The Blasphemous Trinity

Revelation 13, The Blasphemous Trinity

I have been in so many hospital waiting rooms…

I can’t begin to tell you how many I’ve been in, in end of life situations, in emergency situations, in joyful situations….

And there is something that is pretty universally true about every waiting room I’ve ever been in, and that is…

In almost every situation, the people who are waiting there, who have no medical training whatsoever…. miraculously turn into medical experts…

All of the sudden everyone has a theory…Everyone has their expert diagnosis

If only doctors would spend more time in waiting rooms, they could help cure more patients…

It’s funny, I find the same principle to be true whenever anyone brings up Revelation 13

When people hear the phrase…”The mark of the beast” People miraculously turn into Biblical scholars…

They might not be able to explain a thing about the rest of the book of revelation….But they have multiple theories on who the beast is and how the world will end!!

And for guys like me who have devoted their lives to teaching and understanding the scriptures we just put our palm to our foreheads and say…that’s not what it means!

So, this morning, maybe you have strong opinions on this text…many people do…I want to encourage you to set those aside and give this text a fresh reading…

Intro:

The book of Revelation is the result of this vision that John had on the island of Patmos…

I think the best way to summarize it to this point is it is a letter to the church to encourage them to be faithful witnesses in the midst of an empire and a world that is evil…

For today what you will really want to keep in mind is starting in chapter 7, God marks his people who are marked by the lamb…He seals people with his spirit

Then again in Chapter 11 God measures off his new temple people.

We are not a people who are called to just know biblical information; we have to proclaim it with our lives and center them around the lamb!

Last week Pastor Evan lead you though kind of a retelling of the gospel. The birth of Jesus. It was all about the spiritual warfare surrounding the birth of the messiah

If you remember the Dragon who is satan, could not conquer Jesus but has instead has been conquered.

Relegated to earth, now in his dying efforts he sets off to try and destroy God’s children.

So, we are left with this dragon who has been conquered, he’s just this defeated dragon now…with no place left in heaven…

He goes off to wage war against God’s children

Satan has no place in God’s creation…he is a defeated entity

So buckle up lets read Revelation 13

Revelation 13 ESV

And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads, with ten diadems on its horns and blasphemous names on its heads. And the beast that I saw was like a leopard; its feet were like a bear’s, and its mouth was like a lion’s mouth. And to it the dragon gave his power and his throne and great authority. One of its heads seemed to have a mortal wound, but its mortal wound was healed, and the whole earth marveled as they followed the beast. And they worshiped the dragon, for he had given his authority to the beast, and they worshiped the beast, saying, “Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?” And the beast was given a mouth uttering haughty and blasphemous words, and it was allowed to exercise authority for forty-two months. It opened its mouth to utter blasphemies against God, blaspheming his name and his dwelling, that is, those who dwell in heaven. Also it was allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer them. And authority was given it over every tribe and people and language and nation, and all who dwell on earth will worship it, everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain. If anyone has an ear, let him hear: If anyone is to be taken captive, to captivity he goes; if anyone is to be slain with the sword, with the sword must he be slain. Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints. Then I saw another beast rising out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb and it spoke like a dragon. It exercises all the authority of the first beast in its presence, and makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose mortal wound was healed. It performs great signs, even making fire come down from heaven to earth in front of people, and by the signs that it is allowed to work in the presence of the beast it deceives those who dwell on earth, telling them to make an image for the beast that was wounded by the sword and yet lived. And it was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast, so that the image of the beast might even speak and might cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be slain. Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name. This calls for wisdom: let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666.

So, before we get all into this stuff today, like I said in the beginning of this message Everyone has an opinion about this passage.

There is this tradition that is a little over 200 years old and it is called dispensationalism…

And it teaches that this is a literal passage and that there will be barcodes or tattoos or microchips implanted on your head and hands and that is the mark of the beast…

I just want to come out and say I don’t think that is true….But…There are things rapidly coming out for humans like the nuerolink and there is a desire in humanity to add AI somehow to the body…to make super humans…This is a desire to remake humanity in our own image…So what I would tell you is that, in our desire to become super-human, I think it will make us less than human…So Don’t do it…

Let’s just say your at costco and they are giving out free samples of the Nuero-link or of some microchip…Don’t do it!

These dispensationalists teach that this is the mark of the antichrist…And here is the deal…The word “antichrist” is not in the book of Revelation, so in my opinion these folks are using poor biblical interpretation methods to jump to that conclusion…

But: I could be wrong…so don’t get that microchip or nurolink just in case….I will come back to this point at the end…

Break down 1-10 (Government power)

So, Let’s break down this scripture a little

So, there is this defeated dragon that is now going after God’s people and he is standing on the shore and he summons this beast out of the water…

Remember what the seas mean to these people? Chaos and Evil!

The beast that comes out of the water is almost a mirror reflection of the dragon that is sitting on the shore, so we know that it shares in the evil of the dragon…

But it has such an odd description

Revelation 13:2 ESV

And the beast that I saw was like a leopard; its feet were like a bear’s, and its mouth was like a lion’s mouth. And to it the dragon gave his power and his throne and great authority.

So, if we were to look at Daniel Chapter 7, which we don’t have the time to read verse by verse

We would see that Daniel has this dream and he sees these 4 beasts that are immensely powerful, these beasts are rising up in their power

See most every commentator takes Daniel’s vision to be that the first beast is the Meads, the second beats is the Persians, the third is Alexander and Greece and the 4th is Rome…

So, for John to quote this passage…What he is trying to say that this Beast symbolizes Rome…

But it goes further than that

Revelation 13:3 ESV

One of its heads seemed to have a mortal wound, but its mortal wound was healed, and the whole earth marveled as they followed the beast.

So, if you’ve read the left behind books then this is the antichrist! Back when President Kennedy was shot in the head there were people waiting to see if he would come back to life again because of his head wound…

I remember in the early 2000’s when the Ukrainian leader Victor Yushchenko was poisoned, and his face got all disfigured…I remember people saying…Watch out he is the Antichrist!

But to say this would just be wrong…it would be intellectual arrogance…if we say this then we are saying that the early church could not have possibly know what this verse was about…

When in reality the early church would have instantly gotten this reference

The emperor Nero was one of the worst emperors for Christians that there was at the time…He would have these famous parties and since Christians were supposed to be the light of the world, he would light them on fire and make them the source of light for his parties…

So, we are talking about a guy of immense evil…

There was a famous story about Nero…He committed suicide by stabbing himself in the throat….

But rumors were wild that he faked his own death and that he was going to come back as a leader…and in fact this rumor was so believed and so widespread that one of the next Emperors “Otho” claimed to be Nero and took his name, he even used the name Nero in official documents…

So, John is referencing this story that was floating around the empire…He is trying to make the point that this beast is the political and military power of Rome!

And there is something even bigger at play here…When you look at the breath of all of scripture….

You see things like

Pharaoh: and you know what’s interesting, we don’t know his name…Why? All Pharaoh’s are the same

You have Babylon which is this evil empire

And you have Rome which is this evil empire

And I think the key to all of it is found in the temptation of Jesus…

You know Jesus goes out to the dessert and

Satan says turn these stones into bread…Jesus replies…man cannot live on bread alone

Satan tells Jesus to throw himself down and let angels attend to him…Jesus says…hey don’t put the lord your god to the test

Matthew 4:8–9 ESV

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.”

I think the key to the first beast, which is the beast of empire is this…

Every principality and power, every empire…every form of power that the world seems to create….

If you want to know who John thinks is behind it all…it is the dragon

I mean have you noticed that it doesn’t matter who we elect, sometimes we elect people who we put our hope in and they get in there and realize that there is a system that is way bigger than them that they themselves can’t even control all of it….

Satan is always Behind the grasp for human

And see it doesn’t matter who it is, every system that is a grasp for human power

The Egyptians…the Babylonians the Persians, the Meads the Geeks the Romans…it doesn’t matter what name you give it…

The beast seems to always operate as the beast!

So, the dragon summons the first beast out of the sea and then that beast seems to draw out the next beast that comes from the land…

let’s look at that beast

Break Down 11-15 (Government Religion)

Revelation 13:11–15 ESV

Then I saw another beast rising out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb and it spoke like a dragon. It exercises all the authority of the first beast in its presence, and makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose mortal wound was healed. It performs great signs, even making fire come down from heaven to earth in front of people, and by the signs that it is allowed to work in the presence of the beast it deceives those who dwell on earth, telling them to make an image for the beast that was wounded by the sword and yet lived. And it was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast, so that the image of the beast might even speak and might cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be slain.

Do you see what John is doing here…He is saying this beast looks like a lamb…but it speaks like a dragon!!!

So, if the first beast is the political empire

The second beast symbolizes the empirical cult…

It symbolizes the worship that is behind maintaining the empire!

See this beast rises up to lure people into the life of the beast…But it does it by looking like a lamb and speaking like the dragon…

And it does it by saying…Hey look at what the empire can do for you! Look at what it can offer you…

The empire can do this and that…

The empire can give you freedom!

So, the early church absolutely had to deal with this because everything in their lives was marked by the beast…

Some of the earliest debates in the church were, do we eat meat sacrificed to idols or not?

Because that meat was offered in worship to the beast!

Remember early in the series the church of Pergamum? The church that had to deal with these trade guilds…

You either had to be poor and not work or you could go to these guilds and engage in worship to the empire through meat sacrificed to idols and temple prostitution…

See this beast is the little voice that says, see come on in…everyone does it…Just do what you have to do to

There are these forces that wanted to pull in the people

And it looked good on the outside! I mean it looked like a godly thing but on the inside, we were lured into all kinds of evil!

And the thing about this beast is that it wants to put its mark on your life…

Just as in chapter 7 the lamb marked his people …

This Blasphemous trinity of the dragon and the two beasts want to mark your life

See everything about these beasts are just a parody of who God really is in heaven…with parody power…

It looks like the lamb…but speaks like a dragon…it’s a parody

It had a fatal wound yet lived! Like the lamb that looked as if it had been slain.

It called fire from heaven…Just as the two witnesses did!

Satan has no original thoughts

And see this beast wants to mark you on your hand and forehead…

This has been the source of much mystery…but like in everything else in revelation…The Bible itself has the answers to the deep mystery of the book!

Deuteronomy 6:4–7 ESV

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.

See in the Jewish tradition we have to remember that the original group that was hearing this was coming out of Egypt and it was as if God was saying, listen! You are aliens in this world…you are not like the other nations! This verse was saying that your life ought to be so marked by God’s laws that they get into your mind and into your hands…’

But see when you write this on your head…The lord our God is one…you are daily reminded that God is God alone! That there is no one like him…that we are not to be coaxed into believing that Pharaoh is God

This is the beast that coaxes people in…It does signs and wonders…it’s like look what the beast has to offer…

And the parody Blasphemous trinity…. wants to get into your heads…and wants you to be formed by it!

So, here is why this whole argument about dispensationalist and the tattoo and the microchip are important…

If the dispensationalist are wrong about the physical mark…

then I am concerned that we will have churches full of people vigilantly keeping watch over what could be the next mark of the beast, is it a tattoo? Is it a barcode? Is it AI? Is it a Microchip?

while the whole time the church careful not to get the tattoo, the microchip or the barcode… is getting marked by the beast, while we are being squeezed into the mold of empire!

Because the beast wants to lure us in so subtly and have us look like the beast!

And then it says the number of the beast is 666….

So, what on earth does this mean…

So again, if you’ve ever read any of John’s other works you know that everything has a double meaning…

1. It means Nero. The ancient Greek Latin and Hebrew had numbers tied to it…and so if you add up Nero’s name it would have turned out to be 666

2. But secondly and I would argue, way more importantly is this…

Actually, before I get to the second point, I went on YouTube this week and just typed in 666 and mark of the beast to see what kind of crazy stuff would come up…

I found a video that said…that 666 has been a mystery for over 2000 years but now we know that ISIS is really the beast…

And while ISIS is a beastly kingdom….It’s just not true that to the earliest readers of this book the numbers 666 would have been a mystery to them…

It was a reference to King Solomon….King Solomon on one hand was the son of David the king who built the temple of the lord, the wisest man on the earth…

But the text gives us some really damning information about him…

It says that he liked to go down to Egypt…and a good Hebrew king wasn’t allowed to go to Egypt…

1 Kings 9:15 ESV

And this is the account of the forced labor that King Solomon drafted to build the house of the Lord and his own house and the Millo and the wall of Jerusalem and Hazor and Megiddo and Gezer

The text reminds us that Solomon sold horses and chariots that he got from Egypt the middle eastern powers…

That Solomon essentially became obsessed with wealth!

The authors of the text are trying to make this point that if David was the king that was after God’s own heart…

then Solomon his son while he had some of that in him…was after wealth and power

We read verses like this

1 Kings 10:21 ESV

All King Solomon’s drinking vessels were of gold, and all the vessels of the House of the Forest of Lebanon were of pure gold. None were of silver; silver was not considered as anything in the days of Solomon.

1 Kings 10:27 ESV

And the king made silver as common in Jerusalem as stone, and he made cedar as plentiful as the sycamore of the Shephelah.

and Solomon has lots of wives…He had tons of them…Not because he was such a sexual man…but because other kings recognized his power and sent their daughters to be married to him so that he would treat these other nations well…

And with the foreign wives….and they brought along with them all of their gods…

And as the author of kings is writing about Solomon’s life the author writes this next little passage in

1 Kings 10:14 ESV

Now the weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was 666 talents of gold,

Yearly…every year…yearly….every time they counted. Each year

So, this text is saying that every single year Solomon had the same weight of gold…

So, either Solomon’s scales were off because that seems impossible that every year these scales measured the exact same weight

Or the author is trying to tell us something!

I think it is that option…Every year when he counts his gold

He gets 666

So, the number 7 is complete…and 777 would be completely complete because it occurs 3 times…

“666” is a biblical way of saying completely incomplete

That when you chase after wealth as an empire you will never find completeness because every year you have to go and get more…

So back to revelation…there is a beast that symbolizes the empire that wants to lure us into the false security of chasing after wealth and money….

So just like the early church we live in the time…that wants us to be squeezed into a mold

Just as in this passage there is this counterfeit lamb…you know the one that looks like the lamb but speaks like the dragon…

When we surrender to the culture and our lives embody the culture, this is the mark of the beast!

We get more and more marked by that life when we surrender to our culture rather than to the real lamb…That’s when we get the mark of the beast…Because our life resembles the beast!

Our world our culture calls us to love….By having casual sex with whoever you feel like…But really draws us deeper into the pit of bondage…Don’t buy into the lie…it is a counterfeit love

Our culture calls us to the truth….That all religions really believe the same thing and it is intolerant and arrogant to spread the gospel…Don’t buy into the lie…it’s a counterfeit truth!

Our culture calls us to true commitment…until there is any suffering or until life gets tough then if you fall out of love you should totally just go your separate ways…Don’t buy into the lie of what culture says commitment is!

Our culture calls us to freedom, freedom from religion. It just gets in the way and we don’t really want to hear it anyway…Don’t buy into the lie that God is not alive and present in this world

Our culture calls us to being blessed, you deserve it…you deserve the bigger and better car…you deserve the bigger house…Our culture subtly calls us into buying into the lie that being blessed is receiving rather than giving away…Don’t buy into the lie of counterfeit blessing…For blessing is confused with greed

Satan used the cultic practices of the first century, and that was pretty obvious, but he is really sneaky today!

So again, I will tell you…If the dispensationalist is wrong…its totally possible that you could be waiting to resist the barcode or microchip, when the whole time you are being marked by the beast of the empire!

I love the way that Eugene Peterson talks about this passage:

When the mark of the land beast replaces the Shema on forehead and hands, religion becomes consumption – people become gross parodies of the gospel, buying all they can to show they are blessed by God, bowing before every display of success. The buying and selling of religion is the mark of the beast. –

Maybe your life is marked by the pursuit of wealth…by the pursuit of power…by the pursuit of self-gratification…

What John is trying to tell us is stop it because your marking your life by the image of the beast

Maybe you have surrendered to the values of our culture and now you speak the values of our culture…that is just as much the mark of the beast

Again, I will tell you….Satan wants to lure you into incompleteness…It is his life’s work….Don’t buy into the lie!

Let’s Pray