FBC Morning Light – December 1, 2022

The Pressure of Christmas Preparation and the Tendency to Hurry

A good Thursday morning to you. It's December 1st. Oh, wow. First day of the last month of 2022. I hope your December gets off to a great start. And I hope, I really do trust that through the course of these next few weeks before Christmas holidays, that this isn't going to be, you're not going to get caught up in the rat race of Christmas preparation.

I realize there's an appropriate level of preparation for, you know, gatherings with family and so forth for celebrating a holiday. That's all good and everything. But it seems like, it seems like there's just so much craziness and hustle and hurry that we end up really missing out on the value of this Christmas season.

I don't think I'll say much more about that through the course of the month. I don't want to belabor the point. But I think the first day of December just got me thinking about, it's got me thinking about the tendency that our world drives us to, a tendency of hurry.

The Fifth Seal in Revelation 6 and the Souls Under the Altar

Well, anyway, enough of that. Today we're reading in our Bible reading plan in Revelation chapter six. And this is after, you know, the lamb who had the authority to take the scroll begins to open the seals of that scroll.

And I don't want to get into all the meaning of that and the significance of that. It could take much more time and so forth than is justifiable for these little short devotionals. But I do want to focus on just one of those seals.

It's the fifth one, and it's recorded in verses nine through eleven of chapter six, Revelation chapter six. And when the seal is opened, John sees under the altar, he says, under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for their testimony for Christ.

They'd been slain for the Word of God and the testimony which they held. Now, what I want us to realize is the significance, the size of this group. I don't know for sure, I can't prove it, but I suspect that there have probably been more martyrs slain in the last, I don't know, 50 to 100 years than the entire 1900 years of church history before that.

And there have been a lot of martyrs slain from the beginning of the church age. We don't usually think about that. We think of the martyrs like Stephen was a martyr, and Peter was crucified upside down, and Paul was executed, and so forth.

And we think of them as martyrs, and we think of the martyrs in the Middle Ages, and other martyrs in the early church era. But do we realize that even right now as I speak, there are people in countries in this world who are right now being put to death because of their faith in Jesus Christ.

And there have been times when there have been significant, huge efforts to exterminate Christians. I think of some of these places in Africa, like I think in Nigeria, for example, where there are these Islamic extremists that will go into a village and find out who the Christians are.

And they can be villages that are largely Christian in their testimony, and they just wipe them out. They just wipe the people out. Why? Because they're Christian. Because they've named the name of Christ.

These are people who are under that altar, and there are innumerable number of people under that altar. So this vision is far more vast than we give it credit for. It's not like there's this little altar, and there are a few people who are martyrs underneath that altar, no.

God's Sovereignty, Martyrdom, and the White Robe

But what I wanted to point out here is that these martyrs, interestingly, acknowledge the Lord's sovereignty, because they cry out in verse 10, how long, O Lord, holy and true, until you judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?

So in that question, they're acknowledging that the Lord has a timetable, and in his timetable, he will avenge their blood, and he will execute judgment and retribution upon the earth, especially focusing on those who would kill people for their faith in Christ.

They're acknowledging God's sovereignty here. Do you see that? In that acknowledgment, isn't there an implicit or a tacit recognition that the Lord could have prevented their martyrdom, had he chosen to do so?

If the Lord has the timetable down for the execution of retribution, and he's in control of that, and he can and will execute judgment upon people on this earth, he has that kind of sovereign authority, he has that kind of power.

Does he not, therefore, also have the power and the sovereign control to prevent the martyrdom in the first place? Certainly he does, if it's within his sovereign will. Interestingly, the Lord doesn't give them the answer to the question they want.

The Lord responds to say, look, there's more to come. He says to them that they should rest a little while longer until both the number of their fellow servants and their brethren who would be killed as they were was completed.

Do you understand the significance of that? That God, in his sovereign authority, has established a quota of those who will die for their faith in Christ. I don't pretend to understand all that. All I know is that God is good, and he is just, and he has a plan and a purpose for that which he does, for that which he allows, and for the quotas that he establishes.

Our place is simply like these martyrs, our place is simply to bow the knee, to bow the heart, and to submit to that authority, yield to that authority. There's no complaint on their part, none whatsoever.

Just accept the white robe that's given to them at the beginning of verse 11, and accept the answer that the Sovereign One gives. That's the posture of heart we need to have, to accept the answer and the purpose and the plan and the program that the Sovereign One has established for his purposes.

Let's yield to that. Our Father today, we do recognize that your sovereign plans and purposes and authority are far more vast than we can comprehend. We do not understand, we do not comprehend the idea that you would have a quota of those who would be martyred for the faith.

That's beyond us, we cannot fathom this. It's not ours to fathom it, it's ours to yield and submit our thinking to your thinking. Help us to do so, we pray, in Jesus' name and for his sake. Have a good first day of December.

May the Lord bless you in it.