Revelation 20

Tomas and Misha

Revelation 20, Do You Trust Me?

Ok Guys! Just two more weeks of Revelation…Can you believe it?

I feel like I have said a lot that we are going to get into the hardest chapter of the hardest book of the Bible and today is another one of those days. It is one of the hardest texts in the hardest book….So before we really dive into it today we need to do some work of remembering!

On January 28th of this year I preached a sermon that if you kept that sermon in mind then you’re going to do really well today

Yes, I play the long game!

Since most of us don’t remember what we had for breakfast today, let me recap the sermon I preached 8 months ago and help us with why it matters in Revelation 20…

There is this Old Testament Narrative that plays right into the New Testament

The Old testament narrative is that there is a spiritual battle playing out for your allegiance

It happened with Pharoah and his gods

It happened with the gods of Babylon

And I hope you have seen that theme through the book of Revelation…It doesn’t start there though

Recall that we talked about ancient pantheons of god’s…And to the ancients, no one said…Yeah these are really fake…On the contrary in the ancient world there wasn’t even a category for not believing in the gods…What we call Atheism today really just did not exist

What I shared with you way back on January 28th is that the very first commandment understood that there was a spiritual battle for your allegiance:

So what is the first commandment:

Exodus 20:3 ESV

“You shall have no other gods before me.

This is the first commandment

in our 21st century mind we read this and say…Oh don’t make your truck an idol…But in fact there is another commandment about not having idols…

The idea is that there are in fact other gods out there trying to take your allegiance away from the one true god…

And the old testament has an origin story for the false gods…

It is in Genesis 6, the sons of God who come to earth and have sex with the daughters of men and have the Nephilim…This was a race of people made in the image of the fallen angels not made in the image of God…

The Nephilim were called the heroes of old

And It is obscure because 21st century Christianity has chosen not to focus on this but this is something that has been talked about for centuries

But the story line of the Old Testament talks about these spiritual forces deceiving the nations

And it talks about that one day there will be a final judgment and that these agents of evil will be destroyed

In fact the main plot line for the text today is about evil being done away with

The plot line for this text is Isaiah 24:21-23

Isaiah 24:21–23 ESV

On that day the Lord will punish the host of heaven, in heaven, and the kings of the earth, on the earth. They will be gathered together as prisoners in a pit; they will be shut up in a prison, and after many days they will be punished. Then the moon will be confounded and the sun ashamed, for the Lord of hosts reigns on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, and his glory will be before his elders.

The lord will punish the host of heaven: Those who rebelled against God (Genesis 6)

And the kings of the earth: Now there are verses that link the kings getting their power from these host of heaven

just like it says in revelation…Remember a few chapters ago there is this woman who is called the Whore of Babylon who is riding on the dragon…

It is a picture of this woman getting her power from satanic forces!

Isaiah says they will be gathered together as prisoners in a pit!

Remember we looked at that verse in 1 Peter 3 where it talks about Jesus descending into hell?

What was Jesus doing there? He was proclaiming victory over the fallen angels…He was saying your evil and rebellion will never be aloud back out of here

And what was Jesus doing down there?

Revelation 1:18 ESV

and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.

Jesus was saying, I have overcome death! I have the keys to hell! I am victorious!

So what Isaiah 24 and MANY OTHER Old Testament Passages recall is that there will be a day when the powers that deceive the nations and the kings all get judged and they will go away!

Right in the beginning we have to remember….Jesus is the one who holds the keys over all of this!

So up to this point in Revelation:

All through the book of Revelation there has been this almost rhetorical question

Whose side are you on? The Lamb? Or Babylon?

Jesus even reminds us in the beginning of the book, you can not straddle the fence on this question!

And I think the other question and part of the tension is

The question is not, what side are you on, or who do you side with but who has your allegiance? Whose are you?

The question that the entire book of Revelation asks its reader is not which side are you on but to whom do you belong?

Is your identity tied to the lamb or to Babylon?

The last few chapters have been this extended judgment scene of Babylon falling and those whose lives that were tied to it wept….But heaven rejoices for finally those who were destroying God’s good creation were finally being destroyed…

A good way to think of this is that it allows for the light to come when the darkness is all gone…

Last week we saw that Jesus showed up to the final battle…

And in the heat of battle…there was no battle…Jesus and his followers won, simply because he showed up…

And what we have to understand before we read the first half of chapter 20 is just as John the author paused when he described plagues…he is doing the same thing here…for instance…He would do plagues 1-4 quick…then 5-6 and then a big pause and then 7…

There has always been the idea that evil will be done away with and that this event will bring about a great Joy…

Since long before Jesus’ arrival on earth, people knew that evil had to be done away with…

So, this morning Let’s get into the text

Revelation 20:1–10 ESV

Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he might not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were ended. After that he must be released for a little while. Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom the authority to judge was committed. Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God, and those who had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years. And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations that are at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle; their number is like the sand of the sea. And they marched up over the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, but fire came down from heaven and consumed them, and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

So again, should we one day look for a literal dragon? A literal angel holding keys and a chain…Should we try and identify a literal Gog and Magog? Should we look for a literal thousand years?

One of the mistakes that people make in reading this book is that they pick and choose what is a symbol and what is literal and what is figurative…

And we can’t do that with Apocalyptic literature

Remember the rest of the book:

Is Jesus a literal lamb with 7 horns and 7 eyes? No…Symbols not statistics

Are there really only 144,000 sealed? No Symbol not statistic

Was the blood that Jesus shed really long enough to cover all of Palestine from people’s head to toes? 1,600 Stadia? No…Symbol not statistic

So, people read all of these numbers and say oh these are symbols…

But 666 and 1,000 years…those are statistics.

One of the things that we have learned though this series is that numbers are symbols

So, are the 1,000 years literal? I don’t think so…BUT…I will happily be wrong about this…What I think this that this is the way of saying…A long time!

What I would rather do today is to show you the theological point, because I really feel it is most useful to us today:

I along with a lot of other theologians believe that The theological point of the millennium is solely to demonstrate the triumph of the faithful, the martyrs: that those whom the beast has put to death really live.

See this is a consistent message…4 of the seven churches of revelation had promises that ended up right here!

So look back at Revelation 20:4

Revelation 20:4 ESV

Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom the authority to judge was committed. Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God, and those who had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.

The ones who were faithful to the end reigned with Christ and get to sit on thrones with God…They are now actually in charge of Judging those who fell from heaven…the evil powers of this world

Let’s recall what Jesus said to a few of the seven churches about the faithful:

To the Church in Smyrna

Revelation 2:11 ESV

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death.’

To the church in Thyatira

Revelation 2:26 ESV

The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations,

To the church in Sardis

Revelation 3:5 ESV

The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the book of life. I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels.

To the church in Laodicea

Revelation 3:21 ESV

The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.

And I love how in the text John talks about those who are beheaded will rule with God…but this is again a symbol…

It doesn’t mean that only if you lose your head…or only martyrs go to heaven…

See when Rome gave people the death penalty…to its citizens it only beheaded…Because it was seen as the most humane way to use capital punishment…

What John is saying, is hey…all of those who have their citizenship in heaven They get to rule with me…

The ruler of the “kingdom of the earth” is gone…Now my people get it!

See you can look at the craziness of our election cycle…You can look at what is happening in Israel and Iran…You can look at Ukrane and Russia and worry about what China might do…and you could legitimatly live in fear reading the news today

But what Revelation 20 tells us is that those who have placed their faith and trust in Jesus will one day, at the culmination of all things rule over all the evil and we will be God’s partners in overseeing the elimination of all evil…

See the entire point of the millennium is missed when we go too deeply into pre-post and a-millennial theology…There is value into understanding all of that stuff…But we can not miss the point

Because the point is that those who lived their lives with their citizenship in heaven will get abused in this world…you won’t fit it…you can’t in good conscious do things that will everyone else is doing…

Because your citizenship isn’t here! Because you are a resident alien…Your citizenship is in heaven! These are the people who will reign and rule with Jesus!

So, after John talks about the millennium he uses an equally troubling phrase…He talks about this battle between God and Magog

There are two places these words are found in the entire bible.

Here and Ezekiel 38-39

I just want to give you one example of a way that this has been misinterpreted

“At other times, historical identification of Gog has been attempted by playing with the Hebrew words and creating false linguistic connections with the names of historical figures. In this regard Lust observes that the Septuagint renders the phrase נשְיִֹא ראֹשׂ (nesiʾ rōʾsh) as archonta Rōs (“commander of Ros”), and so modern readers can easily mistake the phrase as pointing to Russia.”

Michael S. Heiser, Reversing Hermon: Enoch, The Watchers & The Forgotten Mission of Jesus Christ (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2017), 170.

So People for centuries have been saying this is Russia! And the reality is that the Bible is intentionally cryptic on who Gog and Magog are…

Let me give you a reason why the Bible is this way…Because we are not the only ones reading the Bible…I think Satan knows it pretty well, and if Satan knew the exact playbook of the Lord then that wouldn’t be great would it?

If you remember the Syrian Civil War…Russia is of course an arms dealer and ally with Syria…I had a pastor friend of mine tell me that Russia or Magog was 40 miles outside of Israel in Syria so by his math…the end is imminent!

Then Russia pulled out of Syria…and his calculations were off…

While its fun to have theories…I think there is an inherent danger in speculative theology…The danger is that we are merely guessing rather than searching out the word of God

I think it is clear that when Ezekiel used Magog and Gog…he was talking about all nations from the 4 corners of the earth…

So, what I think John is doing here is saying…When Satan gets out of this 1000-year prison he will gather the last remaining remnants of his army…and come against Jesus again…

Which brings us to our next strange thing here….In chapter 20 there is this strange catch and release of Satan…and then the nations gather against Jesus and his people…What is that all about?

It may seem strange to us, but it seems that it is part of God’s divine plan to make sure every trace of evil is rooted out…allowing the great transformation into a “new heaven and a new earth” to take place

In this text, it says that Gog and Magog come out and surround the city that God loves, which is his people and he destroys them with fire…

And finally, Satan is Gone…and all evil with it…This catch, and release plan was God’s way of rooting out the last bits of evil on the earth…

So, Let’s keep reading…

Revelation 20:11–15 ESV

Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

This text makes two points that I want to spend the rest of our time on…

Revelation 20:12 ESV

And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done.

So figuratively of course. There are a bunch of books in heaven…And I think what John is trying to say is what is in your book? What is in your photo album?

Because there are two books…

The book that shows what you have done and the book that shows what Jesus has done.

Which one would you rather be judged by?

See on the day of all of our final judgment God will look at our “deeds”…there used to be this question in the church…are we saved by faith or works? And the answer is Yes! Because no reasonable person thinks, and the bible certainly doesn’t teach that you can separate behavior and belief.

You can’t just say. Well…I believe this….but how I act is totally different…

See we are judged by our deeds because it is actually the most reliable indicator of what we believe…We are judged by our deeds because it reveals where our faith actually lies…Its sort of like what Jesus said, that out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks…

Just as our words reveal our true heart

Our deeds reveal our true belief

So, Let’s just consider the following scenario

You all know I love to ride my bike…I am one of those annoying road bikers in spandex…

Well I take it really seriously…There is a race season that I want to be in peak physical fitness for and last year, two weeks before race season kicks off, I was at a trampoline park and I accidentally kicked a wall and I just broke my left big toe…

Well I know with a toe break there is nothing you can do, tape them together and hope for the best…

Well we have a very good doctor in our congregation and I asked him to take a look at it…When I say good doctor, I mean top of his field…

So he tells me exactly what I should do…Including going to get an x ray…Meeting with an Orthopedic….taking it easy for a couple of months and a whole bunch of other things

Now I heard this doctor…I love and respect him

But I took it easy for a week and then went as hard as I could the next week…I never got an x-ray…I never went to see the orthopedic…I never followed any of the rest of his directions because I didn’t want to miss racing!

And I had reoccurring problems in my toe for about 9 months…

It still doesn't feel normal… It finally doesn't hurt any more…But the healing process took about a year rather than the 3 months that it should have

Don’t you think it would be reasonable for that doctor to ask…”Do you trust me?”

Or do you sort of trust me?

See if you really trusted the doctor you would do what the doctor says!

See

Our actions reveal our true allegiance, and our true allegiance reveals who we put our trust in…

Belief and behavior cannot be divorced I think it’s why Jesus says this

Luke 6:46 ESV

“Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?

So, on that great day when you stand before God…will he say…Hey you trusted me, and it showed up everywhere in the book I am reading…

Some of us are like man…I don’t want to give an accounting of my life…But PRAISE GOD…There are two books!

All of us, when we die will have to give an accounting of our life.

On that day we have two options.

The first option is to tale our stand based on what we have done with our life. The second is to take our stand on the basis of what Jesus Christ has done with his life.

There are two books that I can be judged by, the book of my life or the book of Jesus’ life, whose works do I want to be judged by?

For me, I find no hope in option one.”

SO, when you stand before God, whose book do you want to read? When you stand before God, what will your deeds have revealed?

Will God be standing there saying…Did you really trust me?

The second point…which is really important is this

death is actually judged…See the text says death and hades is thrown into the fire…What John is trying to say here…The word hades was just a word that can easily be replaced with “The grave”

How can something that that is not a person be judged?

See death was the ultimate consequence for the original sin and in order for a new heaven and a new earth to break through…death needs to be eliminated! Not just all of the evil in the world needs to go…But the consequences of that evil need to go as well!

The apostle Paul tells us that the beginnings of this has already happened

1 Corinthians 15:21–22 ESV

For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

Jesus overcame death…and when you put your trust in him you will too.

And one day…

One day, death itself will be thrown into the lake of fire

The theologian Karl Barth points out that for Jesus, there is no book of death…just a book of life…

In other words ,Death will have no place in the new creation!

So, what I want you to see today is that the God of heaven and earth stands before you today and I think there are two questions…

1. Do you trust me? I mean do you really trust? Does the fact that you trust me show up in your life anywhere? Does it show up everywhere?

2. I think God would say…I raised my son so that death wouldn’t have the final say any more…Are you living with an eternal perspective? Are you living with heaven in view…If your eternity is sorted out, what about your neighbors? What about your co-workers? What about your friends?