Rev No.10 The Day of Judgment

And read from Revelation chapter 6, beginning at verse 1. I watched as the lamb opened the first of the seven seals. Then I heard one of the four living creatures saying a voice like thunder, come. I looked and there before me was a white horse.

Its rider held a bow and he was given a crown and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest. When the lamb opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, come. Then another horse came out, a fiery red one.

Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other. To him was given a large sword. When the lamb opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, come.

I looked and there before me was a black horse. Its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand. Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures saying, a quart of wheat for a day's wages and three quarts of barley for a day's wages and do not damage the oil in the wine.

When the lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, come. I looked and there before me was a pale horse. Its rider was named Death and Hades was following close behind him.

They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague and by the wild beasts of the earth. When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. They called out in a loud voice, how long sovereign Lord, holy and true until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood.

Then each of them was given a white robe and they were told to wait a little longer until the number of their fellow servants and brothers who were to be killed as they had been was completed. I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake.

The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair. The whole moon turned blood red and the stars in the sky fell to earth as late figs dropped from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. The sky receded like a scroll rolling up and every mountain and island was removed from its place.

Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty and every slave and every free man hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. They called to the mountains and the rocks fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the lamb. For the great day of their wrath has come and who can stand.

Amen. Let's keep our bibles open at that particular passage of scripture. Father, we come around your word and we ask again that you will give eye salve to our eyes and sensitivity to our hearts and obedience to our wills so that we may perceive, hear and understand what you wish us to know so that our wills may be pliable, that correctives may be made to our lives and lifestyles as a result of what we discover or are reminded of afresh here.

And we ask that as we look into this most holy and awesome passage of scripture you will enable us to appreciate afresh that you are the sovereign lord of the universe, that God is working his purposes out as year succeeds to year. One day this earth will be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea. In Jesus' name we ask these things.

Amen. It's with not a little degree of hesitation that I bring this address to you from the sixth chapter of the book of Revelation. Any preacher worth his salt wants to preach from the fifth chapter, the great glory of our Lord Jesus as He's exalted on the throne, the center of all the anthem and all the praise of heaven.

Every preacher worth his salt wants to preach on the seventh chapter. But the sixth chapter, well that's a different thing. The first two chapters that I quote, or rather the fifth and the seventh chapters which obviously straddle the sixth, they are chapters of light and of great glory.

The sixth chapter is a somber chapter. It's a chapter that speaks of judgment. You do not speak to a congregation of the judgment and the wrath of God without tears in your eyes and a great concern that God somehow gives you the ability to balance the presentation of His love with that of His justice.

Now the book of Revelation, if you were to take the word in its original you would discover that its meaning means the revelation in terms of lifting a veil, giving an entry into secrets. It's not the easiest book as I say as a whole to understand and yet those of us who are prepared to read it through and contemplate it together are promised that as a result we will be spiritually advantaged. For example in the third verse of the first chapter, blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it because the time is near.

In other words we could argue this, that as a result of this series of addresses that we're giving Sunday morning by Sunday morning, we can expect the blessings of God upon our congregation. Now what the book of Revelation will do is help you to understand that without in any way wanting to make a a feeble pun, history is His story. God is behind the whole saga of human history.

He was there at the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth. He will be there at the end when there will be the new creations of the heavens and the earth. He's not the proverbial watchmaker who having created a watch then allows it to continue on its course and has no interaction with the watch at all.

God is majestic in His glory. He's transcendent. He's altogether what you and I are not and yet He is imminent.

He's directly involved in the warp and wolf of life and He controls and conditions all things. You may not understand this. I must confess that I'm in the same category as myself.

There is so much about this God that I do not understand but this I believe from Scripture and taught time and time again in Revelation is that behind the great epochs of life God is involved. Even with the evil in our world God has power and influence. He can stay.

He can allow the development of evil and ultimately all things will be brought to be seen as under His complete control. So in this fifth chapter of Revelation you find the great glorious scribe to our Lord Jesus Christ who you remember from my past address amongst all the created realm in the heavens and on the earth and under the earth is uniquely qualified to take from God the scroll which has seven seals to it. You read of that scroll more carefully in the fifth chapter at least it's described more carefully but you get the continuation of the act of our Lord moving towards the one who has the scroll in this sixth chapter.

And here is John who gives us an insight into what he himself beheld in this vision. The first verse he says, I watched as the Lamb opened the first of the seven seals. This is none other than our Lord Jesus Christ with God the Father throughout the whole of an eternity gone by and He moves towards the throne and He takes this scroll that speaks as I say of the of the human story which will contain within it God's plan of redemption as well as the more unseemly episodes of man's life here on planet earth.

And seal by seal He'll unlock the scroll until the whole thing is unfurled and you will see what will happen at the end of time. A thumbnail sketch of the sixth chapter will tell you this that as our Lord Jesus releases these seven seals that fix this parchment during the unclasping of the first four horses will appear ridden by horsemen. They will go out to the four corners of the world and they will bring about what is their objective which will be for the discomfiture of the human race.

And then when you move to the last two seals for we'll not get to the seventh on this Sunday morning you'll discover that there is a different emphasis completely as you watch what happens in the heavenlies. Now remember we're in a passage of Scripture where there's great symbolism. In one sense the preacher coming to this chapter is not only utterly dependent upon the Holy Spirit he's also dependent upon his congregation.

If I'm preaching dramatic narrative I can carry you from the story one part to another part to another part and I can enable you to visualize it. But here I am with metaphor with colorful language the like of which I barely understand myself. To carry the congregation through there must be this this desire to do what A.W. Toews has sometimes encouraged his Canadian folk and his American folk in his respective congregations to do to shake their heads to ensure that the little coils of concentration the little cogs are working at the back so that nothing that is gone through is missed as you go perhaps into neutral in your concentration and you forget to follow through what the what the preacher is trying to say.

So let's approach this chapter as we're told first of all about this first seal which our Savior unclasps and we read that before him was a white horse its rider helped bow and he was given a crown and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest. Each of the horses that appears as the first four clasps are undone has a different color and each of the horsemen has a different object to secure. There are those who think that this first vision is actually in one sense an anticipation of what you discover in the 19th chapter when further reference is made to one seated on a horse but I argue that this cannot be the case for in the 11th verse of the 19th chapter which suggests the picture of another on a white horse we are given such information that enables us to conclude that is none other than our Lord Jesus Christ the one who is dressed in a robe dipped in blood and his name is the Word of God.

But I say that in this first seal that our Lord Jesus unclasps in this opening of the seals as described in the sixth chapter it's not our Lord Jesus who you have in front of you here it's the element of power that we might call tyranny if you like that we might call deceit. Here is one who assumes to himself an authority and a power that will work for the detriment of humankind. You will recall in the book of Matthew when our Lord Jesus is speaking about the end time he says in the 24th chapter that there will come those who will deceive men and women, antichrists, those who will try to delude people from the truth and here in this opening of this first seal it seems to me that you have an anticipation of the great deceiver.

Let's go to Matthew chapter 24 and verse 24 just for a moment or two and that will help to pin the point. Here our Lord Jesus anticipating the end times says for false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect if that were possible. See I have told you ahead of time.

The apostle Paul when he's writing to the Corinthians says in the second letter and the eleventh chapter that the church in Corinth is to be warned that at the end time there will be those who are released amongst the churches who will try to deceive. No wonder for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising then if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness.

The apostle Paul is gathering up a warning of our Lord Jesus which is anticipated if you please in this opening of the scroll which refers to this mysterious appearing of a horse, a white horse and a horseman who moves into the world and he has a sword which he can use to the discomfiture of humankind. And I suggest to you that that is the spirit of deception that's always been abroad in the world and is working even more powerfully as we move towards the time of the return of Jesus. So Jehovah's Witnesses numbers increase.

The unification church with the pretensions of the Korean Sung Myung Moon who reckons that he is the Messiah continues to have influence. The end time says our Savior. There will be the white horse with its rider releasing the spirit of deception into our world.

The Christian people have to be very careful that when they're brought up against what claims to be new truth a man with particular prophetic endowment to check the legitimacy of the claim or else they may be led off into error. Who studies counterfeit documents was once asked did he acquire the skill by constantly contemplating the counterfeit and he said no. I always give most of my time to contemplate the genuine and as a result I recognize the counterfeit.

And as we come to scripture and concentrate upon our Lord Jesus and have our minds enlivened so we will be better positioned when perhaps we hear doctrine which is untruthful. When we come across men and women who would beguile we are more qualified to distinguish between truth and error. But the apostle John moves on.

He's taking us now to the second seal. When the lamb opened the second seal verse three I heard the second living creature say come. Then another horse came out a fiery red one its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other.

To him also is given a large sword. Red speaks of blood. This fiery red horseman speaks of the power of evil which God in his sovereignty will allow though not stimulate to have reign in the world.

You see when God created the heavens in the first instance and the earth he gives the ability within the freedom that the angels had and the freedom that our first parents had. He gives the ability either to obey him or to disobey him. Therefore the translator of one verse from Isaiah in the authorized version is quite right when he says of God that he creates evil.

What he means is he creates the capacity for evil. He allows that the possibility of evil to come into the heavenlies and indeed to come on earth. And here are Adam and Eve and they rebel against God and they determine that they will follow the course that he does not wish for them.

And they move into a bondage of evil which is inherited by every son and daughter of Adam. And so you read as Paul writes in a very somber fashion in the epistle to the Hebrews in the first chapter on several occasions speaking of the obduracy the hardness of man. God gave them up.

God gave them up. God gave them up. And so the apostle in the second chapter talks about the wrath of God which is revealed against all men who hold his truth in contempt in unrighteousness.

Now here is John you see and in this metaphor that is almost frightening he perceives the evil going out into our world in terms of the force that man has more than influencing more than any other creature. And that is to spill blood and to make war. C.S. Lewis is right when he says that man is the only wild animal.

Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other. John knows 100,000 people were slain by Roman swords in A.D. 30 through to in B.C. 30 through to the coming into this world of our Lord. John has witnessed the fall of Jerusalem.

He knows of the problems that the Jewish people have had. He knows that throughout the whole of ancient history to his time man has often gone against his fellow with the sword. And the story has continued down the whole corridor of history.

Six million Jews wiped from the face of planet earth within the lifetime of many of us. 100,000 possibly done to death in the last few months in the Gulf War. How do you explain this force that there is in our world where men plunder one another and cause such carnage? The only answer is that there is a force of evil around in our world which men and women are prepared to run alongside and to be influenced by.

And then in their foolery continue to reap great bloodshed in our world. But the time will come my dear friends when God will call a halt to all this. And we're told in the 18th verse of the 11th chapter the nations were angry and your wrath has come the time has come for judging the dead and for rewarding your servants the prophets and your saints and those who reverence your name both small and great and for destroying those who destroy the earth.

The ability of the second rider of the second horseman will be taken from him and no longer will the echo of the horse hoofs be heard in the universe. John continues and he tells us in the fifth verse that when the Lamb opened the third seal he once more has the invitation of those who are looking on the scene to come and he describes what he then sees there was before me a black horse its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hands then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures saying a quart of wheat for a day's wages and three quarters of barley for a day's wages and do not damage the oil and the wine. Black in the Old Testament symbolizes famine and dearth.

Balances are often used for example you discover in Amos chapter 8 and verse 5 as a sort of symbolism of right practice fairness in merchandise in buying and selling and often fairness was not the way that you would describe the Jewish bazaars there would be unfairness and the poor as the result would suffer. Here is this third horse that rides out into the world this black horse and it speaks of famine. It speaks of those who have not.

A quart of wheat for a day's wages. Inflated prices. Barley is a superior grain to wheat and the price for the barley is atrocious.

Ordinary people cannot cope and there seems cynicism on the part of the ones who are witnessing this vision as they cry out do not damage the oil and wine as though you have a picture of the haves with the oil and the wine. The capitalists who control the wealth and the increasing numbers of those who can't afford the wheat let alone the barley. And you read of this famines in our world down the corridors of time multiplying in the 20th century and the tragedy is that there's enough food on planet earth to feed everybody.

No creature behaves with more foolery than man does and John in the apocalypse cannot understand why there is this inequality in our world. But this is the course that man has set man who has raised his fist against this high and holy God. When men choose darkness rather than light can you question the justice of God allowing the decision that they have made to be brought into play.

Thus you see this symbolic language when you think it through it becomes not only sensible and acceptable it becomes a sort of diagnosis of the 20th century. The one-time German chancellor will tell you Willy Brandt re-echoing the words of Edward Heath a decade and a half ago that one of the greatest threats to world peace will come from the have-nots of the third world over against the oil and wine merchants of the first world. We can engage in the liberation of Kuwait and bypass the problems of Tibet because its savers are good to ensure our oil supplies.

The famine in Ethiopia could be dealt with like that if the world was as quick to put the financial resources it did into the weapons that were used in the gulf towards the needy in Ethiopia. I speak with feeling. I know you're feeling uncomfortable as a result but I tell you I feel an even greater discomfiture.

Do not damage the oil and the wine. How do you explain this crass foolery apart from analyzing things as John analyzes things in this in this vision? He talks to us about death. Verse seven, when the lamb opened the fourth seal I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say come I looked and there before me was a pale horse.

Its rider was death and Hades was following close by him. They were given power to kill over the fourth of the earth and if you tottered up the number of people who have been killed in battles and the possibility of even greater shedding of blood you will appreciate that the estimate there of one-fourth of mankind dying in such a tragic way is by no means an exaggeration. How is man going to cope with the AIDS virus? Do you ever ask yourself that? How is man going to cope with the problems that he has allowed to arise in this world? Well the answer is he cannot cope.

It seems as though he's under the control under the sway of these horsemen who have as their objective the downfall of the human race and so the apostle is given further insight and you come to his fifth seal at least the opening of the fifth seal in the presence of John. There are no more any horses or horsemen. All that has changed.

What you are given now is an insight into heaven itself and the company of the redeemed who have died and have gone to be in into the presence in the presence of the Lord Jesus. When he opened the fifth seal I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained and they cried out in a loud voice how long sovereign Lord holy and true until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood. The Bible teaches us that when men and women who have lived under the saving righteousness of our Lord Jesus that means to say they have put their trust in him.

When they depart from this world they don't go out into limbo they go into the immediate presence of God. The description of their state is somewhat modestly supplied in terms of information in the New Testament. But it is an apparent that they have an awareness not only the whole of the holiness of God but they have a great concern that the character of God and the initial purposes for the creation of the universe and the heavens are brought to their fulfillment.

And here you have to understand the cry of these people not so much in terms of vengeance none of the martyrs look for vengeance. Stephen prayed for his accusers you remember the people who picked up the stones and did him to death to death he prays on their behalf. The martyrs will tell you if you read their stories in the history of the church that in one sense they look forward to their martyrdom.

Ridley and Latimer and these great men I hope you read their stories in the great history of the British church in this country. They comfort one another with the idea that the blood that they spilt as they were burned to at the stake would ultimately release such a power into the Christian community in England that the secular forces would not be able to withstay. There was a man by the name of Tertullian in the third century and he said that the blood of the martyrs has been the seed of the church.

But you see these sensitive people who find themselves in the immediate presence of God they're concerned with his glory they see all that is befouled and despoiled planet earth and they cry how long how long oh lord oh would to god that we had the sensitivity of those when we see sin in our world when we see bestiality when we hear of children being abused by parents when we know of little lives being taken from the wombs of their mother through the process called abortion oh that the wretchedness in our souls may be such that we cry how long how long oh god of righteousness before you come and bring this tragedy of humanity and its saga to a completion and rid this earth of all the sin and the blasphemy and the wickedness that men have brought into it well these righteous dead are compensated as they're given encouragement this white robe of the savior's righteousness is theirs they're told to wait a little longer until the number of their fellow servants and brothers who were to be killed as they had been was completed in other words until the number of those for whom jesus has died has been brought to its final total and then the end of all things as our lord returns but we hasten to the 12th verse and to the sixth seal where again there's no horsemen no colored horses whatsoever just the sound of a great earthquake we have a tremendous scene the sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair the whole moon turned blood red and the stars in the sky fell to earth as late figs dropped from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind the sky receded like a scroll rolling up and every mountain and island was removed from its place the book of hagi will tell you in the first chapter once again i will shake the heavens and the earth the writer of the hebrews will take up exactly as the second chapter of hagi chapter and verse six the writer of the hebrews will take up the same expression in the 12th chapter in the 26th verse and here is the reference don't you see to to a great cataclysmic event this is god coming back into his world in terms of great power and recreation this is the shaking of the heavens and the earth and you get these apocalyptic signs of the sun turning black and the moon becoming like a bloody red mass the sky recedes like a scroll the mountains and the islands being removed do you remember how the apostle peter in the epistle that bears his name speaks about the elements of our world melting with fervent heat john in the 21st chapter of revelation says behold i saw a new jerusalem coming down from god and i saw a new heaven and a new earth do these things frighten you in one sense they should in another sense they should not here is the reaction to those who have authority in our world the kings verse 15 those who are under their influence and have authority themselves the princes the generals the rich the mighty every slave every free man the whole of intelligent beings on our planet when this happening occurs recoil in great fear they call to the mountains and to the rocks fallenness and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne for the great day of their wrath has come and and who can stand death would be a welcome event but they cannot get away even in death itself they would pray for the mountains to fall on them but the mountains will not extinguish the human soul because it has the touch of immortality upon it it's made in the essence of god here are people who cannot escape here is the great day and i ask you do you ever think about that day a hindu philosopher was chairing a meeting of a missionary colleague by the name of stanley jones and he said if what this man says is untrue then it doesn't matter if what this man says is true then nothing matters nothing else matters don't you understand either you are contemplating one of the biggest fools in terms of a man telling you these things and therefore you can dismiss him and dismiss it and it won't make any have any effect on the way you live at all or else you'll acknowledge that what he is saying has more than a grain of truth in it and as a result you'll change because of that day that inexorably is coming that great day of the lord that day when our savior shall return listen to him as in the gospel of luke he makes reference to the people who lived carelessly in the days of abraham and he has this to say of them in the 12th verse of the of the 10th chapter the 13th verse woe to you caress and woe to you bethsaida for if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in tyrant sidon they would have repented long ago sitting in sackcloth and ashes our savior has already told them in the ninth verse that the kingdom of god is at hand and in the 14th verse it will be more bearable for tyrant sidon at the judgment the the the translator here has put the word judgment in instead of the word day it will be more bearable for tyrant sidon at that day than for you our savior is constantly bringing men and women face to face with the fact of that day go to the 17th chapter and to the 30th verse and you get further illustration it will just be like this on the day the son of man is revealed on that day no one who is on the roof of his house with his goods inside should go down to get them likewise no one in the field should go back for anything you see the point go to thessalonians and chapter five and verse two of the first letter and you'll find the apostle making reference once more to this great day of the lord now brothers about times and dates we do not need to write to you for you know very well that the day of the lord will come like a thief in the night while people are saying peace and safety destruction will come on them suddenly as labor pains on a pregnant woman and they will not escape let's go on to the apostle peter who in the second chapter picks up the same theme and he tells us there in his final chapter about the day of our lord the tenth verse of the third chapter the day of the lord will come like a thief the heavens will disappear with a roar the elements will be destroyed by fire and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare since everything will be destroyed in this way what kind of people ought you to be i ask you do you ever think about that day the great day of the lord who shall stand on that day when the wrath of the lamb is revealed to the sons of adam you do not think of a lamb being wrathful you do not think of the gentle jesus as being wrathful you know that the word jesus means savior but has it not been told you that our lord jesus is also the judge and the day will come that god has appointed when he will judge all men all men through that one man who he has appointed i told you it's a somber message i don't delight in preaching it but here we have the unclasping of the six of the seven seals and the first four diagnose the history of our world and contemporaneous events in such a fashion that thinking people are driven to the conclusion that there is inspiration in this book and many of us that there is total inspiration so if at the end of time the lord is going to judge all men as a result of their reaction to the lamb and his death on the cross i put it to you what condition do you find yourself in right now have you responded have you ensured that your sins have been blotted out have you taken them to the old rugged cross in a word are you a christian either what i have shared this morning is absolute foolishness and therefore you can dismiss it or it's the essence of truth and it should cause your future to be radically altered as a result let's sing and what sort of hymn do you sing following that type of exposition of scripture well you have to go to one of the old ones because quite frankly the new ones don't bother about the judgment of god but the old ones do because they were written at a time when men feared god when scripture was read in its totality and not just with a promised box mentality 227 great god what do i see and hear the end of things created let's stand and sing this hymn father as we look into your word we thank you again for the lamb the lamb that was slain the lamb who came as savior before ever he assumed the position as judge and we pray for fallen men and women in their thousands in their tens of thousands in our town in our world oh god open their eyes and let them behold the truth of your word and enable us who progress through this planet month after month and year after year recognize that there will be a terminus for us help us to live our lives as though tomorrow would usher us into your immediate presence keep us with joyfulness in our hearts but with sobriety in our personalities and enable us lord to interpret the unfolding events within the light of your word holding on to the fact that one day this savior shall return and you will rejuvenate this heaven on this earth and in a sense it is only that that is worth looking forward to and living for lord be with us as we take bread and wine in a moment or two and as we honor your son and his atoning death on our behalf and these things we pray for his sake for his eternal glory and all the people of god said amen