The "Where" of Revelation

All right, so as I said, we've only got a few Sundays left in 2023, and that's kind of a big a big deal because we've been doing something all year long.

You guys have heard me do this little disclaimer at the front of the message all year long, and we've only got a few more left.

We've done something called the whole story.

We have gone through the entire story of Scripture this year.

As best we can, we broke it up into 14 different series, and we are in the middle of the final series, which is called How It Ends.

This is a discussion on the book of Revelation, a book that confuses no one, a book that is not controversial, that everyone loves, and everyone has a really easy time just reading and going, I get it.

This is everyone's favorite easy-to-read book.

No, Revelation's tough.

It's tough.

And so a couple weeks back, we did a primer.

We spent some time just looking at what Revelation is, how it's been interpreted over the years, different ways people look at it and interpret it.

It's really fascinating.

And so if you're kind of new to Revelation, and I don't blame you for being new to Revelation, a lot of people struggle with it.

It's intimidating.

It seems odd if you don't know like all the symbolism, it's it's tough.

But it's amazing and beautiful.

It is a fitting end.

It is the end that the Holy Spirit inspired for a reason.

It's powerful and amazing, and you should not be ever, you should not be intimidated to read God's word.

Because God has put within you the capacity to know Him.

And there's not one of us here that says, oh, this is beyond me.

No, it's not, it's not beyond any of us because the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit gives us what we need.

Jesus actually promised that the Holy Spirit would teach us.

So if we ever read scripture and we're like, I don't know what this is about, we can pray and we can trust that God will give us what we need, especially as we come together as a church for that purpose.

But Revelation is tough.

And so last week we said that we were going to spend uh the last part of our year looking at three questions related to Revelation, to the ending of this amazing story.

And it's the questions who, where, and why.

Who, where, and why.

Now, as I said last week, a lot of people are like, hey, what about when?

That's kind of like, can we talk about when?

And we could, but we'd just be guessing.

Like, honestly, we'd just be guessing.

Jesus himself was asked, hey, when is this gonna go down?

When is all this gonna happen?

And he told his disciples, I don't know.

Only God the Father knows that.

And so if Jesus was comfortable answering the when question by saying, I don't really know, I feel super comfortable answering that question that way.

Um and I do think it's it's good for us to wonder, it's good for us to look at the world and say, man, what's what's happening?

Is this connected to that?

At the same time, when we get obsessed with when, we get a little silly, we get a little weird, right?

It's just it's a little weird, and it's not super helpful.

So being obsessed with when, that's not what, that's not what the book of Revelation is about.

If it was just about when, then you could go back to people living three, four hundred years ago and say, hey, don't even read it.

It has nothing to do with you.

But this book has inspired and encouraged followers of Jesus for thousands of years, regardless of what era, what time they're living in.

Because it's not just about when.

There's there's bigger questions.

Last week we looked at who, and that who is Jesus.

Revelation gives us the most complete and awe-inspiring view of Jesus that we have in all of Scripture.

We don't just get to see like an angle of Jesus, a little part of Jesus, we get to see Jesus.

We said last week that Revelation doesn't let us settle for like a dinky Jesus.

We get the whole Jesus, and He is powerful and He's amazing.

There's so many pictures, and if you weren't here last week, listen to that.

Today, though, we're gonna talk about where.

Because so much of what's happening in Revelation, so much of our understanding of what it's trying to teach us and show us, it's a matter, in many ways, of geography.

It's a question of where.

It's like that a lot in life.

It's amazing how often who you are or how you behave depends on where you are.

Right?

Like the work you might be very different than the home you.

And if if the work people saw the way you were at home, they might be like, whoa, you're different at home.

And if if your family saw you at work, they're like, whoa, you're different at work.

Sometimes where we are determines a lot.

I know it's definitely like that with kids.

I have four of them, and I know this because I've sat in parent-teacher conferences.

Like, how many of you have kids and you've sat in a parent-teacher conference and you've listened to a teacher who spends eight hours a day with your child describe a human being that you don't know?

Have you ever had that experience?

Dude, my my uh my middle son Judah, seven years old, unbelievable kid.

We we are super close.

In fact, it was his really good friend that got baptized, and he was backstage like as moral support.

Like, I love Judah so much.

But I I listened to his teacher describe a personality in him that I have never met in my life.

She, like last year, she said, Judah is the most helpful student I have.

He finishes his work early, and then he comes to me and says, Is there anything I can do to help you?

I have never in my life, ever heard Judah walk up to me, his brothers, his sister, his mom, and say, Is there anything I can do to help you?

In fact, she said that he's super attentive, he causes no distractions, and I'm sitting there like, do we have this the right, are you?

Are we talking about the right person?

Like, I'm confused.

I mean, I love him, he's great, but like last night my my daughter had a ballet performance and he sat there.

And I mean, I I spent half my time looking at my daughter and the other half of my time like doing that dad thing.

I'm like, if you move one more time, like stop it.

Stop.

And afterwards, I had to pull him, I had to pull him to the side and said, Your teacher told me that you don't cause distractions, dude.

I know you've got it in you.

And so we've got two more performances this afternoon, and it's gonna be different today.

Like it's gonna be different today.

That's what we talked about.

It's gonna be different.

It's amazing though, it's just it's who he is, depending on where he is.

Like the setting matters.

The where matters.

When he's at school, he's one way, he's at home, he's another way, he feels comfortable, he feels like he can let loose be himself.

I don't know what it is, but but so often, if we're gonna figure out what's going on, we've got to first establish where are we and why is that important.

And when you read Revelation, there's there's two main settings, and literally, you're like jumping back and forth between them.

And it's it's heaven and earth.

You read Revelation, it's John, the author, he's he's seeing what's happening in heaven, and things are happening in heaven that are dictating things happening on the earth, and it's like heaven, earth, heaven, earth.

It can make your head spin if you really think about it.

But it's vital for us to understand this.

We go all the way back to the very beginning.

Genesis chapter 1, verse 1.

Genesis 1:1

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

This is how it starts.

It's also how it finishes.

God creates the heavens and the earth.

And we all get the earth, we live there, we've been on it our entire lives, right?

Heavens can mean like the sky, like the atmosphere, but heaven always, throughout scripture, becomes synonymous with the spiritual world, with like the place that God is and dwells and the place where the spiritual things are happening.

We see this countless times in scripture, like Genesis chapter 28.

Genesis 28 · chapter mention

There's a man named Jacob, and he's he's on the run.

He's in a really precarious situation, he falls asleep and he has a dream.

And it says at sundown he arrived at a good place to set up camp, and he stopped there for the night.

Jacob found a stone to rest his head against, and he lay down to sleep.

And as he slept, he dreamed of a stairway that reached from the earth up to heaven.

Some of you rock fans did not know that the song Stairway to Heaven.

It's in the Bible.

Like that's it's from the Bible.

Now you know.

This is good stuff.

And he saw the angels of God going up and down the stairway.

So in his vision, his dream, God and the angels, that's all, that's all up.

In Daniel chapter 7, Daniel has this vision, and it's referenced a lot in Revelation.

Daniel 7 · chapter mention

It's a vision of Jesus.

And he says in verse 13, as my vision continued that night, I saw someone like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven.

The Son of Man, which is a title that Jesus uses for himself, often is coming from above.

In Matthew chapter 3, Jesus gets baptized, and it said, after his baptism, as Jesus came up out of the water, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and settling on him.

Matthew 3 · chapter mention

And a voice from heaven said, This is my dearly loved son who brings me great joy.

Countless times in Scripture, it's just what's up there, that's the God stuff, right?

That's heaven, the visions, it's it's there, right?

The Holy Spirit comes down when Jesus dies and he raises to life, he goes back up.

Like it's connected with God's world, so to speak.

And what we find at the beginning of scripture is that heaven and earth are in sync.

Heaven and earth are in step.

There's a harmony, but that harmony is broken.

We disobey God.

And we could all get mad at Adam and Eve and pretend like if we were there, we would have done it differently.

Clearly not.

Because we all disobey God plenty.

Not only are they are they disobeying God, it isn't just like it came from within them alone, they're deceived.

They're deceived by a serpent.

And just like Jesus is sort of slowly revealed to us bit by bit, layer by layer, throughout the entire story of scripture, the identity of that serpent is like that.

We learn that that serpent is a heavenly being.

We would say Satan or the devil, in rebellion to God, working to create chaos on this earth.

That's the identity of that that serpent.

And now heaven and earth, they're not in sync anymore.

But Jesus shows up and he's out to change that.

In fact, in Matthew chapter 6, he teaches us to pray, may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

This is actually how Jesus defines the kingdom of God.

The kingdom of God is God's will being done on earth as it is in heaven.

It's a matter of geography.

It's heaven and it's earth.

And in Jesus' life, he goes around and he starts bringing heaven to earth.

He starts merging these two realities, right?

We see people who are sick and Jesus heals them.

Because in heaven there's no sickness.

We see people who are confused and ignorant.

They're confused about God, and Jesus clears a lot of things up, and he teaches people who God really is and what God is really like, because in heaven we are not unclear about who God is.

But I want to look at a really interesting story that's going to help us understand what we see in Revelation.

And this is a story of Jesus, it's very short, but it is a story of Jesus bringing heaven to earth in a little bit of an unexpected way.

It's John chapter 2.

John 2 · chapter mention

Verse 13, it says, It was nearly time for the Jewish Passover celebration.

So Jesus went to Jerusalem.

And in the temple area, he saw merchants selling cattle, sheep, and doves for sacrifices.

He also saw dealers at tables exchanging foreign money.

Jesus made a whip from some ropes, and he chased them all out of the temple.

He drove out their sheep and cattle, scattered the money changer's coins over the floor, and he turned over their tables.

And then going over to the people who sold doves, he told them, Get these things out of here.

Stop turning my father's house into a marketplace.

This is Jesus causing a stir in the temple.

This is actually one of the moments that sort of seals his fate.

It's already sealed, like the Pharisees are out to kill him.

But when when he enters what they think is their turf, even though it is clearly his, and he starts messing with things, they're like, that's it.

But this is a story, it's an intense story, but it's a story of Jesus making sure that what God wills in heaven is happening on the earth.

And if you don't know the context, it's kind of simple.

People would show up to the temple to worship, and their form of worship was to sacrifice.

But before your sacrifice could happen, it had to be approved by the religious leaders, and they had this whole scheme where no matter what you brought, they weren't gonna say no.

Oh, there's a blemish.

Oh, I'm sorry, this doesn't meet our standards.

But good news for you, we just so happen to have animals that are pre-certified right here.

And they cost like five times the market price for these animals.

And so you'd come in, you get denied with whatever you brought, which was the best that you had, and then you would have to pay an exorbitant price for one of their pre-approved sacrificial animals.

And then you had these money changers, you could only make financial donations to the temple in the official temple currency, and so you had to exchange your money for temple currency, and the exchange rates were it was it was a scam.

And Jesus walks into this temple.

This is his father's house, this is the place that's supposed to be dedicated to the worship of God the Father, and he sees people being taken advantage of, he sees corruption, he sees greed, and he will not stand for it.

Because he came to make sure that what happens in heaven happens on the earth, and so Jesus flips the tables over, he drives out all the animals, he makes a whip.

I mean, that it's it's intense, but it's intentional.

Because Jesus will not let it stand.

Now, a quick question, and be honest.

It's okay to be honest.

I think I know how this is gonna go, but I'm I'm willing to be surprised.

Do any of us read that story and we're like, Jesus, you're way out of line?

Like, what are you doing, man?

Cool it.

Like, come on.

It's it maybe a little bit, but I didn't think there'd be a lot of hands.

Because I think we see that, we see the absolute corruption, the audacity of what's happening in that temple, and we recognize that that can't happen.

And Jesus has a righteous anger, and he is fully justified to make that right.

And we actually look at Jesus, and if you're like me, we we commend him, and we actually have more respect for the fact that he doesn't let that slide.

He has the power to put evil in its place, and he does.

But it's interesting because if you've ever read Revelation, there's this big section, really like chapter six, all the way through chapter 16, really even into like 19 and 20, where the defining characteristic of these chapters is judgment.

And it's it's God, and He's He's judging the earth, and He's He's rooting out evil, and He's putting it in its place, and it's very intense.

And it's very easy if you're like me, it's very easy to look at that, and instead of it being like the Jesus thing, you know, turning the temples over and be like, Way to go, Jesus, I'll read Revelation, and I'm reading some of the things that like are happening, you know, and there's earthquakes and there's all this crazy stuff, and I'm like, God, you might need to chill.

This seems like a little much.

And if we're honest, we've all had those moments where we read something in scripture.

If you've grown up in the church and you've grown up or you're new to Jesus, but you've read the Bible, and you read like moments of God judging, and it's easy to go, whoa, I I think that's a little much.

And we always have to ask ourselves the question when that enters our minds, is what is more likely that God is overreacting or that we underestimate the intensity of sin and evil.

Like if you don't know the context of what Jesus does in the temple, you know, like for example, we have, you can buy t shirt we have his hands t-shirts.

We sell them at cost.

Okay?

Like we, whatever we pay to print the t-shirt, we sell them.

Some people like t-shirts, they're like, I want a his hands t-shirt.

Cool.

And if someone walked in and didn't know that, they just start flipping our t-shirt table over.

They're like, not in my house, you know what I mean?

Like, we're not, we're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is not, you know, you you you don't understand what's happening.

Right?

If you don't know the context, it the behavior seems wild and crazy.

But if it was a situation where, like, no, to be part of his hands, you must buy our t-shirts, and they are$300.

You have to buy, you cannot, you can't enter, you can't sing and worship unless you have a t-shirt on and they're$300.

Well, then yeah, tables should be flipped.

Right?

When you know the context, when you understand what was happening in that temple, you you are fully okay with Jesus tossing the tables.

There's not one iota of us that's like, oh, those poor guys had to clean that up.

You know?

There's none of that.

And could it be that when we read Revelation and other moments in scripture where what we see happens to be intense judgment, and we have those thoughts of like, ooh, this is a lot, I don't know how I feel about this.

Could it be that we need God to help us understand the intensity of evil and the necessity of his action?

That's what we're dealing with today, is this idea of God and judgment, because so much of Revelation is about that.

But what I want us to understand at the front end, and this is my belief and my conviction, and you don't have to share it.

That's that's between you and God, is that God is good, God is right, God is just.

And it's not like the temple belonged to him, everything belongs to him.

He's the one who created the heavens and the earth, and Jesus came to begin a process that will be finished one day fully, and that process is where heaven and earth are now in sync, like they were meant to be, even more so than we can imagine.

And in order for that to happen, evil and corruption has to be dealt with, and it has to be dealt with thoroughly, and it might be intense.

Very often dealing with evil is intense, but it's intentional and it's good.

Because when someone who is good and just decides to confront evil, that is good.

Now, we'll back up because when we have to understand when we deal with the judgment, you know, in heaven and earth, the whole where thing is happening, and heaven and earth are colliding a lot in revelation, we have to understand first and foremost who God is really judging.

Remember that revelation is incredibly symbolic.

And it's hard for us sometimes to discern those symbols.

There's not there's not 100% agreement on what all the symbols mean.

There's a lot of mystery.

But what we very much understand is that God is specifically judging some very interesting entities.

It's not just like people.

That's that's part of it, but it's it's more than that.

So, for example, Revelation chapter 12, John says, Then I witnessed in heaven another significant event.

Revelation 12 · chapter mention

I saw a large red dragon with seven heads and ten horns, with seven crowns on his head.

Now, if you're a student of scripture, you might know that dragon, you see dragon, serpent language, we're talking about the devil.

And this is made clear to us in Revelation.

And so this enemy, this same serpent that deceived us in the very beginning, that contributed to heaven and earth being out of step, and all the corruption and all the evil and all the sin that's in the world today, we can lay a good portion of blame at his feet.

He shows up in this story.

It goes on in verses 7 through 12 to say, then there was a war in heaven.

Michael, who's an archangel described in scripture, this would be like a high-ranking angel.

And his angels fought against the dragon and his angels, and the dragon lost the battle.

And he and his angels were forced out of heaven.

This great dragon, the ancient serpent, called the devil or Satan, the one deceiving the whole world, was thrown down to the earth with all his angels.

Then I heard a loud voice shouting across the heavens It has come at last salvation and power, and the kingdom of our God, in the authority of his Christ.

For the accuser of our brothers and sisters has been thrown down to earth, the one who accuses them before our God day and night.

They have defeated him by the blood of the Lamb and by their testimony.

And they did not love their lives so much that they were afraid to die.

And therefore, rejoice, O heavens, and you who live in the heavens rejoice, but terror will come on the earth and the sea.

For the devil has come down to you in great anger, knowing that he has little time.

I heard this described once in a way that will always stick with me because I'm like a sports fan.

And you know, sometimes in a game, it's over.

Right?

There's still time left on the clock, but like it's over.

Like you look at the score and you're like, it's over.

This game is just a formality at this point.

But that's actually a really dangerous time to be in the game.

Because if a team knows that they're defeated, if they know that it's over and they can't win, but there's still time left on the clock, sometimes there's just going to be some vitriol that comes out.

Because while they may not be able to win the battle, they can at least inflict some damage.

And that's sort of the idea that we have of Satan.

That he has lost the battle.

It's over.

He has been defeated by what?

By the blood of the Lamb.

Jesus says, Death on the cross defeated Satan.

And by the power of our testimony.

And it connects, by the way, that testimony with those who were willing to die for their faith.

Those who said, I'm not going to be one of these followers of Jesus that's casual, and when it's convenient for me, I'm all about Jesus, but the second it's not, not so much.

No.

That testimony in those early days in the church, the very audience that this was written to, these are people being persecuted like we can't believe, and they were people who did not cling.

To their lives, but there were people who were willing to die to be witnesses for Jesus.

And it's by the blood of their testimony, too, that the enemy has been defeated.

So he's done.

Satan loses.

The dragon is defeated.

But there's still time left.

And he's angry.

And he does what he does best.

We see a few other entities, not just this dragon.

We see a beast.

Well, a couple of beasts, actually.

If you've ever read Revelation, you know what this stuff is.

I want to try to help with this a little bit.

So it goes on to say this in Revelation 13, right?

We've got the dragon judged by God, defeated.

Now we've got a beast rising up out of the sea, Revelation 13.

And it had seven heads and ten horns, with ten crowns on its horns, and written on each head were names that blasphemed God.

This beast looked like a leopard, it had the feet of a bear and the mouth of a lion, and the dragon gave the beast his own power and throne and great authority.

And so you're like, what in the world is going on?

Right?

I show up to church, it's almost Christmas.

We're talking about dragons, we're talking about beasts, multiple heads.

Like, what's happening?

Again, highly symbolic.

There's a lot of different interpretation of this.

Many, many will say that this is a picture of Rome, the empire that was dominant in the world at the time that John was writing this.

There's actually a lot of interesting tie-ins and evidence.

For example, when John wrote what he had written right here, there had been seven main emperors of Rome.

Like seven up to that point in time.

There were three that were sort of like mini-emperors.

They had really short reigns.

And so some will say that the seven heads are those seven emperors, and that the ten horns are those seven emperors, plus the three little dudes that didn't last very long.

And there's other evidence like that.

This is definitely not a literal, you know, seven-headed beast coming out of the ocean.

Don't have to worry about that, I think.

It's symbolic, and it's clearly symbolic of government.

Many times in scripture.

Remember, we talked about this a few weeks ago if you were here.

John is pulling pictures from all over Scripture.

Many times in Scripture, governments, world powers are defined as beasts.

And they have all these different attributes that describe them, but this applies to the Babylonian Empire, the Persian Empire.

We see this countless times through Scripture.

So this beast, this is world power.

These are nations.

And they make war with God.

It says that the beast makes war with the people of God.

In verse 9 and 10, it says, anyone with ears should hear and listen and understand.

Anyone who is destined for prison will be taken to prison.

Anyone destined to die by the sword will die by the sword.

That means that God's holy people must endure persecution patiently and remain faithful.

He says that this beast will go after God's people, but God's people can endure.

And they have and they will.

And then we get another beast, beast number two.

We got a dragon and two beasts.

Revelation 13, 11 says, Then I saw another beast come up out of the earth, and he had two horns like those of a lamb, but he spoke with the voice of a dragon.

And he exercised all the authority of the first beast, and he required all the earth and its people to worship the first beast.

And again, a lot of speculation on what this could be.

Those who would see this as a symbol of Rome would say that this was the sort of religious side of Rome that would force you to worship Caesar.

And some have said that this is a symbol for religion as a whole.

This deception of false worship, of putting your allegiance in anyone other than God.

And again, it's a symbolic.

We don't know.

This could be something in the future.

It could be a symbol of all the things throughout history.

But what we do know is that this dragon and these two beasts are in league.

And the picture that we essentially get is that we have this enemy, and he's been cast out of heaven.

He has no place there.

And he's lost that battle.

And so now he wages war here on earth and he does everything that he can to deceive us and cause chaos in our lives and separate us from the plans and the will and the love of our Father.

But it will not work.

And his chief tools for that, right, are literally the powers of this world.

It's not like a Christian conspiracy theory to say that the powers that be in this world are very often not aligned with God, but rather aligned with our enemy.

That is why very often the powers of this world have value systems completely different than the values that we have as believers.

And we are told to resist.

To resist.

And by the way, this isn't like, you know, we're not like dissident citizens or anything like that.

You know what I mean?

We're not supposed to like cause anarchy, but it means that when we come face to face with temptation to either either follow the way of this world, to go along with culture, or to stand for our faith, when those moments happen, we stand for our faith.

And that we have the ability to endure because Christians have for centuries.

And then you have this beast from the land, and that beast is in some way, it's connected to worship.

And it's this pull to worship anyone other than God.

We are worshipers.

At our core, we are all worshipers.

You might be here today and you're like, I don't know about this whole God thing, this whole Jesus thing.

I just, I got I got brought here.

Um, you know, I'm I'm just I'm here, I'm along for the ride, and I'm not sure.

And by the way, if that's where you're at, that's that's great.

Like, think this through.

It's okay to ask questions.

You should have questions.

I mean, I'm talking about dragons and beasts, like the questions are good.

Um but understand that we are all worshipers.

It is in our nature to worship.

And we will all worship something or someone, even if that someone is the person we look at in the mirror.

We will all worship something or someone.

And and we see this in the world.

We we see through Revelation that you have this great enemy and and the powers of the world, and they're so clearly not aligned with God.

And then you have this these movements, the these religious movements, we would call them, that are all about worship and and not worshiping the true God of this world, but worshiping the systems of this world and the values of this world.

And what we see in Revelation is God decides it's time for that to end, and he judges it.

And so we get to Revelation chapter 19.

Revelation 19 · chapter mention

Then I saw heaven opened, and a white horse was standing there, and its rider was named Faithful and True, for he judges fairly and he wages a righteous war.

It goes on to say in verse 19, then I saw the beast, and the kings of the world and their armies gathered together to fight against the one sitting on the horse and his army, and the beast was captured, and with him the false prophet who did mighty miracles on behalf of the beast.

Miracles that deceived all who had accepted the mark of the beast and worshipped his statue.

There's a lot more about that in Revelation chapter 13.

Revelation 13 · chapter mention

Both the beast and his false prophet were thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur.

Again, all kinds of symbolic language here.

Then the devil, this dragon, who had deceived them, was thrown into the fiery lake of burning sulfur, joining the beast and the false prophet.

And that is both beasts, the beast from the sea and the beast from the land.

So here's what we get to.

Okay.

I know this is a lot, and you guys, I'm telling you, I've never been more nervous in my life than teaching on Revelation.

So y'all are y'all are great.

You're at least looking at me, and it seems like you're listening.

And if you've checked out, I don't blame you.

Um here's here's where we get to, and this is this is so important.

This is Jesus clearing the temple, but on uh on like a cosmic level.

When Jesus walked into that temple, he showed us that he will not stand for corruption, for idolatry, and for evil in his father's home.

The reason Jesus was like that was because of where he was.

Because he was in the temple.

He's like, no, this is not happening here.

But that was just like a foreshadowing.

Because Jesus has authority over all of heaven and all of earth.

He has total authority.

Like when you die and raise to life, you you get authority.

Like that's how that works.

You're you're in charge.

Jesus says that he'd been given all authority in heaven and on the earth by God the Father.

Jesus has all his authority everywhere.

So the temple, that was just this moment for us to see.

I know it's intense.

But it means it's such good news.

It means that it means that all the evil and the corruption and all the horrific things that we see in this world, God is gonna deal with those things.

God's gonna deal with the dragon, he's gonna deal with the beasts.

And we live in a world where very often we see the things happening around us and we feel like it's all just going, it's all going to a horrible place, it's all falling apart.

We look around us, we turn on the news, and we see so much death, and we see so much destruction, and we see so much, so much corruption.

We see so many people who are oppressed.

And sometimes we can wonder, God, are are you are you listening?

Are you paying attention?

What is happening?

And Revelation shows us, yes, he is, that what is happening on the earth is not disconnected from what is happening in heaven.

In fact, just the opposite, that God is very much in charge of what is happening on this earth.

And everything that's happening in history is moving to a point, it's moving to a point where God is going to deal once and for all with all of the evil, all of the corruption, all of the oppression, everything that you experience in your life, everything you see in the world, God is gonna deal with it, and he is gonna deal with it until it is dealt with.

And that is good news.

And look, I'm not gonna gloss over the fact that Revelation describes people who align with the dragon.

That there are people who make that choice, and there's just no way around it.

At some point in life we we pick sides, right?

We all pick sides.

We had a moment as uh parents, like my oldest is a teenager.

And how many of you have had teenagers, by the way, or you have teenagers?

You guys are amazing.

Um, just because you're here.

I mean, it's like they are unique creatures.

Um, and by the way, if you are a teenager in the room, you're awesome.

I used to be one of you.

So I get it.

Um but we found out that there's like there's a music artist that he's been listening to that we didn't know.

And uh it's not not someone we would have him listen to.

And my wife, like, she was, I am gonna tell him, you know.

And she was like, she was, ooh, you know, moms when they get in that mom mode, they're the scariest people in the world.

There's no one, I mean, there's there's moments where if Megan's, if if he ticks the right boxes, you know, he'll look at me and go, Well, I'm like, you're a toast.

It's don't look at me.

You are in a you know, anyway.

But we Megan and I met and we talked and we were like, hey, what do we what do we do?

Like, what do we do?

How do we like because we don't just want to be these parents that are like, no, you can't this, you can't that.

Like, it's not how you pick your battles, right?

But you don't avoid them.

And so I was hanging out with him, and I was like, hey, like, mom told me you've been listening to this this guy.

He's like, Yeah, but I listened to the clean version.

And I was like, well.

I mean, just because they bleep out the words, doesn't mean the content is is clean.

And it was like one of those moments where I just I was like, Lord, thank you, because I feel like God just gave me exactly what I needed, which is not the norm.

Like half the time I say, and Mang's like, why did you say that?

I'm like, I don't know, it seemed right.

She's like, it wasn't.

So I have a lot of putting my foot in my mouth moments.

But this moment I said, dude, I was like, you know, if you want to listen to him, that's fine.

I'm not gonna tell you you can't.

He kind of looked at me like, this seems like a trick, and it was.

Um and I was like, no, hey.

I said, You're you're getting older.

You just have to decide in life what do I stand for and who do I side with.

And if you listen to that music and you decide this is what I stand for, and if you want to research that guy and what he's all about, and you decide I want to stand with him, go for it.

And I walked away.

It was great.

It was great.

But I I actually I really respect my son.

I trust him reasonably.

And you know, he came to us like two days later and said, I'm not gonna listen to that guy anymore.

And I was like, that's cool, that's good.

But it's true, right?

We all have to decide what we stand for and who we side with.

And Revelation makes it clear that there is an ultimate choice.

Like we said, this, this is hard, this is it's tough.

But we have to be unashamed about this as Jesus followers.

And if you're not a Jesus follower, at least see how unashamed we have to be.

Because when you you read Revelation, as we looked at last week with Jesus, it gives you one of two options.

Like you either worship Jesus or you reject Jesus.

There's no there's nothing in the middle.

Like he's the King of kings, the Lord of Lords, he is the Alpha, the Omega, He's God, and you're you either worship that or you just say, I don't want anything to do with that.

You can't be neutral when it comes to the language that revelation uses.

Well, the same is true with our enemy.

Everything's coming to a point.

And the dragon and the beast, it's like all the powers of this world and all their corruption and evil, it's gonna get dealt with.

It's gonna get dealt with.

And we have to choose well, who do we who do we side with?

What do we stand for?

Who do we side with?

And there will be people, there always have been, who not out of ignorance, knowing full well that the difference between right and wrong will side with the dragon, and that's a terrible, unfortunate tragedy.

But Jesus has to deal with evil.

And this is where we get to as we wrap up and worship team, you can make your way back up.

I said at the beginning that it's really a matter of geography, right?

That we're gonna look at this through the lens today of where.

It's heaven and earth.

And if you read Revelation again, you get to like chapter four, it is heaven, and then back to the earth.

Heaven, earth, heaven, earth, heaven, earth.

Sometimes like the same verse, and then this happened, and on the earth, and then this happened on the earth, but it all leads to this really amazing moment where the two come together once and for all.

It's like Genesis 1 all over again, but in a way that is truly amazing.

Revelation 21, he writes, Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth.

For the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared, and the sea was also gone.

And I saw the holy city and the new Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.

I heard a loud shout from the throne saying, Look, God's home is now among his people, he will live with them, and they will be his people.

God himself will be with them.

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain.

All these things are gone forever.

And the one sitting on the throne said, Look, I'm making everything new.

And he said to me, Write this down, for what I tell you is trustworthy and true.

And he also said, It is finished.

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

To all who are thirsty, I will give freely from the springs of the water of life.

All who are victorious will inherit all these blessings, and I will be their God, and they will be my children.

It goes on in verse twenty in chapter twenty-two to say, Then the angel showed me a river with the water of life clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and the Lamb.

It flowed down the center of the main street.

On each side of the river grew a tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit with a fresh crop each month.

The leaves were used for medicine to kill the nations.

No longer will there be a curse upon anything, for the throne of God and of the Lamb will be there, and his servants will worship him, and they will see his face, and his name will be written on their foreheads.

And there will be no night, no need for lamps or sun, for the Lord God will shine on them, and they will reign forever and ever.

That's beautiful, right?

And so Revelation teaches us that that is where history is headed.

And you know, it's it's important for us.

This is personal.

Because when you look at the world and it seems like it's all falling apart, it is not.

There's Eugene Peterson, a really well-known follower of Jesus author.

He said that revelation teaches us that life is not in discriminate bits and pieces, mingled treasure and rubble.

It is coherent.

All of it is working together for something powerful.

Every bit of it.

And so that means in your life, personally, when everything feels like it's a mess, it's not.

It's messy, but it's not a mess.

Because if you belong to the Lord, if you have, if you've given your life to Jesus, you have the Holy Spirit inside of you, God is working something in you, He is bringing everything to a culmination, and there will be a day where all the mess is gone, and you will be as you're meant to be.

And the same is true on the scale of history.

Like that's what Revelation teaches us.

All these things that we see in the world, all the war and the famine and the oppression and the greed and all of that stuff.

He's gonna deal, he's gonna deal with all of it.

He's gonna do away with all of it.

And what's gonna be left is heaven and earth together.

And it's him on the throne, and it's us in harmony with him, and it's beautiful and it's wonderful, and I can't wait to be there.

That's where history is headed.

It's heaven and it's earth.

That's where it all ends.

We get to be part of that.

So, in the meantime, while we wait, while we wonder about the when, we just don't get overwhelmed when we see evil, when things are unfair, when things don't go the way that they ought to go, because we know that they're not done.

God is not done.

Heaven and earth are connected, and he is working it all together to something truly beautiful, and he's doing it on our behalf.

If you've given your life to Jesus, that's that's your destiny.

That should give you hope.

So, with that said, we're gonna pray together and take Lord's Supper.

If you're new, we take this little meal every Sunday, and at the tables when you walked in, there's little cups with bread and juice.

If you didn't grab one, feel free to do that now.

You're not gonna mess anything up by going and grabbing one.

This is really quick.

But this is a meal that Jesus asked us to take together.

He said that the bread represents his body.

He literally said, This is my body, it's broken on our behalf, and the juice represents his blood that he shed on our behalf.

And what's amazing is that this very moment, the moment that this meal symbolizes, it's the moment, it's the moment when the battle was won.

It's the moment when the tide turned.

We see the language at the very end of Revelation, it is finished.

See that language, right?

It's not the first time that those words have been uttered by Jesus.

He said, Those very words on the cross, it is finished, it is done.

The dragon has been defeated, the beasts are doomed, and the Lord reigns.

And so let's take this bread, and we thank him for it.

Lord, we thank you for this bread.

We thank you for your body broken for us as a sacrifice on the cross.

This was not a moment of defeat.

It's easy for us to see it that way.

This was a moment of supreme victory.

In this moment, you dealt a death blow to death itself.

And our enemy, the serpent, the dragon, the devil, Satan, whatever word we use for him, he is a defeated foe.

He's simply desperate because he's defeated, and that this is what won that for us.

Lord, we thank you.

Let's take the bread.

You poured out your life to give us life.

Your enemies thought when they saw you bleed that they had won, but they had lost.

Because your blood, the blood of the Lamb, combined with our testimony, is what defeats our enemy.

And we thank you for that victory, Jesus.

Let's take the juice.