Revelation
4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse

The book of Revelation talks about judgments and the suffering of people. It reminds us not to feel superior and gives hope to persecuted Christians. The judgments are meant to soften our hearts and lead us to salvation. They come in groups of seven, like seals, trumpets, and bowls. The book also tells us about the four horsemen representing deception, tribalism, injustice, and sickness. But in the end, God will make things right and there will be no more suffering.

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 I’d love for you to open your Bibles to Revelation chapter six. We’re gonna be entering into the portion of Revelation that addresses the judgment of evil, but also the sufferings of people. And so, uh, maybe if you grew up in church, I’ve been hearing a lot of feedback that you’ve never heard Revelation preach before.

And to that, I actually think that might be a good thing, uh, because, you know, we, it’s so easy to twist this and misunderstand this book. But, uh, if you’re anything like me, uh, for me, when I would preach in the past, I would get up to chapter five and call it quits, right? Revelation six and on is really strange.

Especially to the modern ear, and it’s very, very hard to understand. And so we’re gonna seek to do that together, uh, today. So open to Revelation chapter six. Let me give you some, we’re just jumping right into it today. Some three exhortation, some encouragement about God’s judgment. I think it’ll be helpful for us as we’re gonna learn and read about the judgment.

The reason we’re reading Revelation right now is we’re doing a whole practice on form by scripture. And so we decided to show you what does it look like to really wrestle with the scriptures. That’s what we’re hoping our church does in general and what other book to, to exemplify and practice that.

Then the book of Revelation. So how do we read about the judgments exhortation? Number one, don’t read the judgments with blood thirsty superiority, right? We have to remember, we love the gospel of Jesus Christ and we, like Titus three says we too. Were once. Slaves to passions. We too, were once lost and disobedient.

And so we have to remember that outside. If the Lamb of God, Jesus didn’t die for us, these judgments would also be on our head. And so we don’t rejoice in, let’s say a neighbor of ours going through this type of suffering. Another thing with that is Revelation six through 18 is a lot of the judgment stuff, okay?

And what it does is it uses physical imagery, we believe, to point to a spiritual reality. Physical imagery, remember it’s poetry to point to a, uh, spiritual reality. In other words, I don’t believe the church is called in revelation to strap up with bazookas and go to Armageddon and just have a great out war.

But you can read this revelation and think that that’s the case. But really it’s not, it’s counter to the way of Jesus to read revelation and pick up a sword. Instead, what you do is you pick up the scriptures and you live a life of sacrifice. You with me? So how does Babylon fight? Babylon has bazookas.

We have prayer. Okay? And I promise you we win in the end. Okay? So that’s number one. When we are reading about these judgments, we’re not happy. Like we’re not thinking of certain people in, in a sense, right? But here’s number two, to kind of balance that. Don’t forget these judgments. Give hope to persecuted and oppressed Christians.

It’s so easy in our context. It’s getting harder. It’s easy in our context to make the argument that God should just overlook evil. That’s easy to say. If you never had a nephew who was murdered in school in third grade, right? You look at your own sins, you, you think it’s not that bad. God should overlook it.

But then you start to really see evil for what it is. And you’re really thankful, God just doesn’t overlook it. Or that’s easy to say until your sister, right WA was raped at an alley, or your father was murdered just for attending church. So there is evil in this world, so have to balance that. So we’re not blood thirsty, we’re not excited about people suffering.

But at the same time, we see the suffering of the saints and we go, well, there’s hope because there is justice that will come. And we really clinging to the scripture. Vengeance is mine, says the Lord, right? It’s the Lord who avenges those things. It’s not up to us. And so the seven churches, they’re well acquainted with evil.

You’ll read again, revelation two and three. They see seven churches and they have friends who are being killed. They are no longer allowed to have jobs. They’re being cut off from social circles because of their faith. So they know that there is evil in this world, but they’re taking hope that Christ will make all things right.

So number one, we don’t read judgements with blood thirsty superiority. We’re not better than anybody. We’re only saved because of the blood of Jesus. Number two, we don’t forget these judgements. Give hope to a persecuted people. Uh, to oppress Christians. And then number three, and this is huge concept to help us the rest of our time this morning, the judgements are designed to be purgative, but eventually become punitive.

I know those are like $10 words. If you grew up in Gilbert like me, uh, what does that mean? Right? So stay with me purgative. Think of the word purge, where Catholics come up with the term purgatory. It’s this idea that maybe you’re not holy enough, right? And so in purgatory, which I’m. We don’t believe, but you know, it’s this idea that, okay, you’ll eventually become holy and then go to heaven.

We actually believe there is a sense of purgatory per purgative actions happening here on earth during our lifetime. And so our design, God designed us to become more like him. And so many of us, or maybe you’re more comfortable with the phrase pruning in John 15, we are being pruned by the Lord. We’re put in really tough circumstances and as we receive those, those hard things in life, we become more and more like Jesus, right?

And so when, when God sins, or sometimes as we’ll see in this passage today allows suffering and evil to have its way. What God is actually designing it to do is to make us wake up and go, oh, I need to clinging to the love of Jesus and become, become more like him and then I can withstand this storm.

Matthew seven. Jesus says, the person who hears the word and does nothing is like the man who built his house on the sand, and the storm comes and it blows away. But a person who hears the word and does it is like the person who’s built his house on a rock. The storm comes and it stays strong. That’s the application here.

But it can also be punitive. Punitive in the sense that this means punishment if when our Exodus series just before, I don’t know, we did it not too long ago, okay? In the Exodus series, we learned about Pharaoh and what happened. Pharaoh was given a chance to repent, but what did Pharaoh do? He didn’t. He said, no, no, no, and his heart got hardened more and more.

And more. And there’s this idea where sometimes God allows these judgments so that we can churn to Christ, become more like him, get saved. But some of us, and I pray it’s not in this room, you can receive those judgments and instead of becoming more like Jesus, you become even more like the devil. You become even more like the world and you hate God even more.

Eugene Peterson, I, I would honestly, I’m thinking through, if you’re really interested in Revelation, some books to encourage for you to read of outside, of course Read Revelation is this book called Reverse Thunder by Eugene Peterson. I think it’s just so helpful. You’ll notice a lot of the themes that he has in that book we’ve incorporated into the series.

Here’s this really great quote in page 99 of that book, uh, just really helping us understand why does get God send and allow judgments. Look at this. He says, we do everything we can to make light of judgment. We use every Strat we can. Uh, that we can find to avoid dealing with the consequences of sin.

But God will not let us off. He will not indulge our inten inattention. He will be taken seriously. I love this next line. However, however, practice we become at tuning out sounds that we do not want to hear, including the sound of God’s displeasure at sin. God finds new ways to penetrate our defensive deafness.

If you remember two weeks ago, that was the whole theme. We’ve, we, we need ears to hear last week, eyes to see these judgements are yet another way. God is designing these things and allowing these things to happen so that you and I would begin to have eyes to see, and ears to hear what really is reality and what we should do in light of it.

Okay? You with me so far? I know. I just like jumped out and we’re already. Three points. Let’s go home. No, not yet. Right? So let’s start to look at Revelation chapter six. I’m realizing if I read every single verse will be here, uh, in, in, you know, until dinner time. So I’m not gonna do that. But let me summarize some of this for you.

And what we’re gonna be looking at is God. Um, in the Book of Revelation, he portrays the judgment in groups of seven scenes. So there’s three sets of seven scenes. So you have seven seals. That’s what we’re gonna look at today. Then you have seven trumpets, and then seven bowls. You’ll get real confused real fast.

So stay with me as what we’re hoping to do today is just look at the seals and hopefully by this kind of understanding, you’ll be empowered to then interpret what do the trumpets mean and what do the bulls mean on your own time? Okay, now, Last week we talked about the scroll opening, but there was the seal that was on the scroll.

So the scroll is the answer to life. It makes all things right. We say it’s the gospel. The lamb was slaughtered for us and because of us, and Jesus is the only one who can bring about this plan. But in that imagery, there are seals that are keeping us from opening this document and everything being made right?

So now John is gonna show here are those seven seals, and once those are released, it’s known. The scroll can now be fully opened and everything will come to pass. You guys with me, right? So there’s seven seals. These seven things have to happen before Christ comes back. That’s the easiest, quickest way to say.

So the question is, what are these seven seals? And that’s what we’re gonna look at today. Let’s pray. Father God, I just ask you for your wisdom. I ask you, God, that we would be just serious students of the scriptures this morning. Thank you, God, that these judgments, these these hard things. Are really intended for our repentance and our wellbeing.

God give us eyes to see that and ears to hear that. And God maybe leave here having a greater understanding of what this world really is going through. But may it not make us more crazy or more fearful or panic driven like the world. May we be so realistic and yet at the same time, so optimistic because of what you have called the church to do and to become.

In Jesus name I pray, everybody says Amen. Amen. Okay, the four horsemen of the apocalypse, that’s how we’re starting this out. So in the seven seals you’ll have in Revelation six, the first four seals are represented with these four horsemen. All right, so who are they? That’s the question for us today.

Let’s talk about the first of the four in chapters in chapter six, verse one and two, it talks about a white horse. Here’s what the white horse is. If you’re taking notes, it’s the white horse of deception leading us to destruction. And when you see that now, white is typically a color of righteousness and purity, right?

Think gandolph, right when he finally got white, you’re gonna love today if you like Lord of the Rings. By the way, that’s not my last reference, okay? So white is like, oh, you’re no longer gand off the gray. You’re gandolph the white. You have more wisdom, you’re more pure, you have more power. What’s interesting is a lot of people look at this passage and it talks about a white horse, and some people think, oh, this must be referring to Jesus because in Revelation 19, what do we see?

Jesus does come on a white. Horse. So we think, okay, maybe this is talking about Jesus, but I think the context shows it’s actually showing more of what the enemy is doing against the church and against the world. And so it’s wise to remember that the enemy loves to dress like an angel of light. The enemy loves to deceive.

Remember two weeks ago we talked about heresy. Heresy doesn’t come out and say, Hey, this is a heretical scary teaching. Instead, it, it dresses as nice, it, it acts like it’s the right answer. And so this white horse is deceiving us saying, we have found the true religion. We have found what is right and what’s wrong.

And so deception does exactly that. It makes you think something it’s not. And notice, and since Genesis three, this whole Bible, the devil’s primary strategy is not to beat us with a stick, but to consume us with bad ideas is to deceive us one little idea at a time. And without a biblical worldview, we are tossed to and fro.

Ephesians four says, by deceptive and false doctrines and ideas, deception in politics, deception and sexuality, deception in religion, deception in your own internal desires. There’s a lot of deception happening today now. So some people interpret these horses. You know what I think is so funny? Talk about just the devil.

That alarm never goes off. We’re setting up all week long, we’re doing this. And now when I start preaching, I hear the buzzing. Don’t focus on that even though I just pointed it out. Rule number one, as a communicator, never point out the distraction. Here I am now. So. Some people interpret, okay, what is this white horse?

It’s deception, right? It’s false religions, it’s ideologies. It’s taking things that are sinful and adding a new name so it doesn’t sound as bad. Now, some people interpret these horses as only happening in a future event, revelation seven, six, and seven should be read together. Revelation seven talks about the church enduring through this great tribulation.

Have you ever heard of the phrase tribulation before? It’s obviously the thing that people talk about. Let me again remind you, there’s four different ways to interpret revelation and uh, we’ll start there. Number one, they’re called the preterist. And so they think that this whole book was written to the first century for the first century, and that’s it.

So everything you read is not really foreseeing anything. It all happened within the first century. We do not have that view. The second is historicist, which they believe it’s progressing. And so they read this book chronologically. And so maybe they would say, okay, chapter six is starting to happen, but we haven’t seen chapter 14 yet.

Remember that. And so it’s this idea that it’s slowly unfolding. I personally don’t have that view. I have plenty of people who are smarter than me that have that view. And it’s okay that they’re wrong. I’m kidding. Now number three is futurists. And this is probably the most famous one today where they read most of Revelation is just happening in the future.

And this is a huge way people interpret this passage. They see these four horsemen, they see the seven sails, and they think once the rapture happens, now there’s tribulation. And in this tribulation is when all these things happen and it’s really, really bad. I don’t see that in this text. So what we are is idealist, at least that’s how this sermon is being presented, is this idea that every, uh, chapter in this book has timeless messages and truths that are true for every generation.

But there is this idea where it eventually culminates. Eventually all of this stuff does lead to an end. So again, we honor all positions, but I could, if I took the framework of a futurist, I would talk about these horsemen that are coming in the future. I think you can look at all of history and see these horsemen everywhere.

Do they have seasons where they intensify? Absolutely. Do they have seasons where it seems like everything got better? Yeah. The reality is it’s intensifying more and more over the stretch of history and eventually it does culminate in Jesus coming to make all things right. So every generation, in other words, is look, is tasked every church, who’s the white horse of deception and how do we speak truth against it?

It’s one of my jobs here every week. What are some deceptions we’re believing even the church is tempted to believe and how do we speak truth against it? Okay, so that’s number one. That’s the white horse. You and I as faithful Christians, and towards the end times, I promise you this, we are closer to the end times than we were last week, right?

That’s all I’ll prophesy. Okay, so this is continuing to happen. Let’s look at the next horse. What is its design and function? You’ll see a red horse. The red horse is the horse of tribalism that leads us to violence. This is verse three and four. Red is the color of war. Any EZ fans read the blood of Angry Man?

Nope. Okay, that’s fine. I have to find a way to sing every week. Now, the writer, this red writer, what it says in this verse, his job is actually, uh, to take away the peace of the world. Right? In verse four, allowed it to take peace from the earth. This word peace is shalom. It’s a Hebrew concept. You have shalom.

Everything was, everything went well. You have peace with God. In the Garden of Eve, you have peace with others. Adam and Eve went, got along. Wow. Miracle, right? And then peace with creation. Everything works. When you would plant something, what happened? The, the tree would, would actually be planted. Amazing, right?

So peace everywhere. Sin is introduced and now death. And now we no longer have peace with God. We no longer have peace with others. There’s constantly fights. There’s constantly conflict. We no longer have peace with creation. There’s natural disasters. We break things, it breaks us. All sorts of stuff, unravel.

So what does this Red Horse do specifically? Right. This red horse leads us to even more violence, to even more pain. Now, here’s what a lot of people do with the Red Horse. They ask a bad question. They ask, who is the Red Horse? Who’s the specific person in our generation that is the Red Horse? You may be tempted to look at world leaders today and say, oh, okay, now that person’s the red horse cuz he is leading to violence.

This, that, the other, right? Ephesians six 12 actually tells us, for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of the darkness against evil spiritual forces and the heavens. This should be on the next screen, uh, Ephesians six 12, so they can see, see, what does this verse mean?

This means it’s not a person, it’s like an institution. It’s government. It’s kind of the, the thought in the air, right? Like you’ll notice if you’re somebody who is born like in the sixties or whatever, you’ll notice, right? Cultural opinion, like our consensus has changed dramatically the last 60 to 70 years, right?

What is that? It’s not that you can point to one person and say, that person has changed all of our minds. It’s just kind of slowly but surely. Culture begins to morph. What we believe is that’s kind of, that is the principalities, that’s the powers of the air. You can’t point it to one person, but it is leading to this type of thing.

And of course you can point to people and say they’re making it worse, or this or that. Now, so what does this writer do? It’s institutions, it’s governments, it’s social movements. What they do is stir violence by way of tribalism. I love the Line by David Brooks. He says, tribalism is the dark twin of community.

He says, community, you base off your relationships off mutual love, but in tribalism, you base your relationships off of mutual hate. Have you seen that? More and more we’re friends. Not because we love the same things, but because we hate the same things. Sadly, churches have become that we’re getting together because we hate that political side of the aisle, right?

That’s a quick way to grow something, but it’s a quick way to also die. So what is happening here, and this is what the Red Horse does, he divides people by race, by culture, by politics, by theology, by sports. I’ve heard of a church in Alabama that split, cuz half of them were for Bama and the other half were for Auburn.

Like what in the world, right? It divides these things. Nations are dividing, right? And so if we don’t recognize this rider at work, we can easily fall into those same traps, those same snares of propaganda that lead towards violence. Let me give you a few examples. One thing that I think is beautiful is love of country, right?

Patriotism. We have July 4th coming around the corner. I love learning our history. I love being grateful for how we were established. I love even acknowledging where we went wrong, but they also knew that they’re hoping we would continue to get better. All of those things. Now, love of country, the Red Horse wants to take that and twist it to where you now hate other countries.

More specifically, you hate other people in those countries. One of the saddest things that I learned when I went to Israel is we’re all kind of trained to believe, yeah, you know, Israel, let’s root for Israel. Therefore, we love the Jews, therefore we hate the Palestinians. I hung out with Palestinian Christians the whole time, and I kept thinking in our tribalistic worldview, these people I’m hanging out with who are following Jesus.

I have Christians who want them to be bombed and killed, but they’re Christians. Right, and it twi the Red Horse causes division where there shouldn’t be division. Another easy example in that we see in today’s world is defending the faith. I love when people defend our faith. I love when we stand up for the right for religious freedom.

It’s wonderful. That can be twisted though. The Red Horse can have its way when we are so caught up in defending our Christian faith that we now want to deny other people their freedom of religion and their right to assemble. One thing that makes us uniquely Baptist is Baptists are actually historically the people to fight for everyone’s right for religion.

Cuz here’s the idea, it’s great when everybody likes the church, but what about the next generation? When people start to hate us, they’ll take those same rules about, you know, Shutting down the mosque, shutting down, whatever, and then they’ll shut down us, right? We need to allow that sort of freedom. Okay?

So that’s a huge theme in all of the scriptures. The Red Horse is always coming, seeking to divide us by making tribes, us verse them, and we say, no. God created all people. And so we love all people. We still call truth. Truth. We call lie lies, but we do not lead to violence. That is the way of Babylon, not the way of us.

Now let’s look at the next rider. You guys still with me? I love our introverted church. All right Now, the black horse of injustice leads us to famine. The black horse of injustice leads us to famine. This one is so sad. Let’s actually read this verse, chapter six, verse five. When he opened the third seal, I heard the living creature say, come and I looked and there was a black horse.

It’s rider held a set of scales in his hand. This represents justice and injustice, right? Balancing the scales. But look at what it says in verse six. Then I heard something like a voice among the four living creatures, say a quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quartz of barley for a denarius, but do not harm the oil and the wine.

If you do not live in this time, you’re like, Cool. What does that mean? I don’t get it at all. Let’s keep moving on. The black horse is strange. Hear me out. A cord of wheat is the starvation race rations for a family. So it’s like, Hey, if everybody we’re in famine, here’s what we all know. Everyone at least needs for a family.

They need to, at the bare minimum, have a cord of wheat. Now, what is a denarius? A denarius is a full day’s wage. So this is saying there is gonna be, there is times where everybody works as hard as they can and they only have just what they need. This is called famine, but then notice the strange thing, but have all this, they barely have what they need, but do not harm the oil and the wine, meaning survival’s not really available, but the luxuries of life are in abundance.

So they have a lot of luxuries, but very little necessities. How backwards is that? This reminded me our, our heart’s really broke in Cabo. I actually kind of felt bad the whole rest of the time we drove in. And the way they drive you into, uh, the resort is they don’t drive like the nice coastal highway cuz then you can see the other nice resorts and you start thinking, man, that one looks nice.

I hope, I hope ours is just as nice as that. So they don’t want you to think that, they don’t want you to start comparing. So they take you this weird way to where literally the, the first resort you see is the one you’re at. Sadly though, on that route, you see where these people actually live. Cardboard boxes, holes in the ground, right?

People have quads. That’s like their only vehicle tents everywhere. It is, it, it broke our hearts. And yet five minutes from there, all you can eat buffet, right? What a picture of how a lot of our world works. Those people over there have all the luxuries over here. They can’t even eat for the day. That breaks the heart of God and it should break the heart of the church.

And no pastor should go to that resort. But I did pray for me. Okay, so I didn’t know before. Now, an injustice throughout history is the powerful, the rich exploiting the poor. Now here’s the disclaimer cuz this is very popular in the world today. So let me speak this. Power is not inherently evil, just as powerlessness is not inherently righteous.

But most of us, if we’re given power, what do we do? We use it for selfish gain at the expense of another. This is a lot of what sin is, and so the church should be the exact opposite of this. We use our blessings to bless others. We use our positions of power to uphold justice for those who are ignored. A key practice in being Christian, and this is ignored today, is we are called to be a voice for the voiceless.

We’re called to care for the poor. We need to advocate for the dignity of all people. Now, let’s be honest though, we don’t think about this often because of our current condition by God’s grace, most, if not all in this room, have your basic necessities met. But can you imagine how encouraging this is? If you were somebody whose basic necessities were not met, you realize, oh, this is a part of something.

There is evil going on, but there is going to be an answer. This will end and this is how this book should be in. So helpful. So as the end intensifies, what continues to happen with these horsemen, you have deception, you have violence, you have famine. And lastly, it leads to death. Look at the pale green horse in chapter six, verse seven and eight.

The pale green horse of uh, of sickness leads us to death. Sickness leading us to death. There is a lot of destroying today that is happening within our own bodies, right? The data is pretty crazy how my generation struggles with things like infertility, right? And, and kids with autism and all sorts of crazy things, and it’s like historically it’s not.

Then we go, is that because we didn’t track it before? Or is something happening that didn’t happen? And then we start to think, right, we have all this stuff happening. Right. The end says this is kind of what the Pale Green horse does it, and, and, and it introduces even more sickness. What we have is really kind of a few different outcomes that the Pale Green Horse tries to do to us.

One is like we’re all going the way of Wally. You guys ever seen that movie, right? Where we’re all just on that, uh, you know, what do you call that thing? You know, just like a wheelchair type thing, and it just drives us everywhere and we’re just constantly entertaining. All we’re doing is eating right.

Technology is doing this to us, right? Basic things we used to do, we just had technology do for us. Praise the Lord for those vacuums that just like, do it for it Roomba, right? Amazing, right? But at the end of the day, when will, when will it stop? You know, like, when will we just like get up and do something for ourselves, right?

And so the Pale Green Horse actually tries to encourage those things, making us more and more useless, using our bodies less and less, and leading it to decay. Another thing the Pell Green horse seeks to do is addict us to substances, right? We talked about placebos last week. These placebos, if I just take this substance, I’ll feel better.

But what happens is you are looking for a physical solution to a spiritual problem, and it leads to more physical pain. Also, the Pell Green horse tries to work us to death, right? Sickness of like not resting. Why? We talk about Sabbath a lot here. Sickness of constantly trying to achieve the next accolade and the next accomplishment, and it deteriorates our body.

I have people I love and I’m like, you just need a break, but they won’t, right? And so the data is showing The wealthiest nations also happen to be the ones with the most illness and the most disease, right? We’re weakened and impaired by the things we eat, consume, and ignore. In a sense, I didn’t think about it until studying it this week.

Larger hospitals should not be something we brag about. Think about it. Yeah, we got the biggest hospital in town. Like that means there’s a lot of sick people, like, you know, like maybe we need to get healthier, right? And of course there’s, there’s so many things outside of our control, but we’re also learning more and more.

Some of this was within our control. What are we consuming? What are we having? Um, anyway, so you guys with me still? This is the pale green horse. Actually, I’m so grateful for a lot of ladies in our church who have been seeking to try to educate me even by the things I consume. Because this is the temple, right?

This is what God has blessed us with. We should take care of it. But the pale green horse finds ways to make us sicker and sicker, less and less effective, and destroying us. Now there’s three more seals. Let me be quick. The last one, marking the end of evil in judgment. So the fifth seal is the religious persecution, so that will continue to ramp up where more and more Christians are killed for their faith.

Look at verse nine. When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar of the souls of those who had been slaughtered because of the word of God and the testimony they had given. They cried out with a loud voice, Lord, the one who is holy and true. How long until you judge those who live on the earth and avenge our blood, they want justice.

So they were given, uh, each a white robe, representing purity, and they were told to rest a little while. Longer until the number would be completed of their fellow servants and their brothers and sisters who were going to be killed just as they had been. This has actually been a huge verse of comfort to those who have died for their faith, because this is saying, in order for Christ to come back, it’s almost like, you know, remember like those fundraising, like thermometer things or whatever, right?

And like, oh, we’re, we’re all halfway there. Right? Keep giving. It’s almost like the, the killing of the Christians. There’s this idea that once that gets all the way, full Christ is coming back. And so it’s this great comfort of saying, okay, I’m gonna suffer for the Lord and my suffering’s not in vain, because as I suffer, the Lord coming back is happening sooner and sooner.

It’s this idea that I’m contributing to the kingdom coming. Back and coming and ushering in a new way of life. See the way of the lamb. Notice in verse nine through 11, he doesn’t say, get your guns out and we’re gonna kill those who don’t believe Jesus. No. The way of the lamb beckons us to die for our faith never to kill for our faith.

One of the worst parts of the church history is the, you know, where, where we were killing people in the name of capturing Jerusalem and and saving people. That, that, that is, uh, that is not the way. Jesus, the sixth seal next in verses 12 and following it talks about natural disasters. And so the sixth seal is natural disasters and catastrophes, which Matthew 24 Jesus says will continue to increase.

Do we not see this everywhere, right? Tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, the earth is groaning, but I always teach my kids Arizona’s the best cuz we don’t have those, you know what I’m saying? We just burned to death. But it’s fine. You know, at least we don’t have hurricanes. Um, Then you have the seventh seal, which is like this symbolic sign of silence happening, and it, the silence represents the prayers of the saints, and that then culminates in Jesus coming back now.

But let me pause for a moment and just lament. Life is hard. You may not have known it, but you have been fighting against principalities and powers. Some of one of these four, or all of these four. You have intimate stories about sickness, taking people far too soon about tribalism and violence within your family or conflict, right?

Or, or just straight up injustice happening, or deception. There’s people in your life, or maybe you even have your own story where you believed a lie for so long, and so life is tough. This. Revelation should not cause us to oversimplify or just rejoice cuz we know how it ends at the end, there is this element where we are sad because this is the world we’re in.

But here’s the good news. Christians are to be the most realistic and optimistic people on the planet. Realistic. There is sin, there is suffering done by us, done to us, done around us. It’s a really tough place. Let’s be real. There’s a lot of deception going on. There’s unjustified violence there. There’s ecological disasters, there’s sicknesses that could have been prevented.

There’s saints that shouldn’t be killed and I know some of the pain in this room and it hurts. Look at my own life. Look at the last seven years thinking about how I thought my life would go, and a lot of it is full of sadness. There has been worship services where me and my wife, I have to hold it together, but we’re crying in the front row because of what happened to us the week before.

The people we’ve lost, the children we have lost and miscarriage. A lot of pain happens. And so we’re realistic about that. If I were to look at the last decade of my life, it’s less that my dreams have come true. More disappointments have come true, but this is life revelation empowers us to be realistic.

The horsemen are here and it gets tough, and yet we’re also optimistic cuz the scriptures as we continue to read the story is not over. Evil does not have the last word. Every tear will be wiped away from our eyes. Notice how John recognizes the pain of this world that we’re all feeling. Look at verse 15 of chapter six.

Then the kings of the earth notice who, who these people describe. The nobles, the generals, the rich, the powerful. These are all people we’re looking to. When everything’s chaotic, at least they have the answer right? And every slave and free person hid in the caves, um, and among the rocks of the mountains, remember, this is imagery here.

And they said to the mountains and to the rocks, fall on us and hide us from the face of the ones seated on the throne and from the wrath of the lamb. Because the great day of their wrath has come. Underline this next phrase, and who is able to stand? What is this? Everybody’s looking for an answer. How do we put an end to judgment?

How do we put an end to suffering? And they’re saying there is a moment in time where everybody on the earth goes, education didn’t save us like we thought it would. Sexual pleasures did not save us like we thought it would. Changing our identity didn’t save us like we thought it would. Medical advancements, political parties, powerful kings, riches and wealth, those things did not save us like we thought It we, and here’s the reality in the end, life without God is unbearable.

Without God who can endure all of the suffering. The question is that the answer is no one. But what if there is a God? And what if there is a lamb who is seated on the throne? So John answers the question. Is there anybody who can stand Chapter seven verse nine. After this, I looked and there was a vast multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language, which no one could number.

Standing before the throne and before the lamb. They were clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands, and they cried out in a loud voice, salvation belongs to our God. He who is seated on the throne and to the lamb. All the angels stood around the throne, and along with the elders and the four living creatures, they, they feel they fell face down before the throne and worship God saying, amen.

Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and strength be to our God forever and ever. Amen. Then one of the others asked me, who are these people in white robes and where do they come from? I said to him, sir, you know, then he told me, these are the ones coming out of the great tribulation.

They washed their robes and made them white in the blood. Of the lamb. For this reason, they’re before the throne of God and they serve him day and night in his temple. This is our future church. The ones seated on the throne will shelter them. They will no longer hunger. They will no longer thirst. The sun will no longer strike them, nor will any scorching.

Heat means a lot to us. Arizonans. Okay, verse 17, for the lamb, who is at the center of the throne will shepherd them. He will guide them to springs of the waters of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, who will stand. The church will stand, those who have put their trust in the blood of the cross of Jesus Christ.

They withstand, they endure and they win in the end. And if that doesn’t get you on fire, your wood is wet. All this is what the church, this is the hope that we have. Reading about these horsemen have reminded me of the nasl. Anybody know the Nasl? It’s the, the horseman in the lower of the ring told you Lord of the Ring reference coming.

Right? So what happens is Frodo gets this mission to take the ring, uh, to Mordo. Am I right on that? Right? Yeah. See, I I’m like, I read, I I didn’t read the books, I watched the movies, right? And so they, but as they do that, these nasl intensify and they’re these horsemen seeking to destroy Frodo and Sam. And what’s interesting about the story is they don’t attack the habits when they live on the Shire.

They attack, they attack the hobbits when they live on mission, when they now have a mission to go and, and fight against the darkness. And that’s true for us as well. Listen, the horseman ramp up when the church stands up. You have in that story, Frodo and Sam are asking themselves, wasn’t life better in the Shire?

Do we need to go back? Why are we picking a fight against these things that seem to be way bigger than us and have more power than us? But they knew. It would be even worse if we went home. Life is better when it’s on mission and friends. Here’s what we’re seeking to do at Passion Creek Church. The enemy is not happy with what we’re trying to do.

We don’t want to make consumers, we don’t wanna make just this big show where there’s just a few people doing the thing and the rest of us are just spectators. We are, we’re obnoxious. We get it. We’re telling you Sabbath every week, and we’re like trying to create accountability. We’re trying to empower you to do it.

We’re saying read scripture every day. I know it’s a lot, but we have to start thinking, what’s the alternative if we don’t do these things? Our life is just controlled by the horseman. It’s, it’s controlled by the ways of the world and it deteriorates us. It’s destructive. And so what we’re seeking to do is show the alternative.

The way of Jesus is against culture, but man, it is the way to life. And life and abundance is to springs of water, is to goodness. And so we are trying to empower our church to actually be students of Jesus who do exactly what he said. And so as we end, I wanna close by encouraging you. What are four practices of resistance?

To fight against the four horsemen of the apocalypse. I’ll be quick. Number one, we resist deception that leads to destruction by becoming students of scripture together, right? So one way if, if you’re not reading scripture, but if you’re just studying the world and how destructive it is, you know what happens.

You panic, you’re super fearful. But when you read the scriptures and then understand what’s happening in the world, you grieve, but you keep pressing forward in love. I mentioned together cuz we don’t believe this Christian life is meant to be alone. And even reading your scriptures isn’t really necessarily meant to be read alone.

It’s in community. As we become more like Jesus together. Number two, we resist tribalism, at least to violence with patience and non-retaliation. Non-retaliation. What do I mean by that? I know that’s a trigger word. What happens? The enemy loves to crank up the intensity just to egg us on to do the same, and then we become.

Less like Christ and more like the world as a result. And so we don’t retaliate in kind, read the sermon on the Mount. We pray for those who persecute us, right? We give to those who needs any, we, we go above and beyond in sacrificing. And so what does that look like today? I don’t know. I think it’s really good for us as a church to have those conversations.

How do we, in the midst of a lot of heresies and a lot of worldviews that are against the church and against the Bible, how do we patiently and lovingly still stick to the truth, but don’t become like the world? Here’s another way I wanna put it. It’s not on the screen, but maybe it should have been. It says, look, we are not rebuking the sins of Babylon when we are reusing the strategies of Babylon.

The younger generation doesn’t care if you’re speaking against these sins, if you’re still using the world’s strategies, right? So being angry. Tribalism pointing at trying to be violent towards other people, right? Those are Babylon strategies. Wanting to pick up a sword. That’s the strategy of Babylon. So even if we speak against the sins against certain sexuality or beliefs or whatever, but if we have the same strategy, we are not following the way of the lamb.

See, the way of the lamb is counterintuitive. The way of the lamb actually looks like we’re gonna lose. He has a sword and I have prayer. I dunno if I’m gonna win, but history says we do. That’s exactly how we win. It’s counterintuitive, but it’s the way to go. Number three, we resist injustices leading to famine.

By advocating for the poor and practicing radical hospitality. Hospitality is gonna be one of the formed series we’re gonna be having in the coming years. And so, you know, come back for that. Uh, but we need to advocate for the poor care for them as a church. We give 10% of our budget to things outside of our church.

And part of that is caring for the hungry, right? Is to help those get jobs, get in a better situation, but also radical hospitality. I love, we had some ladies last night just come, come over to one of their houses and they just had food. We need that. They invited a neighbor who doesn’t come to the church.

We need more of that, allowing people in over the dinner table. Number four, we resist sickness leading to death by challenging greed and praying for the sick. The reality is, is greed has perpetuated sickness, right? Like there’s certain medicines we do or don’t do because of the, the economical gain that comes from it.

And so that’s something we have to think about. We need to challenge greed in all of its different forms. This doesn’t mean we’re crazy or cuckoo, but man, we are saying there is a truth and there is a way to care for people and we’re gonna advocate for that, but also praying for the sick. One of our themes for our church leadership is dazzled or disappointed.

And it’s this whole idea that we’re gonna pray such big prayers that either God answers them and we’re dazzled because he can’t believe he actually did it or he doesn’t answer them. And we’re disappointed cuz we really believe he was going to. Either way, God is honored with that. You see that this is how we fight against the horseman, living out the Christian faith in the way of the lamb, not putting these boards up.

Who’s this next person? What is this guy’s name and how does he have to deal with, we live the Christian life in community, we practice the way of Jesus together and we know that often the scoreboard looks like we’re losing. But the same Jesus we trust will usher our souls into heaven. That same Jesus, we trust that his strategy of sacrifice, patience, sometimes silence actually wins in the end.

That is the greatest way. I think our church in this really big cultural moment can really be a light on a hill. Would you join us in doing that?