Endurance in Chaos—Revelation 13:1-10
Notes
Transcript
Someday, I am going to preach through Job. Not yet. The time isn’t right. I’m praying through what we are going to study next year.
But, Job is a fascinating book. He’s living his life. Minding his own business. Honoring God. Trying to encourage them to follow him.
And then, in a day, it’s all wiped away. He loses all his children, all his livestock, and most of his servants. To this catastrophe, he says:
and said:
“Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
and naked I will depart.
The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away;
may the name of the Lord be praised.”
Another day. We don’t know when or how long the interval between was, Job is afflicted with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head. His only relief was taking a piece of broken pottery and scraping himself with it.
His wife told him:
His wife said to him, “Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!”
He replied, “You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”
In all this, Job did not sin in what he said.
The rest of the book is Job enduring the accusations of his friends and begging God for a reason. But through it all, Job endured and he remained faithful to God.
None of us want to go through what Job went through.
But all of us have times when we are called, in spite of everything that is going on around us, to have patient endurance and faithfulness.
As Paul writes:
Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.
Spoiler alert: we cannot stand firm by ourselves.
I am grateful that Christ produces patient endurance and faithfulness in His people during the chaos of this world.
John continues his vision of the dragon. The dragon is waging war against the followers of Christ.
And we pick up the vision in chapter 13.
The dragon stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name. The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion. The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority. One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was filled with wonder and followed the beast. People worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast, and they also worshiped the beast and asked, “Who is like the beast? Who can wage war against it?”
The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise its authority for forty-two months. It opened its mouth to blaspheme God, and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live in heaven. It was given power to wage war against God’s holy people and to conquer them. And it was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation. All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.
Whoever has ears, let them hear.
“If anyone is to go into captivity,
into captivity they will go.
If anyone is to be killed with the sword,
with the sword they will be killed.”
This calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of God’s people.
Today we are going to see that Christ produces patient endurance and faithfulness Under ungodly rulers, Around ungodly people, During ungodly persecution, Within ungodly pressure.
Will you pray with me?
1. Under Ungodly Rulers
1. Under Ungodly Rulers
Christ produces patient endurance and faithfulness under ungodly rulers.
In our text, we see maybe the most ungodly ruler of all. We know him as the antiChrist.
The dragon stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name. The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion. The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority. One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was filled with wonder and followed the beast.
We could spend a whole sermon on the identity of this person. We won’t, but we will spend a little time.
Jewish imagery always uses the sea for ungodliness, the Gentile nations. This man is not coming from within Isreal, but from the evil world around. The beast has 10 horns and seven heads. Blasphemous names on him. And he looked like a leopard, a bear, and a lion.
If you were here for our Daniel series earlier this year, this should look familiar to you.
In Daniel 7, Daniel has a vision of the future. In it, he sees 4 beasts. The first is like a lion. The second was like a bear. The third like a leopard. The four was indescribable with 10 horns.
In the middle of the 10 horns, another horn came up and spoke boastfully. Just like the beast in Revelation.
The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise its authority for forty-two months.
The fourth beast in Daniel’s vision, points prophetically to the beast in revelation. A man who is over a kingdom which has the characteristics of Babylon, Persia, and Greece. A new Rome, if you will.
Throughout the past 2000 years, people have conjectured who this will be: Nero, the Pope, Napoleon, Hitler, Trump.
We don’t know. In fact, for a time, even when the person is rising in power, no one knows who it is. But, the person will seem a lot like Jesus. So much so that everyone will be filled with wonder and will want to follow him.
But, even in a world which is ruled by the opposite of Christ, God’s people should have patient endurance and faithfulness.
It’s easy for us to get caught up in who is ruler or in authority. We are a month away from an election. Some would say that the direction of our nation is at stake. Well, some say that the US is around at the end of time. We don’t know.
All I do know is that even when the embodiment of Satan is ruling the world, God will still be in control. His people can still have hope. The sky won’t be falling, yet.
Christ produces patient endurance and faithfulness under ungodly rulers.
2. Around Ungodly People
2. Around Ungodly People
I’m grateful that’s not where he stops. He produces patient endurance and faithfulness around ungodly people.
One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was filled with wonder and followed the beast. People worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast, and they also worshiped the beast and asked, “Who is like the beast? Who can wage war against it?”
The whole world was filled with wonder and followed the beast.
Jesus said that when he came back the world would be like the days of Noah.
We don’t know how many people lived during the times of Noah. Conservative guesses are around 750 million people. It could be up to 7 billion. We don’t know. All we know is that there were only Noah and his sons that were saved in the Ark. Only they were considered righteous, god-fearing. 8 people out of millions.
As in the days of Noah, so will it be. We currently have 8.2 billion people on the earth, growing around .88% every year.
Can you imagine a time where everywhere you turn, every person you talk with, worships Satan and his human puppet.
We are blessed here in America, because we still have the tastes of a Christian society. Other countries are not so fortunate.
I was able to visit Germany twice to work at a youth camp. Some of those teens came to that camp because it was the only time in the whole year that they were around Christians their age.
America is heading that way.
It’s easy to get demoralized. To look at everything and say that the world is going to hell in a handbasket.
Well, it is.
But, our hope is not in what the world does or what the world is.
Our hope is in Jesus. And so we can live in patient endurance and faithfulness.
What does this look like?
Well, we don’t allow those around us to distract us from following Jesus. They might not want to. But, we will. We will prioritize time with him each day and time with him each week.
They may not want to live a moral life, but we will. In spite of what is cool, in spite of what is considered normal, we will live with patient endurance and faithfulness.
They might want to worship someone or something else, but we won’t. And we will not get anywhere close to worshiping what they are worshiping.
And through it all, we will not stop telling people around us that we need Jesus.
Christ produces patient endurance and faithfulness around ungodly people.
3. During Ungodly Persecution
3. During Ungodly Persecution
Well, each of those points are not popular. Which is why, in the face of Christian patient endurance and faithfulness, persecution comes up.
But, Christ produces patient endurance and faithfulness during ungodly persecution.
The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise its authority for forty-two months. It opened its mouth to blaspheme God, and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live in heaven. It was given power to wage war against God’s holy people and to conquer them. And it was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation. All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.
I like to say that there is a clear line between those who are followers of Jesus Christ and those who are not. You have either chosen to believe on him for salvation, to follow him, or you have not. You cannot sit on the fence.
There is a clear line. But, in today’s society, we have a hard time seeing that clear line. Because some people fake being a Christian so well. They come to church. They pray great prayers. They live moral lives. To us, they seem great. But, in the eyes of God, they have never come to him in faith. They have never recieved Jesus as their savior. So they are not of him.
One day, that line is going to be extremely clear. And the devil and his antichrist is going to wage war against God’s holy people. That’s pretty strong language. It’s one thing to say: persecution. It’s another thing to say “genocide.”
That’s what is going to happen.
Genocide is an act with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.
And during the last days, a war will be waged against those who are followers of the one true God, with the intent of wiping them out.
And during this genocide, all the rest of the inhabitants will be worshiping this antichrist. The one you worship, you do its bidding. They will be helping in this war.
So, what is it going to be like as a Christian? When the ruler is ungodly, the people are ungodly, and they want you to disappear.
That sounds like a fearful time. To put it lightly.
There is a reason that Jesus says:
“If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened.
God’s amazing grace as he is in control of the events of history.
In the midst of that fear, that uncertainty, which we have brothers and sisters around the world already feeling, Christ produces patient endurance and faithfulness, so that his people can last through it. Either now or then.
4. Within Ungodly Pressure
4. Within Ungodly Pressure
Finally, Christ produces patient endurance and faithfulness within ungodly pressure.
Whoever has ears, let them hear.
“If anyone is to go into captivity,
into captivity they will go.
If anyone is to be killed with the sword,
with the sword they will be killed.”
This calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of God’s people.
God knows our end. As my grandfather would say, I know he stole this from someone else, he was born with a use-by date on his foot.
As David writes:
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
God knows our end. And he knows how we will go. In His sovereignty, he will use those circumstances for good. Even horrible circumstances.
As one person wrote: the seed of the martyrs is the blood of the church.
But, still, though we know these things with our mind, it’s harder to experience them with our bodies and our emotions.
When persecution comes, when pressure builds up in our families, our friend groups, our jobs, communities, for us to deny Jesus, either blatantly through saying he is not our savior or God anymore, or through the back door but lowering our standards or giving his throne to someone or something else.
When that pressure builds up, what are we going to do?
This calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of God’s people. To stand strong and say: do on your worst.
As the disciples said:
Peter and the other apostles replied: “We must obey God rather than human beings!
They were then flogged and ordered to not speak the name of Jesus anymore. Well, they didn’t follow that order.
Instead:
The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name.
I think of Andronicus, a Christian who was martyred in 303 AD, during the reign of Emperor Diocletian.
When ordered to renounce his faith and worship Roman gods Andronicus replied:
Do your worst. I am a Christian. Christ is my help and supporter, and thus armed I will never serve your gods nor do I fear your authority or that of your master, the Emperor. Commence your torments … and make use of every means your malignity can invent, and you shall find in the end that I am not to be shaken from my resolution.
Roman authorities threw him into prison, scourged (whipped) him severely, and rubbed salt into his bleeding wounds. After enduring further torture and being thrown to wild beasts, he was finally put to death with a sword, remaining steadfast in his faith until the end.
Patient Endurance and faithfulness are what we are called to.
Will we practice it now, not knowing what the future will hold.
fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
In his power. Let us stand firm.
today, as we take communion, we remember what Jesus did for us.
