Sermon Tone Analysis
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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:
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
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:
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.
He is a murderous lion and their heads reflect their leader.
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
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.
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
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