Screaming at the Sky
End of Days • Sermon • Submitted
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· 10 viewsGod is sovereign in charge and there is nothing anyone can do to stop him. Your only choice is to repent and live or rebel and die.
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The image is iconic.
Donald Trump had just been elected the 45th president of the United States.
And this woman was on her knees, in the middle of the road, screaming a single word to the skies - “No.”
At the time I didn’t understand.
My candidates have lost in the past and I didn’t drop to my knees and scream at the sky.
But she did.
And now I understand why.
In fact, Revelation chapter 9 helps us to understand why people are doing what they are doing and why people are saying what they are saying.
What was bewilderingly funny on the day after the election in 2016 has moved from comedy to tragedy.
As I have repeatedly said, it never was about Trump and Hillary or Trump and Biden.
It is about good and evil, truth and deception, life and death.
And not just here - but everywhere, in every country around the world, they are all faces the same problems that we are right now.
The Lord has unleashed his judgment on the earth.
It causes some to believe truth and others to believe a lie.
It causes some to be saved.
And it causes some to be damned to hell for all eternity.
Saying that makes us uncomfortable, but it’s true.
Apocalyptic literature - I keep saying it to keep reminding us - it is a style of literature that’s goal is to make you feel something very intensely as you learn its message.
Now listen to me - there are two ways to work Revelation.
You can try to figure out what every symbol means down to the nth detail - and many people do.
They aren’t bad people and who knows, they may be right.
But here’s my deal that I’m learning - and let me explain it like this:
We are all looking at a beautiful picture - stunning in it’s brilliance and color.
Everyone who sees it has their breath taken away.
The picture is so very exquisite.
In the corner of the picture, in the distance, is a tiny spot of blue.
You can’t quite make out what it is.
Is it a plant?
Is it a child’s toy left in the yard?
Is it a blue bird?
Everyone gathered around the picture gets caught up in the discussion.
A few get heated because they are sure of what they see.
Everyone walks away talking about the blue speck in the background of the picture.
But everyone forgets the picture.
We could spend literal hours discussing the specks - the locusts, for example, in chapter 9, and we need to talk about a few things.
But when you step back and look at the whole picture, you realize the horror this picture is painting.
Dissecting one little locust is intriguing.
Seeing a swarm of demons rising from the pits of hell and they are coming at you - well, that is terrifying.
We are going to do three things today - we will define a bunch of terms so the story will make more sense.
We will then tell the story and then we’ll quickly figure out what do to with it.
So the terms.
Look in verse 1 - “I saw a star fallen...”
Stars represent angels and this angel is fallen from heaven to earth.
Fallen, past tense, it happened a while back.
In the description we can’t tell if it’s a good angel or a bad angel, fallen simply means from heaven to earth.
However, angels are messengers from God.
And this messenger has the key to the bottomless pit.
The bottomless pit is hell - straight up, pure and simple - it’s the place Satan will be banished to.
It is the current and future home of everyone who rebels against God.
It was locked up - everything in it had to stay in it.
But the angel, at God’s direction, at God’s time, took the key and opened the door.
Verse 3, “From the smoke came locusts...”
Why locusts?
Let’s answer that this way - think of 2 things that scare you worse than anything.
Not scare you like, “Woo” and it’s over.
I mean terrifies you.
Existentially, it might kill me, kind of scared.
That’s why locusts.
Regardless the industry that was growing in Roman cities, no one can live without food.
All societies before that time and up until now, really, are agrarian societies.
Yes, we all might work in the city or with companies doing things.
But if you eat, thank a farmer, right?
What do you think will happen to us all if the food chain is interrupted?
Those of you who are smugly saying, “nothing, because I have a garden,” think about this - if everyone around you is starving, how safe is your garden from invaders?
There are locusts because they are the most frightening insect in an agrarian culture.
And you can see them coming - think the words Siera read to us - smoke rising and out of the smoke came locusts.
Locusts can travel in swarms 100 feet deep - and dig this - 4 miles in length.
If you are a farmer and you see the moving cloud, and you hear the buzz of a million billion wings.
And you are terrified because you know you are about to lose everything and you and everyone who depends on you might just die.
Verse 5, “They were allowed to torment them for five months...”
Why five months?
This one is easy - the life span of a locust is 5 months and the typical growing season in the middle east and where John was writing was - you guessed it, five months.
We’re just doing definitions right now, we’ll get to the story in a minute.
Verse 5, “…and their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings...”
I’ve never seen a real live scorpion in the wild nor have I seen someone get stung by one.
So I looked it up.
A scorpion’s sting causes pain, redness, itching, swelling, sweating and if it’s intense enough, muscle spasms and drooling.
Doesn’t sound very pleasant does it?
And the kicker to this is, the pain doesn’t just go away - it lasts and lasts.
Verses 7 through 10 describe the locust, but here is another place we are tempted to see the speck of blue in the back of the picture - not everything has a decipherable or necessary meaning.
But a few things do.
We’ve studied gold crowns, remember?
You get a gold crown when you finish the race, when you complete the task that God has given you.
They are going to win their race.
They have lions teeth.
Lions on the attack with their teeth are vicious and unrelenting.
They don’t stop until their prey is subdued.
Ditto these locusts.
They have breastplates.
A warrior with the right armor is invincible.
These locusts cannot be stopped.
Verse 11 gives us the name of their leader - “…in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he is called Apollyon.”
Translated, the words mean destroyer.
There is a link to Roman emperors in the name Apollyon, but we don’t need to flesh that out too much here.
What’s important to us today is the leader of the locust is named destroyer.
Verse 12, “The first woe has passed...”
We hear the word woe, but do we know what a woe is?
We talk about people who are having hardships going “Oh woe is me,” but what does that mean.
Woe means “a state of intense hardship, distress, disaster, horror.”
I’m sorry we don’t have time to stop here and dwell on this - but God - remember this - there are three horrors God is going to pour out on this earth.
And, for clarity, it’s not one horror after another.
John is seeing them one after another, because that’s the only way he can process it - but they don’t have to happen sequentially.
Verse 13 needs to mean something special to us, “…I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar before God.”
The voice John heard is the sound of our prayers for deliverance.
All of the voices of the saints who have prayed for deliverance rose as one voice before God and God acted on those voices.
Team, did you ever realize how important prayers for deliverance are?
Until we pray for revival and awakening, there will be none.
Until we pray for redemption and deliverance, there will be none.
We aren’t waiting on God, God is waiting on us.
Verse 14 says, “…the four angels that are bound at the great river Euphrates.”
Why is this significant?
Think back just a few minutes, I asked you, “think of 2 things that scare you worse than anything.”
Remember our study of Joel and Daniel?
Every major conquering army came from this direction.
If you look at Google maps at the satellite view of the middle east, you see green on the sides and a vast sand colored area in the middle.
That sand colored area is a desert.
The invading armies of Persia and Babylon had to come up and over the Euphrates river.
Nothing good comes from that direction - and that’s the staging area for four more angels.
Verse 16 says, “ The number of mounted troops was twice ten thousand times ten thousand.”
That’s 200,000,000 warriors except it’s not.
The words are twice a myriad times a myriad.
John is saying, the number of warriors is too big to count.
You see this army coming and you quickly realize, it’s an overwhelming force - you don’t stand a prayer.
Verse 17 talks about the colors of the horses.
Want to know why?
It’s simply to add color to the battle - they are arrayed in battle gear - that’s all.
Verse 17 mentions fire, smoke and sulphur.
Where have you heard that before?
Genesis 19:24-25
Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven. And he overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground.
That’s what this is supposed to remind us of.
This is the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah, God’s judgment remains the same.
Verse 19, “For the power of the horses is in their mouths...”
Sounds weird.
But the power of the horses is deception.
Verse 20, “The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands....”
The works of their hands are the idols they have made.
But for 2021, don’t necessarily think of idols of gods - although there are cultures who have them.
Think for us of different idols.
Lambeau Field.
Truist Park.
Hollywood.
Wall Street.
Washington, DC.
Those are our american idols, right?
Those are the images we need to understand - a few more would add color but we just don’t have time.
Now for the story.
There are no locusts and there are no horses.
They are demons, there are vast hordes of innumerable demons released from the pit of hell at God’s direction to begin His judgment and to torment the ungodly.
The judgment is not out there in the future - judgement is happening right now - and 1/3 of the population of the world will be judged and will die and will be sent to hell forever because of these demons.
These demons have been released onto the world so that a few will see the hand of God and repent.
And some will - by God’s grace and divine mercy, he will save a few.
But the rest of mankind...
Revelation 9:20-21
The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk, nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.
The power of the horses is in their mouths…
These demons unleashed on the world whisper deception in people’s ears.
They deceived people into thinking the Bible and praying were bad for children.
They deceived women into thinking they would be happier if they could live as a man.
They deceived men into thinking that having a woman would be their ultimate joy.
They deceived a whole generation of people into thinking physical pleasure of every sort is the ultimate end of life.
They deceived that young woman we started with into believing that the election of Hillary Clinton would be the salvation for her and all women like her and when it didn’t happen, she was stung.
Like a scorpion bite, for unknown days her pain continued- her heart was distressed.
People are suffering the pain of a distressed heart.
They realize the path they are on isn’t working, but they are told there is no other path.
Revelation 9:6
And in those days people will seek death and will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them.
It’s not that they will seek to die.
They won’t be trying to commit suicide.
They will realize the truth of all secular, godless societies: once God is dead, there is no value, purpose or meaning in life.
Nothing you do will last.
You will not last.
All that lies before you is a vast, futile existence that will end in nothingness.
Not rest.
Not peace.
Non-existence - your life is as worthless as a drop of water on the pavement in Georgia under the hot August sun.
So they go to bed and go to sleep in despair, hoping it’s all a dream.
But they wake up and do it all one more time until maybe one day, it will all stop.
That’s what you see happening.
That’s why the world makes no sense to us right now - but Christ followers, we aren’t deceived - let me tell you how I know.
Luke 10:18-20, Jesus says:
And he said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
A star fell like lightening from the sky and it opened the abyss and released hell on earth - hordes of multitudes of millions of demons swarming across the face of the earth.
Demons that have stings like scorpions.
Horses with tails like serpents.
And while we see it, we are immune from it.
“I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you.”
Your authority comes because you are a Christ-follower - If you are a Christ follower, when this dark, swarming, vile, putrid hoard swarms around you, you will walk like you have a force field surrounding you.
And yes, evil may mount up against a Christ follower and yes the Christ follower might suffer - might even die.
But “rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
We, Christ followers, we don’t belong here in the first place.
Luke 22:29-30
and I assign to you, as my Father assigned to me, a kingdom, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
You know why Wednesday night was so special?
Jesus gave us a glimpse into what home looks like.
And it was sweet.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, you have no clue the depth of brokenness in this room.
You think you do but you don’t.
You have no clue the depth of brokenness in the city of Gray - our sweet, wonderful town.
You have no clue the depth of brokenness in Jones County, and Baldwin County, in Twiggs, Wilkinson, Macon-Bibb, Putnam, Jasper.
What caused people to be this broken?
The belief that we can find our own path to happiness without God.
I saw a poster with these words.
Believe in yourself, believe you can and you will.
Stay strong, dream, believe, achieve.
Never give up.
A little progress each day adds up to big results.
Be grateful, a grateful heart is a magnet for miracles.
Work hard, good things come to those who hustle.
Stay humble, work hard in silence, let success make the noise.
Be kind, kindness makes you the most beautiful.
Keep smiling, because of your smile you make life more beautiful.
Makes you feel good, doesn’t it?
It does me, and there is some good advice in that too.
There is a Jewish tradition that underlies Revelation chapter 9.
The Jewish tradition says that the demons in hell have the power to torment the inhabitants of hell with stings like scorpions.
Stings like the locusts.
That make people despair so much they look forward to a death they will never receive.
Listen to me.
Keep teaching our kids the character education on that poster, keep bucking our friends and family up with that kind of feel good, warm and fuzzy pablum and neglect to give them Jesus with that same or more intensity, and they will get to experience that torment forever.
There is only one who saves and His name is Jesus.
When you follow Jesus your life has value, meaning and purpose because you are not of this world.
You belong in eternity with the God who created you to love you and to be loved by you.
You will fulfil your purpose, to love God and enjoy Him forever.
Enjoy - the very thing so many people have distressed hearts over - no joy, their lives are devoid of joy.
The Father offers it to you right now.
Repent - turn from the futility of fighting to be happy and be joyful - turn to Jesus.
He will teach you how to live free - I promise.
Pray with me.
Prayer:
Pray for revival, awakening and deliverance.