Like A Bridge Through Troubled Water

Revelation 15, Like a Bridge Through Troubled Water…

CAMP AWESOME: Announcement: We have 65 people signed up already, last year we had 75 total kids! We are going to have an absolutely huge year. We need you to participate!

Men’s Breakfast: Aviators 8:30am 1st Monday of every month

Today we have one of the shortest sections of Revelation…In many ways it is setting up some of the final scenes

I think that a great way to think about this book is almost like a play that is a dramatic re-telling of stories of the Old Testament…

It is a dramatic telling of the gospel in every little part that helps us to see the gospel in a whole new way…

Since today is shorter, I don’t want to recap every little part of revelation just what came before so that we can see why this is so important…

So, John the author of revelation tells this story about Satan rebelling and being kicked out of heaven…And the way that John re-tells the story is kind of foreign to us

To John there is this dragon and he is Satan…or the embodiment of everything evil….He is the dark power that is behind human systems of power and control in this world

And this dragon gives power to evil empires and false religions…and they form this unholy and blasphemous trinity that bears this number 666, which as we know by now, may have represented Nero…but also in the Jewish mind, would have been a completely incomplete number, a reference to Solomon, who was always chasing after gold but was never satisfied

The dragon is not powerful enough to get to Jesus, so he goes after that which is most near and dear to Jesus…and that is Jesus’ people or the people who are marked by the lamb and his image…

So last week we saw the dragon and this lamb facing off and gathering the troops…and we saw the beauty of the harvest of the earth by the blood of Jesus.

And this week is kind of a prep week for what is to come, the 7 bowls of God’s wrath that will eventually destroy evil and make a way for God’s new creation…

So, flip with me to Revelation 15

Revelation 15:1–8 ESV

Then I saw another sign in heaven, great and amazing, seven angels with seven plagues, which are the last, for with them the wrath of God is finished. And I saw what appeared to be a sea of glass mingled with fire—and also those who had conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name, standing beside the sea of glass with harps of God in their hands. And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, “Great and amazing are your deeds, O Lord God the Almighty! Just and true are your ways, O King of the nations! Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship you, for your righteous acts have been revealed.” After this I looked, and the sanctuary of the tent of witness in heaven was opened, and out of the sanctuary came the seven angels with the seven plagues, clothed in pure, bright linen, with golden sashes around their chests. And one of the four living creatures gave to the seven angels seven golden bowls full of the wrath of God who lives forever and ever, and the sanctuary was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power, and no one could enter the sanctuary until the seven plagues of the seven angels were finished.

Announcing Judgment

So now our focus is back to heaven…

If you’ve been with us through this series, you have seen the focus shift many times from heaven to earth

It’s sort of John’s way of saying that heaven is coming to earth…There is more to reality than what meets the eye!

There is more going on behind the scenes than you could fathom

But this passage is initially somewhat perplexing…

It seems like a joyous pronouncement of God’s wrath… almost as if we can’t wait to see God throw down his wrath on the unbelievers

There is almost this tone of all of the nations and kings will come to see it and we can’t wait to see judgment!

I mean all of us hate to be judged! Why on earth would we want judgment to come upon the earth?

Imagine with me if you will a moment…

1st century Rome…

Let’s say you live in a small town outside the city…

You probably get merchants coming every now and then but even less often you would see government officials coming through.

And Let’s just say a widow had money stolen from a person in the town

Or someone who was a fraudster and cheated people out of money…

The local farmer moved boundary stones and day after day was steeling some of your land

When that judge came to town tons of pint up frustrations would boil over and you’d wait for the judge to make things right

When the judge came, he’d have to be a good judge that refused any bribes

The judge would have to decide who was right and who was wrong and when that judge made is final decision, order would be restored, and chaos would be adverted…

All of the wrong things would be made right!

People would be so excited

Biblically, God’s judgment is a joyful event, it anticipates God making right all that is wrong with the world. (Psalm 98)

I want you to look at this Psalm but also look at it in light of the cross…

Psalm 98 ESV

A Psalm. Oh sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things! His right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him. The Lord has made known his salvation; he has revealed his righteousness in the sight of the nations. He has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness to the house of Israel. All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God. Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth; break forth into joyous song and sing praises! Sing praises to the Lord with the lyre, with the lyre and the sound of melody! With trumpets and the sound of the horn make a joyful noise before the King, the Lord! Let the sea roar, and all that fills it; the world and those who dwell in it! Let the rivers clap their hands; let the hills sing for joy together before the Lord, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with equity.

See we tend to think of God’s judgment as horrific, horrible

We tend to even uses the word judgmental in negative terms

But do you hear the anticipation and the joy that the psalms talk about judgment? Why is it joyful. Because God takes the wrong and makes it right!

It’s because you and I are imperfect judges, But what Revelation 15 is doing here is really just looking back to this huge theme in the scriptures, that we should all be looking forward to the day of judgment.

And I don’t want to miss the fact that for some God’s judgment wont feel like a good thing…

See what Revelation has been laying out over the last few weeks is that when your life is tied to the beast of sin…When your life is tied to the empire and you find your hope in rulers and kings then you will always be completely incomplete

And judgment will not feel like a good thing

See the gospel in its simplest form is that Jesus died on the cross to atone for our sins, so that we can be declared not guilty

The gospel is that for those who have chosen to follow Jesus, you get judged by what he did on the cross not by what you have done…

If you dont want your life redeemed by the blood of the lamb, if you dont want to surrender your life to the Lord then yes, I would imagine that judgement day for you will not go very well. But the theme of all of history is for christians to joyfully anticipate judgment!

This is the purpose of this chapter…It is announcing that the good Judge is coming and that all of the wrong things would be made right!

God’s judgment is to put right that which is wrong in the world…

What Revelation is doing is saying that If the scroll is going to be unrolled and God’s purposes are going to be revealed, then the destroyers of the earth have to be destroyed…evil has to be gone…For all of God’s purposed to come to fruition…then evil has to be gone too

This text first and foremost reminds us…That there is a judge…who is Good and who is coming

But this text is doing more than just announcing judgment…

It is reminding the church of another story

Look back with me at Revelation 15:2-3

Revelation 15:2–3 ESV

And I saw what appeared to be a sea of glass mingled with fire—and also those who had conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name, standing beside the sea of glass with harps of God in their hands. And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, “Great and amazing are your deeds, O Lord God the Almighty! Just and true are your ways, O King of the nations!

2 And I saw what appeared to be a sea of glass mingled with fire—and also those who had conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name, standing beside the sea of glass with harps of God in their hands. 3 And they sing the song of Moses,

Walking through the water

What John is clearly trying to do is remind the church about another story…He says the saints are singing the song of Moses

John is always taking us back to the Old Testament.

And this time he is taking us back to one of his favorite places…The exodus…But this time he is past the plagues and he is moving into that critical moment when the Egyptians go to cross the red sea

So, flip with me to Exodus 14…

In exodus 14 we see the nation of Israel is standing before the red sea and Pharaoh and his army is in hot pursuit

And one of the things that I love to point out about that bible is that any body of water in the Bible represent this darkness and chaos

So, the Israelites are standing there, not really sure how they are going to face the chaos before them…and evil behind them

Exodus 14:10–16 (ESV)

When Pharaoh drew near, the people of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them, and they feared greatly. And the people of Israel cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses, “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? Is not this what we said to you in Egypt: ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.” And Moses said to the people, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.”

The Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry to me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward. Lift up your staff, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the people of Israel may go through the sea on dry ground.

Moses’s response is that God will fight…you only need to be silent…In other words…God will face this chaos on both sides with you…

There is nothing that you can do! You have to face the chaos with God…

Then God says…why are you crying to me…Get moving…

God saved his people by going through the chaotic water, not around it.

Its almost as if God wants you to really experience his grace and his presence but thats not going to happen unless you walk through the chaotic waters

Go through it…

I think what John is trying to tell the church is that yes, trouble and chaos is coming, you can not avoid it…But the judge is coming too…So dont try to avoid it, dont lose your faith over it….walk through it!

What I find interesting is that God didn’t say go around the chaos…he didn’t lift them up over the chaos…

The lord led them through the chaos…

And if you look at chapter 15 there is the song of Moses…

Moses and Miriam are standing on the opposite shore praising God and all of Israel with them….

What did this reference mean to the early church?

There is this interesting reference to the dragon or the Leviathan in the Old Testament

Of course, the Dragon in Revelation is Satan, the beast that comes from the sea is Rome…

Later The psalmist would be reflecting on crossing the red sea and we would get this psalm…

Look at Psalm 74:13-14

Psalm 74:13–14 ESV

You divided the sea by your might; you broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters. You crushed the heads of Leviathan; you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.

In the Old Testament…It was Egypt that was the beast, and God uses the very chaotic water that they came from to crush them!

What the Early church would have heard is God saying…Just as I walked with Israel through the Red Sea

Just as I crushed Egypt…the dragon…So will I walk with you through the chaos…

See it is walking with Jesus through the chaos…through the trouble…through the uncertainty of life where evil is defeated in your life…

As you remain faithful to Jesus…He will transform you on that journey…Particularly though the hard parts of life

It is walking through the chaos with Jesus were evil is defeated in your life

God wanted the church to know that You are not going to be exempt from the usual troubles of this world…

There will always be a Pharaoh perusing you and chaos ahead of you…

But there is a nagging truth about walking through the chaos…

The people who were complaining to Moses that they were going to die at the Red Sea were the same people standing on the other side praising God for their deliverance

often times we can not see how God is going to deliver us…we can only see the pain….

It’s so hard to see the way that God saves and restores…Its so easy to just complain rather than to look past it and say…well I guess this is an opportunity for God to show up…

I guess this is just an opportunity to see God’s power

If we were to go around the room and tell stories I bet some of the biggest things that God saved us from we were complaining before we were praising…and I am no exception to that…

I dont know why, maybe its just our own fallenness…But chaos will often times blind us to the reality that God loves us and wants to save us from it…So we end up complaining

Walking with Jesus in obedience through the chaos of life is transformative

When you don’t avoid the chaos that life brings up and you walk through it with the Lord, he will transform you…

It’s one of those dreadful truths. That pain, that hurt that chaos and brokenness all serve to form us!

A number of years ago Johnny Cash re-recorded the old Simon and Garfunkel tune…And of course, because it was Cash…This is just my opinion, but he blew Simon and Garfunkel out of the water…

That song is “Bridge over troubled water

The song talks about being comforted going over troubled water…

And the way cash does the song…it’s so good it just makes you want to cry

Here is how it goes…

When you're weary, feeling small

When tears are in your eyes, I'll dry them all (all)

I'm on your side, oh, when times get rough

And friends just can't be found

Like a bridge over troubled water

I will lay me down

Like a bridge over troubled water

I will lay me down

It’s nice to think of a bridge over troubled water…But what I think God is saying today, is I will walk with you through the troubled water…

So, I want to end with two questions

1. Are you prepared for the Judge to come?

If the answer is no, you have to ask yourself…will your deeds stand up to the scrutiny of all truth….When God looks at your life will he find it complete? And I know for me the answer is absolutely not! I am so incomplete without Jesus. I need his redemption and forgiveness because I am messed up!

So if that answer is no…You are not ready for the judge to come…I want to invite you to put your trust in Jesus…To say yes to him today

Get Baptized after church

2. Will you trust God to walk with you through the chaos?

What chaos are you walking through right now?

Have you asked the lord to be there with you?