God will be offering mercy to all who come to Christ, but the 6 th seal at the close of chapter 6 reveals the hardness of heart that will remain.

Transcription

1 The Seventh Seal Opened Revelation 8:1-6 3/6/2016 Copyright by Mark Vaughan 3/2016 Open your Bible to Revelation 8 & let s read this chapter as we move forward in our study of this futuristic last book of the Bible. Follow along as I read Revelation 8:1-13. [READ] Last week we paused for perspective as we launched into this next phase of God s wrath on those who dwell on the earth. You may recall that phrase in verse 13 is a description repeated for the objects of God s wrath those who dwell on the earth. That s one of the reasons we believe the church has been Raptured & taken up to be with Christ in heaven before all this wrath begins. We ve also seen that most who come to faith in Christ during these future judgments face death by persecution soon after. Last week we looked back over the outline & flow of the book with its future prophecies of events in heaven & on earth from chapters We noted the 3 sets of 7 the seals, trumpets, & bowls that frame up what s foretold with focus on the 7 year Tribulation. The 1 st of those was the 7 seals that are opened by the only One worthy to rule the earthly perfect, the Lord Jesus Christ. As the Lion & Lamb, Jesus has done all that s needed to rescue His people & to exercise justice on all who spurn Him. As Jesus opened each seal of this scroll from the Father s hand, events unfurled before the eyes of the Apostle John. John wrote these predictions regarding the culmination of the current age as rebellion rises even while under God s wrath. God will be offering mercy to all who come to Christ, but the 6 th seal at the close of chapter 6 reveals the hardness of heart that will remain. As we consider such scenes of judgment, we need to be struck by how bad sin is by how horribly wrong & how terribly sad. It is absolutely nonsensical that rebels under the weight of undeniable sovereign justice will not surrender & repent & seek God. The dangerous darkness of sin derails souls from wanting what s obviously & inescapably the wise & right path. And that s shockingly sad because the blame is clearly on every sinner & not on the God who increasingly makes His supremacy known. As we examine such views of future judgments, we want to let those thoughts impact our thoughts today as well. We want the evil of OUR sin pressed more deeply into us. We want a strengthened fear of God that leads to wisdom. We want a passion for God that values how right & good He is. We want to feel the weight of what s coming & why it matters not only to us but also to our friends & our enemies. With those goals in mind, I ll outline 3 achievements of future judgment from Revelation 8:1-6 that can expand our amazement & appreciation toward our great God. As we witness the seventh seal opened in Revelation 8:1-6, we ll walk through 3 achievements of future judgment that can powerfully impact us now in the present. Read Revelation 8:1 again to note what comes first with the opening of the 7 th seal of this scroll of God s future judgments. [READ] 1

2 Achievement #1 future judgment will arouse silence. The 1 st of 3 achievements of the future judgment revealed as the last of the 7 seals is opened is, #1, that future judgment will arouse silence. Perfect judgment especially final judgment ends excuses & shuts the mouths of backtalk & rationalizations. Even on the smallest of levels, when people are chattering about an issue & someone states the plain truth that can t be refuted, it often creates silence, doesn t it? When you say plainly what everyone else knew but didn t have the boldness to say, it can get quiet quickly, can t it? That doesn t always happen & that s a general example from experience where no one is perfect or omniscient or all-powerful. But how much more will God s final judgment stop every grumble against God & every self-made evaluation system. Romans 3:19 says, Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God. Everyone will be proven accountable by the God who sees & knows all & will bring it all to light. When finally faced with God, every mouth will be closed & the only plea deal He will receive is that we re guilty but Jesus paid our debt. No more excuses; no more minimizing your sin to make it look or feel like it s not that bad. Future judgment will clarify every issue & silence any need for more arguments or rebuttals or cross-examinations or witnesses. Even those under judgment will admit God s wrath has come. Revelation 6:16-17 says that as rebels call on rocks to hide them from the presence of Him who sits on the throne & from the wrath of the Lamb, they will admit that the great day of their wrath has come & who is able to stand? So final judgment will shut down all attempts to play god. But Revelation 8:1 predicts something greater than the shutting of mouths from arguments & excuses that Romans 3:19 mentions. This is a silence that not only forces all to admit the truth. Revelation 8:1 reveals a silence also in heaven where continuous praise of God has been going on as we ve read about repeatedly. Even where God s supremacy is known & adored in heaven, there will be a quiet pause at the sight of the 7 th seal opened. It will be greater than when Habakkuk 2:20 said, the LORD is in His holy temple. Let all the earth be silent before Him. It will be more than Zechariah 2:13 saying, Be silent, all flesh, before the LORD; for He is aroused from His holy habitation. It will be more akin to the words of Zephaniah 1:7-8, which say, Be silent before the Lord GOD! For the day of the LORD is near. It will be awful silence that is both awe-filled & shockingly awful in seeing what sin deserves. What is unleashed throughout chapters 8-19 of Revelation as the outflow of the 7 th seal will strike even heavenly beings with awe. It will be awesome in the fullest sense of the transcendent greatness of God being seen in His supreme worth & complete perfection & absolute holiness. 2

3 It will evoke a fear of God that reverences Him & quakes before Him. But part of the silence will also be the horror of what sin deserves, the terror & dread of being aligned against God to face the outpouring of His wrath. Since Ezekiel 18:23 & 33:11 reveal that God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked but wants them to repent & live, this silence also carries a measure of the sad reality of the evil of sin. God will be spreading His message of grace in Christ to the ends of the earth & yet how tragic that so many reject Him. But that tragedy will not be mixed with any questions of the rightness of the judgment by the Righteous Holy Maker. All the prior praise of God & Christ with the hosts of heaven & all creation will not cease to honor God & Christ. It will only change from loud celebration to quiet contemplation. It will give appropriate recognition to stop & see God on His throne as breathtakingly fearful & spotlessly righteous. It s like Psalm 46:10, which says Be still & know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth. We don t know why this silence will last half an hour & not more or less than that. God is never in a hurry & He is never constrained by time. All we know from Revelation 8:1 is that the opening of the 7 th seal evoked a half an hour of silence in heaven. From the context & other Scriptures, we glean that this is a pause to ponder what was revealed with a reverent awe & righteous fear. With the trumpets that follow, it must also include some level of anticipation of what He has long delayed. Trumpets were used in Scripture to announce a significant message or a king & they were used in battle as under Joshua & Gideon. Read Revelation 8:2 to see this silence followed by 7 trumpets that will sound for King Jesus judgments. [READ] You may remember me mentioning the divine passive voice & we find it again at the close of verse 2. We read that 7 trumpets were given who gave them? God did this passive voice implies God s action as the orchestrator of events who uses 7 Trumpets to move on in time like the 7 seals did. As with the seals, the first 4 trumpets are grouped together & then the 7 th one is set apart. That s not because they are recapitulating the same time or events, but because God chose to organize it that way. The events are clearly distinct as they build & heighten. Angels are again involved & specially identified as the 7 who stand before God, possibly as a special group in His presence somehow. Some want to name Gabriel & Michael in this group with others from Jewish tradition, but that is more than the text says. All we can say is that these 7 are given the purpose of sounding the trumpets that announce the successive phases of judgment. Read verse 6 again to see them ready. [READ] That verse gives a picture of certainty & undoubted fulfillment. 3

4 That s important to remember because God is trustworthy. God can be trusted to do as He has said. And that s true of His promises to answer the prayers of His people even in times when make that look impossible. Even when situations look bleak & our insight into the good that God is working is dim, God is still hearing the prayers of His people. We re reminded of that as we see future judgment as part of God s answer to the prayers of Tribulation saints. That s the point of verses 3-4 panning the picture of what John saw to the prayers mixed with incense ascending to God. Read Revelation 8:3-4 again to see that. [READ] We ve said, 1 st, that future judgment will arouse silence. Now, 2 nd, future judgment will answer prayer. Achievement #2, future judgment will answer prayer. Psalm 141:2 uses this picture of incense as prayer. It follows the symbol of the incense altar in the Temple & Tabernacle as representing the prayers of God s people. [Exodus 30:3, 6] A special mixture of incense was set apart as holy such that the recipe was not to be used for anything else. [Exodus 30:34-38] So incense was honored as should be the high privilege approaching the throne of God in prayer like the priest did for the nation Israel. Luke 1:8-10 gives an example of such prayer by the people when Zacharias the priest, the father of John the Baptist, entered the Temple to burn incense. Offering incense was an OT priestly function, but prayer was welcomed by God from every believer. The prayers of verses 3-4 appear to ascend on a heavenly altar aided by the work of this specially appointed angel. Since this angel is described as another angel of the same kind as the 7 just mentioned, we know it is an angel serving as God commanded. Some try to say this is Jesus mediating or interceding as THE Angel of the Lord like He was in OT appearances. But that reads too much into the text with an OT description in contrast with the NT where Jesus is always named & described. So this is just another actual angel, not Jesus. Though these are priestly functions by the angel, God initiated it all. The divine passive is again used of the much incense given to the angel & so God s involvement is seen throughout. God is the 1 to whom prayers ascend whose throne has an altar nearby. The golden censer that this angel takes is simply an open pan that holds coals of fire with a mixture of incense on it. This firepan was a tool for carrying incense as we find the angel doing. You might picture a stir-fry pan or big saucepan or broad pot holding these coals of fire with incense poured over them. The language of the prayers & the incense can be taken two ways in both verses 4 & 5. The prayers could be equal to the incense as a symbol or the incense could be mixed with the prayers. 4

5 Back in Revelation 5:8, the golden bowls full of incense that the 24 elders held were equated with the prayers of the saints. That s possible again here or it s also possible that incense is added to & offered with the prayers as most translations put it. Either way the significance is the same. Yet we do need to rightly define all the saints who offer these prayers by considering the context back in chapters 6&7. This is not likely the prayers of all the saints for all time throughout history, though that is possible. More clearly from the 5 th seal in Revelation 6:9-11, these are the prayers of the Tribulation saints who are martyred. So the reference to all those saints encompasses all the ethnic & linguistic diversity that will be included there. They are those we read of in Revelation 7:9-17 who are coming out of the Great Tribulation as martyrs. Read how Revelation 7:9 describes them. [READ] Then Revelation 7:14 clarifies that these are the ones who come out of the Great Tribulation. Those are all the saints most clearly connected with these prayers. Turn back to Revelation 6:9-11 to recall that group. [READ] The 5 th seal unveiled these martyrs pleading with God for vengeance, for a righting of wrongs, for vindication of God s supremacy & justice. God s exact plans would be fulfilled & yet these prayers were not forgotten or dismissed as they awaited a full & final answer. And by the way, it was not wrong of them to ask for justice. You can find imprecatory prayers in the psalms, for example, that long for God s name to be honored through His people & that often included punishment & justice & victory over His enemies. Psalm 7, 26, 35, 52, 55, & 58 are some of those. They model as do Revelation 6:9-11 & 8:3-4 that God s people can cry out for justice against enemies & yet still love their enemies. Yes, Jesus commanded in Matthew 5:44 that we should love our enemies & pray for those who persecute us. And that does not contradict a prayer for them to see God s justice. Sometimes, as will occur during these future judgments, God uses justice to crush pride & bring enemies to repentance. So that is certainly a way to pray for both justice & mercy on enemies. Even when God shows mercy to save a person, He is still answering prayers for justice & vindication. God still deals with the penalty for sins when He forgives, doesn t He? Instead of punishing us who trust Him, He counts Jesus death as suffering the penalty for our sins. That s how God can be just & the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus as Romans 3:26 puts it. Yet these martyrs were told to rest for a little longer while more were martyred like them during the Tribulation. God can be the just Judge who righteously punishes evil because He punished Jesus as a Substitute instead. 5

6 Thus He can also be the Justifier, the One providing forgiveness & granting right standing with Him to those who trust Jesus. That s the amazing work of justice & mercy at the cross. And that can be part of pleas to God for vindication of what s right & vengeance against His enemies. Then whether people repent or they absorb earthly wrath & enter eternal wrath, that future judgment will answer prayer. And that s the reason for placing verse 3-4 here in Revelation 8 as the prophecy moves forward into greater judgment. God answers prayer & we see here the power & effectiveness of the prayers of these saints. We should never assume that God s sovereignty gives us reason to skip praying as if God will do whatever He planned anyway & we can passively shrug our shoulders & wait. No. Even God s clearly promised predictions will come about through the prayers of His people after those prayers ascend. So never underestimate the power of the prayers of the saints. And the saints are simply those declared holy by faith in Christ. They are seen as holy because Jesus their Savior is holy & they are increasingly being transformed into holiness like Jesus. Saints simply means holy ones in that sense & is not some higher category of specially advanced Christians. The prayer of the saints, as James 5:16 says, accomplish much for the cause of God in proving His character. God by nature must do what is right & just & holy & therefore He must punish evil & right all wrongs. When His people appeal to His character in that way, He will answer. That s the meaning of these prayers ascending to God as the impetus pushing toward greater judgment to come. We know that because the fire is next thrown down to earth as we can read now again from Revelation 8:5. [READ] In response to the prayers of the saints, God answers by sending this angel to collect fire from the altar to throw down to the earth to continue to heighten the judgments. So now we see 3 rd ly that future judgment will accomplish justice. Fire thrown down on the earth with thunder & lightning & an earthquake demonstrate God moving to bring justice on earth. We said future judgment will, #1, arouse silence, & #2, answer prayer. Now as a 3 rd achievement from Revelation 8:1-6 this morning, note 3 rd ly that future judgment will accomplish justice. As in other times, that intensity is introduced with peals of thunder & sounds & flashes of lightning. And now this time is added an earthquake. Probably these will have some worldwide effect, some globally catastrophic stretch of shocking storms & seismic shaking. But flowing out of the answered prayer, this link emphasizes that this is about God s justice on those who oppose Him. It is the fire of the prayers that is thrown down to start the next sequence of the 7 trumpets that begin in verse 7. 6

7 That fire brings holy, perfect justice on the earth. Thus comes the answer to the cries of the martyrs in chapter 6 of how long it would be before God judge & avenge their blood. That avenging justice would now come. And the immediate results of this fire was only a prelude of what was to come with far more stormy & seismic activity. Much more would come as we read in the rest of chapter 8 & as chapters 9-19 get worse. These judgments are similar in some ways to the Exodus plagues in Egypt, which were all literal & physical. So there is no reason to say these are not literal & physical as well as they bring earthly judgment far broader than only those in the nation of Egypt before the Exodus. Real physical earthly judgments are coming as predicted in Revelation. That assurance should anchor us to live for eternity now. It should awaken us to the exceeding evil & the darkening danger of any level of sin we may step toward. It should alert us to the urgency of pleading with God for others & proclaiming to others the treasure of salvation in Jesus Christ all by His grace. Sadly as much as people rejected the undeniable grace & wisdom & glory of Jesus in His 1 st coming, they will also reject His undeniable justice & supremacy & glory leading up to His 2 nd Coming. Just as He saved His archenemy Saul & made him the greatly fruitful & faithful Apostle Paul of the NT, so He can save such enemies now & He will save others even during the Tribulation. So don t give up praying & preaching the Good News that Jesus will come in future judgment to right all wrongs. His future judgment will arouse silence, answer prayer, & accomplish justice & we want to be prepared & preparing for that future now. If you have not turned from sin & self to bow before Him in faith as your Lord & Savior, then I beg you do so today. Don t delay or keep uttering excuses or rationalizations. You won t be able to blame your soul s destiny on Him or me as a lousy preacher or your parents as poor examples or on the church or professing Christians you know. His Word is clear enough to call you individually to respond to Him no matter what anyone else has done or is doing. So I beg you to give up everything else & trust Him today. And for those who have submitted to Him in faith, I urge you to thank Him with a serious amazement at the justice He paid for you sin. Thank Him with a zeal to hate your sin more seriously & follow after Him with more happy holiness than ever. Now we ll all embrace the chance to be silent before Him now as we take a few minutes to seek Him before we celebrate communion. Bow with me & pray alone & then I ll lead us in prayer. But God can do the impossible & save the most unlikely. 7