Living Words

Hallelujah!

Revelation 19

by William Klock

When I was an undergrad I had the chance to hear a lecture given by a missionary Bible translator.  There was a lot about that lecture that was fascinating and encouraging.  Up to that point it wasn’t a subject to which I’d given much thought, but when I left, for the first time, I’d started thinking about the possibility of studying biblical languages.  It was encouraging to hear about people working to preach the gospel and to provide the Bible in their own languages—even sometimes going to all that effort when only a tiny handful of people speak that language or dialect.  What didn’t sit well with me that night was the way this missionary talked about eschatology.  Why do we have to hunt down unreached people groups—even tiny groups—to proclaim Jesus to them?  Because if we don’t, Jesus can’t come back—and we really, really want Jesus to come back, because the world is an awful place and it’s just getting worse and worse.  Revelation 7 describes a multitude of every tribe and tongue, after all.  The impression we were left with that night is that all we have to do is make contact with every tribe and tongue on earth and win at least one person to Jesus from each and when someone believes from the last unreached people group it’ll be like flipping a switch.  Jesus will come back and we can all finally get out of here!  As if what matters is that there be at least one person from every tribe and tongue in heaven, not that what’s really at issue is Jesus’ conquest of the present age through the preaching of the gospel.  “That’s pessimistic,” I thought that night.  And years later I discovered a term has actually been coined to describe much of contemporary Evangelical eschatology: “pessimillennialism”.  The point of John’s bit about every tribe and tongue is summed up well in Isaac Watts’ well-known hymn:

Jesus shall reign where’er the sun

Doth his successive journeys run;

His kingdom stretch from shore to shore,

Till moons shall was and wane no more.

 

Jesus shall reign wherever the sun shines.  Not, Jesus shall win at least a few converts.  But that pessimistic view of things has been the norm in a lot of Evangelical eschatology for the last century or so.  This idea that sort of says, “Things are just going to get worse and worse, but as soon as at least one person in every tribe and tongue believes the gospel, then Jesus can come, get us out of here, and take us to heaven.”  It wasn’t always like that.  As Abraham Kuyper famously said, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!”  Historically, Christians have tended to have a much more optimistic view of the future of the people of God and of Jesus’ kingdom and, as we come to Revelation 19, I think we finally see this.

Revelation began with that wonderful vision of Jesus as risen Lord, before he spoke directly to those seven churches in John’s part of Asia Minor.  Jesus exhorted and warned them.  Tribulation was coming—and in some cases had already come—but he exhorted them to persevere, because his kingdom was come—because he has claimed every square inch of life and of this world as his own.  And then John saw God’s judgement fall first on rebellious and unbelieving Jerusalem and then, these last several chapters, on Rome and its empire.  These were the two sources of opposition and tribulation and both have fallen—or from John’s perspective, were just about to fall.  Now in Revelation 19 God’s people rejoice.  You might say that John gives a tale of two women and then a tale of two feasts.  Look at 19:1-5.

After this I heard what seemed to be the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, crying out,

“Hallelujah!

Salvation and glory and power belong to our God,

for his judgments are true and just;

for he has judged the great prostitute

         who corrupted the earth with her immorality,

and has avenged on her the blood of his servants.”

Once more they cried out,

“Hallelujah!

The smoke from her goes up forever and ever.”

  And the twenty-four elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God who was seated on the throne, saying, “Amen. Hallelujah!” And from the throne came a voice saying,

“Praise our God,

         all you his servants,

you who fear him,

         small and great.”

 

We’re back in the heavenly throne room with the elders and the living creatures gathered around the throne, worshipping God.  We met them all back in Chapter 5 as they celebrated the entrance of the lamb, the only one who could unseal the scroll of God’s judgement and set everything finally to rights.  Now they cry out “Hallelujah!”  That’s Hebrew for “Praise Yahweh!”  “Praise the Lord!”  It’s interesting that as often as hallelujah is used in the Old Testament, this is the only place it’s used in the New.  But maybe that’s fitting, because here we finally see the victory of God in Jesus.  “Salvation and glory and power belong to our God,” they sing.  Why?  Because his judgements are true and we’ve just seen his judgement on the great prostitute.  Remember the woman John saw in the last chapter, to all appearance, beautiful and regal, but in reality her chalice was full, not of wine, but of unimaginable filth and with the blood of Jesus and the saints.  She represented Rome, backed by the power and authority of the devil, and she had enticed the nations to join her in her wickedness—especially in her idolatry.  But praise the Lord!  He has thrown her down.  Again, the heavenly court cries out, “Hellelujah!”  Because “the smoke from her goes up forever and ever”.  She’s done.  Forever.  As I said when we looked at Chapter 18, the point is not that the city of Rome or even her empire and the institution of Emperor are gone, but that the power of the beast manifest in her has been broken.  The Lord has ordained earthly governments to maintain order and justice—to punish those who do evil and to reward those who do good.  It’s not the way it was supposed to be, but it’s what must be as a result of humanity’s rebellion against God.  So the wickedness of Rome has been judged and the demonic power behind it broken.  We’ll come back to this in a bit, but for now and in short it means that the gospel, the good news about Jesus, can advance.  It will conquer Rome and the nations.  And in response a voice from the throne calls the heavenly court again to praise: “Praise our God, all you his servants, you who fear him, small and great.”

The whore who personified everything wrong with humanity, backed by the power of the devil, has been cast down.  She and her lovers, the pagan nations, were a parody of the marriage to come.  So in verses 6-9 the scene shifts—in stark contrast—from the prostitute to the bride.

Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out,

“Hallelujah!

For the Lord our God

         the Almighty reigns.

Let us rejoice and exult

         and give him the glory,

for the marriage of the Lamb has come,

         and his Bride has made herself ready;

it was granted her to clothe herself

         with fine linen, bright and pure”—

for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.

  And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These are the true words of God.”

 

Now the voice of a multitude sings out in praise.  This is the 144,000 of Chapter 14, those who have been “redeemed from mankind as firstfruits for God and the Lamb.”  These are they who kept themselves pure and remained faithful to the point of death and in doing so conquered “the beast and its image and the number of its name” (14:4-5, 15:2).  In 12:10 John wrote that it was through the faithfulness of their testimony that the “salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come”.  The whole Church is the bride of the lamb, but what has made her ready, what has made her marriage to the lamb possible, is the faithful endurance of those men and women who persevered even in the face of persecution and death.  The bride stood up to the prostitute and maintained her integrity and her virtue.  The Church is pictured as a virgin bride, dressed in white—bright and pure and faithful.

This marriage imagery goes back to the Old Testament to the story of the Lord and Israel.  He rescued her from Egypt, wooed her in the wilderness, married her at Mount Sinai.  She was repeatedly unfaithful, but the prophets—Isaiah in particular—looked forward to a day when the Lord would woo her again.

In overflowing anger for a moment

         I hid my face from you,

but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you,”

         says the Lord, your Redeemer. (Isaiah 54:8)

For the mountains may depart

         and the hills be removed,

but my steadfast love shall not depart from you,

         and my covenant of peace shall not be removed,”

         says the Lord, who has compassion on you.  (Isaiah 54:10)

Isaiah looked forward to a day when the Lord would redeem his people and renew his covenant with them.  But this time it would be different.  Not only would he set fickle and unfaithful Israel to rights, but with her all of creation.  And this renewal would be celebrated with a feast.  Here’s what’s written in Isaiah 25:6-10:

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples

         a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine,

         of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.

And he will swallow up on this mountain

         the covering that is cast over all peoples,

         the veil that is spread over all nations.

He will swallow up death forever;

and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces,

         and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth,

         for the Lord has spoken.

It will be said on that day,

         “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us.

         This is the Lord; we have waited for him;

         let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”

For the hand of the Lord will rest on this mountain,

         and Moab shall be trampled down in his place,

         as straw is trampled down in a dunghill.

 

Of course, Jesus drew on this imagery too, looking forward to the day of this great banquet.  It’s what Israel had been waiting for ever since her exile to Babylon.  It’s what the world had been waiting for when St. Paul wrote about creation groaning in eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.  Finally, the satan’s power is broken.  The shockwave of new creation that went out with Jesus from that empty tomb outside Jerusalem on Easter morning has finally hit Rome and new creation is set to take over the word after its long sad story of rebellion, sin, and death.

This is all so wonderful, John is overcome.  Look at verses 10.

Then I fell down at his feet to worship him, but he said to me, “You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers who hold to the testimony of Jesus. Worship God.” For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.

 

Usually it’s “Don’t shoot the messenger,” but in this case the news is so wonderful John has to be told, “Don’t worship the messenger!”  It’s an odd thing considering John’s just seen the heavenly courts and the bride herself worshiping God and the lamb, but it serves as a transition to the second half of the chapter.  Don’t worship the angel; worship Jesus!  And now we see Jesus and we see again why he’s so gloriously worthy of our worship.  Look at verses 11-16:

Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.

 

The prostitute has been overthrown, but the beast remains.  The background for this lies back in Chapters 16 and 17 where we saw the assembly, the alliance of the “kings of the whole earth”.  The beast and the ten kings allied with him brought down Rome and whether the battle—described with that language about Armageddon—is literal or symbolic, the point is that this alliance stands opposed to the Lord.  They will “make war on the lamb,” but they will also be defeated by him “for he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those with him are called and chosen and faithful” (Revelation 17:14).  So Rome—her demonically inspired heart, at any rate—was judged and has fallen.  That judgement—which first fell on unbelieving Jerusalem, then Rome—now extends to the pagan nations who have stood watching all this happen.  That description of Jesus from Chapter 17: Lord of lords, King of kings, called, chosen, and faithful is echoed here as he rides out to battle.  He is faithful and true and on his thigh is written his name: King of kings and Lord of lords.

John’s vision also highlights Jesus’ victory over death.  He is “faithful”—even as the powers of evil rose to their full height and put him to death on the cross.  He was faithful to the end—and because of that what everyone thought was the end turned out to be the beginning!  His robe is dipped in blood—the blood he shed in faithfulness at the cross.  And the “name written that no one else can learn” links him with the 144,000 on whose foreheads is written the name of the lamb and who sing a new song no one else can learn (14:3).  As he charges out to war on his white horse, he’s accompanied by an army “arrayed in fine linen, white and pure” and also mounted on white horses.  It’s the same description used to describe the bride clothed in white.  The bride rides out to war with the lamb.  These are they who conquered—who persevered in the face of tribulation—and have overcome death just as the lamb has.

John’s vision of Jesus also highlights his sovereignty, drawing on the language of Psalm 2—the bit about ruling the nations with a rod of iron.  Here’s what we read in Psalm 2:

Why do the nations rage

         and the peoples plot in vain?

The kings of the earth set themselves,

         and the rulers take counsel together,

         against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying,

“Let us burst their bonds apart

         and cast away their cords from us.”

He who sits in the heavens laughs;

         the Lord holds them in derision.

Then he will speak to them in his wrath,

         and terrify them in his fury, saying,

“As for me, I have set my King

         on Zion, my holy hill.”

I will tell of the decree:

The Lord said to me, “You are my Son;

         today I have begotten you.

Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,

         and the ends of the earth your possession.

You shall break them with a rod of iron

         and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”

Now therefore, O kings, be wise;

         be warned, O rulers of the earth.

Serve the Lord with fear,

         and rejoice with trembling.

Kiss the Son,

         lest he be angry, and you perish in the way,

         for his wrath is quickly kindled.

Blessed are all who take refuge in him.

 

With the defeat of Rome, the fulfilment of the psalm begins to unfold.  The nations will be brought into submission to Jesus, the powers that have opposed his people will be judged, and the saints themselves will be vindicated.  We’ll come back to the sword proceeding from his mouth, but first let’s look at the rest of Chapter 19, beginning at verse 17:

  Then I saw an angel standing in the sun, and with a loud voice he called to all the birds that fly directly overhead, “Come, gather for the great supper of God, to eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, the flesh of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all men, both free and slave, both small and great.” And I saw the beast and the kings of the earth with their armies gathered to make war against him who was sitting on the horse and against his army. And the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who in its presence had done the signs by which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped its image. These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur. And the rest were slain by the sword that came from the mouth of him who was sitting on the horse, and all the birds were gorged with their flesh.

 

It's impossible to miss the violent way Jesus’ victory over the nations is described.  The reason for that is that John uses language drawn from the Old Testament prophets to describe all of this and he does that not to say that Jesus and the Church are going to literally go out and slaughter the nations, but to highlight that in this victory, Jesus is fulfilling the promises the Lord made through the prophets.  In keeping with those images, we see another feast.  As the bride stood in such stark contrast to the great prostitute, the glorious marriage supper of the lamb is now contrasted with this horrific “great supper of God”, in which the corpses of the kings of the earth and all their minions are fed on by the birds.  The beast and his false prophet—the spiritual powers that stand behind this opposition to God—they are captured and thrown into “the lake of fire that burns with sulfur”.  That’s imagery drawn from Daniel, where a beast symbolic of Rome “was killed, and its body destroyed and given over to be burned with fire” (Daniel 7:11).  The beast’s power is no more.  But, John writes, the rest were slain by the sword that issues from Jesus’ mouth.

It's that sword that makes sense of everything here.  John writes that it’s with this sword that Jesus will strike down the nations.  It’s not a sword held in his hand, but rather issuing from his mouth.  What John’s getting at with this vivid imagery is the victory of the gospel, the good news of Jesus crucified, risen, and Lord, over the false gods, the false ideologies, and kings of the earth.  The imagery of devastation and carnage drawn from the prophets points to the total victory that will be had by Jesus—over every square inch of human life and of creation—but the sword issuing from his mouth tells us that this victory comes not by the literal sword, not by military might, but by the proclamation of the good news by the Church—by that host clothed in white and with the name of Jesus written on their foreheads.  B. B. Warfield writes about this text:

“What we have here, in effect, is a picture of the whole period between the first and second advents, seen from the point of view of heaven.  It is the period of the advancing victory of the Son of God over the world, emphasizing…the completeness of the victory.  It is the eleventh chapter of Romans and the fifteenth chapter of I Corinthians in symbolical form: and there is nothing in it that was not already in them—except that, perhaps, the completeness of the triumph of the Gospel is possibly somewhat more emphasized here.”[1]

The sword was Caesar’s means of conquest and it was through the sword that he imposed his false and fragile peace and made his claims of divinity.  In contrast, Jesus wins his victory by allowing Caesar to do his worst.  Jesus conquers by the cross and his bride, his Church, conquers by the proclamation of that good news and, following in Jesus’ steps, even with its own blood.  The poet Robert Southwell wrote:

With tears he fights, and wins the field,

his naked breast stands for a shield.

His battering shot are babish cries,

his arrows made of weeping eyes.

His martial ensigns cold and need,

and feeble flesh his warrior’s steed.[2]

I think we often need this reminder that Jesus won his victory at the cross and that we win our victory by means of the gospel and even as we may face opposition, persecution, and even death ourselves.  Caesar can be our friend—even our brother—as history shows—when he is himself conquered and captured by the gospel.  But sometimes we forget that it is by the gospel that the world will be won for Jesus and the gospel’s victory often comes through persecution of the Church as we see in Revelation.  Tertullian famously—and rightly—said that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. But the day after I wrote this, a friend posted some quotes on Facebook that were excerpted from Nate Wilson’s podcast this week.  Wilson made a good point that’s very apropos here.  He said, “When empires compost it is really rich soil.  The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church, but the rot of empires is the soil in which those seeds grow.”[3]  That was certainly true of Rome and has been true of so many other empires, kingdoms, and countries.  Brothers and Sisters, we of all people ought to have an optimistic view of the future.  Jesus has won and the truth of his gospel has been advancing ever since.  It’s not always linear.  As Israel was in the Old Testament, the Church is God’s means of making him known and sometimes we need his discipline.  He may, at times, lead us into exile, that we come out the other side restored, purified, and ready to accomplish our task.  I think we here in the West are in one of those periods right now.  But that the Lord disciplines his people is all the more reason to be optimistic.  He does not and has not given up.  Jesus has won and he will continue to win.  Our mission is not to accomplish some bare minimum of evangelism to trigger deliverance from an ever-worsening world by Jesus.  Dear Friends, we are the means of the world’s transformation.  Jesus has defeated the powers that stood behind the pagan empires of the past.  He has brought them down and created the rich soil in which the gospel grows and we can be sure—we can live in faith and hope—that his Church, proclaiming the gospel and empowered by the Spirit, will accomplish the mission he has given.  Not some bare minimum carved out of a wicked people and a wicked age, but every square inch.  One day the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.  We are sure of this for Christ has died, Christ has risen, and Christ will come again.

Let’s pray: Grant, O Lord, that the course of this world may be peaceably governed by your providence; and that your Church may joyfully serve you in confidence and serenity; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

[1] “The Millennium and the Apocalypse”, Princeton Theological Review, v. 2, 1904, p. 603.

[2] From “New Heaven, New War”.

[3] https://mycanonplus.com/tabs/search/podcasts/309

A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Trinity

Romans 8:17-23

by William Klock

There are a lot of times when I hate my cell phone.  There are other times I’m thankful for it.  We were on Mayne Island this week.  On Wednesday morning I went for a bike ride.  You wouldn’t think it’s possible to get lost on a twenty square kilometre Island—but you’d be wrong.  I took a wrong turn.  I didn’t know it at the time, but my bearings were all wrong.  At least on Mayne, no matter where you go you end up at back at the ocean and with a beautiful view.  I got to the end of the road—much faster than expected—and was surprised to be looking across Active Pass at Sturdies Bay on Galiano.  I was expecting to be on the other side of the island, looking out at Point Roberts and Tsawwassen and Mount Baker.  I was disoriented.  I’d been absolutely certain I was riding east when, in fact, I’d been riding due north.  What road had I been on?  There aren’t that many, after all.  So out came my phone.  I opened “Maps”, and there I could see the whole island in front of me on that little screen.  And almost instantly I could see where I’d missed a turn, where I’d ended up, and I knew exactly where I needed to go from where I was.  I was confused, but seeing the lay of the land, the big picture, sorted it all out for me.

The same thing happens with the Bible.  It starts when we’re children.  We read books full of disconnected “Bible stories”—a bit like a kid who’s only ever ridden his bike up and down his own street or had his dad load the bike in the car so he can go ride on his friend’s street or at a park far away.  But he’s got little or no idea how those places are connected.  We end up knowing Adam and Abraham and Moses and Jesus, but we struggle to know how their stories are related and part of the bigger story.  As adults the most common approach to reading the Bible—when we read it!—is the cover-to-cover, Genesis-to-Revelation approach.  Don’t misunderstand; any type of Bible reading is good Bible reading, but the order the books of the Bible are arranged in isn’t chronological and doesn’t always help us see the “big picture”.  Even Bible scholars and theologians aren’t immune from missing the big picture.  They’re often so focused on the individual trees that it becomes easy to inadvertently forget the shape of the forest.

I say this because our Epistle from Romans 8 this morning is one those wonderful, short passages that bring us back to the big picture of the Good News, of God’s redemption and renewal of humanity and of his entire Creation.  But even here we might miss it.  Many Christians reading through Romans miss the big picture here because they aren’t expecting Paul’s language of God subjecting his Creation to futility and bondage and of that Creation waiting in with eager longing.  And yet our Epistle this morning is St. Paul leading us right to the climax of his letter to the Romans.  It’s the hill from which we can see the lay of the land, where we’ve come from, where we’re going, and how it all fits together.

We don’t have time this morning to get into the details of Paul’s line of reasoning in the first half of Romans, but what he does in those chapters is to work his way through the story of Israel and all her ups and downs—and for Israel things were mostly “down”.  And now in Chapter 8 he begins talking about the life in the flesh versus life in the Spirit and the law of sin and death versus the law of the Spirit.  This is where, in verse 11, he famously writes that if the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead lives in us, the One who raised Jesus from the dead will also give life to our mortal bodies—if we are in Christ Jesus we live in hope of the same resurrection he has experienced.  But even more than that, Paul goes on to write, through our union with Jesus we are children and heirs of God, fellow heirs with Christ—that means sharing in Jesus’ inheritance.  But what is that?  Paul writes in verse 17 that it means to suffer with him so that we can be glorified with him.  The Christian life—life with Jesus—for Paul means two things: suffering and glory.  Suffering is a given as we long for glory.

What does that mean?  What does Paul mean by “glory”?  And what about suffering?  Most Christians living through the last two thousand years have understood that suffering is part of our calling as we follow Jesus.  Jesus promised it.  The New Testament writers talk about it often—and most of them faced it themselves and were martyred for proclaiming the lordship of Jesus.  Many of our brothers and sisters today are persecuted for their faith in various parts of the world.  And yet in the West—probably in part because we haven’t faced persecution for such a long time—many Christians have no place for suffering in their theology.  Many even go so far as to say that if you’re experiencing suffering—sickness, poverty, rejection or anything else negative—it’s due to a lack of faith.  But that’s just the opposite of what Jesus taught and it’s just the opposite of what Paul teaches here.  The inheritance we share with Jesus is one of suffering that leads to glory.  What this means is at the centre of our Epistle and Paul goes on in verse 18:

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

 

Paul says, “For I consider…”  That doesn’t mean this is his opinion.  Paul uses the same Greek word several times as he builds his argument in Romans.  Other translations say “I reckon”.  The sense of it is, “This is how I work it out”.  Knowing the Scriptures, knowing Jesus, working under the Spirit’s inspiration, this is the only conclusion he can reach.  He’s been building this argument for eight chapters in Romans and here he reaches the inevitable conclusion: those who will be glorified will first face suffering, but that this suffering can’t begin to compare with the glory to be revealed.

Think about what a powerful statement that was when Paul wrote this.  When he writes that word “suffering” most of us probably read into that whatever our own trials and tribulations are.  That’s fine.  But what did Paul have in mind?  Later in the chapter, in verses 35-36 he writes that nothing will separate us from the love of Christ—nothing—and then he goes on to detail the sorts of suffering that he and other Christians were facing—things people might think mean that God doesn’t love them, things they might think show a lack of faith, things that might separate them from Jesus.  Here’s his list: hardship or distress, persecution or famine, nakedness or peril or sword.  And he quotes from Psalm 44: “For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted sheep to be slaughtered.”  These things are far worse than the sorts of suffering any of us are likely to face.  And as horrible as this suffering was, none of it could compare with the glory to be revealed—no amount of suffering could make the glory not worth it.

But what is the glory Paul’s writing about?  Our translation says that this glory is to be revealed “to us”, but that makes it sound like we’re going to be spectators to this glory.  What Paul writes in Greek has the sense of this glory revealed towards us or into us.  It’s a sense of this glory being bestowed on us as a gift—and this makes perfect sense when we remember what Paul said before: that if we are in Christ, then we will share in his inheritance—we will participate in his inheritance.

And what’s the inheritance?  Well, who is Jesus?  He is Lord.  His glory is revealed or it’s unveiled in his glorious and sovereign rule of Creation and Paul is saying here that the glory we wait for with eager longing, the glory that is the basis for our hope as Christians is not glory in the sense many people often think.  We often think of “glory” as a place or a state of being.  When a Christian dies we often hear people say that he or she has gone on or been promoted to “glory”.  Brothers and Sisters, “glory” isn’t going to heaven when you die.  As Jesus’ glory is his sovereign rule over Creation, so the glory to be revealed in us is our participation, our sharing in the sovereign and saving rule of Jesus.  And this is why he says what he does in verse 19:

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.

 

If our hope, if our glory—as it is so often wrongly portrayed—was for the destruction of this world and an eternity of disembodied existence in heaven with God, then the Creation would have no reason to eagerly long for that glory to be revealed.  What Paul describes here is the opposite: God’s Creation is waiting for the great day when its true rulers are revealed, the sons of God, and when it will be delivered from corruption.  Look at verses 20-22:

For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.  For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.

 

This is where we need to stand back and look at the big picture.  Everything Paul’s saying here is dependent on that.  It’s the big picture the Bible gives of us of God’s Creation, from beginning to end.  We read in Genesis that God created and that everything was good.  We even read there that when he created human beings he looked at his handiwork and declared us not just “good”, but “very good”.  But we look around us now and have to wonder what happened.  War is always raging somewhere, there’s violence everywhere, there’s greed and corruption everywhere.  Justice is in short supply and so are the basic things that people need to survive—maybe not in our part of the world, but for billions of others.  And yet even if we don’t pay attention to the big evils that play out on the international scene—or even on the local scene, for that matter—we only have to look at the struggles that we have ourselves and that we share with our family and friends to keep away from sin and to do good.  Hate is easy; love is hard.  Paul knew it.  The Roman Christians knew it.  We know it.

Paul tells the story of Creation in the book of Romans, but he tells it as Israel’s story.  We don’t have time to run through the whole book this morning obviously, but Paul’s point is that the whole Creation is enslaved in the same sort of way that Israel was in Egypt.  And right there we get a glimmer of hope.  Remember, when Israel went down to Egypt—we read about that in the story of Jacob and Joseph—it was all according to the Lord’s plan.  The Lord arranged for Joseph to become a slave in Egypt so that through him he could rescue his people.  Egypt started out good for Israel.  When things turned around under a new king who enslaved Israel, it wasn’t because the Lord had ceased to be good and it wasn’t because the Lord was no longer in control.  No.  We learn later that the Lord allowed the Israelites to become slaves in Egypt so that he could then manifest his glorious sovereignty to everyone—to Israel in rescuing her and to the Egyptians by showing his power over her false gods and over her mighty horses and chariots.  In the Exodus, the Lord marked Israel forever as the people he had freed from slavery, people to whom he had given a new life.  That became their national identity, celebrated every year in the Passover.

In all of that Paul is working up to his point here.  As the Lord allowed Israel to fall into bondage to Egypt, so he has allowed his good Creation to be subjected to death and decay.  We may look around and wonder if things are hopeless.  Every time one war ends and we see peace break out another war begins somewhere else.  We work hard to lift this group out of poverty, but then that group over there falls into it.  We cure one disease only to have two new ones crop up.  Isaiah wrote about a day when the lion would lie down with the lamb and we look around us and wonder if that’s ever going to happen.

And Paul assures us: Yes, it’s for real.  This is God’s promise.  No matter how bad things are, this is still his good Creation and he has promised to put everything to rights.  Even as he cast Adam and Eve from the garden he was promising them that he would one day overcome sin and restore everything to the way it should be.  Genesis shows things going from bad to worse.  It shows us humanity losing even the very knowledge of God and sinking into paganism and idolatry.  But then it tells us how God came to Abraham and established a covenant with him.  The Lord promised that through Abraham and his family he would restore not only humanity, but all of Creation and here Paul reminds us what that means, what it looks like and why the Creation itself would long for it to happen.

Again, we need the big picture—we need to remember where things started.  In Genesis we read that the Lord created human beings to be his image bearers.  Theologians have argued for two thousand years over what exactly that means, but in the last century, as we’ve been able to read the Old Testament in light of other Jewish and Ancient Near Eastern literature that’s been unearthed we’ve realised that the language of Genesis is temple language.  Israel’s pagan neighbours built great stone temples and then places images of their gods in them.  Those images represented the gods’ rule or sovereignty over the land and people.  And Genesis uses the same languages and imagery, except that in Genesis it’s the Lord himself who builds his own temple—the cosmos—and instead of placing an image of himself carved in stone or gold in it, he creates human beings, to live in his presence in the temple, but also to rule his creation justly and wisely—to have dominion and to subdue Creation in the Lord’s name.  That’s what it meant for humanity to bear God’s image: to be his stewards, the priests of his temple.  But then we chose to rebel.  As Paul writes in Romans 1, we chose to worship the Creation instead of the Creator.  We subjected the Lord’s good creation to corruption.

Now, in light of that, it should make sense that Creation is longing for the day when our inheritance is revealed.  That’s the day when Creation will be set free from the corruption we brought on it.  That’s the day when we, Creation’s stewards will be restored and renewed and put back in charge, reigning with Jesus.  Again, think back to Israel.  He chose and called her, he rescued her, he made her his people, he sent her to the nations to bring healing and restoration.  But she rebelled and she rejected her mission.  And yet the Lord didn’t give up and he didn’t change his plan to redeem his Creation through Israel.  He simply sent a faithful Israelite—he sent Jesus.  And Jesus not only redeemed Israel by dying in her place, he established a new Israel in his own person, a new people to be a light to the nations—this time equipped by the Holy Spirit.

This is what Paul is getting at in verse 23.  It’s not just the Creation that groans in eager longing:

And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

The Lord hasn’t given up on his Creation any more than he gave up on Israel.  Creation is eagerly waiting for its rightful stewards to be set right.  On that great day the Lord will make all things new and restore his redeemed people to their rightful place as good, wise, and just rulers of Creation—as the faithful priests of his temple.  This is what it means for our glory to be revealed.  The big picture, the story of redemption, reminds us that this was how it was supposed to be from the beginning.  And so we groan and we wait eagerly too.  We live in the mess we’ve made here in the world.  We live with sin and with sickness and with death, and yet we live in hope, knowing that what God has begun in Jesus he will one day complete.

And we can hope because our God has given us the firstfruits of his new creation.  He’s given a down payment on what he has promised.  The present age and its rulers have been decisively defeated by Jesus at the cross and the empty tomb and God’s new age has been inaugurated.  Jesus is Lord.  He truly is God’s King.  He’s given us his Spirit—Paul describes the Spirit here as the firstfruits—and that’s because we live in the overlap between these two ages, these two kingdoms.  The Jews brought the firstfruits of the harvest—usually sheaves of grain harvested at the very beginning of the season—as offerings to God.  They offered them in good years and even in bad years in faith that God would provide the rest of the harvest.  And so the Spirit is the sign of hope for us.  The life he gives to us here and now is a reminder that encourages our faith and hope in the resurrection and the new creation to come.  We groan and we sigh, we wait longingly in eager expectation, but our hope is certain because God is faithful and keeps his promises.  The prophet Habakkuk wrote that one day the glory of the Lord will fill the earth as the waters cover the sea.  Brothers and Sisters, when that seems impossible, we only need remember the cross of Jesus, his empty tomb, and his gift of the Holy Spirit.

But our faith is not a complacent faith.  We haven’t been redeemed by Jesus and given the gift of the Spirit so that we can retreat into a sort of personal holiness or private piety while we wait for Jesus to return.  Not at all.  Jesus has inaugurated this new age in his resurrection and somehow someday the making new that began in his resurrection will encompass all of Creation and you and I are called, in the power of the Spirit, to embody that renewing work here and now.  How is Habakkuk’s prophecy going to be fulfilled?  How does the knowledge of the glory of the Lord spread to cover the earth?  Brothers and Sisters, that’s our mission.  We’re called to proclaim to the world the Good News that Jesus is Lord and that his kingdom is here and now.  Our mission is to call the world to repentance and faith.  But don’t forget: We are also called to live out repentance and faith in our lives in such a way that we lift the veil on the kingdom and that we give a glimpse to the world of what heaven on earth looks like.  So far as we are able to do so today, we are called to exercise the good dominion that was given to Adam—we are called to be stewards of God’s temple, of his Creation.  Jesus has led the way for us here, the second Adam.  In his earthly ministry he made his Father’s new creation known in practical ways to the people around him and so should we.  In a word full of sin we should be visible in seeking after holiness.  In a world full of war and injustice, we should visible and at the forefront working for peace and justice.  In a world full of hurting and sickness, we should be seeking to make the healing ministry of Jesus known.  In a world full of anger and hate, we should be working for forgiveness and reconciliation.

If you’re like me you might get discouraged thinking about the mission Jesus has given us.  When I think of these things I think of things that we as Christians can do to bring Jesus and his glory to the world in “big” ways.  I think of Christians—and there are so often so few of us—working on the big international scene or I think of missionaries going to far off countries.  And then I get discouraged.  That’s far away.  It’s bigger than me.  But Friends, never forget that for every St. Paul or St. Peter, there were thousands of ordinary saints manifesting Jesus in their ordinary lives, proclaiming the Good News, and building the kingdom right where they were.  We fulfil Jesus’ calling to us as we raise covenant children to walk with him in faith and to live the values of his kingdom.  We fulfil Jesus’ calling when we work for peace and reconciliation with our neighbours, in our workplaces, and in our schools.  We fulfil Jesus’ calling when we forgive as we have been forgiven.  We fulfil Jesus’ calling when we love the hard-to-love people around us, knowing that we ourselves are hard-to-love too, but that Jesus loved us enough to die for us.  We fulfil Jesus’ calling when we sacrifice ourselves, our rights, our prerogatives, our time, and our treasure in order to make Jesus and his love known.  In everything we do, we should be seeking to give the world signs and foretastes of God’s new creation.

Let us pray: Heavenly Father, as we asked earlier in the collect we ask again for grace that to pass through the trials of this life without losing the things of eternal importance.  Remind us that the suffering we experience cannot begin to compare with the glory to be revealed to us.  Remind us always of the suffering that Jesus endured for our sake that in love and gratitude we might suffer too for the sake of making him known.  And as we think of Jesus’ death and resurrection and as we live the life given by your Spirit, fill us with hope and faith, knowing that the glory inaugurated in us today will one day be fully accomplished in our own resurrection and the restoration of all your Creation.  Amen.

Fallen is Babylon

Revelation 18

by William Klock

Sometimes gospel—good news—isn’t what we expect.  The gospel is a multifaceted message, but the church in every age has a tendency to focus on one part of it, while deemphasising or even ignoring others.  John wrote his letter to the churches of Asia in part to get them straight on this kind of problem.  We do the same thing in our ways.  We modern, western Christians have a tendency to emphasise the personal aspects of the gospel over the corporate.  We tend to view the gospel as a primarily spiritual thing.  And we emphasise those parts of the gospel that are most likely to make people feel good, while down-playing or ignoring what might make them feel bad.  Some aspects of the gospel just confuse us—so we sort of pretend they aren’t there.  Such is our passage today, which continues—and more-or-less—concludes John’s vision of God’s judgement on Rome.

So what do we do with judgement in the Bible?  I don’t think we have a problem with judgement itself—maybe we don’t, but some do.  I mentioned a couple of weeks ago the Canadian prayer book, which butchered the Psalter, because its revisers back in the 1950s concluded that the imprecatory psalms have no place in Christian worship.  But it’s not just the Psalmist who pleads with the Lord for the judgement of the wicked and then praises their fall.  From the Israelites joyfully singing about the victory of God over Egypt while they watched the dead bodies of Pharoah’s army float on the waters to Isaiah singing “Fallen is Babylon and shattered are her gods!” to Mary’s song in which she praises the Lord for throwing down the mighty from their seats, Brothers and Sisters, God’s people have always and still ought to plead for his judgement on the wicked then praise his victories.  We plead for deliverance and we pray for an end to evil and for his justice to prevail.  When he answers our prayers, we shouldn’t be squeamish about singing joyfully in praise that he has defeated his enemies.  But for some reason we are.  I know Friday’s Supreme Court ruling in the States isn’t much consolation for Canadians.  I’m not inclined to get overly enthusiastic about what it means for the US.  It’s a return to Federalism on the issue of abortion and it remains to be seen what the States will do in light of it.  But it’s a victory, it’s a big one, it’s and answer to fifty years of prayer, even if only in part.  And Christians ought to rejoice and to praise God.  But if you’ve done that on social media in the last few days, there’s a good chance you got rebuked for it by other Christians.  Why?  Because we’re squeamish about judgement and about praising God when he defeats his enemies.  But the Lord defeating his enemies and the enemies of his people is good news, it’s gospel.  Back in Revelation 14 John wrote about the angel who came declaring gospel—good news—and that the good news was a proclamation of judgement and a summons to repentance: “Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come, and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water” (14:7).  It’s an echo of the gospel St. Paul proclaimed to the men of Athens: “Turn from these vain things to a living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them” (Acts 14:15).  Or, as we sing from Psalm 96 in Morning Prayer, “For he cometh, for he cometh to judge the earth; and with righteousness to judge the world, and the peoples with his truth.”  So our passage today, Revelation 18, is timely.  Let’s look at verses 1-3.

After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority, and the earth was made bright with his glory.  And he called out with a mighty voice,

“Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great!

         She has become a dwelling place for demons,

a haunt for every unclean spirit,

         a haunt for every unclean bird,

         a haunt for every unclean and detestable beast.

For all nations have drunk

         the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality,

and the kings of the earth have committed immorality with her,

         and the merchants of the earth have grown rich from the power of her luxurious living.”

 

The great prostitute John saw in Chapter 17, the woman deceptively clothed in fine garments and expensive jewelry, whose chalice of wine contained only filth and abominations—who invited the nations to join her in her fun—fun which consisted of rank idolatry, the murder of the Lord Jesus, and the persecution of his people—the great prostitute has fallen.

And John’s imagery, borrowed from the Old Testament prophets, gives us another lesson—some important insight into how biblical prophecy works and how we ought to read it.  I’ve spent quite a bit of time explaining that when John wrote of “Babylon”, he was writing about Rome.  But not everyone reads the text that way.  Others will tell you that “Babylon” was Jerusalem.  And there are others who will tell you that “Babylon” is Rome, but not historical Rome, but some Rome of the future—maybe the Roman Church or some future European empire.  I don’t know if it’s still a popular theory, but back in the 70s and 80s, a lot of people saw here the European Union—especially when it had only ten nations—ten horns and all of that.  Now, if we just read the text and if we read it with the big biblical narrative in mind, it’s really obvious—inescapable, I think—that John was speaking of Rome in his own day.  The problem for a lot of folks is that they don’t know how to read biblical prophecy and if John was talking about historic Rome, then it all looks like a failed prophecy.  Rome didn’t cease to exist.  It wasn’t demolished to leave a barren wasteland as the angel’s song describes.  Some interpreters then turn to Jerusalem.  That is, more or less, what did happen to Jerusalem—although not in a.d. 70.  John describes the fall of Jerusalem in terms of the events that were soon to unfold, and yet things settled down quickly after the war with Rome and Jewish life returned to a kind of normal in Jerusalem, albeit with the temple gone.  It wouldn’t be until after the Bar Kokhba Revolt, a little over fifty years later, that Jerusalem really would be wiped out and the Jewish people scattered.  That right there gives us a hint at how we ought to be reading things.  But, similarly, since these things didn’t literally happen to Rome, others respond by pushing it all into the far future.  They try to save John’s prophecy, but in doing that they undermine the clear teaching of Jesus and the apostles that judgement was soon to come.  It helps if we look at how John uses the Old Testament prophets.  Here he draws from the passage from Isaiah 21 that I read earlier:

“Fallen, fallen is Babylon;

and all the carved images of her gods

         he has shattered to the ground.”

 

Babylon, in the Old Testament, embodied opposition to the Lord.  It all went back to the Tower of Babel and only got worse from there.  And Babylon wasn’t satisfied to keep her idolatrous harlotries to herself.  For centuries she afflicted Israel, eventually conquering Jerusalem and taking God’s people into exile.  One of the keys for understanding Revelation is to remember that the prophets—like Isaiah—had warned Israel that her conquest by pagan armies was judgement for her own adulteries.  This the historical pattern given meaning by the prophets: Israel, the Lord’s bride, is rebellious and plays the harlot with foreign gods.  The Lord is patient, but she continues to be unfaithful.  So the Lord judges Israel by allowing her to be defeated by her pagan neighbours—in this case Babylon.  Judgement brings Israel to repentance—at least for a while—and the Lord vindicates her by then judging the pagan nations that had oppressed her.  That’s the pattern we see in Revelation.  First the Lord uses pagan Rome to bring judgement on rebellious Jerusalem.  Through it he spares and vindicates his people.  Then he comes in judgement on Rome herself.  This is why John uses Babylon as an image of Rome.  Isaiah writes that Babylon would be a haunt of jackals and hyenas—and demons, too, in the Greek OT (Isaiah 34:13-14).

Jeremiah writes:

Babylon was a golden cup in the LORD’S hand,

         making all the earth drunken;

the nations drank of her wine;

         therefore the nations went mad.  (Jeremiah 51:7)

And the prophet Nahum wrote:

And all for the countless whorings of the prostitute,

         graceful and of deadly charms,

who betrays nations with her whorings,

         and peoples with her charms.  (Nahum 3:4)

John also draws on Ezekiel’s oracle against the city of Tyre:

When your wares came from the seas,

         you satisfied many peoples;

with your abundant wealth and merchandise

         you enriched the kings of the earth.  (Ezekiel 27:33)

 

So, like Babylon (and like Tyre), Rome will fall because of her idolatry, because of her wickedness, and because she has spilled the blood of Jesus and the saints.  But did Babylon fall?  If we take Isaiah and the other Old Testament prophets literally, we have the same problem we have with John.  John writes later, in verse 21, that Babylon (Rome) will “be thrown down with violence and will be found no more”—which certainly didn’t happen literally.  Rome has had its problems, it would even be defeated and the city sacked by enemies, but there’s a reason it’s called the “Eternal City”.  And despite Jeremiah writing that Babylon would be “a wilderness, a dry land, and a desert”, “her walls…thrown down”, “overthrown like Sodom and Gomorrah, no one will live there”, it was many centuries before the city of Babylon eventually declined.  Babylon was defeated, as the prophets said it would be, by the Medes, but they didn’t destroy the city.  They diverted the river and sneaked into the city while its people were having a holiday.  The Medes and the Persians made Babylon their capital and it flourished for centuries.  What this shows us is that prophetic language of judgement isn’t necessarily literal.  It’s dramatic and over-the-top.  It often speaks of judgement in terms of de-creation: the sun ceasing to shine, stars falling from the sky, the ground itself falling apart and opening up to swallow armies and cities.  The key point of the Old Testament prophets and of John in Revelation, is that the oppressors and persecutors of the Lord’s people will face his wrathful and righteous judgement in repayment for their deeds.  Nebuchadnezzar was defeated and his kingdom destroyed, leading to the restoration of Israel in Judea, even though Babylon remained under different management.  Similarly, Rome will be defeated in such a way that the Christians martyrs would be vindicated and the way paved for the triumph of the gospel over this once pagan empire.  The gods of Rome will be shattered and Caesar’s claims of divinity will be exposed in the light of the gospel, which proclaims Jesus as the true son of God.  Caesar will be defeated and Jesus will reign—and the world would see the birth of “Christendom” as we called it for centuries.  Why does is it work this way?  Because even though God did not create man to govern man, but to live under his kingship, he has ordained earthly kings and governments to curb the chaos of the fall.  As St. Paul writes, governing authorities are established by God to reward those who do good and to be a terror to those who do evil.  But when that gets reversed, particularly when those authorities persecute God’s people, he will bring his justice and take them down.  Nebuchadnezzar was taken down and the Medes took his place and Cyrus return the Israelites to Judea.  Good rules—or less bad ones, at any rate, will replace the wicked.  And just so with Nero and his ilk.

At this point a second angel joins the first.  Look at verses 4-8.

Then I heard another voice from heaven saying,

“Come out of her, my people,

         lest you take part in her sins,

lest you share in her plagues;

for her sins are heaped high as heaven,

         and God has remembered her iniquities.

Pay her back as she herself has paid back others,

         and repay her double for her deeds;

         mix a double portion for her in the cup she mixed.

As she glorified herself and lived in luxury,

         so give her a like measure of torment and mourning,

since in her heart she says,

         ‘I sit as a queen,

I am no widow,

         and mourning I shall never see.’

For this reason her plagues will come in a single day,

         death and mourning and famine,

and she will be burned up with fire;

         for mighty is the Lord God who has judged her.”

 

In light of the coming judgement, the angel warns Jesus’ people to get out—not necessarily literally, but not to have anything to do with the wickedness and the idolatry of the pagans.  This echoes the warnings to the churches at the beginning of Revelation.  The great prostitute is, again, deceptively attractive.  Her wine looks appealing and everyone else is drunk on it.  Rome and all the nations submitted to her have the appearance of wealth and security.  In contrast, those little groups of Christians were facing opposition—and it was soon to get worse—and all because they proclaimed Jesus as Lord instead of Caesar.  They were the ones willing to openly say that the emperor had no clothes—or that the harlot’s chalice was full of filth—but that’s not what anyone wanted to hear.  Compromise was so enticing and so easy.  A pinch of incense offered to Caesar, a meal in the temple of Aphrodite—never mind the orgy going on—and everyone would accept you.  But Israel had tried that, offering sacrifices to the Lord in his temple, but also erecting altars to Baal and Asherah.  It never works.  You cannot serve two masters.  Either Jesus is Lord or he isn’t.  And Babylon is a graphic testament to what happens to those who worship false gods—and soon Rome will be, too.  So, “Come out of her my people, lest you take part in her sins,” calls the angel.

Her sins are heaped high.  In other words, her judgment is overdue and coming soon.  She will be paid back.  In fact, she’ll be paid back double for her deeds.  The angel echoes Jeremiah’s prophecy against Babylon:

Repay her according to her deeds; do to her according to all that she has done. For she has proudly defied the LORD, the Holy One of Israel. (Jeremiah 50:29)

Now, the long middle section of the chapter shows us the response of the nations as they stand watching Rome’s fall.  They were once drunk on the prostitute’s wine, but the Lord’s judgement sobers them up quickly—as the one in whom they had invested everything now falls.  Look at verse 9 and following:

  And the kings of the earth, who committed sexual immorality and lived in luxury with her, will weep and wail over her when they see the smoke of her burning. 

 

John echoes Ezekiel’s prophecy of Babylon’s fall:

The merchants among the peoples hiss at you;

         you have come to a dreadful end

         and shall be no more forever.’” (Ezekiel 27:36)

 

One of the thing that stands out here is that this isn’t the end of the world.  This is a judgment that happens in history as the nations watch.  Continuing…

They will stand far off, in fear of her torment, and say,

“Alas! Alas! You great city,

         you mighty city, Babylon!

For in a single hour your judgment has come.”

  And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn for her, since no one buys their cargo anymore, cargo of gold, silver, jewels, pearls, fine linen, purple cloth, silk, scarlet cloth, all kinds of scented wood, all kinds of articles of ivory, all kinds of articles of costly wood, bronze, iron and marble, cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, oil, fine flour, wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots, and slaves, that is, human souls.

 

Slavery is what made the ancient world turn, and especially Rome and it was the sanctifying influence of the gospel that eventually brought it to an end, as with so many other things: human sacrifice, gladiatorial games, and abortion and infanticide.  Jesus spoke about being salt and light and that’s just what those first Christians were and by the gospel they taught the pagans mercy and the value of life.  But in the meantime, the nations mourn.  The prostitute and her chalice are gone.  The party is over.  And the angel’s imagery draws very closely on Ezekiel’s prophecy of Tyre’s destruction:

At the sound of the cry of your pilots

         the countryside shakes,

and down from their ships

         come all who handle the oar.

The mariners and all the pilots of the sea

         stand on the land

and shout aloud over you

         and cry out bitterly.

They cast dust on their heads

         and wallow in ashes;  (Ezekiel 27:28-30)

This is key, because the reason Ezekiel says that Tyre was judged was because it’s king had boasted: “I am a god, I sit in the seat of the gods” (Ezekiel 28:1).  Now it’s Caesar’s turn to be brought low for his blasphemies.  In the meantime the nations continue to mourn:

 

“The fruit for which your soul longed

         has gone from you,

and all your delicacies and your splendors

         are lost to you,

         never to be found again!”

  The merchants of these wares, who gained wealth from her, will stand far off, in fear of her torment, weeping and mourning aloud,

“Alas, alas, for the great city

         that was clothed in fine linen,       

                  in purple and scarlet,

         adorned with gold,       

                  with jewels, and with pearls!

For in a single hour all this wealth has been laid waste.”

And all shipmasters and seafaring men, sailors and all whose trade is on the sea, stood far off

and cried out as they saw the smoke of her burning,

“What city was like the great city?”

  And they threw dust on their heads as they wept and mourned, crying out,

“Alas, alas, for the great city

         where all who had ships at sea

         grew rich by her wealth!

For in a single hour she has been laid waste.

Rejoice over her, O heaven,

         and you saints and apostles and prophets,

for God has given judgment for you against her!” (Revelation 18:9-20)

The suitors of the harlot mourn, but notice that the angels calls out to God’s people: “Rejoice!”  Specifically, “Rejoice over her—over fallen Rome—because God has judged her.”  And not just that, notice the angel makes the point, “God has given judgement for you against her!”  This is the vindication of the saints.  God has judged the wicked on behalf of all those saints in those little churches in Asia Minor and across the empire—the saints who were mocked, maligned, and even martyred, the saints who watched as their brothers and sisters died in the arena or were crucified and lit on fire to light Nero’s garden parties.  For you God has judged the harlot.  Brothers and Sisters, the Lord hears the cries of his people.  He heard the Hebrews crying out from their bondage in Egypt.  He heard the Israelites crying out from their captivity in Babylon.  He heard his Church crying out from their persecution by Rome.  And for the Lord to hear is always for the Lord to answer.  And the natural response is for the song of praise sung by the redeemed to be even louder than the lament of those wailing over their judgement.  In Proverbs we read the truth that “when justice is done, it is a joy to the righteous” even as it is “terror to evildoers”.  Brothers and Sisters, rejoice and praise God for his triumph, even as the wicked wail and lament.

Finally, now, verses 21-24.  The joyful song of the saints is contrasted with the deathly silence of the judged city.

Then a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying,

“So will Babylon the great city be thrown down with violence,

         and will be found no more;

and the sound of harpists and musicians, of flute players and trumpeters,

         will be heard in you no more,

and a craftsman of any craft

         will be found in you no more,

and the sound of the mill

         will be heard in you no more,

and the light of a lamp

         will shine in you no more,

and the voice of bridegroom and bride

         will be heard in you no more,

for your merchants were the great ones of the earth,

         and all nations were deceived by your sorcery.

And in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints,

         and of all who have been slain on earth.” (Revelation 18:21-24)

Jeremiah wrote:

When you finish reading this book, tie a stone to it and cast it into the midst of the Euphrates, and say, ‘Thus shall Babylon sink, to rise no more, because of the disaster that I am bringing upon her, and they shall become exhausted.’”

 

The description of the musicians being silenced is straight from Ezekiel’s oracle against Tyre:

And I will stop the music of your songs, and the sound of your lyres shall be heard no more.  (Ezekiel 26:13)

The bit about Rome deceiving the nations by her sorcery calls back to Nahum’s denouncement of Nineveh:

And all for the countless whorings of the prostitute,

         graceful and of deadly [sorceries],

who betrays nations with her whorings,

         and peoples with her [sorceries].  (Nahum 3:4)

I don’t think anyone amongst John’s readers would have struggled to rejoice at these words of judgement, but the angel does drive home the point one more time in verse 20.  He reminds us that in her was the blood of the prophets and saints.  He even goes a step further, saying that the bloodguilt of all who have been slain lies with her.  Rome wasn’t guilty of every murder that ever happened, but remember that behind the prostitute and behind the beast lies the dragon, the Satan.  Rome was the current embodiment, the height of human wickedness, all fed by the lies of the devil.  The devil and all the world’s wickedness rose up to its full height at the cross when Jesus was put to death.  Evil, concentrated all in one place, did its worst and was dealt a death blow by God.  And, once again in Rome and with the persecution of Jesus’ people it rose up again, and yet again God would strike it down.  That’s the promise here.  Remember John’s three themes: tribulation, perseverance, and kingdom.  The saints are not walking anywhere that Jesus has not gone before them and the Lord will vindicate them just as he vindicated Jesus.  They would know mourning, but judgement was coming.  It was a sure thing.  And not too far in the future they would have reason to rejoice as the millstone that was Caesar and Rome was cast into the sea to make way for the gospel of Jesus the Messiah.

Brothers and Sisters, there’s a word here for us, too.  We will know new Romes and Babylons before the Lord returns.  We will know opposition and maybe even persecution, tribulation, and martyrdom.  Persevere.  Know that Jesus is Lord.  Do not be enticed by the harlot and her chalice.  Pray for her downfall, for her downfall, as it always has been, will open the way for our proclamation of the gospel.  When that day comes—and it always does—praise the Lord for his righteousness and his faithfulness, and go forth with the good news.  For Christ has died.  Christ is risen.  Christ will come again.

Let’s pray: O Lord God, the unfailing helper and governor of those whom you bring up in your steadfast fear and love: Keep us, we pray, under the protection of your good providence and give us a continual reverence and love for your holy name, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

Babylon the Great

Revelation 17

by William Klock

You’ve all seen Pinocchio, haven’t you?  It wasn’t by any means my favourite kids’ movie.  I think I must have been about seven years old the one and only time I saw it.  I don’t remember much about it beyond the general idea of the puppet who wanted to be a real boy.  But that was because one scene terrorised me and has stuck with me all these years.  Do you remember “Pleasure Island”?  An evil character called the Coachman rounded up bad little boys with a promise of fun and took them to an amusement park on Pleasure Island.  There they could eat and drink and smoke and indulge themselves in all the things that bad boys like to do but usually get in trouble for doing.  It was the ultimate good time.  But there was a catch, as there always is with that sort of “fun”.  Once they boys spent enough time on Pleasure Island, they’d start growing ears and tails, they’d lose the ability to talk, and they’d eventually turn into donkeys.  Then the Coachman would sell them to work as slaves, hauling carts in the saltmines.  The moral of the story was simple: act like a jackass and you become a jackass!  The book of Proverbs says something very similar—but Proverbs never gave me nightmares!  Der Struwwelpeter, the famous German moralising storybook for kids, wasn’t half so terrifying.  At least in Der Struwwelpeter the bad kids died.  That wasn’t nearly as bad as being turned into a donkey for life.

As I began last week to think about today’s text, I couldn’t help but think of Pinocchio, having a good time and suddenly horrified to discover he’d grown donkey ears and a tail.  When Carlo Collodi wrote the story, he had an age-old lesson in mind.  It’s one that goes back to Proverbs—and to Jesus and to St. Paul and to St. John.  Sin is enticing because it is so often deceptively attractive, but in the end it will eat us alive and spit us out.  It brings us inevitably to judgement—and we see this in Revelation 17 and 18 as the Lord’s judgement falls on Rome.  It’s yet another warning against the deceptive attractions of sin and of worldliness.  But it’s also, along with the rest of the book, an exhortation to the Church.  Keep the themes of Revelation in mind: tribulation, perseverance, and kingdom.  Jesus’ people will find themselves opposed—even to the point of martyrdom—by the wicked of the world, by its corrupted values and its sinful systems.  And the situation may look hopeless.  Back in Chapter 13 the nations marvelled at the beast and asked, “Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?”  Those silly Christians?  What did they think they were doing?  What do they think they’d accomplish standing up the beast?  And yet Revelation was the promise to those people—even as they were fed to the lions—that Jesus is Lord, that he has and he will defeat the beast, and that his people will be vindicated.  It’s, as St. Paul wrote, foolishness to the gentiles.  But if you’d heard and believed the good news that Jesus was crucified and rose again, conquering death itself, it all makes sense.  We just need to be reminded now and again to keep this gospel, this cross-centred, this Easter perspective.

And so John goes on at length about the judgement about to fall on the enemies of Jesus and his people.  It begins with Jerusalem, but when Jerusalem has been judged, the Lord’s justice then confronts the Greco-Roman world.  It goes hand in hand with the commissioning of the disciples by Jesus: You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8).  God’s judgement pave the way and goes before the powerful proclamation of the gospel.  In Chapter 15 John saw the beast’s judgement prepared as heaven sang God’s praises—just as Israel had sung his praises at the fall of Pharaoh, his false gods, and the Egyptian army.  In Chapter 16 we saw the bowls of judgement poured out on beast.  This language of the “beast” is drawn from Daniel, where four ferocious beasts represent various empires, so we know the beast here represents the current great empire of John’s day.  The beast is, on the one hand backed by the power and authority of the dragon—of Satan—and himself backs the second beast who causes the nations to worship him.  John, in his symbolic language, made it clear that this beast is Rome, headed by its Emperor who claims divinity and has an entire cult devoted to spreading his false gospel.  John has already given us a sense of why judgement had to fall on Rome, but now he goes into detail.  Look at Chapter 17.

Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the judgment of the great prostitute who is seated on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed sexual immorality, and with the wine of whose sexual immorality the dwellers on earth have become drunk.”  And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns.  The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her sexual immorality.  And on her forehead was written a name of mystery: “Babylon the great, mother of prostitutes and of earth’s abominations.”  And I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.

 

Pleasure Island was an age-appropriate—well, almost—story for kids about the deceptive attractiveness of sin.  John writes to adults—and adults who lived in a world as of yet untempered by the gospel.  He writes far more graphically.  The debauchery of the ancient world is, I think, hard for us to imagine.  Today’s decadent, debauched, and obscene celebrations of “pride” begin to come close to daily life in the pre-gospel world.  The Romans were the moralistic prudes of the Mediterranean world, but even in Rome prostitution and sodomy, sexual abuse of children and slaves, infanticide, and even sometimes human sacrifice were the rule of the day.  As much as we grieve the moral sewer that our culture has become, the ancient world was far worse.

And Rome sat on top of it all.  One of the angels from the last chapter whisks John away to the wilderness to show him the subject of the judgement that has been poured out.  John sees a woman arrayed in fine clothes.  Purple and scarlet dyes were very expensive to produced and usually reserved for royalty and the very wealthy.  She is beautifully and extravagantly adorned in jewellery.  Everything about her has the look of success, of wealth, and most of all, desirability.  And she’s ready to party.  She holds a chalice and reels drunkenly.  But her chalice doesn’t hold wine.  Her wine, the wine with which she entices the nations, the wine with which she makes them drunk, John writes, is sexual immorality.  John says the cup is full of “abominations and the impurities of her sexual immorality”.  Our English versions are somewhat restrained in their translations here.  “sexual immorality” is the Greek word porneia.  It’s the word for illicit sex and for prostitution.  The words for abominations and impurities refer to things and to acts that are deeply vile, disgusting in every way, that defile and degrade, and that not only merit, but cry out for judgement and condemnation.  Inside the cup the cup are filth, excrement, disease—to tip it would be to release a sewer, both literally and metaphorically.

The woman is stunningly beautiful to look upon, she is fabulously weathly, and she is full of promises.  But it’s all a lie.  She sits astride the beast—seven heads and ten horns, the servant of Satan, whom John earlier identified as the Emperor and his emprie—and, he writes, despite her appearance, she is really “Babylon, the mother of prostitutes and earth’s abominations”.  It’s imagery from the Old Testament.  Babylon was not only the place were the great tower was built in humanity’s attempt to reach heaven in our own power, but the city that would became the enemy and eventually the conqueror of Israel.  Babylon represents everything that stood opposed to the Lord and to his people.  And this new Babylon is even worse.  She sits astride the dragon, reeling, drunk on the blood of Jesus and his people.  Again, she is beautiful and sits there welcoming the nations with a promise of wealth and a good time, but it’s all built on wickedness.  The underlying reality—strip off the make-up, the jewellery, the expensive clothes, pour out the cup—and what you find is vile, disgusting, utterly stomach-churning.

There’s a reason John uses this imagery of a prostitute to depict the enemy of God’s people.  Revelation is about God and his people, whom we see at the end as the lamb and his bride.  The story culminates with the marriage of the lamb—husband and wife are joined and their relationship is characterized by faithfulness.  The prostituted represents the polar opposite.

This imagery goes back to the Old Testament and to Israel and the Lord.  Israel was his bride, but she was repeatedly unfaithful.  Think of the prophet Hosea, who used his own marriage to a prostitute, as a prophetic image of Israel’s rejection of the Lord as she ran after foreign gods and idols.  Babylon was the epitome of idolatry in the Old Testament, but now the Greco-Roman world has taken up that torch.  The nations worship false gods, whose idols and temples are beautiful and full of promises, but who cannot deliver.  And now, Caesar himself, claimed to be divine and with that claim, has gathered the peoples and tongues of the earth under his banner.  The devil had deceived the nations and now empires like Rome and kings like Caesar enticed the world away from God.  Babylon all over again.

And, of course, prostitution is a fitting metaphor for every form of statism.  Rome—not to mention our own contemporary nations—offer us security, well-being, and wealth—only submit, and it’s all yours.  And just as certainly as one is trapped by the false promises of prostitution and pornography, so Caesar traps, ensnares, and enslaves.  And the foolish would rather go along with the lies than walk away from what they’ve already lost.  I can’t think of a better real-life illustration than what the Finance Minister said this week with regard to more government spending on more programs in an attempt to save us from the results of the previous two years’ government spending and programs.  The only way out of our economic predicament is austerity, but the State has promised prosperity and prosperity she must deliver.  The cup is full and inviting, but inside is abomination and impurity—or, at least in this case, stagflation and all the misery that comes with it.

These systems, whether Babylon, or Rome, or Washington, or Ottawa derive their power from the beast.  John goes on in verses 7 and 8:

 

When I saw her, I marveled greatly.  But the angel said to me, “Why do you marvel?  I will tell you the mystery of the woman, and of the beast with seven heads and ten horns that carries her.  The beast that you saw was, and is not, and is about to rise from the bottomless pit and go to destruction. And the dwellers on earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world will marvel to see the beast, because it was and is not and is to come.

 

Again, John is reminded not to be deceived by the woman.  She is backed by the beast.  But then the beast itself.  John was clear before that the beast represents the Roman Emperor—that was currently Nero at John’s time of writing.  This bit about “was, is not, and is about to rise…and go to destruction” isn’t the easiest thing to parse out, but seems, I think, to be referring to the chaos into which the imperial throne was soon to fall with the suicide of Nero and the “Year of the Four Emperors” that followed.  However we work out the specifics, the angel’s point is that the Emperor stands under God’s judgement and he warns: Even as the empire descends into the chaos of this judgement, the people of the earth—at least those who do not belong to Jesus and whose names are not recorded in the book of life—instead of seeing what’s happening, repenting, and turning to the Lord, they will double-down on their commitment to the beast.  They would rather continue in their idolatry than admit that the Lord is God.  And Jesus’ people need to be prepared, because this is why the beast goes after the saints: They are the only ones who stand as witness to the falsity of his claims at divinity and the truth that Jesus is the risen Lord.  This is why the woman who sits astride him has made herself drunk on their blood.

Now, in verses 9-18 the angels explains all of this further.

This calls for a mind with wisdom: the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman is seated; they are also seven kings, five of whom have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come, and when he does come he must remain only a little while.  As for the beast that was and is not, it is an eighth but it belongs to the seven, and it goes to destruction.  And the ten horns that you saw are ten kings who have not yet received royal power, but they are to receive authority as kings for one hour, together with the beast.  These are of one mind, and they hand over their power and authority to the beast.  They will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them, for he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those with him are called and chosen and faithful.”

 

The angel’s explanation probably seems more cryptic than helpful to us.  To John and his readers it would have been clear.  Not all of it is difficult for us, though.  That this woman is seated on seven mountains or hills would have been, to anyone in the First Century and still today, an unmistakable reference to the city of Rome.  The seven horns of the beast are relatively clear, too.  The angel says they represent seven kings—or seven different caesars.  At the time of writing there have been five.  That would be Julius, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, and Claudius.  One is.  That’s Nero.  The seventh who must remain a short while could refer to Galba, who reigned a short seven months after Nero, but probably sums up the year of chaos in which there were four rival claimants to the throne, none of which lasted.  That would make the eighth, who is like the seven, Vespasian, the founder of the Flavian Dynasty that followed.  He was enough like the earlier emperors that he was just as deserving of destruction.  I think there’s something fairly obviously symbolic about these numbers as well.  The seven emperors give to the empire a false appearance of and the eighth, parodying Jesus who rose on the eighth day, will have appeared to have cleaned up the mess, dealt with the chaos, and led the empire into a new and better day, when the fact is that, just like his predecessors, he is leading the empire straight into the Lord’s judgement.  I think this is the real message those early believers needed to hear.  Again, they were mocked.  “There is none like the beast!  Who would be foolish enough to rise up against him?”  And here, again, John is reminded that even though the beast and his empire have the appearance of might and perfection, even though they appear impervious to defeat, it’s all going to come falling down under its own corrupt weight.  Look at verses 15-18:

And the angel said to me, “The waters that you saw, where the prostitute is seated, are peoples and multitudes and nations and languages.  And the ten horns that you saw, they and the beast will hate the prostitute.  They will make her desolate and naked, and devour her flesh and burn her up with fire, for God has put it into their hearts to carry out his purpose by being of one mind and handing over their royal power to the beast, until the words of God are fulfilled.  And the woman that you saw is the great city that has dominion over the kings of the earth.”

 

Again, the details here point unmistakably to the city of Rome as the prostitute.  She had dominion over the kings of the earth.  Nothing else fit that description in John’s day.  The ten kings represented by the beast’s ten horns seem to refer to kings or other rulers within the empire—rulers of the nations over which she has dominion.  But in the end, Rome will devour itself.  The great prostitute will be stripped naked, her flesh devoured, and finally burned with fire.  The rulers whom she robbed blind in exchange for false promises will turn on their mistress and destroy her.  That said, even as they bring justice to the prostitute, they are part of the same system represented by the beast.  They may be through with their mistress, but they are just as intent on making war on the Lamb—as John writes in verse 14—as the beast ever was.  If nothing else, John's vision here and the angel's explanation sounds an awful lot like Nero’s burning of Rome—setting fire to the city so that he could build his new palace on top of the devastation—and then blame the fire on Christians.

But verse 14 is, again, an exhortation to persevere in the midst of tribulation.  The Lamb will conquer, because he is, after all, “King of kings and Lord of lords” and those who are with him are called “chosen and faithful”.  Again, it all looked like so much foolishness to people invested in the beast’s system, but to those who knew the reality of the cross, it all made sense.  They just needed to be reminded.  Jesus has conquered by his blood and the Church—those whom Jesus called to take up our crosses and to follow him—will conquer through our own self-sacrifice, as we give our all—even sometimes our own blood—for the sake of the gospel.

Brothers and Sisters, that’s the heart of the lesson here.  The who’s who of the symbolism is important too and we need to get it right, because it’s important to our understanding of the story we tell and our place in it, but I think the really important, the critical truth for us here is much the same as it was for those Asian Christians in the First Century: Don’t fall prey to the lies of the prostitute.  The systems and philosophies of the world make us promises galore: promises of wealth, promises of security, promises of self-discovery and identity.  But those promises are empty snares and behind them all lies the dragon, the devil, who has been telling lies to humanity from the beginning.  He tempts us to give ourselves over to wealth.  He tempts us to submit ourselves body and soul to the State.  He temps us to find our worth in material goods.  He entices us to satisfy our appetites with gluttony and with illicit sex.  He tells us that we will find satisfaction in identity, whether that’s race or sex or sexual orientation.  He undermines marriage and the family and then holds out the State and sexual immorality as substitutes.  His agents in this world hold out a golden chalice, to all appearances filled with wine, but inside is abomination and filthiness.  Inside is idolatry that ensnares, entwines, corrupts—and ultimately leads us away from Jesus and straight to destruction.  Brothers and Sisters, stand firm and look to Jesus for your security and for your identity.  We will find ourselves caught up in the battle and when we do, John reminds us that this is no accident.  We are soldiers of the Lamb, the King of kings and Lord of lords, and we will conquer by his blood and by the word of our testimony.  Christ has died.  Christ is risen.  Christ will come again.

Let’s pray: Our Father, in the Collect we acknowledged that we are weak and that you are our source of strength.  Again, we ask for the help of your grace that we might stand firm in faith against the enemies of the Lamb, and as your Church advance the cause of the gospel to the ends of the earth.  Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

Blessed is the One Who Stays Awake

Revelation 16

By William Klock

There’s an old story of a clergyman, who out of concern for a parishioner who had been absent for some time, went to visit her at home.  He saw her car in the driveway.  The drapes were drawn, but he could see the lights were one.  He could hear the faint sound of the TV.  She was clearly home.  He knocked on the door and waited.  No answer.  Then he heard the TV go silent.  He knocked again.  Still no answer.  He waited.  Out of the corner of his eye he saw a faint movement of the living room drapes, as if someone had peeked around the edge.  Still no answer.  He rang the doorbell and waited again.  Still nothing.  He sighed, pulled one of his cards from his pocket, and slipped it into the front door’s weather stripping.  Then he had an idea.  If anyone needed to read her Bible, it was she.  So he took the card back, pulled out his pen, and wrote on the back “Revelation 3:20”—“Behold, I stand at the door and knock”—and slipped the card back into the weatherstripping.  “She’ll have to look that one up,” he thought, “and maybe she’ll keep reading while her Bible’s open.”  He rang the bell one more time, waited again, and left.

On Sunday morning he was pleased to see that the woman was in church, but she left too quickly for him to greet her.  Then, as he was getting ready to leave the church, one of the wardens approached, holding a little card.  “It was in the offering plate,” the warden said as he handed it to him.  The priest took the card and saw it was one of his own.  He turned it over and saw the Bible reference he’d written: “Revelation 3:20”.  Underneath it the woman had written another: “Genesis 3:10”.  He laughed.  That’s Adam’s answer to the Lord, “I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”

Revelation 16 continues with the Lord’s judgement on Greco-Roman world.  We looked at Chapter 15 two weeks ago and saw the announcement of seven plagues, carried by seven angles in bowls like those used for drink offerings in the temple.  In Chapter 16 we’ll now see those plagues poured out—the wrath of God revealed.  And in the middle of the plagues John stops—in verse 15—to give a warning to God’s people:

“Behold, I am coming like a thief!  Blessed is the one who stays awake, keeping his garments on, that he may not go about naked and be seen exposed!”

 

It’s a warning from Jesus for his Church to stay alert and on guard—not to be distracted, but to be diligently about the work he’s given.  He gave similar warnings to the churches at Sardis and Laodicea.  The reference is to an officer in the temple in John’s day, who was tasked with making sure that the men on watch stayed awake.  He would make the rounds of the temple and if he caught anyone asleep, he would beat him.  If he found the same man asleep a second time, he would strip the man naked and burn his clothes.[1]  One commentator writes, “The danger is of being caught not momentarily but habitually off guard—not, to put it crudely, with trousers down, but without trousers at all.”[2]

Consider Jesus’ warning to the Christians in Sardis:

Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God. (Revelation 3:2)

Brothers and Sisters, it is easy to become complacent.  Either we become complacent and neglect our calling to proclaim and to live out the good news about Jesus and to declare the mighty works of God.  Or we become complacent in that we become worldly.  We live in the world and it’s easy to be unconsciously influenced by it when we keep our guard down and neglect to feed ourselves on God’s word and to share in the means of grace found in the Church.  It’s also easy to become complacent through wilful compromise with the world.  We face opposition and instead of standing firm, we compromise in the hopes that the world will oppose us less—maybe that they’ll even like us.  We see an awful lot of this today.  Churches looking to attract “seekers” structure ministry and worship around what is attractive to unbelievers—which can be great when done thoughtfully and carefully, but disastrous when, as so often happens, we end up looking more like the world than the church.  Or we cozy up to the world’s system, especially to politics—Left or Right—it can go either way.  When we allow ourselves to be overtaken by the world’s ways of thinking, whether that be commercialism and materialism or expressive individualism, the sexual revolution, and post-modern gender theory.  Or—I think most appropriate in light of our text today—we water down our message.  Large parts of the Western Church today are hesitant to talk about sin and about the consequences of sin, about the wrath of God and of judgement.  H. Richard Niebuhr famous described the gospel of much of modern Christendom as: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgement through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”[3]  Such a faith is worthless—for those who believe—and for the world to which it is proclaimed.  The Church that preaches such a message is no church at all and when God’s judgement does come, such churches will be swept away with everything else not of the kingdom—caught naked and asleep at her post.  It’s important that the Church be clear about the difference between the things of God and the things of the world, the difference between godliness and sin, and knowing the kingdom of God, and be able to persevere in the midst of tribulation—that, to use John’s metaphor, we stay awake and keep our pants on.

As John announces the judgement that was soon to come on the pagan world of Caesar, using the language of cataclysmic plagues, the Church was expected to recognise the judgement of God in the same way that Israel had seen, recognised, and praised the judgment of God on Pharaoh, the supposed god-king, and on his pantheon of false gods.  John saw those who had conquered the beast, like Israel of old watching Pharaoh’s army drown, singing the praises of their victorious God.  Brothers and Sisters, God’s people are called to singing of his victory for the sake of the world and, in doing so, we glorify him.  Now look at Chapter 16.  John writes:

Then I heard a loud voice from the temple telling the seven angels, “Go and pour out on the earth the seven bowls of the wrath of God.”

 

Remember that in the last scene, John saw the heavenly tabernacle filled with smoke—so full that no one could enter.  And out came seven angels bearing bowls.  The image is of the priests of the old covenant bearing their drink offerings at the conclusion of the daily service.  Since no one could enter the heavenly tabernacle because of the smoke, this must be the voice of God directing the angels.  John then goes on:

So the first angel went and poured out his bowl on the earth, and harmful and painful sores came upon the people who bore the mark of the beast and worshiped its image.

  The second angel poured out his bowl into the sea, and it became like the blood of a corpse, and every living thing died that was in the sea.

  The third angel poured out his bowl into the rivers and the springs of water, and they became blood.  (Revelation 16:2-4)

Just like the plagues poured out on rebellious Jerusalem, the plagues poured out on the pagan nations are meant to remind us of the plagues the Lord brought on Egypt.  First, painful sores reminiscent of the boils that afflicted the Egyptians.  Second, the sea turning to blood and then, third, the fresh waters turning to blood as well.

In contrast to the plagues poured out on rebellious Jerusalem, these plagues are universal in scope.  The earlier plagues were limited—a third of the water, a third of the people.  I think the idea in this distinction is that when God disciplined his rebellious children, there was an opportunity for the pagan nations to see, to take heart, and to repent of their wickedness themselves.  Now that opportunity has passed.  The wine of God’s wrath has been tread out in the winepress and the wicked peoples who drank the blood of the saints are now—metaphorically—left with nothing but putrid blood to drink.

That raises another question?  Are these plagues meant to be understood literally?  I think it’s fairly clear, given the context, that they are not.  The imagery draws on the Lord’s past judgement on the nations that afflicted his people, first Egypt and then, we’ll see, Babylon.  The point is that the Lord is now going to judge Rome.  Remember the point of Revelation: tribulation, perseverance, and kingdom.  Jesus’ main purpose in giving John this vision is to encourage the saints to persevere in the midst of tribulation.  The great New Testament scholar, George Caird, puts it this way: “The theme of the whole series [i.e., the plagues] is neither the collapse of the physical universe nor the punishment of individual men for their personal contribution to the world’s iniquity, both of which come later when the record books are opened…but the ending of persecution through the removal of the persecutor.”[4]  The angels underscore this when they sing out between the third and fourth plagues.  Look at verses 5 to 7:

And I heard the angel in charge of the waters say,

“Just are you, O Holy One, who is and who was,

         for you brought these judgments.

For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets,

         and you have given them blood to drink.

It is what they deserve!”

  And I heard the altar saying,

“Yes, Lord God the Almighty,

         true and just are your judgments!”

 

The Lord’s judgement vindicates his saints and brings justice on their persecutors.  The songs of the angels and of the altar—I assume these are the martyrs we saw earlier under the altar—the song is a needed reminder of the goodness of the Lord’s judgement.  We modern Christians have often become uncomfortable with judgement—Niebuhr’s God without wrath and kingdom without judgement.  One morning this week I left my prayer book at home.  I had left a Canadian prayer book on my desk—the 1962 edition—after looking up something in the lectionary last week, so I picked it up for Morning Prayer.  And I was jarred by the changes they made in the Psalter.  Wherever they could, they eliminated or watered down the passages that speak of or call for the Lord’s judgement.  Whole psalms were removed.  Because modern Christians have—to our shame—become exceedingly uncomfortable with the topic of the wrath and judgement of God.  And yet, the angels sing here, it is God’s justice which reveals his holiness.  Do we consider that when we sing “Holy, holy, holy Lord God almighty”?  And do we consider that it is the Lord’s justice that is our consolation as we face a world that opposes us because it opposes him?  Brothers and Sisters, we need to remember that the Lord is revealed to be true and just because he judges wickedness and, in that, he deserves our praises.  There is no reason to preach the gracious mercy of the cross, if there is nothing from which we need deliverance.

Now the fourth plague—verses 8 and 9:

The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and it was allowed to scorch people with fire.  They were scorched by the fierce heat, and they cursed the name of God who had power over these plagues.  They did not repent and give him glory.

 

The fourth of the trumpets that announcement judgement on Jerusalem heralded a plague of darkness.  Now the fourth bowl brings the opposite.  It metaphorically highlights the Lord’s vindication of his saints.  The martyrs we saw under the altar back in Chapter 7 were consoled with the words:

They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore;

         the sun shall not strike them,

         nor any scorching heat.  (Revelation 7:16)

In contrast, the wicked are exposed to the full justice of the Lord.  And yet, even as they experience his wrath, like Pharaoh, their hearts are hardened.  They know the source of their affliction, but rather than repent, rather than turn from their evil and give him glory, they curse him.

With the fifth bowl, the judgement narrows from the wider pagan world of the Greeks and Romans to its throne—to the heart and embodiment of its wickedness.

The fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and its kingdom was plunged into darkness.  People gnawed their tongues in anguish and cursed the God of heaven for their pain and sores.  They did not repent of their deeds. (Revelation 16:10-11)

The Lord’s judgement now falls on the beast, on Caesar, on Nero himself.  Darkness—political chaos—descends on the empire.  In a.d. 69 the Senate declared Nero a public enemy.  He fled and committed suicide.  A year of chaos—referred to as the Year of the Four Emperors—ensued.  Galba became emperor.  He was murdered by Otho.  Meanwhile, Vitellius popular for his military victories in Germany, vied for the throne and won the support of the imperial guard.  Otho committed suicide.  But Vitellius had his own rival in the general, Vespasian, who was besieging Jerusalem.  In the end, Vespasian’s supporters in the military outnumbered those of Vitellius, who abdicated and was promptly lynched by a mob in Rome.  It was a year of chaos and civil war.  But again, even as the beast was toppled from his throne, there was no repentance.  Nero, who had initiated the empire’s persecution of the saints, was cast down, but in quick succession four others seized his throne and made the same blasphemous claims to divinity that he had.

And the sixth bowl.  Verses 12-16:

The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up, to prepare the way for the kings from the east.  And I saw, coming out of the mouth of the dragon and out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet, three unclean spirits like frogs.  For they are demonic spirits, performing signs, who go abroad to the kings of the whole world, to assemble them for battle on the great day of God the Almighty.  (“Behold, I am coming like a thief! Blessed is the one who stays awake, keeping his garments on, that he may not go about naked and be seen exposed!”)  And they assembled them at the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon.

 

John has referred to Rome symbolically as Babylon—historically the great enemy of the people of God.  And now the symbolism of the judgements recalls the fall of Babylon, while at the same time conjuring up the great fear of Rome at that time.  Ancient Babylon fell to the Medes when the invaders diverted the Euphrates River so that they could enter the city.  Now it’s Rome’s turn to fall.  Rome’s great enemy to the east was the Parthian empire—on the other side of the Euphrates.  In the midst of Rome’s political chaos, war was coming.  John writes of the kings of the nations assembling to battle at a place called in Hebrew, Harmageddon—the Mount of Megiddo.  It’s a little interesting in that there’s no Mount Megiddo.  Megiddo is a valley between the mountains—the route from the coastal plain of Palestine to the interior, to Syria and Damascus.  For that reason it had a been a place of many battles.  Deborah and Barak had won their victory there in Judges.  It was the place where King Josiah met his Waterloo, so to speak.  And that’s precisely how John uses “Megiddo” here.  That there’s no actual Mount Megiddo suggests strongly that John isn’t using this location literally.  When we say someone has met their Waterloo, we don’t literally mean that they’ve gone to Waterloo to lose a battle.  Waterloo is a metaphor for defeat and John uses Megiddo in a similar way here.  Rome will meet her enemies and she will fall.  The beast’s own wickedness will catch up with him both at home and abroad and he will be toppled from his throne.

But in the middle of all this there’s that warning.  “Stay awake,” warns Jesus.  Hearkening back to the plague of frogs in Egypt, the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet spew forth demonic spirits imaged as frogs.  These unclean spirits perform signs that deceive the kings of the nations and summon them to the battle.  Jesus warns his people not to be conned by the false prophets and their lying signs.  Pharoah’s magicians had once mimicked the Lord’s miracles and the prophets of the dragon and the beast will do the same.  God’s people must be alert, he warns, that they not fall prey to the enemy’s propaganda.

And in verses 17-20 the seventh and final bowl is poured out.

The seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and a loud voice came out of the temple, from the throne, saying, “It is done!” And there were flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, and a great earthquake such as there had never been since man was on the earth, so great was that earthquake.  The great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell, and God remembered Babylon the great, to make her drain the cup of the wine of the fury of his wrath.  And every island fled away, and no mountains were to be found.  And great hailstones, about one hundred pounds each, fell from heaven on people; and they cursed God for the plague of the hail, because the plague was so severe.

 

The final judgement is poured out into the air, the space between heaven and earth, and the only language John can employ to describe the result is the language of de-creation used by the Old Testament prophets.  Zechariah had once described the fall of Jerusalem using this metaphorical language—the city being split in two by an earthquake.  Now Rome is metaphorically split in three in the chaos of lightning, thunder, and earthquakes.  I think it’s very possible this is a reference to the civil war that was about the rattle Rome to its core, but it was a civil war that would topple the beast who had persecuted the saints.  And yet, still, the wicked continue to curse God.  The men who took Nero’s place on the throne did not continue the persecution of the saints, but they continued with their blasphemous claims to divinity.  Nevertheless, John says, “God remembered Babylon the great”.  This is our lead-in to Chapters 17 and 18.  The great city will be revealed as the world’s whore.  But in that revelation, the faithfulness and the beauty of the Lord’s bride will also be revealed.

John saw the end of pagan Rome.  Or it might be better to say that he saw the beginning of the end of pagan Rome.  As Caird also rightly points out, Israel’s prophets had always used this kind of apocalyptic language “to give theological depth and urgency to this historical crisis which he and his people were facing at the moment.  John, too, had his vision of the End, but because he had learnt his theology at the foot of the Cross, he knew that an end could also be a beginning.”[5]

The Lord’s judgement would cast down the beast, break his empire, and in time the good news about Jesus, proclaimed by saints and witnesses by the blood of the martyrs would transform the world.  And, Brothers and Sisters, it will continue to do so.  Throughout history the power of the gospel has brought transformation, but it’s never as simple as we might like: Okay, the gospel has conquered here, now the Church can go over there or over there to conquer and forget about here.  The Church triumphs there, and then wanes here, only to triumph again here, later.  We in the West are experiencing what it’s like to live in a post-Christian world—the waning of the gospel here—to fall out of favour, to experience opposition.  If John were here today he would warn and exhort us as he did the Christians of his own day: “Blessed is the one who stays awake, keeping his garments on, that he may not go about naked and be seen exposed!”  Don’t give up.  Don’t succumb to the spirit of the age.  Don’t be swayed by the lies of the unclean spirits.  The gospel will triump here again and it will do so through the witness of faithful Christians.  So live in deep community with your church family.  Drink deeply at the well of grace provided by the sacraments.  Steep yourself in the word of God.  Don’t be afraid to be different—to be holy—and to proclaim the sinfulness of sin, the gracious mercy of God revealed at the cross, and the lordship of Jesus over all things.  Be shaped by faith-filled hope for Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again.

Let’s pray: Almighty God, we thank you for the exhortation you have given us through John.  You judge the wicked and deliver your people.  Your gospel is powerful and transforms the world.  Strengthen our faith and fill us with hope in these truths, so that we can live courageously for Jesus in the face of hatred and opposition.  Renew us by your Spirit and make us faithful witnesses of the transforming power of your word.  Judge the wicked, we pray, vindicate your people, and set your fallen creation to rights.  Through Jesus we pray, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, new and for ever.  Amen.

[1] Philip Carrington, The Meaning of Revelation (London: SPCK, 1931), 265.

[2] J. P. M. Sweet, Revelation (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1979), 249.

[3] The Kingdom of God in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1959), 193.

[4] The Revelation of St. John the Divine (London: A & C Black, 1966), 201.

[5] 210

A Sermon for Whitsunday

Acts 2:1-11

by William Klock

 

Last Sunday we recalled the Ascension of Jesus and remembered it’s significance—that it offers a powerful visual confirmation of his lordship over creation.  And yet many Christians fail to make that connection.  For many, the ascension just means that Jesus isn’t physically present with us anymore.  And I think this has happened because we as the Church have too often neglected to understand the events of Jesus’ life and the life of the early Church within the context of the big story of God and his people.  When we do that me miss the deeper significance of pretty much everything.  For the last century or so, Evangelicalism has been dominated by a theological system that understands Jesus’ kingdom essentially to be an entirely future reality.  And that leaves the Church spiritually impoverished.  Think of our study of Revelation and themes it stresses: tribulation, perseverance, and kingdom.  But if the kingdom is only a future reality, perseverance in the face of tribulation becomes impossible—or something we must do soley on our own strength.  Now Pentecost.  Something similar has happened with Pentecost.  Not necessarily in the same way, but nevertheless, we’ve allowed a cheapened view of things to downgrade what Pentecost actually means.  In the case of Pentecost, a lot of Christians have turned it into little more than a personal experience.  And as much as the reality of Pentecost is a personal experience for us as Christians, when that becomes our main focus, we tend to lose the bigger picture, the big picture of redemption.

So let’s back up to the Ascension for a moment to get some perspective before we head into Pentecost.  Again, the point of the Ascension is that Jesus has taken his throne and that he will reign from there until, as St. Paul says, every last enemy is put under his feet—until every enemy of God and his people, of his kingdom and his new creation has been conquered.  And if Jesus is reigning, that means that his kingdom is here and his kingdom is now—even if its full consummation is still future.  This is what the Old Testament points to throughout its pages.  It’s what the New Testament affirms about Jesus and his coming and his mission.  Kings don’t take their thrones without their sovereign rule being inaugurated and that’s as true of Jesus as it is for earthly kings.

As I’ve thought about this I’ve come to suspect that one of the major reasons we’ve missed the reality of God’s kingdom is that we haven’t fully grasped the mission of the Church—of God’s new creation here on earth.  We pray every day, “Thy kingdom come.  Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” but we never fully grasp just what we’re praying in those words.  And that’s what I want to talk about this morning.  And that brings us back to Pentecost.  What’s the significance of Pentecost?  Why is Pentecost important?

The best place to start is our Epistle from Acts 2 this morning.  St. Luke tells us there of this amazing thing that took place as the Holy Spirit came in a rush of wind and fell on the disciples in something that looked like tongues of fire.  Suddenly they were praising God in other languages.  Jews from all over the empire were there and heard these Galilean men telling of the mighty acts of God in their own languages.  None of these visitors was quite sure what was going on.  Some of them thought the disciples were drunk.  And that’s when Peter stood up and gave his first sermon.  He began with Joel’s prophecy as he walked the people through the Old Testament and then explained how Jesus, in his death and resurrection and then in his ascension not only fulfilled those prophecies, but how Jesus actually fulfilled Israel’s failed mission.  As he says in verse 36, “Therefore let the whole house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.”

It’s an amazing picture Luke gives us, but as we read it we probably missed the really significant little note he gives us right at the beginning.  In verse 1 Luke begins by telling us that all this happened “when the day of Pentecost arrived”.  And we think, “Well, of course…this is why we refer to that day as Pentecost!”  What a lot of people don’t realise is that it wasn’t Luke or the Church that decided to call that day Pentecost.  That day was already called Pentecost.  That’s what the Greek-speaking Jews called the day fifty days after Passover—“pente”, “fifty”.  In Hebrew it was called the Feast of Weeks—specifically, seven weeks after Passover.  And the connection between this Jewish festival and what happened on that day Luke tells us in Acts when the Spirit descended on the disciples is important.

Passover and Pentecost go all the way back to the beginning of Israel’s story in the Exodus.  Remember back to the first Passover.  The Lord sent his angel to take the lives of the firstborn of all Egypt.  But he made a provision to spare the firstborn of Israel.  He gave Moses instructions for the people: Each family was to slaughter a lamb.  They were to eat the lamb and they were to paint its blood on the doorposts of their home.  When the angel of death saw the blood of the sacrificed lamb he would literally “pass over” that home and spare those inside.  The next day the Lord led his people out of their bondage in Egypt.  He rescued them again as he parted the waters of the Red Sea so that they could escape Pharaoh’s army and he led them to Mt. Sinai in the wilderness where he gave them his law.  The law he gave to the people through Moses was the charter of his covenant.  To be God’s people is to manifest his glory and his faithfulness to the world.  “On earth as in heaven,” as we pray.  That was Israel’s calling and it had been ever since the Lord had called Abraham: to be a light to the gentiles so that the nations might know the glory of the Lord and be drawn to him.  The Lord wrote his law on tablets of stone so that Israel would know what to do to fulfil her mission and ministry—that she would know what it is to live in covenant with the Lord.  God rescued his people, leading them in an exodus from their bondage to the Egyptians and on the fiftieth day he met them and gave them his law.  That was the origin of the feast of Pentecost.  And that was its significance for Israel down through the years.  At Passover they remembered how God had rescued them.  Year after year they sacrificed lambs and painted the blood on their doorposts to remind them of the way in which the Lord had saved them.  And every year, fifty days later they commemorated and celebrated the giving of the law that taught them how to live as the Lord’s people.

All of that’s packed into that statement Luke makes in Acts 2:1 about the day of Pentecost having come.  And that points to the meaning of Pentecost as we remember and celebrate it as Christians.  On that last Passover of the Old Covenant era, Jesus went to Jerusalem.  He and his friends ate that age old covenant meal in the upper room, but as they did so, Jesus gave it new significance.  Now the Passover bread was his body.  Now the wine was his blood.  The next day, Jesus gave his body and blood for the sins of his people.  And on that first Easter morning he rose from the grave, not only conquering sin and death, but leading his people in a new exodus.  This time is wasn’t an exodus from human slavery, but an exodus from slavery to sin and death and into the new promised land of the long-awaited age to come.

For forty days Jesus taught his people from the Law and the Prophets, showing them all these connections.  He gave his people a new mission.  And yet it wasn’t a completely new mission.  It was the same mission that Israel had had all along: to manifest the glory of the Lord to the nations and to call them into covenant with him.  But this time the Lord was equipping his people as he never had before.  He had promised through the prophet Ezekiel: “I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them.  I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 11:19).  This is what humanity needed all along.  The law was external—written on stone tablets.  What humanity needed was a new heart, a new life, given and made possible by the indwelling Spirit of God.  And so, at his ascension, Jesus gave his disciples their mission: go out into the world, proclaim the good news—the message that Jesus is Lord, that there is a new and eternal King, make disciples of the nations, and baptise them into the God who loves and redeems his rebellious people.  Once again, “On earth as it is in heaven.”  But this is also why he told them to go to Jerusalem and wait.  The exodus made Israel God’s people.  In fact, we see throughout the Old Testament that it was in the Exodus that the Lord adopted Israel and called her his firstborn.  But being adopted is different from being given the tools needed to actually live as part of the family and to carry out the mission.

Think about that.  Imagine being adopted into a family, but not being told the house rules or the family expectations.  That was what Israel needed to live the Lord’s adoption.  And that’s the purpose that the law served when it was given at Sinai.  It was the family rules.  And just so with Jesus’ disciples.  Jesus is now the Lord’s firstborn.  He has taken Israel’s role on himself and as we pass through the waters of baptism in faith—our own Red Sea experience—we are adopted as Jesus’ brothers and sisters into the Lord’s family.  But we need to be equipped to live as members of the Lord’s family.  And so, on the fiftieth day after their exodus, after their rescue from slavery to sin and death, Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to his people.  Instead of external tablets of stone, he gave his life-giving and empowering Spirit to breathe life into his sons and daughters that they—that we—might truly live as his people, as his family.  Instead of an external law pointing us to God, God comes to us himself, pours himself into us, and turns our hearts to him.  “On earth as it is in heaven.”

That day was a commissioning too.  Pentecost mirrors Jesus’ own baptism.  Think back to the beginning of the story of Jesus’ ministry.  He was baptised by John and as he came up out of the waters of the Jordan River the Holy Spirit descended on him and the Lord spoke from heaven: This is my beloved Son; in him I am well-pleased.  At Pentecost the Lord did the same thing for the Church.  He sent his Spirit not only to indwell us, but to commission us to carry out the mission that Jesus began.  On Pentecost the Lord declared to his Church, to all those who are in Christ: These are my beloved sons and daughters; in them I am well-pleased.  And as Jesus was sent from his baptism into the wilderness to suffer Satan’s harassment and to triumph over him in the power of the Spirit, so from our baptism at Pentecost, the Church is sent out into the wilderness: to charge into the darkness with the light of Christ, to proclaim the good news that Jesus is Lord and that he has conquered sin and death and Satan.  We’re not called to go timidly into the world to offer people a new option on the smorgasbord of world religions.  No, we’re to charge into the territory of Satan and of Caesar to proclaim that there is a new Lord, that the kingdoms and systems of this old age are coming to an end and that Jesus is Lord.  In Jesus and then in the Church, heaven and earth are coming back together, the fracture caused by our rebellion is being healed, all things are being made new, and this corrupt and broken world is being set to rights under the power and authority of the King.  Our message is one that we should be proclaiming not with timidity and fear, but with power and authority.  Ascension and Pentecost give us the assurance we need that Jesus reigns, that his kingdom is here and now, and that however bad things may look today, he will with absolute certainty subdue every enemy and return on the clouds the conquering king at the end of the age.

No matter how bad things look.  No matter how bad things get.  As we’ve seen in the message of Revealtion, there’s no reason to be afraid.  There’s no reason not to have confidence in our mission.  Ascension and Pentecost should be reminders of that.  Last week we sang those words of the old hymn “See the Conqueror”:

 

Thou hast raised our human nature

In the clouds to God’s right hand

There we sit in heavenly places

There with Thee in glory stand

 

Jesus reigns adorned by angels

Man with God is on the throne

Mighty Lord in Thine ascension

We by faith behold our own

We by faith behold our own

 

In his Ascension Jesus gives us assurance.  He in his resurrected and exalted humanity has raised our humanity and this earthly realm to heaven.  That’s one half of his final promise to restore heaven and earth.  And Pentecost embodies the other half of the promise: In sending the gift of the Holy Spirit to indwell his people, the Lord has sent heaven to earth.  Humanity has risen to heaven with Jesus and heaven has descended to earth with the Holy Spirit and so we know that heaven and earth cannot remain sundered and separated forever.  One day they will be restored.  All that remains is for Jesus to subdue his enemies.

In the meantime, Brothers and Sisters, we the Church have been made the temple of the living God.  Think about what that means.  In the beginning God created a garden temple where he and his people lived in fellowship with each other.  Human beings lived in the presence of God.  Our sin broke that fellowship.  Sin and death drove us from the garden.  Sin and death forced apart earth and heaven.  The tabernacle and the temple were built as models of that garden temple in miniature.  They became the centre of Israel’s life, because in the temple God and human beings could find fellowship, even if it was a limited and broken fellowship.  Then Jesus came and he became the temple himself.  In his incarnation he united humanity to God and in giving his Spirit to us, to the Church, the Lord has made us his living temple.  In us, thanks to Pentecost, God is made known to fallen and broken humanity.  In us the new creation has begun.  And in us the Lord is working to restore his fallen and broken world to himself.  As ancient Israel caught a glimpse of heaven in the temple, so the world is meant to catch a glimpse of heaven in us, in the Church—a view of humanity and God once again set to rights through the mediating work of Jesus.

And how do we do that?  Brothers and Sisters, just as Israel was given a new set of “family rules” to show her how to be light in the darkness, we as God’s new Israel have been given the same.  Not a legalistic set of dos and don’ts—although it does certainly involve that—but a call to live the law of love exemplified first in the Lord’s relationship with Israel and then brought to full fruit in the ministry of Jesus.  We’re called to manifest faith and to manifest hope and, most of all, to manifest love to a world with no faith and no hope, to a world filled with fear and hate.  We’re called to live out the manifesto, the charter given by Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount: hungering and thirsting for righteousness, showing mercy, making peace.  We’re called to show the world that Jesus has given us a new way of living.  In fact, it’s not a new way.  It’s the old way that was lost when we fell into rebellion and sin, but now it’s back and it’s possible because this time it’s not just a set of rules carved on stone; it’s a new being and a new life imparted to our hearts by the very Spirit of God living in us and giving us his new life.

Brothers and Sisters, there’s an awful tendency to forget all of this when we turn Pentecost into a private experience as often happens.  Pentecost is about the people of God being equipped by the Spirit to live as his people, not just privately, but publicly—not for the sake of ourselves, but for the sake of the world.  Pentecost is about the Spirit bearing fruit in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, it’s about the people of God being changed and renewed in our hearts that we might proclaim that Jesus is Lord.  And we do all this as heralds of his kingdom, proclaiming its good news.  That’s the idea of “gospel” or “good news”.  The New Testament brings together two meanings in that word meaning “good news”.  For the Jews “good news” brought to mind the language of Isaiah.  “Good news” meant a messenger coming to a people languishing in exile; a messenger sent to tell them that their enemies had been defeated and that the Lord had returned to Zion.  To Greeks and Romans, “good news” brought to mind an imperial herald, sent to the far reaches of the empire with the message that a new Caesar had ascended to the throne.  In Jesus both of those meanings are brought together.  In Jesus we have a new and eternal King; in Jesus the Lord has returned to Zion to dwell in the midst of his people.  The power of Pentecost is the power and life of the Spirit given to us to proclaim his kingdom and to live it before the eyes of the world.  “On earth as it is in heaven.”

Let us pray: O God, who on this day taught the hearts of your faithful people by sending to them the light of your Holy Spirit: Grant us by the same Spirit to have a right judgment in all things, and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

The Song of Moses and of the Lamb

Revelation 15

by William Klock

There is a long history of songs sung by the people of God in praise of his faithful deliverance.  His people experienced the problems of life, they knew that this is not how things are meant to be, they knew also the promises of God to set things to right, and that sang out his praises.  Sometimes it was in response to his mighty and saving deeds.  Other times it was in faithful anticipation of what they knew he would do, because of his past history of faithfulness.  These songs often begin with the big picture of the Lord’s deliverance of Israel, then they narrow their focus.  If the Lord has such love and shows such care for Israel, he will also show his love and will care for me.  Hannah, for example, sings of the greatness of the Lord, she alludes to his past faithfulness to his people, and then praises him for meeting her own need, for giving her a son, before singing again of the Lord’s judgement, which extends to the ends of the earth.  Or Mary’s Magnificat, in which she too sings of the Lord’s faithfulness, this time beginning with herself—“My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.  For he hath regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden.”—and then expands as she sees what he has done for her as part of his faithfulness to Israel: “He remembering his mercy hath holpen his servant Israel; as he promised to our forefathers, Abraham and his seed, for ever.”  The Bible is full of these songs that praise the Lord.  They praise him for his faithfulness, but they see that faithfulness manifest in his judgement—in his vindication of the righteous and his punishment of the wicked.

These songs give us a sense of the plight of God’s people and of what justice looked like for them.  Poor Hannah not only bore the shame of barrenness, but also the daily contempt of her husband’s other wife.  Mary’s song gives us a general sense of the difficult state in which Israel found herself: The humble and meek under the boot of the prideful and strong.  The rich full and satisfied, while the poor hungered.  Both songs echo the words of many of the psalms.  Think of the final words of Psalm 96 we sing each day in Morning Prayer: “For he cometh, for he cometh to judge the earth; and with righteousness to judge the world, and the peoples with his truth.”

Think of the daily injustices that people like Hannah and Mary and the people of their villages faced.  This man’s property marker was moved by his neighbour.  Another man’s sheep was stolen in the night.  An old woman was taken advantage of by a shady workman.  One of the merchants in the market had two set of weights and was ripping off people who didn’t know better.  These were all things the provincial judge would set to rights when he made his rounds and held court in the village.

But then there were the things the judge would not fix, because he was part of the system that itself was the problem: The tax collector who took and took and took, far above what was actually owed.  The Roman soldier who raped a local girl.  The rich man who manipulated the poor to put them in debt, then took their land in payment knowing that the jubilee would never be observed or enforced, so he’d never have to give the land back.  The Romans and their rich and powerful friends just took and took and took, all while mocking the God of Israel.  It wasn’t right.  The world wasn’t supposed to be this way.

But it wasn’t just in Israel.  John has given us a good view of the plight of the people of God, in these little churches, trying to get by and be faithful to Jesus in the midst of the wider world of the Greeks and Romans.  Even far away from Jerusalem, on the west coast of Turkey, they found themselves at the mercy of local Jews who rejected Jesus.  As Jesus warned in our Gospel today, “They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God” (John 16:2).  First it happened in Jerusalem, but even in the Greek cities, Christians were facing tribulation.  If they were lucky it was just being kicked out of a trade guild for refusing to worship false gods.  At worst they were dragged off to the arena to be eaten by lions.  Again, it wasn’t right.  The world wasn’t supposed to be this way.

But the Lord is God and justice will be done.  Someday Jesus will set everything to rights and wipe away every tear.  We know it, because he was raised from the dead and set the wheels of re-creation in motion.  We’ve tasted this new world ourselves in the pouring out of God’s Spirit on us.  It’s begun, the hardest part has been accomplished, so we know that God will finish what he’s begun—and we live in hope and faith because of that.  Last Sunday, in Chapter 14, we saw those First Century Christians, the ones who had been through that time of great tribulation, standing before the heavenly throne singing a song that only they could sing.  They were the blameless ones, the firstfruits of the redeemed, who had refused to compromise with the beast.  They had remained faithful to Jesus, because they, too, knew that what Jesus had started he will surely finish, they had tasted it, and they wanted to be part of it.  Three angels announced their vindication and the judgement to fall on Babylon, on Rome.  This morning we’re looking at Chapter 15, where this scene continues.  In verse 1 John writes:

Then I saw another sign in heaven, great and amazing, seven angels with seven plagues, which are the last, for with them the wrath of God is finished.

 

In Chapter 14 the announcement was made.  One angel proclaimed the message: “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, she who made the nations drink the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality.”  Another announced that anyone who had drunk of that wine “also will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger.”  The wickedness of the nations has been put into the Lord’s winepress and the angels have trod it.  Now the wine of wrath is prepared: seven plagues.  Seven seals and seven trumpets have announced the wrath of the Lord so far.  Now there are seven plagues.  John writes that this is the culmination of God’s wrath.  That doesn’t mean God won’t ever act again to bring judgement and justice.  Revelation shows us the early church vindicated over against unbelieving Israel and the pagan Greco-Roman empire.  That’s the context here.  And the plagues call back to the Lord’s deliverance of Israel from Egypt—the prototype for his deliverance and salvation.  That gives us a sense of what’s going on and we’ll come back to it in a few verses.  First, there’s more imagery borrowed from the exodus.  Look at verse 2:

And I saw what appeared to be a sea of glass mingled with fire—and also those who had conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name, standing beside the sea of glass with harps of God in their hands.

 

The martyrs, the faithful people of Jesus who had faced the great tribulation and stood firm, now appear again.  In Chapter 14 John saw them before the throne singing.  Here they are again.  These are those whom the world despised.  The gears of wicked Jerusalem and corrupt Rome had ground them up and spit them out and their enemies had declared, “Good riddance!”  Just like the wicked people who had crucified Jesus and thought they’d won, these people thought they’d done away with these weirdos, these deviants who refused to worship the beast.  But anyone who was paying attention that first Easter morning knows that’s not how it ends for the God of Israel, for his Messiah, or for his people.  Now they stand before the Lamb and, writes John, beside “a sea of glass mingled with fire”.  What does that mean?

I think there’s a two-fold explanation to this imagery.  As these saints stand there, they sing and in verse 3 John says they sing the song of Moses.  Remember Moses and the Israelites praising the Lord after he led them through the Red Sea and drowned the chariots of Pharaoh?  Something similar is happening here.  Like Israel in the Exodus, these saints have been delivered by the Lord.  He's led them through their own Red Sea waters and now they stand on the far side, and even though they’ve died, they have experienced the deliverance of the Lord—like Israel did in the Exodus, but in an even more spectacular way.  This is the exodus for which the old Exodus was merely a type and shadow.  This is the exodus towards which all of redemptive history had been moving.  They stood firm. These men and women have conquered the beast.  The Lord has delivered them.  And now they stand by sea and sing his praises.

But, too, the word for “sea” is the same one used in the Greek Old Testament for the laver, the basin in the tabernacle and later the temple, where the priests would purify themselves.  In the tabernacle it was fairly small, but in Solomon’s temple it was a massive basin of water that sat on the back of four great bulls.  That sea in the temple was symbolic of the Red Sea, through which the Lord had purified his people and purchased them for his own.  And something similar has happened here with these saints who have passed through this great tribulation.  Here they have been purified and made God’s people.  I think, too, that there’s some sacramental imagery going on.  Repeatedly in Revelation, the Lord has paused before acting out his judgements, paused so that he can mark out his people.  A Passover of sorts, as when the Israelites marked their homes with the blood of the lamb so that the Lord’s judgment would pass over them.  Repeatedly, too, John uses the imagery of the beast’s mark—an anti-sacrament, which marks out the wicked as belonging to the beast.  So here, the saints are marked by their baptism as belonging to the Lord and judgement passes over them.  They have passed through a baptism of fire, and just as Pharaoh’s army was destroyed by the same sea through which Israel was delivered, the fire through which the saints have been delivered is about to be poured out on Rome in judgement.

Look now at verses 3 and 4:

And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying,

“Great and amazing are your deeds,

         O Lord God the Almighty!

Just and true are your ways,

         O King of the nations!

Who will not fear, O Lord,

         and glorify your name?

For you alone are holy.

         All nations will come

         and worship you,

for your righteous acts have been revealed.”

 

The saints here don’t literally sing the same song that Moses sang, but they sing something that gets at the same themes as the song of Moses and the Israelites in Exodus 15.  You all know the song of Moses—or at least parts of it.  “I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously, the horse and his rider he has thrown in to the sea” (Exodus 15:1).  The first half of that song is all about God’s defeat of the Egyptians.  That’s the part we sing in Sunday school.  It’s the—for lack of a better term—the “theological” part that follows that we don’t know as well, which is ironic, because that’s what explains the whole thing.

The second half of Moses’ song highlights two important things.  The first is that the Lord does these things because he is holy and just.  “Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods?  Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?” sings Moses.  The Lord cannot and will not allow injustice to continue forever and to go unjudged.  Second, the Lord does these things and his people proclaim them so that the nations will take note.  So that the nations will fear the Lord, and come to him in repentance and faith.  Moses sings, “The peoples have heard; they tremble; pangs have seized the inhabitants of Philistia.  Now are the chiefs of Edom dismayed; trembling seizes the leaders of Moab; all the inhabitants of Canaan have melted away.  Terror and dread fall upon them, because of the greatness of your arm.”

Brothers and Sisters, the Lord’s purpose in calling Abraham out of the pagan nations and then, through him, creating a people for himself, was that through that people, he would make himself known to the world.  In everything he did with and for his people, whether it was blessing or judgement, deliverance or discipline, the Lord’s goal was to draw the nations to himself.  And the song of the saints here in Revelation 15 is full of these same themes.  “Great and amazing are your deeds,” they sing.  “Just and true are your ways, O King of the nations.”  “All nations will come and worship you, for your righteous acts have been revealed.”  That’s always been the Lord’s purpose—when he acts and for his people.  He desires to make himself known.  And the purpose of his people, whether the old Israel or the new, has always been to witness his mighty deeds.  It’s interesting that it was on the other side of the Red Sea, at Mount Sinai, that the Lord gave his people instructions for building the tabernacle, the place where they would witness or meet with him.  Now, with that in mind, look at verses 5-8.

After this I looked, and the sanctuary of the tent of witness in heaven was opened, and out of the sanctuary came the seven angels with the seven plagues, clothed in pure, bright linen, with golden sashes around their chests.  And one of the four living creatures gave to the seven angels seven golden bowls full of the wrath of God who lives forever and ever, and the sanctuary was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power, and no one could enter the sanctuary until the seven plagues of the seven angels were finished.

The heavenly tabernacle which the earthy tabernacle and temple were but a shadow now opens.  Seven angels emerge and they carry with them seven golden bowls containing seven plagues.  These bowls are the heavenly counterpart of the bowls used in the earthly tabernacle to present and pour out drink offerings.  As John wrote in the last chapter, the wicked were to “drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger”.  In the next chapter the angels sing, “For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and you have given them blood to drink.  It is what they deserve!” (16:6).

In the daily service of the tabernacle, just as here in John’s vision, the trumpets are blown and then the bowls containing the drink offering were poured out.  It was the last ritual act that completed the service of the altar.  And, again, I think John has the imagery of the sacraments in mind.  The sea, an image of the Red Sea, before which the saints stand recalls the deliverance of Israel and now their baptism into Jesus and the Spirit, into the life of God.  But it also recalls the reversal of those saving waters to drown the army of Pharaoh.  Now I think we also see the Lord’s Supper in the bowl or chalice that carries the drink offering—the blood of Jesus given for the redemption of the world, but which, when poured out, also bears the wrath of God for the wicked who have unjustly spilled the blood of both the saints and of Jesus.

And then John sees this awesome image of the glory of the Lord as the heavenly tabernacle fills with smoke.  It was this awesome cloud of glory that consumed the sacrifices.  It was this awesome cloud of glory that led the Israelites in the wilderness. It was this awesome cloud of glory that descended to fill the tabernacle and later the temple.  And it was the sign of the Lord’s presence with is people—a source of comfort and of hope—but in its awesome terribleness it was also a reminder of his absolute holiness—a holiness to make sinners tremble before it.  No one could bear the weight of that holiness when it was present.  So, once again, the Lord is here, he is present, for his people in the midst of their tribulation, but he is also present to pour out his wrath and judgement on sin.  Brothers and Sisters, if we sinners, broken by the fall, can so easily look at the world and know that things are not the way they should be, how much more is the one who created all things and grieves its corruption aware of the problem?  He who loves his creation and loves his people, he who gave his only Son for our sake, he who is supremely righteous, will surely see that justice is done and that all is set to rights.

For those saints living in the First Century, who knew first-hand the persecution of both Jerusalem and Rome, many who died rather than renounce the Lord Jesus, vindication and justice were coming.  The heavenly tabernacle was opened.  And just as the Lord’s righteousness was once poured out on Egypt, it was once again about to be poured out on the nations.  As they sang: His righteous acts were about to be revealed” with the result that “all the nations would come and worship him”.  And, once again as we’ve seen before, the church has an integral role to play in all of this.  Christians do not simply sit by—me, my Bible, and Jesus—while God does his mighty deeds.  As Israel before, the Church is part of those mighty deeds.  We experience the wickedness of the world—from the neighbour who robs us in the dark of night, the shady workman who rips us off, the acquaintances who mock our faith, the central bank with its unjust weights and measures that debases our currency, to the government that rules the proclamation of the gospel to be “hate speech”.  God’s people are in the thick of the world’s injustices.  We are meant to know by our own mournful experiences that this is not how the world was meant to be.  And so, like those saints before the throne, we can declare to the nations the mighty acts of God—the acts that have brought both judgement and deliverance, both wrath and hope—from the Red Sea to the Cross and the empty tomb to the fall of wicked Jerusalem and the conversion of an empire and the nations.  Brothers and Sisters, we know the fallenness of the world and we know ourselves the Lord’s saving hand.  We are his people and he has filled us with his Spirit.  We are now the tabernacle in which he dwells.  May the smoke of his holy presence now arise from us as we proclaim the good news of his justice and mercy, his wrath and his grace, to this world so desperately in need of the hope of the good news.  We do so in sure and certain faith, knowing that Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again.

Let’s pray: O God, the King of glory, you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven: Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit to strengthen us, and exalt us to that place where our Savior Christ has gone before; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting.  Amen.

Follow the Lamb

Revelation 14

by William Klock

A few weeks ago we observed what’s often called “Good Shepherd Sunday”, the Second Sunday after Easter.  We read the Gospel from John 10.  That’s where Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me” (John 10:14).  Later he says, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.  I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:27-28).  The good shepherd knows his sheep, but because he knows us, we grow to know him in return.  “My sheep hear my voice,” he says.  It’s the image of a shepherd, not driving his sheep from behind, not corralling them with sheep dogs, but going ahead, leading the way.  And because the sheep know him, they follow.  They know they are secure.  Throughout the Gospels that is Jesus’ call: “Follow me.”  To the fisherman tending their nets, he calls out, “Follow me.”  To Matthew, sitting in the customs house counting his money, he calls out, “Follow me.”  When his friends ask him stupid questions or complain that they don’t know what the future holds, Jesus sets them back on track and says to them, “Follow me.”  That’s what it’s all about: following Jesus.  Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff comfort me.”

In contrast, the last couple of chapters in Revelation have shown us the dragon and his beasts.  The first beast boasts blasphemously, claiming to be divine.  His pet, the second beast, compels the people of the nations to worship him.  In contrast to the Israelites, who were to bind God’s law to their heads and hands—to meditate on it and to live by it—the nations are similarly marked by the beast with a parody of the Lord’s exhortation.  They devote themselves to the beast, to his values, and to his system.  And those not devoted to the beast and his worship become outcasts and are persecuted.  In the midst of all this, John is exhorted: “Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints.”  This is the valley of the shadow of death, but keep following the good shepherd.  And now as we begin Chapter 15, we see Jesus leading those who endured in faith.  Look at 14:1-5.

Then I looked, and behold, on Mount Zion stood the Lamb, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads.  And I heard a voice from heaven like the roar of many waters and like the sound of loud thunder.  The voice I heard was like the sound of harpists playing on their harps, and they were singing a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and before the elders.  No one could learn that song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth.  It is these who have not defiled themselves with women, for they are virgins.  It is these who follow the Lamb wherever he goes. These have been redeemed from mankind as firstfruits for God and the Lamb, and in their mouth no lie was found, for they are blameless.

 

Picture the good shepherd as he makes his way up to the mountain top, to the sheepfold, and behind him follow his sheep—a multitude of them.  It may have seemed as though the entire world was bowing before the beast, capitulating to the empire, offering their pinch of incense to Caesar.  As we read in 13:4, those who saw the power and authority of the beast cried out, “Who is like the beast and who can fight against it?”  To oppose the beast was hopeless.  And yet it wasn’t.  And this multitude following Jesus, this 144,000, this number symbolic of completeness, they prove otherwise.  Rather than bearing the mark of the beast, these are marked on their foreheads with the name of the Father and of the Lamb.  These are those who had been baptised into Jesus.

The heavenly orchestra accompanies them as they burst into a new song in the presence of the Lord.  And it’s a song that they and they alone can sing.  Why?  Because this is a unique people.  Who are they?  In addition to being marked out by God, John says that these “have not defiled themselves with women, for they are virgins”.  This is symbolic language.  It doesn’t mean that they were all men.  It doesn’t mean that they were literally all virgins.  It's a symbolic picture of faithfulness.  In Old Testament imagery, Israel was depicted as a pure virgin and, of course, the Lord was the groom.  This was the ideal that Israel repeatedly failed to keep.  Over and over she prostituted herself to foreign gods.  And so this group of people stands in contrast both to unbelieving Israel, but more immediately, they stand in contrast to the nations from which John says they have been redeemed.  The nations had become drunk on the wine of Babylon—on the wickedness of Rome and her false gods.  In contrast, these have kept themselves pure.  “It is these who follow the Lamb wherever he goes,” John writes.  And they followed even to death.  Jesus called to them, “Follow me,” and they followed him.  They followed him through rejection, through persecution, through tribulation, even through death, because Jesus had already died for them and they had no reason to fear and every reason to be faithful.  Tribulation.  Perseverance.  Kingdom.  That’s what Revelation is about and we see the kingdom bit here.  John draws often on Psalm 2.  These saints stand on Mt. Zion with Jesus.  The Psalmist writes, “I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill” (2:6).  This is the king who will “break the nations with a rod of iron and dash them to pieces like a potter’s vessel” (2:9).  This is the same Psalm that Jesus used when he gave John the letter to the Christians in Thyatira:

The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father.  (2:26-27)

As messed up as some of those churches were, John also sees them here having stood firmly for Jesus.  They have “conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name,” he writes in the next chapter.  They have followed Jesus in faithfulness and they now share in his reward.  They have been “redeemed from mankind as firstfruits for God and the Lamb”.  If you’ve been reading ahead, these are that special group who make up the first resurrection of the dead that we read about in Chapter 20.  The beast built his world on a lie, just as the devil did in the beginning.  These are they who refused the lie for the truth of God.  These are they who took the mark of the Lamb rather than the mark of the beast, even though it meant they would stand out, ripe for persecution.  Brothers and Sisters, that’s what it means to follow Jesus.

Now that the saints have been marked by God, judgement on the wicked is finally unleashed.  From here to the end of Chapter 18, John describes the Lord’s judgment as it was to fall on the Greco-Roman world.  Look at verses 6-13:

Then I saw another angel flying directly overhead, with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people.  And he said with a loud voice, “Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come, and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water.”

  Another angel, a second, followed, saying, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, she who made all nations drink the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality.”

  And another angel, a third, followed them, saying with a loud voice, “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.  And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name.”

  Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus.

  And I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.” “Blessed indeed,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!”

 

John draws on the prophecy of Isaiah now.  The middle part of Isaiah was written to Israel in exile, to Israel on the verge of losing hope.  The Babylonians had defeated Israel, they’d destroyed Jerusalem and the temple, and they’d taken all but the poor back to Babylon and into exile.  “Where is our God?” the people asked.  By all accounts the Lord appears to have been defeated by the gods of the Babylonians—and that made him a god not worth following, not worth worshipping.  And so Isaiah prophesied.  He prophesied about the covenant faithfulness of the Lord.  He reminded Israel that the Lord is the one who created heaven and earth and that he had not and will never be defeated by the false gods of the nations.  He had no more been defeated by the gods of Babylon than he had been defeated by the gods of Egypt a thousand years before.  When the time was right, the Lord would, as he had in the past, manifest his power and authority.  He would deliver his people, renew his covenant with them, and set all to rights.  And the Lord, Isaiah prophesied, will do all of this through his servant—the servant whom we meet in the New Testament as Jesus.  Babylon will fall—and Isaiah has no shortages of oracles about Babylon falling.  And this is where we read that well-known passage about the beautiful feet of him who brings good news.  That’s the imagery and language John is drawing on here when he writes about this angel, this herald carrying an “eternal gospel”—good news.

Brothers and Sisters, what is the gospel?  We too often have a narrow and truncated view of the gospel.  We often make it very self-centred: God loves me, God forgives me, God saves me.  All of that is true, but the gospel is a lot bigger than that, too.  Think of St. Paul writing in Romans.  There the gospel is about Jesus’ the king descended from David and recognized as the son of God in his resurrection.  It’s about the fact that he is lord of all and that he will not only set us personally right, but that he will set all of creation to rights.  The gospel is big—far bigger than we often give it credit.  And so, drawing on Isaiah, especially Isaiah 52, John has three things in mind when we writes about the preaching of this gospel.

First, the Lord reigns.  However things may look, the God of Israel is in control—over the gods of Babylon, over Israel’s defeat and exile, and over everything—which means it will be okay (52:7, 9).  Second, Isaiah reminds the people that the Lord will return.  The temple was destroyed, the Lord’s presence was no longer there, but he will return and everyone will see and know it (52:8).  And, third, the Lord has rolled up his sleeves—he’s “bared his arms”—to deliver his people and all the world will see it (52:10).  And yet, when Babylon eventually did fall and Israel returned to the land and rebuilt the temple, the Lord remained conspicuously absent.  The glory cloud never returned to the temple.  Not until Jesus did the Lord return to fulfil these promises once and for all.

John also draws on lengthy passages of judgement from Jeremiah.  Jeremiah, too, experienced the defeat of Israel by Babylon, the destruction of the city, and the aftermath of exile.  The last seven chapters of his prophecy are announcements of judgement on Egypt, Philistia, Moab, Ammon, Edom, Syria, and finally Babylon.  These were the nations that fought and oppressed God’s people and Jeremiah announced the judgement that was to come on them.  And that sets up the judgement John writes about.  The gospel is good news on two fronts.  It’s good news that the Lord is setting this fallen world to rights and it’s good news that this also means the enemies of God and his people will finally be judged and dealt with—their corrupting influence removed and the saints they oppressed vindicated.  The angels announce, Babylon who forced her immorality on the nations and made them drunk, has fallen, and in verses 9-11, the Lord’s judgement will be both just and thorough.  It's not just the beast; it’s not just Babylon.  Those who have drunk her wine will drink the full cup of the Lord’s wrath.  John borrows this image from Isaiah 34, where the destruction of Edom is compared to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.  Again, the Lord’s judgement on the wicked will be just, it will be thorough, and it will be complete.  And, note, John describes this judgement and destruction as happening in the presence of the Lamb.  First, Jesus does not turn away and leave others to carry out justice.  Second, it’s also a reminder to us that justice on the wicked—however much it may grieve him—is also pleasing to the Lord.  The Lord is just and bringing justice to Creation reveals his glory.

But here’s the key: this announcement of judgement once again becomes a call for the endurance of the saints, just as we saw in the last chapter.  Hold fast to Jesus!  “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord,” John is told to write.  Here they are, standing with the Lamb on Mt. Zion having endure and overcome.  For the saints, death it not the end.  The wicked fear death.  It is their final wage.  But for those who belong to Jesus, death has been defeated and is no more to be feared.  Now verses 14-20:

Then I looked, and behold, a white cloud, and seated on the cloud one like a son of man, with a golden crown on his head, and a sharp sickle in his hand.  And another angel came out of the temple, calling with a loud voice to him who sat on the cloud, “Put in your sickle, and reap, for the hour to reap has come, for the harvest of the earth is fully ripe.”  So he who sat on the cloud swung his sickle across the earth, and the earth was reaped.

  Then another angel came out of the temple in heaven, and he too had a sharp sickle.  And another angel came out from the altar, the angel who has authority over the fire, and he called with a loud voice to the one who had the sharp sickle, “Put in your sickle and gather the clusters from the vine of the earth, for its grapes are ripe.”  So the angel swung his sickle across the earth and gathered the grape harvest of the earth and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God.  And the winepress was trodden outside the city, and blood flowed from the winepress, as high as a horse’s bridle, for 1,600 stadia.

 

The vision shifts from the lamb and his people on Mount Zion to one like a son of man seated on a cloud.  This is an image from Daniel 7 of the coming Messiah and his crowning as God’s king.  But the imagery of the harvest and the winepress is from Joel 3:

Let the nations stir themselves up

         and come up to the Valley of Jehoshaphat;

for there I will sit to judge

         all the surrounding nations.

Put in the sickle,

         for the harvest is ripe.

Go in, tread,

         for the winepress is full.

The vats overflow,

         for their evil is great.  (Joel 3:12-13)

In his resurrection and ascension the Messiah has taken his throne, he has judged Jerusalem, now he judges the nations.  The image of the wine and winepress highlights the justice of the Lord’s judgement.  In verse 10 John wrote that the worshipers of the beast would drink the wine of God’s wrath and now we see that it is their very wickedness that angels tread in the Lord’s winepress.  The wickedness of the nations is poured back on them.  The measure they have given is pressed down, shaken together, and running over is measured back to them.  They reap what they have sown and once again God is glorified because his faithfulness is revealed.

And that’s the message we need to hear.  I want to be clear that John was writing to a specific people in a specific time and specific place about specific events that were about to take place.  All of it, at least so far, is in our past.  It happened long ago.  And yet what we see in Revelation about these themes of tribulation, perseverance, and kingdom reverberate down through the ages to us.  John reminds us, as he writes in the prologue to his Gospel, that the light has come into the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.  Just the opposite, in fact.  You and I bear that light today.  The darkness still hates the light, but still, the darkness has not and will not overcome it.  God will vindicate his people.  He always has and he always will, and in that we find out faith and our hope.  We look to the cross and know that we are forgiven, we look to the empty tomb and see that death has been defeated, and then we look up and see Jesus ascending to his throne and know that he reigns and always will.  That’s the good news and the world needs to hear it.  So we go out and we proclaim Jesus.  We proclaim the cross.  We proclaim the empty tomb.  We proclaim his ascension.  We proclaim the mighty and saving deeds of God to the world.  And the light drives the darkness away.  Sometime fast.  Sometimes slow.  But the light drives the darkness away.  And yet we know it’s not always easy to be that light.  The darkness will not overcome it, but that doesn’t stop it from trying.  And so we need John’s words of encouragement and exhortation in our own age.  And again that points us to Jesus.  The light shined its brightest when the darkness thought it had snuffed it out.  And sometimes so too with us.  Tribulation, opposition, persecution, and even martyrdom  are part of the Lord’s plan to bring salvation to the world.  There could be no empty tomb without the cross.  There could be no ascension if Jesus had not first humbled himself.  And so with us and with our life, mission, and ministry, Brothers and Sisters, as he entrust ourselves to Jesus and give ourselves for the sake of the gospel.  That 144,000 stands today in the heavenly throne room, praising the Lamb, and witness to us that it is worth following Jesus.  He truly is the good shepherd.  He is faithful to his promises and he cares for his sheep.  We can trust him.  For Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will surely come again.

Let’s pray: Gracious Father, by the death and resurrection of your Son, you have made us an Easter people.  Keep his cross and empty tomb and throne ever before us that we might follow in faithful obedience wherever he leads, and fulfil the good purpose you have for us, through him who reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, now and forever.  Amen.

A Call for Endurance

Revelation 12-13

by William Klock

John’s Revelation has prompted innumerable speculations over the last two millennia, ranging from the reasonable to the bizarre to the downright goofy.  The most fruitful root of such speculations is, without a doubt, this character John calls the “beast”.  Who is he?  The Protestant Reformers pretty universally identified him with the Papacy for understandable reasons.  Luther even wrote to Leo X and accused him directly of being the antichrist.  Napoleon was accused of being the beast, mostly because he antagonized the Church—and if you finessed his name and title the right way it adds up to 666.  Ditto for Hitler.  Then there’s JFK and the 666 votes he took in the electoral college—and his death from a head wound.  I remember as a kid people speculating about Henry Kissinger, whose name adds up to 111, which is 666 divided by six.  But Kissinger quickly gave way to Mikhail Gorbachev.  I never heard anyone work up a 666 scheme, but the birthmark on his forehead was surely the “mark of the beast”, or so people said.  Never mind that a lot of the same people in those days were telling us that the mark of the beast was somehow also credit cards or barcodes.  Then there was Ronald Wilson Reagan—each of his names contains six letters.  And Barack Obama.  The day after he was elected, the Illinois Pick Three lottery numbers in his home state were 666.  And, of course, Saddam Hussein, who some folks claimed was setting out to rebuild ancient Babylon.  More recently there have been schemes to connect Bill Gates with the beast and COVID vaccines as his “mark”.  Even Barney has fallen victim to these schemes.  Not only was he corrupting our children, but “CVTE PVRPLE DINOSAVR”—yes indeed, it adds up to 666.

All these attempts to identify John’s beast really highlight the folly of unhitching the biblical text from its context.  No one seems to take seriously Jesus’ promise that these things would take place in the lifetime of his disciples.  And no one seems to consider that John was writing to a cluster of churches in Asia Minor in a specific time and setting in order to encourage them to stand firm in faith as all hell was about to break loose around them.  How would any of these identifications have made sense to the people of those churches?  And how would knowing an obscure connection between the devil and Leo X or Henry Kissinger be any kind of exhortation to them?  Context is everything and what John wrote to them had to make sense to them in their situation.  So far, John’s vision has revealed the climax of the story of God and Israel, culminating in judgement on the old, faithless Israel and the vindication of the new.  These are the events that Jesus warned of in his ministry.  But that’s not the end of things.  The gospel was not for Israel alone.  Israel’s ministry had always been to the nations; they simply never fulfilled it.  Last week we saw the witness of the Jewish Church, fulfilling what Elijah and Moses had never been able to do: to cause the nations not only to notice the God of Israel, but also to stir faith in them.  The judgement of the old Israel and the vindication of the new now broadens the horizon and, as I said last week, John’s vision now begins, itself, to broaden.  From Jerusalem, it now turns to the nations.

With Chapter 12 John’s attention is turned the sky.  Imagine being out on a dark night and looking up into the depths of the sky and seeing the constellations.  And as you look they come to life and you see a story unfold in the stars.  That’s, I think, the sense of what John sees now.  Look at 12:1-6.

  And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.  She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth.  And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems.  His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it.  She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which she is to be nourished for 1,260 days.

 

John sees a woman, a dragon, and a child.  The woman is in the pains of childbirth and the dragon poises itself to devour the newborn child.  The child is where we should begin.  This is the Messiah.  John uses the language of Psalm 2.  That’s the song where Israel sang about the Lord’s anointed King who would rule the nations with a rod of iron.  It’s the psalm where the Lord says of this Messiah, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you” (2:7).  With that in mind we shouldn’t take the birth of this child as his literal birth.  In other words, this isn’t Mary giving birth to the Baby Jesus.  The signs John sees in the sky point to the resurrection of Jesus.  Paul writes in Romans 1:4 that Jesus was “designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead.”

And while John draws on the symbolism of Daniel to describe the dragon with his ten horns and seven heads, he tells us outright in verse 9 that this is the devil.  The dragon is poised to devour the child, but the child—the Messiah—is rescued by God himself.  At the cross the devil was sure of his victory, but at the empty tomb and in the ascension, his prize was snatched from him.  With Jesus out of his grasp, he goes after the woman instead.  Who is she?  This is where it’s crucial to remember to whom John is writing and why.  Remember that Revelation is about tribulation, perseverance, and kingdom.  It’s meant to encourage the Church to stand firm even as the dragon pursues.  God has rescued and vindicated his Messiah and he will do the same for his Church.  For three and a half years the enemy will rage against Jerusalem as we’ve already seen, but God will prepare a place for his own.  Using the language of the Exodus John describes the woman being cared for in the wilderness.  But why does the dragon go after the woman?  John goes on in verses 7-12:

Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven.  And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.  And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.  And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.  Therefore, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!”

 

John’s vision sort of reveals what’s going on behind the scenes—or in heaven or in the spiritual realm—at the cross.  As much as Michael is traditionally seen as an archangel, I think there’s good reason to equate him with Jesus himself and with the “angel of the Lord” in the Old Testament.  His description in Daniel is similar to the description of Jesus in Revelation 1.  And in Daniel, the angels are unable to overcome the demons until Michael comes to their aid.  Whatever the case, the key to this victory is the blood of the lamb, and the devil himself is thrown down by the saints.  This is interesting and encouraging.  As much as it is Jesus who defeats the devil by his blood, John says that the saints win their own victory over the devil by his blood and by their testimony.  Jesus said something very similar on the return of his disciples early in his ministry.  He sent them out to proclaim the kingdom and they came back excited and saying, “Even the demons submit to us!”  And Jesus said to them, “I saw satan fall like lightning from heaven.  Behold, I have given you authority…over all the power of the enemy.  Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven” (Luke 10:18-20).  Notice that it’s by the victory of the saints that “the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come” and that the accuser has been thrown down.  This is a victory that, again, was won by Jesus, but the Church, especially in her persecution and witness, has a share in the victory of Jesus.  And that’s because it’s the proclamation and witness of Jesus’ people that carries his authority to the nations.  To put it in terms of Daniel’s prophecy, this is the coming of the son of man to receive authority and to bring judgement on the nations.

But the defeat of the devil in “heaven” means tribulation for his enemies on earth.  This is the warning that John has been giving to the churches, but it also comes with a word of encouragement.  Look at 12:13-17.

And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child.  But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle so that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to the place where she is to be nourished for a time, and times, and half a time.  The serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, to sweep her away with a flood.  But the earth came to the help of the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed the river that the dragon had poured from his mouth.  Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus. And he stood on the sand of the sea.

 

The imagery here and in the first part of the chapter identifies the woman with Israel.  Amongst other things, the twelve stars, the sun, and the moon at her feet is the language of Joseph’s vision of his family.  And, of course, it’s Israel that metaphorically gives birth to Jesus.  He is the culmination of her story.  But in Revelation, Israel stands judged because of her unfaithfulness.  So the woman’s identity is narrower than just all of Israel.  She represents the faithful of Israel, those who have kept covenant with the Lord and, more specifically now, the Jewish Church.  They have seen the Lord’s Messiah and they’ve embraced him in faith.  And failing to defeat Jesus, the dragon now goes after this “woman”.

John uses the language of the Exodus here.  In Exodus 19:4 the Lord says to Israel, “You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself.”  Here, again, he rescues his people on eagles’ wings.  The serpent pours out water—calling back to the Red Sea—but the Lord causes the earth to swallow it.  And as we read in verse 6, like Israel, the Lord feeds the woman in the wilderness.  For three and a half years the dragon wars against her and for three and a half years the Lord protects and cares for her.  And this, more or less, reflects what happened in those days.  The Romans warred against Jerusalem for three and a half years, the city was destroyed, thousands up on thousands were killed, but the Christians of Jerusalem heeded the warnings of Jesus, fled eastward into the wilderness, and were spared.  So the dragon has been foiled twice and now the dragon goes off to make war on the rest of the woman’s children, on those “who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus”—on the fledgling gentile churches of the empire.  This is where John’s vision reaches out to encompass those little churches scattered across Asia Minor.

Now, Chapter 13.  Look at verses 1-4.

And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads, with ten diadems on its horns and blasphemous names on its heads.  And the beast that I saw was like a leopard; its feet were like a bear’s, and its mouth was like a lion’s mouth. And to it the dragon gave his power and his throne and great authority.  One of its heads seemed to have a mortal wound, but its mortal wound was healed, and the whole earth marveled as they followed the beast.  And they worshiped the dragon, for he had given his authority to the beast, and they worshiped the beast, saying, “Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?”

 

This beast rises from the sea, an image that tells us we’re not talking about Israel anymore.  In fact, from this point on John changes the source of most of his Old Testament imagery.  Up to this point he’s been drawing on images that speaks of judgement on Israel.  Now he starts drawing on imagery that speaks of judgement on the pagan nations.  This beast with its seven heads and ten horns is related to the dragon.  It’s part leopard, part bear, and part lion—three of Daniel’s beasts representing the pagan empires that oppressed Israel, and that identifies it as yet another pagan empire, in this case Rome.  This is made explicit later, in Chapter 17, where the angel tells John that the seven heads are the “seven mountains on which the woman is seated” (17:9), which can’t be mistaken for anything but Rome.

To this beast the dragon gives his authority to rule the nations.  And, yet, remember that even the dragon operates within the sovereignty of God.  And as the dragon reaches for divinity, the beast parodies Jesus.  Jesus died and rose again.  The beast—or one of its heads—is mortally wounded (verse 14 says by a sword, for what that’s worth), but the beast survives and the world marvels.  The nations worship the beast and, in doing so, unwittingly worship the dragon who stands behind it.  They marvel at his power and authority declaring, “Who is like the beast?  Who can fight against it?”  And, of course, that’s just what we see in the historical record with regard to Rome.  Rome conquered the known world, its emperors grasped at divinity, calling themselves sons of God, and even when the emperors fell, the empire itself recovered.  The mortal wound may be a reference to the assassination of Julius Caesar, the first Emperor, or to the suicide of Nero, which would take place not long after John wrote.  Whichever it refers to, many expected the empire to fall into chaos, but both times it recovered and became stronger.

Think of those Caesars who demanded the worship of the people, making blasphemous claims at godhood, as we read verses 5-10:

And the beast was given a mouth uttering haughty and blasphemous words, and it was allowed to exercise authority for forty-two months.  It opened its mouth to utter blasphemies against God, blaspheming his name and his dwelling, that is, those who dwell in heaven.  Also it was allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer them.  And authority was given it over every tribe and people and language and nation, and all who dwell on earth will worship it, everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain.  If anyone has an ear, let him hear:

         If anyone is to be taken captive,

                  to captivity he goes;

          if anyone is to be slain with the sword,

                  with the sword must he be slain.

Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints.

 

The Emperor Nero was the first emperor to actively persecute the Church, and at Rome his persecution lasted three and a half years.  To this evil king the dragon gives authority over every nation—the very authority won by Jesus in his resurrection and ascension.  This is the set-up: The dragon and the beast have stolen what rightly belongs to Jesus.  They and their worshippers will be judged and thrown down and those who belong to Jesus—those whose names are in the book of life—will be vindicated.  John quotes words of warning from Jeremiah 15:5-9, this time aimed at Jerusalem and apostate Israel: Jesus will set everything to rights.  And so John says to the churches: “Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints.”  As Jesus said, “In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).  Even when it doesn’t look like it, Brothers and Sisters, Jesus has won.

But that’s not all.  John then sees a second beast.  Look at verses 11-18.

Then I saw another beast rising out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb and it spoke like a dragon.  It exercises all the authority of the first beast in its presence, and makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose mortal wound was healed.  It performs great signs, even making fire come down from heaven to earth in front of people, and by the signs that it is allowed to work in the presence of the beast it deceives those who dwell on earth, telling them to make an image for the beast that was wounded by the sword and yet lived.  And it was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast, so that the image of the beast might even speak and might cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be slain.  Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name.  This calls for wisdom: let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666.

 

This is an unholy parody of the Trinity.  The dragon tries to claim the position of the Father, the first beast tries to take the place of the Son, and the second beast tries to take the place of the Holy Spirit.  If the first beast represents the emperors of Rome and their false claims of divinity, the second beast represents the imperial cult and its priests.  Through a network of temples—temples that were particularly popular in the cities of Asia Minor to which John wrote—the people were forced to acknowledge the divinity of the emperor and to worship him.  Sometimes it was an obligatory and patriotic pinch of incense that everyone was required to offer to Caesar.  Sometimes it was the expectation to set out a personal shrine to Caesar on the feast day that had his priests processing through the city.  But every day it was dealing with the interweaving of this false religion with the social and economic life of the city.  The law instructed the Hebrews to bind God’s law to their forehead and to their hands.  Some did it literally and still do, but the point was that they would remain faithful to the Lord and his covenant by meditating on his law with their minds that it might work out practically in their actions.  Earlier we saw that Jesus marks his people similarly in baptism with the Holy Spirit.  In contrast the people who worship the beast have centred themselves on him.  The “mark of the beast” isn’t a literal mark—as some have speculated, like a barcode, a computer chip, or a vaccine.  It’s simply the parody of the law in Israel and the Spirit in the Church.  John prompts those brothers and sisters in First Century Asia Minor to ask: Who is our God?  Who do we worship?  What will we do when push comes to shove and we’re forced to choose?  Will we stand firm and give Jesus what we know he is due, or will be bow to pressure and give to the beast what belongs to Jesus?

Now, I don’t think there was any doubt in the minds of John’s hearers what any of this symbolism pointed to, but at the end of Chapter 13 John makes it clear in saying that the beast is a man and that this number is 666.  What’s that about?  Well, ancient peoples didn’t have separate numbering systems like we do.  They had various ways of using the characters of their alphabets to represent numbers, which means that you could add up the numerical values of the letters in a name and come up with a number.  In this case 666.  John most likely wrote it this way in case the Romans got hold of his letter.  They weren’t stupid and would know that he was point to someone’s name.  His trick is that he wasn’t adding up the numbers of a Greek or Latin name, but of that name transliterated into Hebrew.  Neron Kaisar in Hebrew letters works out to 666, if you add the values up.  It doesn’t match up with Nero’s name in Greek or Latin, which any imperial censor would have assumed.  The early church Fathers recognized this.  And we even have one early variant textual tradition that changed the number to 616—the sum of Nero Caesar in Latin—a change made for the benefit of readers who didn’t know Hebrew.  Now, that said, I don’t think John meant that the beast is Nero and Nero alone.  The beast represents the emperors of Rome and Nero happened to be the current emperor at the time John wrote.  It already would have been obvious that John was writing about Rome, but just in case there was any question, the 666 bit makes it clear.

But what do we do with this?  Well, first, Friends, it means there’s no reason for Christians to be wringing their hands or getting worked up about accidentally receiving the mark of the beast—or, for that matter, accusing other Christians of having received it.  We’re talking about events that happened almost two thousand years ago, but even then, there was no way any faithful Christians was going to be tricked into receiving the mark—into worshipping Caesar.

That said, John’s exhortation to stand firm in the face of opposition is still as relevant today as it was then.  Because of the witness of the Church, the gospel conquered Rome and brought down Caesar and the dragon’s demonic parody of the Trinity.  I don’t think we realise just how different the world is today because of the power of the gospel.  The world has been radically transformed and even today’s post-Christian world that is often hostile to us continues to thrive on the capital of a world once transformed by the gospel.  But that doesn’t mean we aren’t surrounded by opposition and hostility.  We need to hear Revelation’s exhortation to stand firm in faith, Brothers and Sisters, and to remember that we do so not on our own strength, but as we stand on the victory that Jesus has won at the cross, remembering that we are an Easter people, following a resurrected Lord and living in expectant hope of our own resurrection and of the renewal of all things.

And we stand firm, not for our own sake, but because even though it is Jesus who has won the ultimate victory, John reminds us here that we have an essential part to play.  Jesus doesn’t save us from sin and death to then sit out the war behind the line while he fights the battle alone.  God has called and created a people for a reason: to carry the good news to the world.  And in that, as Jesus’ people, we have a part in the victory of the gospel over sin and death.  So stand firm.  Fight the good fight.  Go out in the power of the Spirit and with the word of God to proclaim the good news, for Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again.

Let’s pray: Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the many and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.