those that were pressing the grapes would take off their shoes and hopefully wash their feet and stomp on these grapes.

And oftentimes the grape juice is called blood.

And so it looks like blood, it's called blood symbolically, and that it would flow into these vats.

And so the image here is God trampling on evil, an empire.

All that destroys, all that oppresses.

Now I understand that this has been turned into songs and lyrics and battle cries for the past 2,000 years.

And so there's a lot of weight to this imagery.

But I want to highlight this is symbolism.

It points to a reality of God dealing with evil, of God doing what is necessary to restore all that is broken.

And although I think this doesn't sit particularly well with us, there's a tension here.

How do we take a compassionate God who is quick to forgive, who is patient, who is kind with this type of judgment imagery?

But at the same time, most of us recognize that we live in a broken world.

That we don't have to look far to see that evil and oppression is real.

We don't have to think too hard to come to terms with this reality in us that we crave justice.

Even in our own broken court system in the United States, when we hear of verdicts that just aren't right, there's something in us that cries out like, where is the justice?

And this is the culmination of the justice of God.

The Hebrew prophet spoke of the day of Yahweh or the day of the Lord, where God's patience will kindly come to a head.

And God will make all things right.

And what that looks like, we don't actually know.

That's why the symbolism is so strong.

Think about it.

How does this God work together all things for good?

How does he redeem that which he is going to redeem?

And how does he bring justice to evil?

On a cosmic level, how do all these puzzle pieces fit?

We don't know.

And that's why we're left with these images.

And they're meant to shock us.

They're meant to draw us in.

But the question is the same question that the Hebrew prophets pose in their judgment literature.

And the question is, how is God going to restore that which is lost?

And in many ways, the book of Revelation is the only book of Christian prophecy.

It connects the promises and the prophecies of the Old Testament Hebrew prophets with Jesus at the center, with this vision of this creation being restored completely.

And that is the invitation of the book of Revelation.

That is the good news that this angel is proclaiming to every tribe, every tongue, every nation.

And that is what I want us to make sure that we don't miss in sort of the trauma of the imagery.

I want to close with this.

I'm going to have Scott come back up as we close our time in worship.

Perhaps in more accessible language, the Gospel of John records these words of Jesus.

Would you close your eyes as we pray this?

This kind of sums up, I would say, the entire book of Revelation.

John chapter 3, verse 16.

John 3:16

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.

God, I thank you that you speak and we respond.

I thank you that you hold the keys to justice and not us.

We thank you that you have paved the way to eternal life through your son and that you invite us into that.

And so, God, I thank you for that.

And I also pray for everyone here, wherever they may be at in their spiritual journeys, whatever they may be carrying this morning, that you would speak your eternal gospel to them, that they would hear the good news that they need to hear this morning.

So, God, thank you that you are with us.

Thank you, God, that you have loved us with an everlasting love.

We pray that in Jesus' name.

Amen.