Revelation | Why Witness Matters

Hello and thank you for joining us on the Sierra Bible Church Sermon of the Week.

We hope you enjoy this message by Pastor Nate Leverett.

Amen.

Thank you, M.

And welcome.

Brought my stacked doll this morning.

I hope he's gonna help.

Got Lamar Odom, Pal Gasol, Kobe, when we were in Russia.

This was the Lakers.

Fisher's way down in here, if you're wondering who the point guard was in the mid-90s.

We'll get back here.

Well, welcome.

Some of you know, as uh Em said, where we are, others of you will find out in a few minutes, and you might wonder, what am I doing here?

What in the world uh are we walking through?

We have decided this fall to try and dive into this crazy, bizarre and brutal book uh that is the Revelation of Jesus.

It's a letter in its sort of first pages that is written to the local church.

And it's written in such a way that it's meant to go beyond these sort of seven churches to the church to invite us to know what it looks like to live and to, as Emily said, to bear witness to the truth of who Jesus is in our day.

Now, if you, like some have, uh have read the text already today, you'll know we're gonna try and get through chapters eight through 11.

There's a lot in there.

Uh, some of the book of Revelation, if you're familiar with it, you'll know that there are lots of perspectives on this.

And so my hope is to give you sort of my perspective at some in some ways, but also really what does it mean then as we kind of walk this out as God's church for us today?

Uh, one of the things that I love, right?

We talk about this revelation is this moment for John.

He's on the island of Patmos, and and he sort of has just, it's as if he's going through a normal day.

And all of a sudden, this sort of curtain is pulled back and he's ushered up into this sort of heavenly realm.

He sees Jesus.

Do you remember?

It's like chapter one, what what he does when he sees Jesus the first time in heaven, like in his glory.

Anyone?

No.

I was the only one.

Yeah, like he hits a deck, right?

And so there's a sense, right, where like when we have this moment right before God, and maybe this was your kind of even conversion moment, you're like, what's happening?

I'm on the ground as God reveals the truth of who he is.

Well, that happens to John.

John, then, in some like, I would say not that reassuring kinds of ways, has Jesus said this, do not be afraid.

Then he follows that with these words.

I was dead, and now I'm alive.

Which I don't know about you, but if you see Jesus in his glory, if anybody tells you, hey, I was the dead guy, now I'm alive, like I'm not sure that settles this whole fear thing that's happening in my spirit.

I'm probably even a little more worried at this point.

And yet, Jesus, as we know from reading the Gospels, predicted that radical truth, that he would be the one that would die and would raise again.

In many ways, it's the sort of turning point in all of history.

And he reassures John that he is that one that predicted and pulled off his death and resurrection, whereby our sin before a holy God could be appeased and we could be invited into relationship with God.

It's it's the gospel.

Well, they sort of uh, you know, experience this in the book of Acts.

So we have Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

These tell the story of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection.

And then in Acts, it's the start of this crazy, wild, I'm not sure it's actually gonna last 2,000 years thing called the church.

Jesus, in fact, we looked at this last week, predicted when he began to talk about the church that the gates of Hades or hell will not stand against it.

Now they're gonna push as we looked last week, but some will stand.

And what a beautiful message looking uh through the seals as Jesus pops those open to unveil the plan of God.

And so they get this moment in Acts then where you know Jesus has predicted his death and resurrection prior to him actually dying.

They they try and like make him king.

This is the promise.

They don't exactly know how it's gonna go, but we get these pictures of the disciples coming around saying, He's gonna be our king, we're gonna make him king.

Peter, even at one point, pulls out a knife and chops a guy's ear off.

These are all these statements of saying, This guy's gonna be our king.

We're not sure how it plays out, but we well, then he dies and he resurrects, and at this point, they are sure he is the king.

So if you pick up the story in Acts chapter one, they kind of lean in the disciples to Jesus.

And it's like, is this the time?

Is it now?

Jesus says it's not for you to know the time.

These words should echo through as we jump into the book of Revelation.

He says this, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you.

This is God's plan.

Why?

So that you can be his witnesses.

Think John chapter 9, when the blind person can see and they come to him and say, Hey, tell us about this guy, Jesus, right?

John 9 · chapter mention

They're trying to arrest him.

And he's like, I don't know a lot about Jesus, but here's what I do know.

Do you remember what he says?

I was blind and now I see.

This is the point of being a witness.

It's not that I am the judge or the jury.

I'm just here to say this is what I've experienced.

And he says, This is the plan of God for the church that we would be his witnesses in where Jerusalem, this is our Sonora, Judean Samaria, this is kind of our northern California or Tuolomy, and to the ends of the earth.

And he said, after he said this, excuse me, he was taken up before their very eyes.

There's always this question of when is this going to happen?

When will you be king?

When will you do this heaven and earth coming together, this ruling on earth with your people kind of thing?

Well, Revelation kind of pulls the curtain back and lets us see that.

So what we see here, right, at the end of this text in Acts is Jesus does what?

Sort of moves into the sort of heavenly realm.

John is giving us a picture from the other side of the curtain, what's actually going on in the heavenly realm.

Do you remember John early on?

I think it's chapter four, he's in the throne room.

And he's up there and he's like sees the father.

The father has a scroll.

It's God's redemptive history for mankind.

But nobody can open it.

Nobody in the throne room can open it.

So John's like crying like a baby, we're told.

He's weeping.

Somebody comes up to John and Eldon's like, John, don't worry about it.

The Lion of Judah is coming.

Well, Jesus leaves earth, steps into this other realm, heaven, which John is now getting a picture of, and we see in the throne room a lamb as though it had been slain, that then takes this scroll.

And what we looked at last week begins to open the scroll.

Now, all this is imagery, it's symbol, it's beauty, and it's all over the place.

And so we have to kind of figure out what are we going to do with all of this.

So Jesus begins to break these seals.

There's seven seals.

The rhythm that we looked at last week, there's six seals, then there's a pause, and he does a couple different things, and then the seventh seal.

In fact, Emily picked up the seventh seal as it is broken, and then there is silence.

Jesus would go on to say this, why are you, why do you, excuse me, stand here looking up into the sky?

Or excuse me, an angel does.

I'm off a little bit here.

An angel, eventually they're like looking up, right?

And he says, Why, why do you stand here looking into the sky?

Then he says, This, the same Jesus, who's been taken away from you into heaven, will come back.

The Bible talks about Jesus' return.

The angel says this, he will come back in the same way you've seen him go.

But in the meantime, between what theologians call the already, Jesus has come, died on the cross for us, raised again as the promise of new life, and his return, the not yet, the church has a rule.

You've been invited into the plan of God as a part of his church, as we look from the lips of Jesus to bear witness.

Peter then says this, because along the journey, oftentimes the disciples look at or churches look and they say, Why is he taking so long?

When's he actually coming back?

Those that walked with Jesus, because I think of his words and what he inferred, thought he was coming back like yesterday.

Peter says this, he says, The Lord is not slow in keeping his promises, as some understand slowness.

Instead, he is patient with you.

And now here he's going to say, Here's the priority in heaven, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to what?

Repentance, to turn, to leave their idols, the things they worship, and to worship the one living, true God.

This is the priority of heaven.

Do we have a part to play?

What does that look like?

So, what we see is that God has a plan that we would bear witness, and part of our witness would cause for an unbelieving world, a people far from God, what?

Repentance.

People would turn.

We repented if you repented, you're a Christian this morning because someone bore witness.

Someone told us, someone lived it, and we turned.

That is our invitation.

Now, Jesus stood on Acts chapter one and said, Here's what I want you to do.

Just prior to this, we have in Matthew 28, go into all the world, make disciples of everyone, teaching them to obey everything I've taught you, baptize them.

Jesus makes the command.

He says, Go.

Friends, this is the priority in heaven.

This is what I want you to be doing.

And you know what some of us do, myself included?

I'll get around to it.

Yeah, mate.

Maybe that's for other people to do.

Maybe that's for those people that.

And he says, no, no, no.

This is for you too.

And we pull up my phone, see if I have time to do that whole priority in heaven witness thing.

And I want to argue that in many ways, that's why we have the richness of these visions as we looked at last week given to us in Revelation.

That this is, it was from the beginning, a letter to the church to stir something in us that we would accomplish the work of God, the priority of heaven on earth.

It's what he's stirring.

So last week we looked, if you look at the book of Revelation, we have these chapters at the beginning, we have these chapters at the end.

I can't wait till we get them there to them.

The new heavens and new earth.

If you've read 21, 20, I mean, it's just like life without sin, where we're all going.

In the meantime, it's some tough sledding, and one of those places is this morning.

Last week we looked at uh these seven seals that Jesus breaks.

So he kind of walks through all those six, pause, the seventh one we looked at this morning.

This morning, we'll look at these seven trumpets.

So there's angels and trumpets.

And then later on, chapters 15 and 16, we'll look at these seven bowls of God's wrath that's poured out, all of which are incredibly symbolic.

For those of us that like to study this kind of stuff, if if you really try and like go, how do I do the literal, accurate, man?

You can really get off into some crazy places.

And so, how do we read this in a way where we begin to understand what it is that he's inviting us to consider?

And how is it meant to stir us?

To wake us.

Imagine for a moment that if I walked by my boy's bedroom yesterday and I said, Hey, weather's coming this week, so you guys need to quit screwing around on the floor, rolling around like a couple kittens, clean up your bedrooms, and then go outside to that pile we've talked about numerous times, and stack it underneath the cover so that it doesn't get waned on, rained on.

So just imagine, like that could happen in our world, right?

And I leave them, they're like, Dad, we got this.

Okay, we got it, no problem.

I leave them on the floor, rolling around like kittens.

Hear a lot of kind of crazy things happening in there.

About 15 minutes later, I come by, nothing's changed.

Brah! We're just crazy.

And I'm like, okay, I'm not sure I was clear the first time.

I'm not sure you understand that this is your commander-in-chief.

This wasn't a suggestion.

This is something you need to do.

Do I need to talk to your mother?

That's how it works in our house.

You know, in your house it may be different, but if you know Kathy, Dad, we got this.

Okay, okay, we'll go, we'll go.

I leave, still hear things bouncing off the walls, hitting the window.

Chaos ensures about a half an hour later.

I'm thinking, surely, at least they're cleaning the and I make my way by.

At this point, I'm frustrated with them, right?

I'm like, what's going on?

Was I not clear?

Did you not get it?

What happened?

Like, dad, dad, dad, don't worry about it.

After you left the last time, we spent some time praying about this.

We even got our friends, and we did a little Zoom small group, and we talked about how we could like stack the wood for you.

Caden, the oldest one, you know, he's drumming up here.

He's a great kid.

He did a Bible study on how what it would look like if we actually did what you asked us to see where we're going.

What Jesus does, and it's it's violent language, but I believe he wants us to hear that evil matters.

The consequences of life outside of the redemption that Jesus offers is actually death, that there are consequences, and it ought to stir us from let's see if I get around to that, to the listening to the words of Jesus saying, be my witness.

In any way, understand this is the priority of heaven for you.

Go.

And what we see in this text with these seven, seven, and seven is not so much that it's like chronological order where we get these kind of seven seals broken, and then we have these sort of seven trumpets that blow, and then later on we have these seven bowls that are poured out, but rather that the bowls, if you will, are actually inside this, they're just a different perspective.

And the trumpets actually blow, they're they're kind of like within the same time frame between this already Jesus has died and risen and ascended, and when he's coming back.

And so we see them from different perspectives.

Here's one way that you could say this.

And and I know that not everybody agrees, let's go to that big long um statement.

Past these three.

The seals, trumpets, and bowls, thank you, Brad, describe a time period between Jesus' resurrection and his second coming from different perspectives with unique priorities.

God's judgments are not separate, distinct events, but they're different dimensions of the same terrible overall reality, the world we live in, where sin has its way.

The trumpet sound and reveal a world that is actually worked out in parallel to the world described by the seals, revealing not dateable events, but true aspects of the world we live in, which may be true at any time.

When we begin to read the text, we'll look at from that perspective, we can begin to see that this is actually answering a different question.

Each of these three do.

Last week you might remember, at the end of sort of all these persecutions, all these challenges, the devil himself coming against the church.

Man, we've got people running for the hills after the sixth trumpet.

They're like, let the hills just cave us in.

What?

And then they ask a question.

You remember what this question is?

What's the question?

Who will stand?

Who can stand?

If it's gonna be that hard for the church, will there be any church left?

Jesus' answer in between six and seven is yes.

Those will be found standing that stand with the lamb.

There will be my church standing in this time if they stand with me.

So the answer is yes.

This particular, the seven trumpets, answers a different question.

We're still going to go through seven.

There's six, a pause, and then a seventh, and it asks a different question.

The question is this who will even repent?

Like, let's just say I do it.

I'm not fully committed yet to being a witness, to going out of my way to telling other people the truth about who Jesus is and what he's done and the difference that he's made in my life.

But let's say I do it.

Will anyone repent?

Does it matter?

Jesus' answer in these verses is absolutely it matters.

I'm not sure I would have put the same level of trust in myself that Jesus seems to, but let's walk through these together.

The question these seven trumpets seek to answer is who will repent?

Now, these are called trumpet plagues by by some people, um, because as we walk through these sort of in overview fashion, what you'll begin to see is that these sound a lot like what happens in Exodus when God is saying to Pharaoh, let my people what go?

Right?

So the nation of Israel, God's people are in slavery.

God sends these plagues because he wants a particular response from Pharaoh.

In similar fashion, our world will experience a kind of dramatic um sort of divine interventions and brokenness, if you will, that are meant to stir a same kind of response.

They're sent so that people would what?

Repent.

Look at what we see at the end of this section.

I want to fast forward to this set that uh scripture right there.

Um, if you have your Bibles open, it's gonna be um chapter 9, verse 20.

Listen to what he says.

This is after these plagues come, or it's actually after the first six.

So after the first six, here's what we hear.

It's a little bit like the end of those six seals where people are running for the hills thinking there's no hope.

The rest of mankind, whoever wasn't killed in the midst of these plagues, still did not what?

Repent.

Remember what Peter said?

God's patient, not like you understand patience, because his desire, the hope of heaven is what I mean.

According to Peter, it's that all would repent.

But according to this verse six, what we see and we're stuck in the tension of is people that still do not repent, of their work of their hands.

They did not stop worshipping demons and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone, and wood, idols that cannot see or hear or walk.

They did not repent of their murders, their magic arts, their sexual immorality, or their lusts.

And what God says is the unrepentant or the far from God, even though these horrible things are happening, outside of something else, in the midst of their story, they do not repent.

They hold to a sort of godless, unrepentant, worshiping idols kind of life.

Now, let's look at in overview fashion these uh trumpets.

We'll look at the the six, some of them you may be familiar with.

They're all kind of brutal.

Again, we can wrestle with these because there's disagreement on how some of this plays out for sure.

Um, but just kind of listen to the language and think about what is this maybe inviting me to consider.

This is chapter eight, uh, verse seven.

You have your Bible open.

The first angel sounded his trumpet.

He honks.

There came hail, we're thinking ice, fire, we're thinking fire, mixed with what?

Blood.

And it was hurled down on the earth, a third of Of the earth was burned up, a third of the trees were burned up, and all the grass was burned up.

Verse 8, the second angel sounded his trumpet.

Something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea.

A third of the sea was turned into blood.

A third of the living creatures in the sea died.

A third of the ships were destroyed.

Verse 10, the third angel sounded his trumpet.

Great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and the springs of the water.

A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died because the drinking water was unsafe or had become bitter.

And so we walk through these things.

Hail, fire, blood.

What's he saying?

He's saying there's going to be seasons between the already and the not yet when our world seems to turn on itself, where destruction rolls in the sort of natural environment.

Now he says there's like a third, and some people try and piece that out.

I would argue he's just saying, like, hey, there's going to be massive amounts of destruction at times.

Second, he says, you know, there's going to be this sort of blood in the water, a third.

And these people lived around the Mediterranean rim.

So that was their sea.

That was their commerce.

And if the creatures within and their way of traveling is now stopped, he's simply saying there's going to be times when for the unbelieving world, specifically, what they thought was their way of sort of making life economically is going to be blown to the bottom, is going to fall out individually, but also socially or corporately.

And he kind of goes on with these bold pictures.

He's inviting us to feel this, to sort of smell this, to realize that people are dying.

The fourth is a very interesting one.

A third of the sky is kept from shining, third of the sun.

Now, if you're a scientist, you think okay, if a third of the sun stops shining, we get cold.

Okay.

So if a third of the sun stops shining, how much of the human race dies?

How many?

Does anybody know?

I mean, come on.

How many?

Everybody's dead, okay?

But that's not what he's saying.

So again, we have to say, what is he saying?

What's he inviting us into?

What kind of radical?

And many people will say this particular one is meant to draw us back to what we see in Exodus chapter 8.

Exodus 8 · chapter mention

And this is the plagues in Pharaoh.

You remember the plagues, the plague of the frogs.

So there's like, guess what?

God says, you're getting frogs if you don't let my people go.

It's like, I ain't letting your people go.

So frogs are everywhere, right?

And then Pharaoh looks at his like magicians.

And he's like, hey, can you guys do the frog thing?

They're like, we got the frog thing.

They make a bunch more frogs.

I don't know how this works.

But the next one is if frogs wasn't enough, he's like, let my people go, or it's gonna be gnats.

And he's like, we're not letting your people go.

I don't care about a gnat.

Well, nobody cares about a gnat until there's a lot of gnats, right?

Because you can come to my office and you'll care about gnats.

Well, what happens after the gnats?

Pharaoh says to the magicians, Hey, can you do the gnat thing?

They try and do the gnat thing, they try and do the gnat thing.

One more time, they try and do the gnat thing, and they're like, Hey, the gnat thing is actually the finger of God.

And so what we see here is there will be sort of natural disasters that, at least from one perspective, you guys have thought this, I'm sure, about your friends that are far from God.

If I had seen that, if I had experienced that, if I had felt that, I would have turned to God.

How are you walking through that and still not turning back to God?

The fifth of these uh trumpets is the kind of the most radical.

Now, listen to the story.

Now you can read it, we're gonna study it when we do this chapter by chapter study on Sunday afternoons, but it's crazy.

An angel, we're told, falls into this kind of cavern in the earth.

Okay.

Most people say that's probably Satan or a picture of Satan falls out of heaven, falls into this huge cavern, it closes up after him.

Some point in time, the abyss is opened, and out comes the abyss is what?

Massive amounts of smoke, says the thing.

You can't see the stars anymore, you can't see the sun, the air's all full.

It's like when you're like trying to start a fire and you're like, My fire is not going, my fire.

And so you open the door, and it's like poof, and you're like, oh gosh, like what just happened?

It's that same kind of picture.

What comes out of the smoke-filled abyss is this like bizarre-looking locusts, lots of them.

Like they got hair, they got like armor.

He says, These locusts sting you like a scorpion.

Now, in their world, if you got stung by a scorpion, the physical pain would last about two days.

To this day, if you get stung by a scorpion there, you will start to wish something upon yourself.

Some of you thought this before in the midst of your intense physical pain.

I wish I was what?

Dead.

Says that's what's gonna happen.

It's gonna be five months.

It will not touch Christians, but for five months, these locusts will come up and sting like man.

I can remember the day when I was, you know, messing around on the shore of Coronado.

If you don't know about the, you know, um stingray shuffle, you need to.

I stepped on a stingray, that thing flacked me.

And I mean, for the next 90 minutes, thankfully, because I don't think I could have lasted longer than that, I was like, someone just cut my leg off.

That's the same kind of pain that will be inflicted at times in human history to an unrepentant world.

Why?

So that they'll turn, so they'll repent.

That's the priority of heaven, the lost.

Some people think these locusts are real locusts.

And I imagine if you planted crops and fed your family, and locusts came up and blew through your crops and you couldn't feed your kids, dads, come on.

You would say that's about as gut-wrenching and painful as life could get if I couldn't feed my own children.

I mean, we can handle a lot of physical pain.

You may have heard the name Hal Lindsay.

He wrote a number of books.

He was really into like the literal, trying to do a literal translation, and what came out of that was a couple of books where he dated the return of Jesus.

So he said, 1988, Jesus is coming back.

Everybody got really stirred up because he's coming to get us.

He had this theology wrapped up in that.

88 passed, some of us were there.

He said, Well, we got a little bit off.

Remember the next date?

2000, sold millions of books.

People said, This is what's gonna happen after 2000.

Don't make any plans.

For how Lindsay, the locust was a what?

Some of you know?

An Apache helicopter.

Now, here's just what I want to say.

If an Apache helicopter is coming after your town, I'm good with it.

Like the locust is the Apache helicopter.

Like that thing's gonna inflict a whole lot of pain and suffering physically in your world.

But it might also be like a lady I talked to at the cancer center on Friday who described for me the last two rounds of chemo.

And she used these words.

She said it was so utterly painful.

I felt like my insides were moving to my outsides, and I wanted to die.

There will be seasons in our life when God is allowing, sending a kind of pain to an unrepenting people to draw them back to Him.

And yet we see at the end of this text, no one repents.

I love this uh quote.

It was helpful for me in trying to think a lot of this through by Michael Wilcock.

He says, This fearful damage is done to the land and its vegetation, the sea and its ships, the waters which men drink, the light by which they see, their environment, their commerce, their resources, and their vision.

But the damage is partial, sounding not doom but what?

Warning.

The seals show the suffering church pleading for justice to be done.

The trumpets show the wicked world being offered mercy.

Let it never be said that God has not done all in his power, even to the devastation of his own once perfect earth, in order to bring men and women to their senses.

And yet, one, two, three, four, five, six, and still no one repents.

Now, what's fascinating about the storytelling in Revelation is this He's going to insert now in between six and seven something we call the church.

His people.

He's going to say that there's another option.

People could be left to just them and the pain and the suffering and the world to repent.

Or people can walk through that same kind of thing with a church, a lamppost that steps in.

Listen to these two ways he does it.

And it's really interesting, and there's a whole lot in there that we're not going to be able to unpack.

But here's what happens in chapter 10, verse 9.

It's fascinating.

This angel shows up, and he's this mighty, crazy angel.

He can step on earth and water at the same time.

Then the voice that I heard from heaven spoke to me.

This is John.

Once more, he said, Go take the scroll that lies open in the hand of the angels.

Remember, John sees the scroll opened.

This redemptive history.

He says, Take that.

He says, uh, so he says, Go and take that, excuse me, from the hand of the angel who is sitting on the sea and on the land.

So I went to the angel and I asked him, Give me the little scroll.

He said to me, Take it and eat it.

It will turn your stomach sour, but in your mouth it will be as sweet as honey.

I took the little scroll from the angel's hand and I ate it.

Some of you're like, that's what happens when I eat a donut.

Tastes great, but something about it's a picture of the gospel.

I could stand up here and say that what Jesus did dying on the cross was an invitation for us to put our lives in his hands to trust him with our eternity and our life.

And for some of us, that's the sweetest story ever told.

And we go back to a moment where we first believed and we experienced, we remember again our baptism and we we walk in that sweetness.

But some of us, right, we're about this witnessing thing.

We're about the list that's on my phone of the seven or eight guys that I pray for regularly that don't know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.

And for them, the gospel isn't a sweetness in my mouth, it's a bitterness in my gut.

Because I know that life outside of him is death.

And we're invited to see that and feel that and taste that in this incredible book.

What does he say next then?

Take the scroll, eat the scroll.

And lastly, he says this then I was told, you must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, languages, and kings.

He says, take what you've eaten and tell an unbelieving world.

This word prophecy is just telling the word of God.

Get out of your bedroom, play in your game, and go do the thing that Jesus invited you to do.

And again, we remember the question we we rehearsed at the beginning: like, does it matter?

So there's these two fascinating stories in this section.

There's this big angel with the small scroll, and then there's two witnesses.

Some people say these witnesses are meant to draw us back to Moses and Elijah, two people that boldly stepped into their culture and did what the angel here is telling John to do.

They prophesied, they told the word of God, they told of the hope that is ours in Christ.

They move from their kind of yawn to be an active participants in the work of God by witnessing to who Jesus is.

And what we see at the end, we see these two little minor stories.

We see kind of a minor, minor story.

And in many ways, the way this is written, it's meant to draw us back to the six first plagues.

Because how does it start?

It says that there's a great earthquake.

So we have these two witnesses.

We have this scroll that John eats, and he's invited to tell everything that he now knows.

And then at the end of the story, and I'm reminded as I'm saying this that I forgot to put this on the slides, we hear then these words.

This is verse 13.

After the invitation to John, after the two witnesses make their way into their world with the truth of who Jesus is, he says, at that very hour there's a severe earthquake.

Tenth of the city collapsed.

7,000 people were killed in the earthquake, and the survivors were terrified and what gave glory to God in heaven.

There's two responses we see within this seven trumpets.

All this horrible stuff happens.

Nobody turns.

There's an earthquake at the end of the story.

After those who were called to bear witness do that.

Another earthquake comes, and there's a different response.

The response is they turn back and they give glory to God.

They leave their idols, they leave their the invitation, the reminder that Jesus leans.

He says, I want to stir you up around these things because they matter.

There's a different response when the church, he says this at the end of the story, the lampstands do what they were meant to do.

They shine.

So what's our invitation then this morning?

And we'll end with this.

What would it look like for you and I to take the scroll and to eat it?

Okay, remember, we're talking about symbols here.

To eat it.

Take it.

Eat it.

Man, know the truth of the story of God.

Know that this story starts with like an incredible creation.

Sin enters in, but God is a plan of redemption that's moving human history towards his final restoration.

You need to be able to tell it, the angel tells John.

If you're gonna be effective, if people are gonna move from nobody repented to people started giving glory to God, it's because the church stood up, knew the story, they understood the gospel, they ate it, and then they began to tell.

And what does that look like in our day?

It simply says, Where are the people around me with regards to their understanding of who Jesus is?

And how can I help them take one step?

How can I how can I clarify for them?

It's gonna come out of people like you and I seeking to live the story of the gospel with all the beauty and boldness that it invites us into.

It's gonna invite us, require of us to step into our culture and bear witness of a changed life.

It's gonna invite us at times to talk about the response that Jesus invites us to make, to say yes to what Jesus has done on our behalf, to surrender our lives and our futures, to trust Him and Him alone.

Will we allow this incredible picture to stir us, to be the people of God, his church, his lampstand in our day, that when those around us get their lives shook up, they would say, I have seen a people, a person that stands even in the midst of these challenges.

And maybe they'll be invited to repent.

God, thank you for this incredible picture.

Thank you for drawing our stories in and for all the things we don't know, for all the things we don't understand, we can go back to Acts chapter 1, where you said the time isn't for you to know, but open yourselves up to my spirit and receive his power.

Acts 1 · chapter mention

And then go.

Go and be my witness.

I have positioned you into a world alongside people I so deeply love and care about.

Tell them, be my witness.

May we be faithful.

God, thank you that someone witnessed to us that your gospel is sweetness in our mouth.

We love you, we praise you.

It's in your name we pray.

Amen.

Thanks so much for joining us, church.

We hope that you enjoyed this message.

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