Revelation 16:10-21

November 8, 2020

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

The sermon starts around 22:45 in the audio file.

Or, Blasphemy Such as There Has Never Been

Series: Just Conquer Part 44

Introduction

It seems possible to know something truly and yet be deceived, whether by one’s own sinful anger or by supernatural propaganda. The people who experience the final plagues know exactly who sent the plagues that are destroying them and yet they refuse to humble themselves, which you’d think would be the reasonable response. Many of them even gather to fight against Him, and this is a ridiculous response.

We are down to the final three bowls of judgment. Seven angels were given seven bowls which are the seven last plagues, and all seven are poured out in Revelation 16. The first four appear to affect individual men more directly, with sores and scorched skin and with blood to drink and clotted-blood clogging up the seas. The final three bowls affect persons, but are targeted at a higher level of cities and the anti-Christian systems.

God remembers all the faithlessness and fraud and idolatry and immorality of men. God remembers His people and His promises, and this is good news for the faithful; in fact we need to remember His faithfulness not to forget us. But here, “Babylon the great was remembered by God,” and they will wish He was forgetful. They will blaspheme His lack of forgetfulness, and it will be blasphemy such as there has never been.

Fifth Bowl: Dark Despair (verses 10-11)

The fourth bowl brought intense heat from the sun that caused burns on men, the fifth bowl causes darkness far as the curse is found. “The fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and its kingdom was plunged into darkness.”

There was a plague of darkness in Egypt that shut down everything under Pharaoh’s rule for three days (Exodus 10). This apocalyptic darkness targets “the throne of the beast,” the center of the Antichrist’s authority. The throne was a gift from the dragon, that is, from Satan, to the beast (Revelation 13:2). With visible irony, the darkness and blindness which come about from the beast’s deceiving work comes back onto the beast’s seat and extend throughout his dominion. While he wishes he could be the Logos of light, he can’t even keep the lights on over his throne.

A lot of bad things are done in darkness, and this is bad darkness. We can imagine the confusion and chaos of the dark; think of the response of the riffraff in a busy casino that loses power. At this point, it’s hard to imagine a bunch of compassionate idolators trying to help out their neighbors. They have become like who they worshipped, terrible in selfishness.

More time in the dark gives them more time to think about their favorite subject: themselves. And it’s a planet-wide pity party. “People gnawed their tongues in anguish and cursed the God of heaven for their pain(s)/sufferings and sores.” It’s strange that in English gnawing one’s tongue and biting one’s tongue do not mean the same thing. Biting your tongue means being quiet, gnawing your tongue means grumbling and whining in complaint. If there is any connection between people, it’s like rocks banging into each other in a bag about how mean God is.

John says they “blasphemed the God of heaven,” which means that they know the throne and kingdom of the beast is inferior. They know, and they hate what they know. So, they lie about God. Even now, with nothing else to do but consider their obligations to the Sovereign God who had come so intimately close in judgment, “they did not repent of their deeds,” deeds such as murders and sorceries and sexual immorality and thefts (9:21).

Sixth Bowl: A Lost Cause (verses 12-16)

This bowl is a scene-setting bowl. This judgment gets the pieces put on the board in the right place, so the bowl is poured o[...]

Selected Scriptures

November 1, 2020

Evening Service

Jim Martin

Series: Centers and Circumferences Part 10

Revelation 16:1-9

November 1, 2020

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

The sermon starts around 17:10 in the audio file.

Or, Par for the Curse

Series: Just Conquer Part 43

Introduction

How we do things communicates along with what we say about the things we’re doing. This is more than about body language, though that’s an example. We’ve talked a lot over the years about how liturgy affects us, the patterns and repetitions and attitudes along with the words. The same is true in good fiction; C.S. Lewis cared about the assumptions he could get his readers to carry with them as they followed the arc of the plot. We can’t read the Chronicles without feeling, if that is the apropos word, that certain things in the Narnian world are true.

The Apocalypse likewise weaves threads into the fabric of our worldview. All of God’s Word does, actually. There is never an argument God’s existence, it just begins with that reality and moves forward. The book of Revelation takes us to the other end of world history, and how it does so forms not only expectations about the future but also what sort of world we live in now. We are knit with weltanschauung whether we like it or try to work around it.

It’s been a great year for thinking about things we can’t see. Modern society has grown bad at that; our greatest invisible irritant is weak WiFi. But this year has provided perfect lessons on unseen things, like viruses, sure, but even the decision-making process of our political overseers. We’ve been given pause, especially when we were told to stay home, to question the cause of all this. When the greatest argument against conspiracy is incompetence of the presumed conspirators, you know we’re examining just what sort of world we live in.

It is good to look at more than just the things that are seen. It could go wrong, get too far-fetched, but Screwtape warned Wormwood not to let his subject think too much about what could be “true.” Distraction is much better demonic work, at least for now.

This circles us back to the book of Revelation. Revelation removes distractions. There are ways to be confused about it, but most of the confusion comes from wishing we lived in a different world that wasn’t so consequential. “Just let me be, man.” You don’t get to just “be.” There’s no neutrality; it is conquer or be compromised, even for professing Christians.

Working through John’s visions at this pace is sort of relentless; as Coach Boone once said, it’s like novocaine, just give it time. John’s visions leave no room for materialists who believe all we see is all there is. The visions leave no room for syncretists, who believe you can choose from the buffet of religious options. The visions leave no room for sentimentalists, who believe that people are pretty good and nice to each other if you just let them be. No, these are visions of heaven and hell, of faith and martyrs’ blood, of sun and moon and stars, of false teaching and fiery trials and even hotter fires of judgment. There may be a time to sing “This is my Father’s world,” but when angels sing, they sing about how the Almighty is true and just in all His judgments.

What kind of world do we live in? A world full of angels and demons, a world full of hatred toward God, a world trending toward a final conflict with God, a world that will be weighed in God’s righteous balances.

John introduced us to the “seven angels with seven plagues, which are the last, for with them the wrath of God is finished” (15:1). He heard a great choir of conquerors, and then saw “one of the four living creatures” give “to the seven angels seven golden bowls full of the wrath of God” (15:7). All seven bowls are emptied in chapter 16, quickly and mercilessly. As with the seals and the trumpets, a pattern of four and three can[...]

Revelation 15:1-8

October 25, 2020

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

The sermon starts around 25:05 in the audio file.

Or, The Final Strains of Justice

Series: Just Conquer Part 42

Introduction

Imagine living in a world hostile to Christianity, in which not just friendships, but financial opportunities were lost because of being public about one’s faith. Imagine a world that lied about where real glory was, where political leaders portrayed themselves as saviors and tribes formed according to public loyalties. Imagine a world happy to call evil, good and to call good, evil.

If you can imagine that sort of world then you have crossed the chronological bridge to the first-century world in which John wrote and in which the churches lived. It also means that you can picture what it will be like in the last days. One of the reasons you probably didn’t even need to use a lot of creative gas is because our experience gets us pretty far. The present evil age is as evil as ever; evil is like a fountain that keeps on flowing.

John wrote for just such a day as this. While the majority of the unveiling is yet to occur in real time, it has, and has since he wrote it, had immediate relevance. Through John God has promised blessing to all who would read and keep the words of this prophecy, and we’re coming up on two millennia of application.

The suffering, marginalized, minority of Christians had reason not only to carry on but to conquer. They had it hard, and the visions saw it getting harder. There were heresies within, and governmental attacks without. And yet the visions that John shared showed them not only those who would hold on but those who would belt out in song.

Revelation 15 introduces us to the final series of seven judgments. All seven seals on the scroll have been broken open, from which the seven trumpets have been blown. The seventh trumpet leads to the handing over and pouring out of these bowls of God’s wrath. We meet the seven angels who are commissioned by God to dump out the bowls, and we learn that this is it, the end, and the windup of God’s wrath. In between we hear the saints singing.

The chapter has three “And I saw”s, with the focus on the middle one. Interrupting what verse 1 introduced, the center “saw” is the Song of Moses and the Song of the Lamb. These are the final strains (which has a perfect combination of meanings, with struggle of pulling tight and then the sound of stringed instruments) of justice. God will be glorified in praise and He will be praised for righteous deeds.

A Great and Marvelous Sign (verse 1)

There are only three “signs” called as such in the Apocalypse: the woman clothed with the sun (12:1), the red dragon (12:3), and here in 15:1. The woman was a “great sign,” the next sign was of a “great dragon,” but here John “saw another sign in heaven, great and (marvelous).” The same two adjectives describe the works of the Almighty Himself in verse 3.

The great and amazing sign in verse 1 is of “seven angels with seven last plagues,” and they are called the “last” “(because) the wrath of God is completed in them.”

We’re used to the sevens. There are so many sevens in the Apocalypse that many readers muddle them together, especially the seven seals, trumpets, and bowls. The seven plagues presented in chapter 15 are similar to the previous, but they are not identical.

Consider: the sevens have been presented in sequence, one following another. Is the counting just for emotional affect, or to unveil order? The sevens have increased in intensity; the bowl judgments affect all the earth, not merely a quarter or a third. Are the differences in ratios meant to be poetic alternatives, or to unveil escalation? In addition, nowhere has John (or an angel from heaven) explicitly connected them, “this (seal) is like this (trumpet/bowl)[...]

Selected Scriptures

October 18, 2020

Evening Service

Dave Light

Series: Centers and Circumferences Part 9

Revelation 14:14-20

October 18, 2020

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

The sermon starts around 17:50 in the audio file.

Or, The Great Winepress of Wrath

Series: Just Conquer Part 41

Introduction

Many believers hold the balance between current events and end times as well as our presidential candidates compliment one another on social media. In other words, we swing wildly back and forth, and the swinging is usually ugly. Balancing is hard, whether we’re trying to rejoice in the promises for the future or to navigate the problems of the present. Christians tend to shine all their eschatological light on the immanence or remain in the dark of eschatology’s irrelevance. Living by faith, even in John’s fantastic visions, is different than getting lost in distracting fantasies.

We confess that Jesus is Lord and that Jesus will return; these things are true and good and gladdening. Our confession, therefore, must be more than nominal, more than a token, more than two-dimensional. We believe, and so we speak (2 Corinthians 4:13). We believe, and so we sow. The fruit of believing in April that there will be a harvest in August is planting. The fruit of believing in June that there will be a harvest in August is patience, perhaps alongside other sorts of seed spreading. All of this is a way to remind us that the Now and the Then are connected in more ways than chronology.

The one who connects them is the King. Jesus is the Lamb who ransomed people for Himself, and He is the Anointed who will inherit the nations after breaking them with a rod of iron (Psalm 2:8-9; Revelation 2:27; 12:5; 19:15). Jesus Christ is “the ruler of the kings on earth,” and “he is coming with the clouds” (Revelation 1:5-6). The book of Revelation is the unveiling of the things that must take place, and they must take place because reaping follows sowing. Jesus is the Redeemer, and He is also the Reaper. He has finished His work of atonement, but He has not finished His work of accumulating evidence. All authority is His now, He sees what men sow, and He will repay.

> Revelation 22:12 “Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay each one for what he has done. 13 I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”

So now does matter, and every “now” will matter until His return. The King is not mocked. The one who sows to his own flesh will reap corruption (Galatians 6:7-8), and all those on earth who get drunk on the depravity, indecency, idolatry, and degeneracy of the beast and his deceptions will be ripe for the great winepress of God’s wrath.

An angel blew the seventh trumpet at the end of Revelation 11, and chapters 12-14 are visions that explain the long war waged by the ancient serpent against God. In chapter 12 John told the story of the dragon’s hatred toward God’s people and especially God’s Son. In chapter 13 John saw the dragon rising like a beast out of the sea to blaspheme God and make war on the saints. John also saw another beast in chapter 13 rising out of the earth who served the first beast and led the earth-dwellers to worship and take the mark of the beast. In chapter 14 John saw a remnant redeemed from mankind by and for the Lamb (verses 1-5), but then he saw the consequences for those who sowed their lives for the beast: eternal unrest and torment (verses 6-13).

We are almost ready for the final series of judgments, the seven bowl judgments, to be poured out. Before that, John sees two similar visions in verses 14-20, a grain harvest and a grape harvest. The hour to reap has come, and the King’s sickle is sharp.

The Hour of Harvest (verses 14-16)

This is a vision of the final autumn of sin, of the world-field filled with those given over to their lusts and to serving the embodiment of their pride in the beast.

> 14 “Then I looked, and behold, a white cloud, and se[...]

Selected Scriptures

October 11, 2020

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

The sermon starts around 17:30 in the audio file.

Or, Or, A Contest of Gifts

Series: Centers and Circumferences Part 8

I have missed preaching about economics twice now; the first time was in March due to virus-lockdowns, and then it was rescheduled for last Sunday night, but I was laying flat on the floor. It’s part of our Centers and Circumferences series, concentrating on how Christ’s lordship ought to be the focus (center) and full-scope (circumferences) of every sphere of life.

I’m sure we could have moved some things around and found another evening for this message, but I’m tired of holding new wine in old wineskins, or, as my dad used to say, it’s like cash burning a hole in my pocket. I also think that this provides a providential excuse to talk about one of the defining dispositions of TEC. We see the errors of, and have come to repent from, dualism.

I haven’t used that word in a while. It’s not meant to scare anyone with academic sounding vocabulary. It refers to a wrong-headed evaluation of spiritual things over earthly things, an improper division between mind and matter. It refers especially to Christians who love the Bible but who ironically misread the Bible in order to defend their incorrect understanding of the Bible’s teaching about earthly things. Paul wrote that we are to think about Christ, not “on things that are on earth” (Colossians 3:1-2), and then he defined the earthly things as things such as sexual immorality, covetousness, anger, and lies. Then he gave instruction for how those who are richly indwelt by the Word (3:16) will behave as spouses, parents, masters and slaves (3:18-4:1). Apparently we “seek the things that are above” on earth in our relationships and responsibilities by doing “everything in the name of the Lord Jesus” (3:17).

When I got serious about theology I got serious about how much more important it was to read theology than to make dinner. The only thing that could be better than studying the Bible was studying the Bible longer. The point of church was to gather up truth, as we line up in our pews like beakers in a lab, all trying to get our truth-tubes filled. That’s false.

While we love truth, we learn from Scripture that the collection of truth is only as good as our transformation by truth. Bible reading and study makes men obedient and fruitful.

A convenient nickname for this anti-dualism is Kuyperianism. Abraham Kuyper died 100 years ago; he taught and embodied with star-like energy the reality that Jesus is Lord of all, including all the things that so many Christians claim (or live like) are just secular or neutral, as if Jesus has no interest in those things. It turns out that a big reason that Christians, and their churches, have been so lost and tossed about in the last six months is because their theology never needed to be public before, certainly not political. We’ve been, as a flock, trying to pick up a three-dimensional worldview with our opposable thumbs, and economics is the next issue on the table.

I have some things to say about economics because I’ve had to learn on purpose. My message this morning is not primarily about household budgets, or cash envelope systems, though I enjoy Dave Ramsey as much as the next person with a burdensome monthly car payment. This is not about tithes or tariffs or pivot tables. I’ve never excelled at Excel. I think Solomon once wrote, “of the making of many spreadsheets there is no end, and much study of tax codes is weariness of the flesh” (think Ecclesiastes 12:12). But while we seek first the kingdom of God, what do we do when He adds “all these (other) things” to us, like Jesus says (Matthew 6:33)? Mature disciples are not the ones who think that the promise part of the verse never comes true.

Economics is the sphere of stuff and services, of producers and p[...]

Selected Scriptures

October 4, 2020

Evening Service

Jonathan Sarr

Selected Scriptures

October 4, 2020

Lord’s Day Worship

Jim Martin

The sermon starts around 14:25 in the audio file.

Or, How not to sound like a presidential debate

Revelation 14:6-13

September 27, 2020

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

The sermon starts around 17:30 in the audio file.

Or, The Draught of God’s Undiluted Wrath

I’ve read too many British novelists, including Lewis and Tolkien, not to come across the word draught. It’s apparently not an American English word; we use “draft.” They are pronounced the same, but, to me, draft doesn’t seem quite the same. Though it has a number of meanings, for now, think of draught as a portion of drink, a gulp or swallow of a long and thirst-quenching drink, typically of some sort of adult beverage (or elvish). You sip tea, you down a draught of beer.

In the middle part of Revelation 14 three angels announce a draught of doom and identify those who will drink a draught of God’s wrath. God’s anger is likened to wine that will be drunk and will cause disaster for them. The hour of His judgment has come upon those who have made the wrong worship choices, and their torment is just getting started.

Satan (in chapter 12) has thrown himself against the Lord’s anointed and any who follow the Lamb. The antichrist (in chapter 13) embodies the jealousies of Satan and sets himself up as a poser king over the nations. The false prophet leads the earth in worshipping an image of the false messiah. The lies are heavy and great pressure is applied so that all will take the beast’s mark. None can resist in quiet. Worship the beast or lose your life.

At the beginning of chapter 14 we see a remnant of God’s people who do not bow to the beast, many of whom appear to pay the ultimate (earthly) price for it. They have the name of the Father and of the Lamb on their foreheads, and they will not defile themselves in fornication or in falsehood.

Now, though, we begin to see what the future holds for the earth-dwellers. It is not good.

I have preached around 460 sermons at TEC. Most of those sermons have tracked sequentially through a book of the Bible. We’ve finished John and Genesis, 1 Corinthians and some other quicker studies through shorter epistles. We’re more than halfway through Revelation, and I don’t remember ever working through a paragraph on hell, on the lake of fire, that is as explicit as this paragraph about eternal judgment.

There have been sermons on Sodom and Gomorrah, and we’ve studied Psalms with judgment on rebels, but this is an unmistakable, and awful passage about God’s everlasting punishment on sinners. There is even more to come in the Apocalypse.

Hell is an almost unbearable subject, and who can imagine how triggering it is to today’s average college graduate. Psychologically, as in, down in our psuchos/souls, our consciences accuse us and that torment is an prelude of the physical and mental torment coming on those who will not give glory to God.

This is a terrible reality that points to the terrible offense of our sin, and it would be a good opportunity for parents to talk to their kids about it further. Most of the time we talk about adorning the doctrine of God so that it is appealing, especially to our kids. We emphasize that the Lord blesses obedience, and we will see that in this passage as well. But it is good to learn, or to be reminded, that every life on earth will come to an end, and that who we’ve worshipped has eternal consequences, in ceaseless song or the ceaseless smoke of torment.

In verses 6-13 there are four voices making four announcements.

ANNOUNCEMENT ONE: FEAR GOD (verses 6-7)

As usual John “saw” another vision and he sees “another angel flying directly overhead.” The last angel John mentioned was Michael who threw Satan out of heaven (12:7), but the last similar flying announcer was an eagle proclaiming a trifecta of woes (8:13).

This angel carries “an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on the earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people.” Is this a saving gospel? There is no mention[...]