Thy Kingdom Come, The Third Woe and the seventh trumpet

Matthew 6:9–13 NASB95PARA

“Pray, then, in this way: ‘Our Father who is in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. ‘Your kingdom come. Your will be done, On earth as it is in heaven. ‘Give us this day our daily bread. ‘And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. ‘And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.’

Introduction

We cry out in prayer, “May your kingdom come”. We need the kingdom of God. We need King Jesus. Death, destruction, disease, the decay of safety in the world. Growing hatred. Growing fear. It’s all wrong. The chaos in our world demonstrates the two fold problem of sin and selfishness. We need Jesus.

As James said: The source of quarrels, conflict, murder, covetousness, fighting and envy is sin (James 4:1-2a ). It is loving self above God. It is loving self above others. We need Jesus.

How many times have we inwardly (or outwardly) groaned in the face of the sin, selfishness, destruction, and decay around us? How many times have we longed for the cure - not to A disease, but to every disease? How many times have we wept in the halls? How many times have we cringed at the harm our own tongue can do to others? How many times have we yearned for Jesus and found ourselves quietly praying, “how much longer Lord, will you not deliver us from this evil?” Our answer, in a sense, comes as we examine the seventh trumpet. The Final Trumpet.

The sixth trumpet has sounded and in it the passage of the final 3.5 years of the tribulation period is recounted in terms not only of terrible warfare in chapter 9:13-21 which nonetheless shows no repentance among mankind, but continues in chapter 10 with a reminder that God in his grace has given us his word to proclaim, a word which the latter half of chapter 10 indicates will mark Christians as targets of the unleashed fury of the antichrist, but which seems to result ultimately in the salvation of the Jewish People as they recognize their Messiah, and thus give glory to the God of heaven.

With this salvation the Second of the three woes pronounced in Revelation 8:13 has passed, the third and final woe comes quickly.

It begins with the seventh trumpet as King Jesus takes over the world in Revelation 11:15-19.

But before we go there we need to take note of where this passage ties in to the Old Testament.

Old Testament considerations

There are two highly significant Old Testament passages to consider as background to understanding this moment in the book of Revelation 11:15-19.

Psalm 2 which we read at the beginning of our service today, you ought to hear its echoes throughout this text; as well as to contemplate its call to “kiss the son” that is to yield to Christ, submitting to Him in order to

The other passage is Joshua 6 - the siege and fall of Jericho. Particularly important are a few themes: The ARK carried by the priesthood follows along after the seven TRUMPETS (Joshua 6:6). On the final day, the seventh day the VOICES of the people were raised and the walls of Jericho fall inaugurating the conquest of the promised land - and the arrival of the kingdom of Israel comes in a display of God’s great power.

Would you stand with me and get your hallelujah’s ready?

Revelation 11:15–19 NASB95PARA

Then the seventh angel sounded; and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ; and He will reign forever and ever.” And the twenty-four elders, who sit on their thrones before God, fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying, “We give You thanks, O Lord God, the Almighty, who are and who were, because You have taken Your great power and have begun to reign. And the nations were enraged, and Your wrath came, and the time came for the dead to be judged, and the time to reward Your bond-servants the prophets and the saints and those who fear Your name, the small and the great, and to destroy those who destroy the earth.” And the temple of God which is in heaven was opened; and the ark of His covenant appeared in His temple, and there were flashes of lightning and sounds and peals of thunder and an earthquake and a great hailstorm.

Come Quickly Lord Jesus!

Behold He Comes!

As we focus now on the seventh trumpet in Revelation - I want to remind you of its importance for us as Christians. During the days of the seventh trumpet, proclaims Revelation 10:7, and 1 Corinthians 15:52, the mystery of God will be finished and christ shall come! The seventh trumpet brings in the the return of Christ, the rapture of the church, and the establishment of the kingdom of God on earth – the final answer to “Thy kingdom come” which Christians have now prayed for two millennia.

What we see in the Seventh trumpet is the moment that all our lives are yearning for: The return of our Savior and King, Jesus!

When the seventh angel sounds his trumpet loud voices break out in declaration of a long awaited task accomplished.

The kingdom of the world - that is to say the entire world system. If any nation we now know exists at that time they will all be included from Russia and China to America and New Zealand. The entirety of its land masses yes, but most accordingly it’s people.

When we consider the language of the beast we had just looked at last week (and more of which is coming in chapter 12 and beyond) there is a reminder to be had that behind all the various kingdoms of men throughout all of human history, there lies a single spiritual source of authority which, “will be manifested in concentrated form in the Antichrist in the last days. Here is a profound bit of theology: the evil, demonic powers which the church must face in the eschatological consummation are in principle no different from the autocratic power which the church has had to face in secular states throughout her history.”[1]

The kingdom of this world is the world as it is today; broken, scarred, filled with the lust and crimes of all of humanity. It is described in Colossians 1:13 as the kingdom of darkness.

Colossians 1:13 NASB95PARA

For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son,

There, our citizenship is transferred, but here It has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ.

Notice here the language it is the kingdom of our Lord (the Father) and of His Christ (The Son.). Paul speaks of this in one of the most transfixing moments of future history in 1 Corinthians 15.

1 Corinthians 15:24-28.

And at his arrival – our king shall not have a passing reign. The voices cry out that he shall reign forever and ever. There are two vital concepts here:

First that he shall reign.

There has never been a sense in which God was out of control and thus ultimately sovereign as we can see even in the book of Job. Even the devil, is God’s devil - said Martin Luther. The wind and waves obey him. And yet we see everywhere the evidence of a world that is in obedience to decay. Make no mistake even the decay must obey the sovereignty of God. Yet we see something new in the reign of God that is described throughout the Old Testament and later in the book of Revelation in terms that are sweeping and hard to comprehend. They are summed up in many ways in the word heaven - but even that fails to capture it.

That God will reign means that from this point forward Sin will not intrude. That God will reign means that from this point forward there will be no place for hatred, for death, for disease, for decay.

That God reigns means....

Second: He shall Reign forever

Second note simply that his reign shall be eternal.

Listen carefully. Sometimes I am asked whether or not it will be possible for us to make it to heaven and to fall again. What shall happen there? Lucifer will be imprisoned, but what if - for example, Michael the Archangel should decide to mount another rebellion? What if ? what if? These could be terrifying thoughts. But God’s reign here - that is - his established and continual rule of all things for His Glory and in fulfillment of his righteousness will be uninterrupted. There will never again be a failure in another garden. There will never again be sorrow, death, and loss. There will never again be the results of a world that is living outside of obedience to God. Because he shall reign forever and ever. That is what is meant by His reign.

We will not have a king who will die after a hundred years, or a thousand, or ten thousand. For God who is eternal shall rule as eternal king over his eternal kingdom.

What follows are three sections that begin with AND. They are inclusive of the reign of God. The first is Worship. The Second is Wrath and Reward. And the Third is the presence of God.

Worship

(v16-17) bring us to the worship of the mysterious 24 Elders we first met in chapter 4. They’ll be back in chapter 19:4 but here they fall down just as before and they worship God this time for the establishment of the kingdom. Listen to what they say beginning in verse 17.

They give thanks to God for both his power and his eternity.

First they call him God Almighty: there is no power above him.

Consider that all of creation itself comes from his power and know that all of creation cannot amount to his might and power.

They say we give thanks to you “Who are”. They make the claim simply that God is … today he is.

Then they declare “who were” meaning who God was. Who God is in the past is who God is today. In the time of this song God is precisely who he is now, and who he has always been.

And we have already noted that he will reign forever and ever so God is forever as well.

What is in view here is the eternal nature of God. He is unchanging. The theological word is Immutable. God doesn’t change. He neither improves, nor does he get worse. The eternal nature of God is unchanging in his being. God has always been perfect, and will always be perfect in his person and nature and being.

We can see the worship of the elders and we might think that this is not that important. But the nature of God matters deeply. God’s immutability is a source of great comfort to us - because if God is not almighty, eternal, and unchanging then we have great reason to fear.

If God were not Almighty, he could lose the battle, or lose us! If God were not eternal - than after him would be what? If God were not unchanging (immutable) than we ought to fear that he could change his mind or become different than he is.

But that God is almighty, eternal, and unchanging means that our hope is grounded upon the rock forever. No Christian ever need fear that having begun with God, God will just get tired of them the way we get tired of new things when they become old.

They also worship and praise God because he has taken his great power and has begun to reign - that is he has begun to exercise his power in such a way as to bring all of creation into conformity with who he is. There has in one sense never been a time when God did not exercise sovereignty over all things. But this is new in which the exercise of God’s sovereignty will be on earth as it has always been in heaven.

And then in verse 18 we notice...

Wrath and Reward

Verse 18 and Psalm 2 are linked together in this section.

As their praise continues they recount a summary in one sense of all of history.

The nations were enraged and our minds ought to harken back to Psalm 2:1, “Why are the nations in an uproar and the people’s devising a vain thing.....” Ever since the garden mankind has been foolishly in rebellion against God. That vain thing in Psalm 2 is the human attempt at the dissolution of God’s power and authority over them. Look around you and see how everyone lives as if God were not. They strive towards complete autonomy but their great effort is met in Psalm 2:4 with God’s scornful laughter followed by his fury.

The rage of nations is followed by God’s wrath which we see in the book of Revelation in part. This is followed with the time for the dead to be judged. What is pictured here is a tiny snapshot of the final judgement.

Again, pay attention if you will that while many charts want to line up the varied groups of seven seals, trumpets, and bowls in some chronological order that we are jumping ahead right there to Revelation 20:11 as all of these things overlap. The church is being told over and over again that God is going to win this thing in order to encourage the church long ago, the church today, and still yet the church in the future that God will in fact come in Glory to claim his kingdom and reward his servants.

In fact rewarding God’s bond servants is next.

In his recent book titled, “Glorious Finish” Daniel Henderson summarizes the varied crowns of reward that are mentioned in the Bible.

At least four crowns of reward are mentioned in scripture - all of them possessing one characteristic in particular. They are called imperishable or eternal in 1 Corinthians 9:25. The contrast here is to the crowns an athlete in the ancient games would get. It would be woven perhaps of different flowers, and we don’t have to imagine very hard to see how long such a fading crown would last. By contrast the rewards for God’s bond-servants are timeless - they are eternal – the Bible calls them incorruptible. They are not subject to fading memories, or decaying splendor.

Let’s look very very quickly at these crowns as the rewards God gives his servants.

The Crown of life

James 1:12 says that the one who remains steadfast under trial will receive the crown of life, the same is promised in Revelation 2:10

Do not quit.

The Crown of Redeemed Souls

Philippians 4:1 Paul calls the Philippian church his joy and crown. The same is true in 1 Thessalonians 2:19-20. He who wins souls is wise declares Proverbs 11:30.

The Crown of Righteousness

2 Timothy 4:7-8

In the light of Rome’s persecutions and accusations, the crown of righteousness seems to be a crown of vindication declaring, “Paul you were right and Rome was wrong!”

The Crown of Glory

1 Peter 5:2-4 Service - well served for Christ will be well honored by Christ.

Note who gets rewarded here. It’s not just the Spiritual superstars, it is every believer. Every saint – which Biblically defined is everyone who trusts in Christ. All who fear God’s name, weather they are well known monuments of faithfulness like the recently promoted to heaven Ravi Zacharias or the very small - the person you or I have never heard of the new believer in a far flung country who has only just been born in Christ. It is time, says the chorus of Elders for Christ to reward such ones.

And as he rewards his saints, he will also destroy those who destroy the earth.

There could be much to say here but I think what is sufficient to see is that it reveals the problem with sin. Sin is destructive to what God creates. Sin destroys the inhabitants of earth, and the earth itself.

So the establishment of God’s kingdom involves the worship of heaven, the restoration of earth, and the presence of God.

The Presence of God

In verse 19 we get a hint at the presence of God as the temple of God in heaven is opened.

After this, we encounter a moment that seems parallel to the death of Christ. In Matthew 27:51 as Jesus dies, “the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.” We have often understood this to indicate how the death of Jesus opened up the way to the holy of holies for all; enabling the dwelling of God with His people. In other words, God was now free to be among his people, and his people - through Jesus - are now able to approach God freely.

There in the temple of heaven as it is opened is the ark of His covenant. Remember Hebrews 9:23 again which indicates that what Moses had built were merely copies of what was in heaven - and that which was purified by the blood of Christ.

The Ark of the Covenant of God is uniquely central to the temple. The ark of the covenant was the wooden box, coated in gold that housed the ten commandments, a jar of Manna, and Aaron’s staff. It was housed in the holy of holies and served as the location of God in the midst of the camp of Israel. Once a year the high priest could enter with a sacrifice to make atonement for the people. It was the center in that sense of the temple. It was called “the mercy seat” and there God would meet with Moses.

We can trace the History of the Ark from its making under Moses, to its moving to Jerusalem under King David. But it soon stops being mentioned and nobody knows from there what happened. It could be that during the reign of Rehoboam King Shishak of Egypt (not to be confused with Cheryl’s she shed) carried away the treasures of the house of the lord (1 Kings 14:25). Or perhaps destroyed in 586BC when the Babylonians destroyed the temple (Jer 3:15-17). Or, later Jewish legends say that Jeremiah rescued the ark and hid it in a cave where it is preserved. Or as another theory holds, priests moved it to Egypt before the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and it eventually migrated to Ethiopia where it resides today in the town of Aksum, in the St. Mary of Zion cathedral.

Of course we all know that Indiana Jones found it just before it melted a bunch of Nazi’s!

Whatever happened to the ancient Ark of the covenant, in John’s vision the temple of God in heaven opens up and the Ark of the Covenant is there. And then John witnesses several images of God’s mighty power. Lighting and sounds, AND peals of thunder, and an earthquake, and a great hailstorm. We have already seen these things and we will see more of these things later in the book; but for the moment it is sufficient to recognize that these are all images of God’s great power.

The message here is that God is finally, and fully present with his people.

The opening of the temple of God to reveal the Ark shows us that God is now about to fulfill his repeated promise of the Old Testament, “I will be your God and you shall be my people” (e.g. Exod 6:7, Lev 11:45, 22:33, 26:12, Jer 7:23, 11:4, 30:22, Ezek 36:28).

That is the great conclusion of the kingdom of heaven.

Heaven is not about streets of Gold, angels, halos, harps, and even meeting old loved ones.

It’s about God, and being finally and fully in his presence forever.

Amen.

[1] George Eldon Ladd, A Commentary on the Revelation of John (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1972), 161.