Revelation: Groaning for Restoration

So we are studying our way through the book of Revelation.

So this is John's poetic letter at the end of the church.

It can be quite a strange book, maybe a book you've avoided in the past.

Filled with a lot of symbolic language.

It has literal language, it has figurative language, makes it difficult.

In Revelation 4, John began to have a vision, and he begins to write it down to the seven churches that he's writing to.

Now, like so many things in the Christian faith, and like so many things in your friendships and your families, there are different views.

There are different views.

There's different views about the book of Revelation, and there's definitely different views as we head into chapters 6 through 20.

So there is the dispensational premillennial view.

There's a couple big words for you.

I'll give you a dollar if you use it this week in a conversation.

It'll definitely up your intellectual status level and your friendships if you throw that one out.

The dispensational premillennial view.

You don't have to remember that.

It's the left behind book series, okay?

Like some of you read it.

Why are you laughing?

I don't know why you're laughing.

It wasn't a joke.

Maybe it was.

Maybe the whole series was a joke.

I'm not sure.

What wasn't a joke was 80 million copies.

Like some serious cash flow, right?

Those are the royalty checks we all wish for.

80 million copies.

So some of you read it, right?

The Left Behind Book series is built on the dispensational pre-millennial view, which is there's a rapture.

Christians are taken up, sucked up to heaven, and then there's uh a horrible seven years of tribulation before Christ reigns for a thousand years, and then an eternal heaven.

So it's a very uh literal um way to look at chapters 6 through 20.

That's what that view is.

Some of you hold that view.

I'm not gonna belittle that view.

I'm not gonna that people hold it.

That's not my view.

That's not the view that I'm gonna teach this morning, but that is your view, and perhaps you hold it with great conviction, and I welcome you to continue to hold it with great conviction, and you're welcome to be here.

I'll be teaching what's called the Covenant Amillennial View.

Covenant A millennial view.

Now, at this point, 92% of you wish you had stayed home and mowed the lawn.

Maybe I wish the same.

I won't, maybe, maybe, maybe not, I don't know.

You'll never know.

So why does revelation matter?

Like, why does it really matter?

I mean, and that's something that I've wrestled with my whole life because this is the first time, as I've told you, this is the first time I've ever, it's the first time I've ever studied my way through this book, and it's the first time I've taught my way through this book.

Um because it's just been such a crazy book at the end of the Bible that for me it just felt like, eh, uh, eh, I'll just, you know, I'll stick with Galatians.

All right, but here's what Revelation gives us.

Number one, the crazy book at the at the end of our Bible is not as crazy as people think.

And that's really reassuring when people say, or we think, or I think, I struggle with the Bible because of Revelation.

And the more we unpack Revelation, it gets less crazy as we understand John is using imagery and symbolic language.

Number two, Revelation draws our hearts toward the astonishing greatness and lavish redeeming love of God.

We saw that last week as we were in Revelation chapter 5, one of the most powerful chapters of the Bible.

Revelation 5 · chapter mention

And number three is that revelation helps us see God will restore the hurt and the sadness of the world.

And in your hurt and your sadness.

He will restore that.

I love that word restoration or restore.

It means to set all things right.

For those wrongs to be made right.

Two Saturdays ago at my U10 girls soccer game that I coach for my daughter with two other coaches because it takes three of us to handle 13 girls.

We're driving, and it does, by the way, take three of us to handle the girl.

So we are driving the ball down the field.

We get into the box, it is looking like this is gonna happen.

We are gonna score.

I forget which girl it was.

She kicks it, and the defender puts her hand out, it hits her hand in the box, and I'm like, handball in the box, handball in the box.

And because I'm thinking, penalty kick, we're gonna get a goal out of this.

No whistle.

I just keep yelling it.

Like, hand bomb the box, hand bombing the and me and the ref, we make eye contact, handballing the box, yeah, like because he knows.

I'm pretty sure he saw it.

I'm pretty sure he saw it, and he just didn't want to stop the game.

Because he's like, you know, let's just keep the thing going.

It's nine-year-olds, and I'm like, he owes me.

Like, I I remember his face.

We have a game today.

If it's that referee, I'm just gonna walk by, look, hey, remember that handball in the box?

You owe me, right?

Because I want things set right.

I want to be restored.

I want I want my restoration.

And you want restoration.

Your heart does.

Because somebody cheated on you.

Or you were cheated.

Or they hit you.

Or that one friend, the one, the one friend, you didn't think it was gonna be them when they betrayed you.

Or you're sick.

Or you lost somebody before you thought you would lose them.

Or you're uh like there's a war inside of you of fear or insecurity or anxiousness or loneliness.

And you want to run or you want to medicate and maybe do those things, but we're all kind of crying out that question, J.R.

Tolkien's question, Lord of the Rings, is everything sad going to come untrue?

Will there be restoration?

Now back to the soccer game, because it was such a big game.

Such a big game.

I mean, you two you ten girls, is where I project all of my anxieties come out on the soccer field.

And so there we are, myself, Coach Grant, Coach Chris.

Coach Grant is coaching the offense.

Uh, Coach Chris is focused on the midfield.

I'm kind of down by the defense and the goalie, okay?

Now, I could tell you the game in a linear fashion, right?

The game started, this happened, then that happened, then the girl was doing cartwheels, and the other team scored on us.

Like a very linear way to tell the story.

That's one way to tell it.

That would be a dispensational premillennial way to tell that soccer game.

Now, I could tell you from a different way to tell the story.

I could tell you my view of the entire game.

And then I could start over and then tell you Chris's view of the entire game because he's at midfield.

It's a little bit different perspective.

And then I could start over and tell you Grant's view.

Three different views, same game, but a way of recapping it and restarting and recapping it and restarting.

So that way of storytelling is recalled recapulation.

Maybe we read a novel that's done that from different people's points of view.

You're recapping the same thing over and again.

This is what we see in the book of Revelation.

As we move forward from here on, this is what we see.

We see seals today.

We're talking about five of the seven seals, then trumpets, then bowls.

They all mean something, all this symbolism.

We're gonna unpack all that.

But it's a telling of the problems and the pains of this world right now, from different angles.

So, in this view that I'm kind of presenting to you, in this view, the end times are not something that will come in the future, but this is actually talking about our world right now.

That the end times is something that is from the point of the resurrection and the ascension of Christ to when Christ will return and usher in eternal heaven.

That's an amillennial way of thinking about it.

So now let's look at the text.

Revelation 6, 1 through 8.

Now I watched when the Lamb opened one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures say with a voice like thunder, Come.

And I looked, and behold, a white horse, and its rider had a bow, and a crown was given to him, and he came out conquering and to conquer.

When he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, Come, and out came another horse bright red.

Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.

When he opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, Come, and I looked, and behold, a black horse, and its rider had a pair of scales in his hand.

And I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying, A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius, and do not harm the oil and wine.

When he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, Come, and I looked, and behold, a pale horse, and its rider's name was Death, and Hades followed him.

And they were given authority over a fourth of the earth to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth.

Now, that was always enough for me to not read Revelation.

But remember, John is using imagery.

He's pulling actually a lot of imagery from Zechariah chapter 6.

Zechariah 6 · chapter mention

And the Bible's filled with literal and figurative imagery.

We talked about last week.

I mean, even this verse 1, 6, verse 1, it says the lamb.

So that's that's Christ.

No, but Christ is not, like we said, he's not a literal lamb.

He doesn't have four legs.

He's not covered with wool.

Just like you are called a sheep in the scriptures, but you're not a literal sheep.

You don't have four legs right now.

You are not covered with wool.

Right?

It's figurative language for us to discover something more.

Point number one is this God will bring full restoration to all the sadness and all the brokenness.

So let's go through these seals.

We're gonna talk about five of them.

The first seal and the first horse symbolizes conquest and victory.

Conquest and victory.

The second seal and the second horse symbolizes war, violence, and division.

Remember, it's a description of our world right now.

It's incredibly honest.

The Bible's incredibly honest about our lives and our world.

It doesn't find the reason to make up excuses that there's a war in Ukraine or that there's violence somewhere, there's division in families.

The Bible doesn't care to sweep it under the rug.

Romans 8, 23 and 24 says this.

For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together and the pains of childbirth until now.

And not only the creation, but we.

We ourselves who have the first fruits of the Spirit, we groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

Paul is saying this world isn't as it should be.

Paul's admitting it, the Bible's admitting it, it's not as it should be, and God isn't finished yet.

That we're in the middle of the story of creation, fall, redemption, restoration.

This week I was at a conference in New York.

The title of the ministry and theological conference was Hope for a Weary World.

Here's what I learned, summarizing.

We hope because we are weary.

And we hope because we don't have yet what we need or what we want.

That's why hope only exists when we don't have what we need or we want.

And hope reaches into the future and it brings it brings some joy into the present groaning.

The chaplain said this sentence.

I wrote this one down, highlighted it.

Hope is gracious resignation through patient surrender to the slowness of God to restore.

Hope is gracious resignation.

That's our surrendering.

Through patient surrender to the slowness of God to restore.

Don't you just hate that?

Like, don't you?

I kind of went when I said it, you're like, eh, nah.

Like, really should have mowed the lawn, right?

Like, really, brunch would have been really nice.

Resignation, surrender, God is slow.

Like, yeah.

Seems like a pretty good summary.

I hope I get better.

I hope my family's restored.

I hope my children don't starve.

I hope I get the job.

I hope the war ends.

And hope doesn't explain your suffering.

But it gives you a God that comes into your suffering.

A God who always came into suffering, who is visibly on the cross.

And who isn't finished yet.

That the story's not finished any slower than we want, and we're gonna have a bunch of questions.

Third seal, third horse.

Symbolizes economic oppression and inequality.

Pretty good description of our world.

Fourth seal, fourth horse, symbolizes death.

Now that verse eight, they are given a fourth of the world.

It's a way to say we we live in days, it's not an exact number, we live in days of sickness and illness, war, death.

But, but don't forget the first horse.

See, John's saying something in all this.

Beautiful imagery.

He's a poet.

We have to be willing to come at this understanding.

John is he is a poet here.

The white horse is first.

The white horse is foremost, and the other horses are following.

Now, we might as well go ahead and open up the can of worms all the way.

And I debated whether to open up the can of worms all the way or not, but there's two of you that actually know this fact, so I'll go ahead and put it out there so you don't have to come and send me emails afterwards.

And here's the issue.

The issue is this.

Some people think a lesser percentage of scholars think that this letter was written in the mid-60s, like 60 AD, like 60 years after.

But most scholars think it was written in about 90 A.D.

Okay?

Now, if Revelation was written closer to the mid-60s, then many of all these judgment scenes and descriptions probably describe the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D.

70.

And they have nothing to do with anything I've just said.

Like, just you can just forget all of it.

Okay?

But if the book was written in the mid-90s after the destruction of Jerusalem, then everything I just said has pretty good legitimacy and you should consider it.

All that to say, we really have to approach this with some humility and not rigid certainty.

And certainly not something to argue and fight about.

Verse 9.

When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne.

So that persecution, we could summarize that.

Verse 10, they cried out with a loud voice, O sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on earth?

Then they were given, each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves have been.

So the fifth seal symbolizes the suffering of God's people.

Point number two is this we live in the already but not yet.

Say it a lot in our church.

We live in the already but not yet, waiting for ultimate restoration in heaven.

That's the story.

It's our existence.

The already but not yet.

Christ's kingdom.

Christ reigns, yet the world is still broken and battered.

The Bible's the first to admit that.

Our belovedness.

We are fully loved, we are fully righteous, we are fully forgiven, we are secure with God because of Christ's work on the cross, our sin put upon him, his righteousness given to us, all of it's secure, it is already, it is secure.

Yet, we don't always fully and perfectly experience that on like a Tuesday morning.

It's already, but not yet.

Ephesians 6, 4 through 7.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great wealth with which he loved us, what a great phrase.

Even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

By grace you have been saved and raised us up with him.

And where are we at?

Seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

So verse 6, we are already seated with him in heavenly places, yet we're here in Marietta at Redeemer Church this morning, and I'm a little bound up and anxious and not feeling perfect, just like you aren't feeling perfect.

And maybe you're discontent.

Maybe you're ashamed, maybe you're guilty.

You're already, but not yet.

And yet you have that seat, that already seat in the heavenly places.

And so you have that already, but then not yet.

We're not yet experiencing that.

We don't know that in full.

So, Romans 8.23, so we groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons or children, daughters, the redemption of our bodies.

In 1887, the Russian artist Viktor Vasnattsov painted the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

Now maybe you're here.

I mean, look at this, right?

We just we just went through this, right?

First horse, second horse, third, fourth.

Just look at the painting while I talk for a little bit.

Maybe you're here and you know the hurt and the chaos of those horses.

Maybe it's not your style of art, okay?

Maybe not.

But you know the hurt and the chaos.

Maybe your heart breaks for the millions of people right now being genocided, exiled, raped, enslaved, starved, killed right now.

Or maybe you're just lonely.

Or maybe you're a survivor of abuse.

You can't seem to get over it.

Maybe you're being abused.

Maybe the bills keep coming.

And you can't cover.

Oh man.

And it just won't leave your mind.

Like just a little financial relief.

Maybe there's division in your family or in your marriage.

Maybe with your children.

Maybe you're sick.

Maybe you're dying.

Maybe you're suffering.

Maybe you're suffering because you're a Christian.

In some way?

At work?

In romance?

In your neighborhood.

So you know these horses.

Right?

We know these horses.

We're worn out by these horses.

We were beat down by these horses.

Remember that first horse.

Isn't it interesting that he he painted it with a horse and he turned around, aiming that bow backward at the other three.

And then look at the top of the painting.

You probably kind of discovered it at this point, right?

At the top, very small.

There's the lamb and the word.

As if to say, all this we experience will come to an end.

And we will groan, but we have hope.

We are already, but not yet.

Yesterday morning I woke up in New York.

It was the last morning of the conference.

I just wanted to come home.

Been up there most of the week.

I was ready to come home and see my girls.

I wanted to see trees instead of buildings.

I wanted to see Zorgiagrass instead of dog urine on sidewalks.

I wanted to walk down a sidewalk and not have the stench of the sewer come up, just up from underneath you.

Toilet air just randomly hitting you at different moments.

You think you're having a great morning, holding the hand of your wife, walking through New York, and then the toilet air just hits you.

Just wanted to come home, right?

I'm a resident of Marietta.

I'm not a resident of New York.

Maybe you live there, maybe you're from there.

Maybe you know all about the toilet air and you like it.

I don't know.

I don't like it.

Give me about two days and I'm ready to come home.

I'm an alien in New York.

It's not my home.

So when I'm there, my residency is here.

Right?

Yesterday morning, I was groaning to come home.

Already, but not yet.

I'm already a citizen somewhere else.

But I'm not yet there.

And then this morning to wake up and go for a walk, and there's no toilet air, and there's grass and there's trees, like, this is it.

This is where we live.

I mean, there's like, we made good choices in life.

Amazing.

Wasn't it interesting in the painting?

Throw the painting up one more time.

It's interesting in the painting that the artist chose to make the lamb and the word so small.

I don't know, I'm not an art historian.

But to me, it just sort of felt like, man, that's what it feels like a lot of times.

Like, it feels like you really feel those horses a lot.

As if to say, like, this is true, but we won't always feel this way.

But it's still true.

For there will be a day, and I don't know how it technically works out, but there will be a day.

There will be a day when all the sad things come untrue.

Creation, fall, redemption, restoration.

When there will be a gentle wiping away by God, a gentle wiping away of every tear and every fear.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you that you have given us a home.

You've given us a home in you.

Thank you that you are the first to admit that we live in a suffering world that is broken.

And that our resting place is not in this world, but our resting place is in you and in you alone.

Help us to trust in you.

Help us to rest in you.

Help us to have hope in you.

Help us to groan well.

Help us to reach forward and hope for some joy, that you are a God, even though you are slow, that you are our God of restoration, and you're with us in our suffering.

That you do not leave us.

And I pray for those of us here this morning that these horses are all too real.

I pray that you would be a great comforter.

God, I pray that you would show up in the midst of their hurt and pain and woundedness in an incredibly profound way inside of their spirits and their souls.

We thank you that you are a God who favors the suffering, favors the weak, favors those who come with empty hands, and says that we need you.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.