The Sixth Trumpet
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INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
I told my wife that the first two weeks of Midweek of 2023 were going to be brutal.
Revelation 9 is a tough chapter filled with the Satan and war and demons and the fires of hell
We began it last week and we finish it tonight.
Allow me to review just a bit so that we know how we got here.
In Revelation 8, the trumpets are sounded as a response to the prayers of God’s people rising up to Him.
The first four trumpets impact all of Creation
And there is agricultural and economic fallout as a result
But the judgments are limited
And from this we saw that whenever there are things happening in the world, God is doing something
His judgments are active in the nations everyday and will be until His Son returns
The first four trumpets demonstrate that to us
But Revelation 8 ended with this eerie scene of an eagle flying overhead pronouncing doom upon those who dwell on the earth:
Then I looked, and I heard an eagle crying with a loud voice as it flew directly overhead, “Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth, at the blasts of the other trumpets that the three angels are about to blow!”
Last week we saw the first of the final three trumpets be blown.
With the blowing of the trumpet, we saw Satan release his demon locusts on the earth
They could not harm the people of God, but they tormented unbelievers
Tonight, we see things escalate as the demonic activity in the world plays itself out in wars and nations coming against nations.
We will work through the passage and then have three teaching points to pull from it.
READ Revelation 9:13-21
Then the sixth angel blew his trumpet, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar before God, saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” So the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour, the day, the month, and the year, were released to kill a third of mankind. The number of mounted troops was twice ten thousand times ten thousand; I heard their number. And this is how I saw the horses in my vision and those who rode them: they wore breastplates the color of fire and of sapphire and of sulfur, and the heads of the horses were like lions’ heads, and fire and smoke and sulfur came out of their mouths. By these three plagues a third of mankind was killed, by the fire and smoke and sulfur coming out of their mouths. For the power of the horses is in their mouths and in their tails, for their tails are like serpents with heads, and by means of them they wound.
The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk, nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.
EXPOSITION
EXPOSITION
Let’s start tonight by just walking down these verses and making some sense of what John is seeing. We will pull our teaching points from the passage after that.
In verse 13, the sixth angel blows his trumpet and a voice from the golden altar before God telling the sixth angels to release the four angels bound at the Euphrates
This is the same altar from chapter 8, verse 3:
And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer, and he was given much incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne,
This shows us that the commands coming from God’s merciful and sovereign voice are still connected to our prayers
Even with all the horror we are seeing in chapter 9, God continues to operate according to His plan, with the prayers of His people folded into that plan.
The four angels bound at the Euphrates have been prepared for this moment (v. 15)
Down to the year, the month, the day—down to the very hour
And they are released to kill 1/3 of mankind
Things have escalated from the first four trumpets, where people were not harmed—it was creation that was impacted.
The earth was burned up
A third of the sea became like blood
The rivers and the springs were poisoned
The heavens go dark and fail to give light
But then the first eagle flew and cried out his woes and Satan’s forces are tormenting people, but not killing them
Now, the sixth trumpet is blown and the second woe is upon the earth and there are people dying.
And those who don’t die by the events of the sixth trumpet, still reject God in verses 20-21 and they will face death as they face Him in judgment.
Then we get to verses 16-19.
John sees this hellish army of twice ten thousand times ten thousand
That is 200 million
This is all a vision and the numbers are not meant to be taken literally. It is just supposed to make us think of a multitude you can’t even count
The scary thing about this army isn’t so much the riders, but the horses.
They have breastplates that are the color of fire and sapphire and sulfur.
The Greek word that translates to fire could also translate to red
The sapphire probably refers to the bluish-gray tint that smoke produces
And sulfur is yellow
These are the colors of war
The breastplates are reflecting the horrors of a fiery, smoky, burning battlefield.
The riders are spewing fire and smoke and sulfur out of their mouths.
So the breastplates are reflecting the violent elements coming from the mouths of this army
They have lion heads and serpent heads on their tails.
With their heads they roar and spit and skill
With their tails they trap and wound
They reflect their King. They reflect Satan.
Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
He is a murderous lion and their heads reflect their leader.
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.
He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”
He is the Serpent from Genesis 3 who slithered into the Garden and deceived Adam and Eve
And He is the Dragon we will meet in Revelation 12, who works with the Beast and False Prophet to war against God and the church and deceive the nations
And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems.
So what exactly are we seeing here in this vision? I
Well, I think the imagery should lead us to believe we are seeing war.
Not a specific war, but just war in general.
God is showing John that until Jesus returns, there will be wars all over the earth and these wars will demonstrate just how awful it is when sin on the earth reaches its boiling point.
I don’t think we are talking about the war to end all wars. This isn’t Armageddon.
That is coming and we will see it in Revelation 16.
Instead, this is war all over the earth until the Lord comes back.
That is why there are four angels that come out of the Euphrates.
In Revelation, four often represents the four points of the compass, which sum up the whole globe.
After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, that no wind might blow on earth or sea or against any tree.
So the four angels are letting us know that war will mark the earth in the north, south, east and west.
It will be global.
The 200 million riders are telling us the same thing.
It is a multitude that you could never count if they were before you.
Who is at war? The whole world.
The whole world is buckling under the weight of the bloodshed that sin brings about.
Think about how universal war truly is:
Historian Quincy Wright says that between 1480 and 1941:
Britain engage in 78 wars
France were in 71 wars
Spain have been in 64 wars
Russia in 61 wars
Austria in 52 wars
Germany in 23 wars
The United States were in 13 wars during that time (don’t give us too much credit—we only existed for about half of that)
China have been in 11 wars
Japan in 9 wars
And the wars have not stopped. They carry on now.
We know the US have been in multiple wars since 1941. Some of you have served in them.
We know that even now the world is captivated by this terrible war in the Ukraine
John says that a 1/3 of humanity perish in these wars.
That large number is meant to show us that while war won’t kill everyone, it will be one of the single most devastating and destructive sources of death that mankind knows until Jesus comes back.
The sixth trumpet is meant to be a final warning.
When the 7th trumpet sounds in chapter 11, it is the end
Final judgment comes as Christ returns and it is too late to repent
The wars are meant to be a ringing alarm in history that causes us to stop and consider how horrible Final Judgment will be if the wars we have seen on this earth are just a snapshot of what that day will be like
A ringing alarm that wakes us up to the horrors of sin
God uses the bloody conflicts of the earth to say to humanity, “This is who you are if I take away my restraining hand. This is what sin has done to you.”
John Calvin agreed when he said that wars are one of God’s judgments on the earth.
William Shakespeare agreed when he called war a son of hell.
And the old preacher Martin Lloyd Jones agreed and proclaimed that God allowed two world wars in the 20th century to show man to things:
1-He is an animal in his sin.
2-To show him what horrors he is capable of when left to his own devices
So We look at the Holocaust
Or we look at Stalin executing a million Russians
Or we look at 7000 dead in the Ukraine in 2022
And we say this is God letting us see our sinful nature on full display
And the portrait you find in these wars is one of death and darkness
Don’t get me wrong. There are beautiful stories that emerge from war. Stories of heroism and sacrifice.
And the men and women who have served our country have done nothing wrong in doing the job they swore to do for us
But those men and women can tell you more than anyone just how horrible war is
Maybe that is why John Calvin also said:
War is pleasant to those who never tried it.
John Calvin
So how will the people who dwell on the earth respond to the warnings of war? Will they see the horrors of sin in conflicts of the nations and say, “I reject the sin that creates this conflict?” Will they turn from sin and trust in Christ?
According to verses 20-21, the answer is no.
They will continue to reject the Lord.
The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk, nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.
They reject God and they continue on in their sin.
Which leads us to our first of three teaching points for tonight...
1. The Sixth Trumpet shows us the depravity of humanity.
1. The Sixth Trumpet shows us the depravity of humanity.
When we say that humans are depraved, what we mean is that sin has robbed us of the ability to offer anything to God that could merit salvation.
Because of the sin Adam handed down to me, I am born cut off from God and I am unable to convert myself in my own strength.
My will and my desires are corrupted.
Unless God intervenes, I will always choose sin because sin will always be my desire.
By God’s grace, my will can still obey traffic laws and pay taxes and be kind to my neighbor, but because those works are coming from my fallen sinful heart, they are tainted and cannot be received by God.
All of this is why Jesus said that people can’t come to Him unless the Father allows it.
And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”
When people do not come to Him and they reject Him, the very sin that led them to reject Him is the same sin that will continue to cause conflict and division in the world. And the end result of this conflict will be war.
What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.
Why do people fight? Because of the passions in them that cause the to covet and desire that which doesn’t belong to them.
After all, the nations fighting are made up of individuals that are at war with one another.
Joel Beeke says it this way:
The world is made up of nations, which are made up of communities, which are made up of families, which are made up of individuals.
Look at World War I for example. Why did it begin? We could say a number of things:
Nationalism and competing ambitions
Desires for more territory
Global economic alliances that have to be maintained
Smaller nations wanting independence
An arms race for more deadly weaponry
The changing balance of power in Europe
But what really started it all was a secret group of Bosnian zealots assassinated the Archduke of Austria-Hungary in an effort to destabilize the empire
At the end of the day it was just was James said in James 4.
They were fighting because they desired and they did not have.
The Black Hand wanted more power, so they fought.
And their fighting sent the world into war
War is a result of depravity. That is the simple fact of the matter.
And the terribleness of it should cause people to wake up to their own depravity and ask Jesus for mercy and salvation.
But the Sixth Trumpet shows us the reality of depravity in the response to the war, not just in the war itself.
In verses 20-21, people ignore the warning and they continue to worship their idols and bow down.
They are unrepentant and do not turn away from sin.
The language in these verses is very similar to what we see in Daniel 5...
but you have lifted up yourself against the Lord of heaven. And the vessels of his house have been brought in before you, and you and your lords, your wives, and your concubines have drunk wine from them. And you have praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood, and stone, which do not see or hear or know, but the God in whose hand is your breath, and whose are all your ways, you have not honored.
This is how the Bible often speaks of idols in the Old Testament:
Their idols are silver and gold,
the work of human hands.
They have mouths, but do not speak;
eyes, but do not see.
They have ears, but do not hear;
noses, but do not smell.
They have hands, but do not feel;
feet, but do not walk;
and they do not make a sound in their throat.
Those who make them become like them;
so do all who trust in them.
Thus says the Lord:
“Learn not the way of the nations,
nor be dismayed at the signs of the heavens
because the nations are dismayed at them,
for the customs of the peoples are vanity.
A tree from the forest is cut down
and worked with an axe by the hands of a craftsman.
They decorate it with silver and gold;
they fasten it with hammer and nails
so that it cannot move.
Their idols are like scarecrows in a cucumber field,
and they cannot speak;
they have to be carried,
for they cannot walk.
Do not be afraid of them,
for they cannot do evil,
neither is it in them to do good.”
We saw with the blowing of the fifth trumpet that the demons are tormenting unbelievers.
They are making them miserable from the inside out and seeking to destroy their lives.
And yet, people are content to continue bowing down to them.
They reject the warning in the rumors of war and they persist in their sin, hoping the calamity of something as terrible as war will never touch them.
Certainly hoping that Final Judgment will not touch them—or hoping it will not come at all.
So from the war-wrought death in the world to the rejection of God and continued idolatry, the sinfulness of humanity cannot be denied in these verses.
And yet we have hope because of Teaching Point #2...
2. The Sixth Trumpet shows us the rule of God.
2. The Sixth Trumpet shows us the rule of God.
What is there to comfort us when war is all around and it seems the depravity of human beings is winning the day?
It is the reality that God is still governing the world from His throne with calmness and clarity.
He is not panicked and He is not unclear about what He intends to do.
We see this in a few places in these verses.
The first can be found in verses 14-15 where God is doing the loosing and it is all in His perfect time.
The four angels who are released from the Euphrates are not the same four angels from chapter 7, verse 1.
In chapter 7, the four angels are servants of God and they are restraining judgment on God’s behalf
In chapter 9, the four angels are being restrained.
They are bound.
They want to go to and fro in the earth, stirring up conflict and war and bringing death, but they will not do it until God allows it.
Notice it is governed down to the hour.
A reminder that nothing is on accident. Everything happens is either caused or allowed by God.
And that includes evil. God is not the author of evil. We established that last week. But He is control of it.
There is no bad guy that has escaped God’s rule and governance.
So what we are seeing is that in the same way the Lord is in control with the blowing of the 5th trumpet and Satan has no authority unless God grants it to him, the Lord is in control in the blowing of the 6th trumpet too.
Another sign that God is ruling and reigning is that He is keeping His covenant with His people.
You see that the four angels are bound up in the Euphrates River.
This has caused some Bible commentators to get worked up about the physical site of Armageddon.
No need to do that. We aren’t deal with Armageddon until chapter 16.
References to places in Revelation are not meant to cause us to look forward and speculate. They are meant to cause us to look back and connect.
We should be looking for the Old Testament significance of Euphrates
There are a few places for us to look:
On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates,
Turn and take your journey, and go to the hill country of the Amorites and to all their neighbors in the Arabah, in the hill country and in the lowland and in the Negeb and by the seacoast, the land of the Canaanites, and Lebanon, as far as the great river, the river Euphrates. See, I have set the land before you. Go in and take possession of the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give to them and to their offspring after them.’
From the wilderness and this Lebanon as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites to the Great Sea toward the going down of the sun shall be your territory.
What you see in those three passages is that the Euphrates served as a boundary between God’s people and the world.
It was a line in the sand.
A physical boundary that had spiritual significance:
On this side of the Euphrates dwells the people of God in the Kingdom of God
On the other side of the Euphrates are those who rebel against God and live in the domain of darkness
So the fact that the four angels emerge from the river that is the boundary between God’s people in the world communicates something important to us—God is keeping His covenant and He will not allow His people to be destroyed.
This was a great encouragement to the believers of Asia Minor in the first century.
For all the evils of Rome and their state-sponsored persecution of the church
For all the threats that bear down upon the church from within Judaism
For all the war that is in the world
The church will prevail. The church will be okay.
And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
That is not to say that Christians will not die in wars.
We will have more brothers and sisters in heaven who died in wars than we could possibly imagine. There is no way to estimate it.
On famous example would be Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran pastor who was a part of a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler
Two years after being arrested, Bonhoeffer was executed by the Gestapo for his crimes
Sadly, the war ended just 6 months after he was killed
He was faithful to Christ in end
So Bonhoeffer died. Did God not keep covenant with Pastor Dietrich?
Of course he did. Because though Dietrich Bonhoeffer was killed in April of 1945, his soul lives on in the eternal life Christ gave him.
And the church marches on, even though a million Bonhoeffers have come and gone
And God, in His governing, will see to it that the church marches on until Christ returns.
This doesn’t mean we can be lazy and say, “We don’t really need to tend to the church or the mission because God won’t let the church fail?”
No. That would be disobedience.
Plus, He won’t let THE CHURCH fail.
But YOUR CHURCH might not make it. So you better staying working.
But we also don’t need to wring our hands and fret over every election or every war or every new law and how it will impact the church.
We can be informed for the sake of prayer and understanding, but we don’t need to be fearful about what will happen to the church.
The wars and rumors of wars will not reach into Canaan and burn the church to the ground
God rules and reigns and sustains His people from the heavens, limiting Satan’s power until the time when He returns and crushes Satan under His peaceful feet for good
Let’s go to our final point:
The Sixth Trumpet shows us the depravity of humanity.
The Sixth Trumpet shows us the rule of God, as He limits Satan’s power and keeps His covenant with us
And now we see that...
3. The Sixth Trumpet shows us the urgency of repentance.
3. The Sixth Trumpet shows us the urgency of repentance.
As I stated earlier, the wars of this world are a warning to the unbelieving in this world. They are a call to wake up and consider what it would be like to come up against God Almighty in battle.
They are a call to consider the eternal defeat that awaits anyone who would challenge God’s authority and position as the Creator and Ruler of this world.
And this warning in the 6th trumpet is merciful. We know that because of where it comes from.
The voice instructing the sixth angel comes from the golden altar before God.
This is the same altar from 8:3.
This altar is meant to call our attention to the altar of atonement and intercession in the Old Testament.
It stood just outside of the Most Holy Place.
It was the place of cleansing and the removal of defilement.
And it is from the heavenly altar that God mercifully unleashes war on the earth
You might hear me say that and say, “How could it be merciful?”
Because again—it is a warning.
And if the tumultuous and terrible consequences of war cause you to tremble at the prospect how evil sin is, then urgently repent.
If the thinking about all of the fighting that has happened and is happening in the world causes you to feel despair over how things are, repent of your sin and find safety and joy in Christ.
Because as terrible as the wars of this world are, there is no war worse than the one humans choose to wage against God in their hearts.
And the only way to be saved from our treasonous war crimes repent and trust in Christ.
He stepped down into this war-ravaged world and gave His life as a ransom for many.
He died in Your place.
And then He resurrected to prove His victory over sin and death.
And He offers the peace of that victory to anyone who will repent and trust in Him.
And we must repent. Because World War II and Vietnam and the Civil War and the French Revolution and all the wars of the world combined, cannot compare with the sorrow that will come with the defeat of God’s enemies in the final war.
Repent now, before it is too late.
And then one last bit of application--
As much as the wars of this world should cause an unbeliever to repent, they should cause believers to proclaim.
We should see the blood and the bullets on our televisions and say, “I have to tell my neighbor about Jesus. I have to invite them to church. Sin is too terrible for me to be silent.”
Isn’t this how we saw Jesus respond to the events of His day?
There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”
When people said, “Jesus, why is this happening?” He would say, “The sinful world is dangerous. Repent before it happens to you.”
And that is how we should respond.
War in the Ukraine? Man, this world is fallen. I better tell someone about Jesus before something terrible lands in their backyard.”
And don’t get in your head too much about this.
You love your Lord and you love your church.
Talk matter of factly about them and then be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within you.
Because the message of the Kingdom that Christ has given you, is the only hope this world has
CONCLUSION
CONCLUSION
I know that after this you are all ready for the world to end.
Six Trumpets—you know that the end of the world will come with the end of this cycle—with the blowing of the 7th Trumpet
But that will not actually come for two weeks.
Much like between the 6th and 7th seals, there is an interlude in chapter 10
A pause before Final Judgment arrives
We will pick up the interlude next week with Revelation 10:1-11...