Revelation 8 Trumpets of Doom

You're listening to the podcast of the Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak preaches through his series, Thy Kingdom Come, taking us through the book of Revelation. Let's listen in.

Welcome to Recast Church, I'm Don Filsak and I want to start off by welcoming everybody this morning. I'm glad that you're here. I am, as we get started this morning, going to start by setting the stage and I do this every week.

I kind of start by giving us a little portion of the text, a little bit of explanation about where we're going. And I just wanted to share with you the reason that I do that and we dive in, kind of just do a little intro to the messages so that we hear a bit from God's word as we start.

I'm convinced that worship is a bit of a cycle, knowing God as he truly is, which we find through the pages of scripture informs our ability to actually sing songs to him and worship him correctly and so that's one of the reasons that we do this.

But before we dive into this text, I just want to make a quick announcement for those of you that were waiting and haven't maybe heard yet. The vote last week was unanimous to sell our current property, buy the new property, and then also to begin the process of doing blueprints.

I'm getting the time's up card already back there, so little humor here on my Sunday morning. And then, so to do the blueprints for the building and so I'm just praising God for the way that he has led us to the place where we've got some financial means to begin this process and to really consider having a facility, a building of our own here in this community.

So just continue to pray and continue to praise God for the way that he is continuing to provide for us. We're continuing to walk through the book of Revelation, which sometimes I'm like, what have I done done?

Like why really the book of Revelation? Like each week I recognize and I come to the end of myself and realizing I've bitten off more than I can chew, but it's not too much for God, right? Like he's the one who wrote this and it's something that he desires for us to wrestle through and work through.

So I have to confess that this book has the potential to be pretty uncomfortable in our current social context. We live in a society that often uses Jesus to support whatever we want him to support. We can put Jesus is and whatever fill in the blank on a bumper sticker and have him support our cause, right?

And have any of you ever seen that? Have you seen Jesus support all kinds of strange things on bumper stickers? And so we live in that kind of culture. And many would claim to be followers of Jesus Christ, but then they can be found on social media or in conversation saying things like my Jesus would never, and then you can fill in the blank, my Jesus would never judge anyone.

Oh really? Your Jesus would never judge anyone except that scripture declares quite openly that he is the one appointed through whom all the world will be judged. So I mean you're kind of on shaky ground if you say my Jesus would never judge anyone.

I understand the sentiment though, do you understand the sentiment of somebody who might say that? My Jesus isn't judgmental, like that's different, but to say he would never judge anyone. Or to say Jesus just came to bring peace and an example of loving everyone and unifying everyone when Jesus said some pretty radical things like I come to divide, I come to bring a sword, whoa.

And that's why we have to read all of scripture. We have to study all of it to understand the full scope and breadth of who God has revealed himself to be and who his son is. We have a tendency to neglect the things that don't make sense of our world view, right?

We have a way that we view, a lens through which we look at the world and then if it doesn't fit in there we can't. But here in the book of Revelation we find that God, we find out really that God has been pulling punches for a few thousand years before he begins the process of ultimate justice and ultimate judgment.

He hasn't been hitting us as hard as we deserve. He hasn't been hitting us as hard as we deserve. We have been experiencing for millennia common grace, grace that is undeserved. And that's the reality of life.

And I am grateful for his patient mercy. Anybody else? Anybody else grateful that he has not given you right here, right now what you rightly deserve in your sinfulness and rebellion against him? But he has given to humanity time to turn to him in repentance and to embrace the salvation that he has offered to us through his son Jesus Christ.

But this time of God's patience will indeed come to an end and that's where we come to the book of Revelation. When we get there we're seeing the end times where his patience has given its full breadth, its full end.

So I have to ask you this morning, and to really think about this as we come to this text and we're going to read Revelation chapter 8, does your view of God have room for this? Does your view of God take in an understanding of God who owns it all and has the right to do these kinds of things to this world?

Well, I would suggest to you that either we need to edit Revelation chapter 8 or we need to let Revelation chapter 8 edit us and our understanding and our view of God. We really only have those couple of options available to us.

Either we believe that this is true and that God really rolls this way in the end. And by the way, I'm not talking about a God of the Old Testament and a God of the New Testament or Jesus the way that he was at the beginning and the way that he is now.

But this is Jesus. This is who Jesus is. And in the end, God's final justice, his final judgment, his final wrath towards sin will be revealed. And in Revelation we're given pictures, remember, like images, like snapshots through the Apostle John, and those often rattle us.

And they are intended to rattle us. They should rattle us. In our text this morning we read about a new cycle of destruction at the start of the blowing of the seven trumpets. We've already seen six of the seven seals broken off the scroll and tragedy that ensued after that.

We'll see the start of the seventh seal and then the beginning of the four trumpets in our chapter this morning. And we can be left with a couple of major conclusions. Yes, I'm giving you conclusions here at the beginning because apparently my time is short, right, Eric?

But a couple of conclusions here at the start to give you an indication of where we're going. And that is, number one, that God takes sin seriously. God takes sin very seriously. And he brings the final kingdom through a just cataclysmic cycle known as the Great Tribulation.

A time that's somewhat like birth pangs for the kingdom. That the old kingdoms of this world that rebel against Christ, rebel against God, will indeed try to bring it to God and God will finish it. He will take care of it.

And he will push aside all of these kingdoms of this world that oppose him and usher in the kingdom of his son, Jesus Christ. So let's open our Bibles to Revelation chapter 8 if you're not already there.

If you have an app or whatever, you can navigate over to that. But if you have no means right now on your lap to look into the pages of scripture, then I'd ask that you do me a favor and just raise your hand and we've got, Mark is back here with a Bible and he just wants to bring you one and then you can take that with you.

We want everybody to have a copy of God's word so that you can look into these things for yourself and see that the things that I'm reading about, the things that we're discussing this morning are just coming straight from the pages of scripture.

If not, if you're uncomfortable raising your hand, you can just grab one of those Bibles off the table back there during the connection time and have one as we go through. But recast, this is God's word.

This is what he desires for us to wrestle with, to deal with. This is what he laid on my heart to bring to us here this morning. Revelation chapter 8. When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about a half an hour.

Then I saw the seven angels who stand before God and seven trumpets were given to them and another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer and he was given much incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne.

And the smoke of the incense with the prayers of the saints rose before God from the hand of the angel. Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth.

And there were peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake. Now the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared to blow them. The first angel blew his trumpet and there followed hail and fire mixed with blood and these were thrown upon the earth.

And a third of the earth was burned up and a third of the trees were burned up and all the green grass was burned up. The second angel blew his trumpet and something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea and a third of the sea became blood.

A third of the living creatures in the sea died and a third of the ships were destroyed. The third angel blew his trumpet and a great star fell from heaven blazing like a torch and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water.

The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became Wormwood and many people died from the water because it had been made bitter. The fourth angel blew his trumpet and a third of the sun was struck and a third of the moon and a third of the stars so that a third of their light might be darkened and a third of the day might be kept from shining and likewise a third of the night.

Then I looked and I heard an eagle crying with a loud voice as it flew directly overhead. Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth at the blast of the other trumpets that the three angels are about to blow.

Let's pray. Father, it seems appropriate in the light of reading a text about judgment to move into a time of confession, to move into a time of recognition of the way that we have given our hearts and our minds and our energy and our strength over to sin.

Father, we are broken in our relationships. We don't respond the way that we ought to to others. We certainly don't respond the way that we ought to to you. There are times in our lives where we take control, where we seek to manipulate others, where we speak words that are harsh or are unkind to those who bear your image.

Father, we have wrong priorities. We set the wrong things at the head of our lives. Father, we are unworthy and yet it is only through the blood of Jesus Christ that we have hope. Where your wrath here in this text is poured out upon the earth, we recognize your wrath poured out on the cross.

So Father, I pray that you would be honored and glorified in our presence as we sing songs as the redeemed, as those who have been bought from this great cataclysm that is coming upon this planet. Father, I pray that you would embolden us, give us power, give us strength to go out to share this, not as those who are perfect, not as those who have it all together, but Father, as those who are the redeemed, who are forgiven and who are seeking to walk with you, that we would share this glorious hope with others and we ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen. Yeah, you can go ahead and be seated. I'm just really grateful for Dave leading us in worship this morning and hopefully you were able to step before the throne of God. It is, as Dave mentioned, kind of a text that it's, it's kind of a twist to get it to the point where we recognize it as worship.

It is about destruction, it is about wrath, and at the same time, that God, who is going to bring it all to justice in the end, is worthy of our worship, for sure. And so I encourage you to keep your Bibles open to Revelation chapter 8, so that you can kind of just have that text there on your lap in front of you as we're going to walk through.

And remember that if you need to get up and get any coffee or juice or donuts, or you need to get up and stretch out in the back or whatever, to keep our focus on God's word over the next half an hour or so is really the point.

But yeah, Revelation 8 is where we're at. And in the throne room of God, remember, we've already set some stage, we've already gone from Revelation 1 through Revelation 7, and we've seen a lot of stuff going on in the throne room of God.

So to make sure to catch you up if you haven't been here through all of that, we saw a particular image early on of the throne room where there was wonder, a throne room full of just wonder and full of signs and symbols of the power of God.

In the presence of God right now, as we're here on earth, there in his presence, there are shouts of worship, there are choruses of angels, the cries of prayers of the martyrs coming from beneath the altar of incense, there are peals of thunder, and there is all of this, all of this noise, all of the stuff that's going on.

I would not call it chaos, I would say it's organized, and at the same time, it is a busy place. And when the final seal of the scroll of judgment is open, remember this is the final one in a sequence of seven, there is silence, silence.

That makes us uncomfortable, doesn't it? How about a half an hour, half an hour of silence? The drama in the opening of this seal is intentional, it's on purpose. I believe that the conclusion of the kingdoms of this earth and the bringing forward of the new kingdom of Jesus Christ, they're at the end.

Remember the sixth seal, the sky was all rolled up and rolled up like a scroll, and the mountains were fled away from their location, and there were no islands anymore, and everything was coming down around them, and in heaven there is silence.

The next thing to come after the end is the great judgment day of the Lord. There is awesome silence in heaven in expectation of what comes next. What does a person do when they've observed the fierce wrath of God finally measured out on this sin-cursed world?

A stunned silence seems like an appropriate response, doesn't it? And that's exactly what happens here in heaven. But verse two now indicates a new vision. So that's kind of a, that's kind of, when they broke up the chapters, they did that and I, and partly because there was this interlude about where the followers of Jesus Christ are.

Remember last chapter, in chapter seven, we saw that those who are saints and those who are followers of Christ, a great multitude surrounding the throne, praising him there in his presence, and then this silence here at the end wraps that up.

But now a new vision begins in verse two, kind of a paragraph beginning, a new thought. Remember that John is receiving these things as visions, as like we would receive a dream, there's an image, there's a picture.

Sometimes there, have you ever had a dream? Do you have words in your dreams or is it mostly just impressions and visions that you have? And I would suggest to you that the majority of dreams are just impressions that you wake up and you saw this thing happen or you felt this thing happen or something like that.

And that's what this is like. But be careful to not assume in verse two when we see the phrase, then I saw that that indicates chronology of the end or future events. It does indeed include the order in which these visions were given to John, but it does not indicate to us how it's all going to roll out in the end.

I believe that the seal judgments that we just wrapped up, the trumpets that we're going to talk about today and next week, and then the bowls of God's wrath that are coming down the pipeline for us in a few weeks, all of those are non-linear, cyclical descriptions of the period of the end known as the great tribulation.

There is a time coming when God in his justice is going to wrap up the kingdoms of this world and usher in the kingdom of Christ and these are cycles. A lot of times we read them like we could have a tendency to read them like seals, then all of those seals are done and then trumpets and then all of these trumpets are done and then bowls and all of these bowls are done.

Well, these are snapshots. These are images coming fast and in a hurry to John and he's seeing them and there's imagery that's involved in them and there's all kinds of symbols and figures of speech that are going on, but it's all covering the same amount of time and you kind of go, well, does the first trumpet line up with the first seal?

Is that what? No, it doesn't even line up that way. It's not his intention. It's each one of these is a snapshot of something that's going to occur and it's heightening intensity. These visions come faster and faster and they come with more force and more power where we go to a third of the, a quarter of the world being, earth being destroyed to a third to a total annihilation in the end and so there's force and there's movement and these are overlapping visions that occur here in our text that describe the end of time with a different focus, with a different set of details involved in it.

You see the seals that we just wrapped up focused more on the status of humanity at the end. How is humanity going to roll? And there was conquest and there was murder and there was strife and there was war and all of those things and disease, but here in the trumpets, we're going to focus more on the status of nature.

What's the status of the earth like there at the end? Where we've talked a little bit more about what is the nature of human interaction. Now we're going to get a little bit more focused in on what's going on on the earth in this and many have seen that delineation in these two.

And in verse two, we're introduced to seven angels. They've not been mentioned before this text and these seven angels stand before the presence of God according to the text and they're known in Jewish tradition.

Jewish tradition has these seven angels in their tradition. They're the seven archangels or seven angels of the presence. Now you might go, well, if there's these seven angels and Jews believe that there's these seven angels, they don't believe in the book of Revelation, do they?

And of course not. The book of Revelation is all about the revelation of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who we believe to be Messiah. Jews do not believe him to be the Messiah, so how would they have the same number of angels?

And I think it's kind of interesting that in their own traditions, they have even named these seven angels, but they do so because there's two particular in the Old Testament that we're aware of that identify themselves as angels who stand in the presence of God.

The only two angels that we ever receive a name for, aside from Lucifer, the fallen angel, we receive the names Gabriel and Michael. And it is said of them, they basically introduce themselves in a couple of texts as angels who stand in the presence of God using the same phraseology that we see here.

And so we might possibly already know two names, and many scholars think we already know two of these angels who will blow these seven trumpets at the end, Michael and Gabriel. Many believe that they are going to be there.

And they're all given trumpets. And trumpets, if you think about it, they're used for all kinds of things, and particularly in the ancient world, they were extremely useful. They were a way of communicating something with large groups of people at one time.

Now, we can think in military usage, you might think instantly of a different instrument being used in military. What instrument is most common in our American history might be a bugle? I was thinking drum, like they would march to the drum or something like that to help people keep time in a march into battle or something like that.

Bugle, trumpet, something to that effect. It's able to communicate something with the notes that are carried, and so you could call retreat with a trumpet with certain notes, or you could call charge with certain notes, or you could communicate to large groups of people at once on the battlefield.

Even over the din of battle, the trumpet would be a piercing cry that could be heard all around the battlefield. If you wanted to command people to do certain things, hey, when I blow the trumpet this way, this is the way it's gonna go.

Also, trumpets could be used in a village context or in a city context. Hey, we're being invaded, like wake up, like it'd be a wake up alarm kind of thing. And I think there's, to some degree, that's the usage of these trumpets here.

It's a little bit more get prepared, be ready, this is coming. These angels are not picking up trumpets getting ready for band camp, okay? This is not about marching band, but these, the blowing of these trumpets are going to be, to bring forth the actual judgments of God.

But before the trumpet sounds, God shows us something that seems a little bit out of place. The angel, there's an angel, before those trumpets sound, he shows us an image that it's kind of like, he could have left this out and it feels like the story could have just gone on as normal.

Ready, are you anticipating some trumpets being sounded by what's been already said in the text? And then we get to this interlude where an angel makes an offering of incense mingled with the prayers of the saints before the throne of God.

The prayers are said to be like incense rising before God, and then the angel chucks the burning censer to earth, it produces lightning, thunder, and an earthquake, all indicators of judgment, of bad things to come.

And this is the type of thing that I could often routinely miss in my Bible reading. Like, have any of you read through the Bible in a year, or you've gone through the book of Revelation and you've read it, and it's like, okay, yeah, trumpets, okay, something about some incense angel thing going on, back to the trumpets.

And you could miss that and maybe not even understand, and to be honest, even as I first read this text, I was like, wait a minute, this is gonna need some study, I'm gonna need to pay some attention to this.

I get the trumpet bit, but what is this about this incense and this angel? It's the type of thing we could easily miss. But this part of the text takes a moment to tell us something that may be a bit shocking to our understanding of the judgment of God and how it all rolls down.

The angel has a censer in his hands. Now, you probably haven't used a censer before. Do you know what a censer is? Some of you, maybe you were raised in a Catholic church or an Anglican church or a high church where they would use incense.

It's that kind of gold thing that the priest would hold and he would do this number with it and it had smoke coming out of it and it would make the place smell either funky or weird or good depending on how your nose works.

But it's the idea, censers come in all shapes and sizes. You see a picture of one there on the screen. They get very ornate, that's a pretty simple one. But one thing that they all have in common is they all have a cup at the bottom of them in which you would put hot burning coals and mingle with that, add to that incense which is just basically like good smelling woods and then as that wood catches on fire from those coals or burns it would produce an aroma that would permeate, you know, the place, the temple, the whatever and in this case, we're talking about the throne room of God.

So the angel, he sees an angel with this kind of rig, okay, he's holding on to one of these and it's golden it says in the text. And he takes hot coals and he takes incense and he mixes them and they produce a pleasant smell and there's a couple of observations, really three observations that I think stand out to me as we think about an angel holding a censer and what all of that's about.

The first is that our prayers are offered up to God in a way that has already once been stated in the book of Revelation but is an idea of our prayers having an impact on the atmosphere of the throne room of God.

Do you think about that? I mean, a lot of times we think in terms of prayer for what we stand to gain from it. Like often, are we making requests? Is that reality? We go to God in our need and I'd encourage that but our prayers are having an impact on the throne room of God in setting the atmosphere and setting a pleasing aroma to the nostrils of our God.

Like he's paying attention to this and it's impacting what's going on there in his presence. It's a glorious, beautiful picture of prayer. The second is that there's coming a time when those prayers will be offered in finality before the throne.

Where is the censer by the end of this text? Now the picture, remember this is an image, there's not a literal bowl where the angel is, oh, here comes a prayer, and he's trying to catch him in a bowl for us.

Obviously that's not the case but this is an image that here is this censer that is being offered. Now where is the censer at the end of the text? Cast down. It's not in the presence of God anymore. This is the repository, this is the place where prayers are held, so to speak, in a figurative sense.

But it's not there. It's cast out of heaven. I believe that this is one further indication that a time is coming. Where were the saints at this point according to the text last week? They're there. Who was silent at the start of this text?

I believe that's us. I believe we who have been singing his praises are silent at the final destruction of the sixth seal and we're there in the presence of God. It's us standing around and God's right there in the middle.

It's not prayer anymore. He's there. This is the kind of picture that we have there during the tribulation where the saints are raptured and are in the presence of God. We're there with him. It's not prayer anymore.

And so the censer is cast out. We'll no longer be in heaven. We'll be filled with fire and cast to earth. Now, the third observation about this angel priest action is that as he casts the censer to earth, that is the initiation here in the text of some sense of judgment, of final judgment.

It might not be comforting to all of us, but our prayers for justice are being heard. When we pray, come quickly, Lord, he hears. And not only does he hear, but he will act when the censer is full. The imagery of the golden censer is that our prayers for the end have a part to play in God's sovereign timing of the final act of judgment.

The prayers of the saints. Do we long for his kingdom enough to ask for it? Now, some of us are like, man, if my prayers going into that censer are impacting when all of this rolls down and when all of these judgments come, then maybe I'll stop praying for that until I get to meet my grandkids.

Or until, and you could fill in the blank, until I get married, until I get done with college, until I get a little bit further in my career, until I, you know, things that you want to accomplish in life.

Have you, I mean, let's just be honest, have you ever thought like that? I mean, I know I have. I mean, there are things, are there things that you want to see in your life? Some traveling you want to do, some, some things that you, you know, like I said, even just, just, I'd love to meet my grandkids.

That would be a beautiful thing. I would like that. God blesses me with grandkids. I don't presume that, but so there's, so there's things that I would like to have happen. And so do we really long for it?

I mean, in reality, in our hearts, and I would suggest to you that we do not process this text, this longing for the kingdom of God, this longing for justice in the same way a Christian in, say, Iraq processes this text.

The way that they understand the longing for the justice of God. I would suggest to you that a Christian in South Sudan might have a different perspective than you or I regarding their longing for the kingdom of God to arrive.

I'm guessing that the majority of Christians on this planet, the majority of Christians on this planet, the vast majority of Christians on this planet are not as in love with the world as you or I. The majority of Christians, I mean, that's an indictment.

The majority of Christians on this planet are not as in love with this world as you or I are, and that is because our blessing is often a hindrance to our spiritual growth and understanding. I conclude just thinking about this section of the longing that is there for the kingdom of God, these prayers that are offered in hope that Jesus would return quickly, that we as Americans are in the 1 most at risk of our wealth impeding our spiritual growth and depth.

Not trying to make you feel guilty for where you were born. I've said that many times up here, but it's a matter of how we process this and work through it, how we use the blessings that God has given us, how we're generous to those that are in need.

This is not a sales pitch for the Uganda trip, but man, if God might take even this message and pluck at your heart and just kind of say, you know what, just go to the meeting afterwards. There's gonna be some sandwiches there.

Check it out. Maybe God would actually, yeah, Heather's laughing. Sell it with sandwiches, whatever. And it's free. But it's just a chance to go check it out and say, maybe it's a good fit, maybe it's not.

And you're not wasting our sandwiches by being there. It's an opportunity for you to really check it out and just say, maybe, maybe that's one of the things that God has, yes, he's blessed us. And it's not just us in our arrogance going over to help those poor people, but a real movement in our hearts of just, just sharing life and love and particularly the love of God with those in need around the world.

But to pray for Christ to come back is a cry ultimately for sin to be done with and for justice to finally win. How much do you long for his return? Think about that. After the censer of prayers is cast to earth, the seven angels lift the trumpets to their lips, but they do not sound out in unison as we might expect, but instead they sound out one note at a time, one trumpet at a time.

And when the first angel sounds his trumpet, hail and fire mixed with blood fall on the earth. Now, most scholars, by the way, see significant parallelism and I think you probably can too between the seven trumpets and the 10 plagues of Egypt.

I think it's intentional and there's a lot of Old Testament references throughout the book of Revelation, a lot of tying this stuff into the Old Testament. Now, certainly those of you who maybe have some precision in your makeup and your personality, you're going, how could they be parallel?

There's seven and there's 10, right? I mean, the numbers don't even match up, Don. They can't be parallel. Well, obviously there's themes that are in here that are obvious that they're connected. Hail, blood, fire, that kind of stuff.

But the concept is still the same. God is ready to lead his people in a final way into the land of promise here in our text. And he judges those who have held them captive. And he will, in the end, judge the ones who stand in the way of the kingdom of God in Christ Jesus.

He will remove the barriers that they have for his kingdom to come. And this fire, hail and blood, it says, burns up one third of the trees and all the green grass. It impacts a third of the earth. The way that this is written, by the way, leaves room.

I just want to be clear for the grass to be destroyed only in the areas that the earth are impacted, despite the way that you read the text in English. The Greek allows for that. But I want to just point out, and I say that particularly because we can't really get scientific on this stuff.

Maybe you want me to. Maybe you want me to try to explain what my take is on the way that a third of the earth gets burned up and scorched in the trees and all of that stuff. But we're going to see here just in a couple of, really next week, in one of these trumpets blows and locusts appear.

And the locusts are told to, are you ready for it? To not touch the grass. Don't eat the grass. Well, if all the grass is burned up, then you're kind of looking at this and you're kind of saying, is this, is this sensible?

Is this reasonable? And I'm just saying, he's being given impressions and images here along the way. And I don't think you can read too much into the visions that are being given. I believe that, and again, the language allows it to bear up under there, just being a third of the grass being destroyed, just in those areas where the earth is completely scorched.

But we can try to go all scientific on this. But as soon as we begin to try to work it out that way, we get kind of silly by the time we get down to the scorpion horse locust things here in a few verses.