Revelation 6 The Birth Pangs of the Kingdom

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. I'm the lead pastor here. We're going to get started, and I don't know if you knew this or not, but today is Mother's Day. Hopefully, there's no panicked expressions out there, like, uh, but you still got time to call your mom, right?

I would encourage all of you to show honor as, like, I don't know if you realize, like, it is a biblical concept to show honor to your mom, and so if your mom is still around, I'd encourage you to give her a phone call, you know, maybe stop by to see her or whatever is possible for you to demonstrate honor toward your mom today.

And here on Mother's Day, I'm going to be bringing you a really soft and gentle message about the ride of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. So, you know, we're talking conquest, wars, murder, plague, pestilence, martyrdom, earthquakes, people begging for it to all end.

Happy Mother's Day. But honestly, I think it's a reasonable question that you might wonder is why would I preach this? Why would I preach it on Mother's Day? Why would I even maybe preach it at all? And the simple reason is this, I believe that this is true.

I believe it's true, and that it is given to us by God, and therefore, because it is given to us by God, it is beneficial to moms, dads, single individuals, those who are parents, those who are not, those whose parents have passed on before them, those who have not.

It is pertinent and applies to all of us, because it is indeed God's word, and it is indeed true. And I believe that when we understand it correctly, it has the power to change and shape our understanding in a way that aligns us more closely with God's plan for us in the here and now.

Some people have a tendency to read Revelation for, like it's a manual for the end, like I'm not going to pull that out until the Antichrist shows up, or I'm not going to pull that out until the rapture, or whatever, or things like that, and we do not study Revelation primarily so we can correctly navigate the end times and the great tribulation.

But we are studying this today because understanding the book of Revelation, and understanding particularly chapter six, ought to impact the way we understand God in the here and now, and also should impact the way that we live for him.

And knowing all of these things throughout the book of Revelation, studying it to understand who he is and what he wants from us, also equally gives us hope in the hardships that we face here and now, as well as the hardships that we know we will face down the road.

The Opening of the Seven Seals in Revelation 6

So let's open our Bibles to Revelation chapter six, if you're not already there. Navigate in your app or whatever. If you don't have a Bible in front of you, just raise your hand, and we've got some guys back here with some Bibles to hand out, but we do want everybody to have a copy of God's word so you can follow along and see that this craziness that I'm reading about comes straight from God's word, and is indeed what he wants for us to hear today.

And so Revelation chapter six, hold on tight. Now I, and remember this is written by the apostle John, now I watched when the Lamb opened one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures say with a voice like thunder, come, and I looked and behold a white horse, and its rider had a bow, and a crown was given to him, and he came out conquering and to conquer.

When he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say come, and out came another horse, bright red, its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.

When he opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say come, and I looked and behold a black horse, and its rider had a pair of scales in his hands. And I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the four living creatures say a quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius, and do not harm the oil and the wine.

When he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say come, and I looked and behold a pale horse, and its rider's name was Death, and Hades followed him, and they were given authority over a fourth of the earth to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth.

When he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. They cried out with a loud voice, O sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will avenge, will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?

Then they were given, each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been.

When he opened the sixth seal, I looked and behold there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when it's shaken by a gale.

The sky vanished like a scroll that is being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?

Let's pray as the band comes to lead us in worship this morning. Father we encounter here this morning certainly a dichotomy and I recognize it that we are celebrating moms and we are grateful for birth into this world and the sacrifices that our mom has made for us to be here and we want to honor that and we want to rejoice in that and at the same time we recognize that here in this text is gravity, there is a heaviness, there is a weight about the way that all of this is going to end.

And so Father I pray that you would help us in that tension to be both joyful and grateful this morning and equally to recognize the severity of sin and the awesome judgment that it requires and the wrath that you have towards sin and rebellion against you.

And so Father I thank you that you have placed us away from the side of rebellion and towards the side of your children and that you by your great sacrifice of your son Jesus on the cross for us have brought us into your family, you have called us heirs, that we recognize that these things are not our destiny for those who are in you.

And so I pray that from the backdrop of this judgment that is coming we ought to rejoice all the more this morning. Our song should be fueled Father with a recognition that there is therefore now no condemnation, there is no wrath reserved for us because of what you have done for us through your son Jesus.

And so let our voices be raised in joyful exaltation of you and the Lamb because our hope is in you. And we ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Big thanks to Dave and Rob for leading us, for Rob stepping in at the last minute to help Dave with his voice and Dave's still up there playing even though he's not feeling great so just grateful for that.

And I encourage you to get comfortable as much as possible because here comes the apocalypse, right? So try to get comfortable but really seriously there's more coffee and more donuts and juice over there so take advantage of those and again like I say most Sundays if you need to get up and stretch out in the back do so.

I know that the chairs aren't super comfortable. But I do also want to encourage you to keep your Bibles open in Revelation chapter 6. We're going to walk through this text and hold on tight. So when we come to a text like this and really throughout Revelation we're looking at a type of writing that you and I do not encounter anywhere else in our lives.

We don't, we are not used to the genre. So when you think of the word genre it sounds like a really highfalutin word but genre is just a type of writing and we encounter all kinds of writing and you may be well aware.

Any of you ever been to Barnes and Noble before? And they've got those headings over the top of the book racks that tell you what genre you're looking at. What is this type of writing that we are looking at and we encounter email now, a different type of writing.

We encounter text messages, another type of writing. We encounter poetry, essays, novels, technical manuals, all types of writing and our expectations for each style of writing is a little bit different.

And what we are looking at in chapter 6 through the end of the book of Revelation is a specific known type of writing called apocalyptic literature. It was a well known form of writing in the ancient world.

It was really common and it had similar features from one writer to the next so if you had one guy writing an apocalyptic type of writing and another guy there would be some common features that would be, that would tie those two writings together in a sense.

And here now we see the Apostle John guided by the Holy Spirit record a divine apocalypse complete with the very features of that type of literature. There's deep symbolism. There are cycles of judgment that were common to that type of literature and the major theme being the thing, one of the major things that held all of that type of writing together was the end of the world.

All apocalyptic literature has to do with this concept of the end of the world. But the beautiful twist of what God brings to this in this last book of apocalypse in our, in the canon of scripture is that it is indeed about the end of the world but it's so much more than that, isn't it?

Because what's the title of the, the title of the book is not apocalypse. What is the title of the book? Revelation. Why? Because the end of the world is wrapped up in an individual who is being revealed to us through this book and who is that individual?

Jesus Christ. He is the one who has the keys, who has the authority, who has the right to open the scrolls of the final judgments. He is the one who initiates all of this and that is because of his authority, because of his high standing and his position.

And not only is it the end of the world as we know it but it is the inbreaking of a new kingdom in which he will indeed be the king. And so remember that last week we saw that he alone is worthy to open the scroll and to break the seven seals of judgment.

Jesus is the rightful king and therefore he was the only one with the clearance to bring everything to its conclusion. But one other thing needs to be said before we jump into the opening of the seals and that is that we are part of a select few of people in the scope of all of human history to read about these seals being broken and be shocked.

We are some of the only people on the face, that have lived on the face of this planet to be shocked when we read this. Why do I say that? Well when we read about conquest, have you lived that? Have you lived through a conquest?

I guess you haven't, maybe a hostile takeover from another company or something like that. But have you lived through a conquest? No, you haven't. When we read about drought and famine, we've only watched the effects of that on television commercials asking us for money, many of us.

When we hear about pestilence and ravaging diseases, I think of how grateful I am that Ebola, Lassa fever, Malaria, SARS and Zika seem a long ways away. Do you agree with me on that? Have you ever thanked God?

I mean have you ever considered that here in Michigan there's just not, I mean you get the influenza and there's very few things, I mean you'll hear about a weird case of West Nile or something like that, but it's just extremely rare that we would have some kind of an epidemic here.

We think to ourselves when we read about the ride of the four horsemen here, wow, Pastor Don tell me, when are those going to be released? When are those four horses going to be unleashed and finally ride through the earth?

But if I were to read Revelation chapter 6 to most people down through the ages of history and even in other parts of the world here today, they would say, those horses are already riding. Those horses rode through my neighborhood last week.

They ride through my country every day of the year this past year. Think about some of those who live in the Middle East. Is war riding in their neighborhood? Is there murder riding in their neighborhood?

Is there famine? Is there pestilence? Yes, there are. They're already riding to many. I bring that to your attention not to make you feel guilty for being Americans, there's nothing we can do about that, right, other than to help and to use the privilege that God has given us to bless others as the trip is one of the main focuses and purposes of that is to be able to bring God's grace and mercy and ministry to others.

But we need to read and understand this text from a perspective larger than our own. Many times we get so narrow in our understanding as Americans, in particular as American Christians, we get so narrow that we cease to recognize that we live in a sin-ravaged world.

We have a lot of blessings and benefits, a lot of things that do not touch our lives that touch many around the world. And we've had for some unknown reason, you and I, grace upon grace to be born in an oasis of time and space.

America is not the promised land, hear me carefully, but these horsemen don't seem to ride through my neighborhood yet. Most of the world experiences them to some degree daily and down through history most people have experienced them as a regular routine part of their lives.

So the lamb, the lamb opens the first seal. Don't lose sight of who is opening these seals as we walk through this book. Jesus is in charge. And the opening of these seals is the beginning of the birth process.

In Revelation, the old kingdoms of this world are beginning to lose their grip and the kingdom of God is being born. And it will come through a lot of birth pangs. It's like the birth of a new kingdom and there's a lot of travail and hard labor that comes in the bringing of this kingdom.

Each of the four seals is opened by Jesus. One of the four living creatures, remember those four living creatures with eyes all over themselves and kind of creeped us out a little bit a couple weeks ago in that chapter and one had the appearance of an ox and one like an eagle and one like a man.

Remember those? Well those four living creatures who are constantly before the throne singing holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come. Those four living creatures now in our text here, each one takes a role and when the seal is broken, one says, come forth.

And they call forth a rider on a horse, again a symbol. The first is a rider on a white horse and the white horse is a horse of royalty showing that the one who sits on that particular horse is symbolized as a leader amongst humanity.

Some have identified this rider with the Antichrist or tried to specifically identify who is this individual sitting on this horse and I would suggest to you that he is just conquest. That's who he is.

Think in terms of a picture of what happens on the face of the planet. You're going to find this about me pretty quickly through this series and it may disappoint some of you but I'm not going to be quick or confident with identifying the symbols with modern day equivalents.

We're not looking for helicopters in the book of Revelation, particularly, I mean some people have, do you know what I'm talking about? Have you ever, have you had or listened to those guys on the radio who are willing to tell you that's an Apache helicopter?

Look right here, I mean you can see there's something whirling above something else. You know, it's like I'm not going to be that guy who, I really think that speculating over who is the Antichrist or trying to identify which nation is Gog and which nation is Magog, I don't know, the world scene today, I think that that pulls us away from an understanding of what the text wants to drive home for you and me.

I don't think that the original audience was sitting there reading those things going, well there's probably some future nation that's going to be a lot like America that's going to, there's other points that we're going to get at and we'll see that we're going to just try to take the content that is given us and we have enough to wrestle with right here than trying to speculate over what these things represent.

But the rider here carries a bow symbolizing conquest, he was given a crown which to that day and age would have obviously demonstrated his rule, he's a ruler, and his only thought is to conquer. The text goes overboard trying to communicate to you that this first rider is bent on conquest, he's not mentioned for any interest in economics, civics, law, foreign relations don't seem to be his thing unless the foreign relations involve conquering someone else.

And so it's stated with all of the force of the Greek language to make it clear that this rider is hell-bent on conquest, he eats conquest, he drinks conquest, when he tucks himself into bed at night what does he dream about?

Conquest, okay, it is over the top in the Greek to try to communicate that that's all that this rider ever thinks about, that's his life, that's what he exists to do. And as we think about applying these visions, think about this first horse, should we be looking for a specific individual who's going to come riding on a white horse, carrying a compound bow, wearing a Burger King crown on his head, dead set on conquest, is that what we're looking for?

And then we'll know, like when the guy riding the white horse, then we're like, oh the first seal must be broken because a dude came with a crown riding a white horse, is that, do you see what I'm saying?

I mean we could take this so literal that we would miss the point and I do not believe that this is intended to be a literal rider on a white horse, rather consider how the early church would have understood this.

The concept is that conquest will be unleashed, conquest will indeed grow and increase. This is not a specific person who we should be watching out for, but a symbol of a world system that is already at work in our sinful hearts, it's at work in us.

If we allow it to have its way in us, we will indeed be a part of that. I believe that a time is coming, however, when conquest will be kind of released, it will be let off the chain, if you will. And John's readers also recognize that a future time was coming because of this revelation when conquest will drive world politics even more than it did in Roman times, even more than it does today, even more than it did in World War II.

War, Famine, and Death as the Other Horsemen

The second seal was broken open by Jesus and a rider on a red horse then is brought forward. The second of the living creatures shouts, come, and this guy comes out riding a red horse. The red represents blood.

He is permitted to remove peace from this world. He is given a huge sword and is given the right to incite people to slay one another. Pleasant. The removal of peace from this earth is already a reality for many.

And as I mentioned, it's already been the case down through the ages for many. But a day is coming and the church should be made aware of this through the reading and the teaching of revelation that there's a time coming when peace will be taken away.

Civil war, strife, and murder will increase. And fundamentally, this text is answering a question that many people wonder today. Just last night, we sat down and watched the second half of Mockingjay.

Any of you ever read those? And any of you read any of the dystopian literature that is out there today? I would say that preaching on revelation would have been different even ten years ago. But dystopia, utopia, dystopia, a bad future, utopia, a good or paradise type future.

And the question that I think fundamentally many people want an answer to is what direction is this thing going? And you can ask two pundits the same question and some see it getting better and some think it's getting worse.

Right? Have you encountered that? You might even, on the political sphere in America, we could be so divided on that that there could be an entire group of people who go, it's just kept getting better and better.

And here's the data. Right? Have any of you seen those? It's been posted on your Facebook wall too? Okay? Your friends saying that? And then others are saying, man, it's just gone. I mean, we're going to hell in a handbasket is the mindset.

And it's just getting worse and worse and we need change. We need da, da, da. And so do you see how we could have just very different views of the direction, the trajectory of this world? And yet, where do we get that from?

Do you get the trajectory of this world from the newspaper? Do you get it from watching Fox News? Do you get it from CNN? Where do you get, or is it just from kind of hanging out with your friends and kind of thinking about these things?

Where do you get your view of the trajectory of the future? Well, I would suggest to you that you should go to the word of God if you have a desire and an interest in knowing how is all of this going to go?

Where is it all heading? Are we on the road to a utopian society where everyone lives together in peace and harmony? Will technology bring us all together and crush the boundaries and divisions that have separated humanity?

God says, ultimately, no. That's not where it's going. As time progresses, it could get better for periods of time. You recognize that there's this cycle and this movement to history, but we are trending downward.

And there's coming a time where it just drops off. As time progresses, it will continue to get worse. These seals, the trumpets of wrath, the bowls of wrath that we're going to get to later in the book of Revelation are all woven into an apocalyptic tapestry that demonstrates what to expect.

And it's grim. It's like a woman who has started labor. It's not a joking matter, right? Don't tell jokes to women in labor. That's not going to go well for you. Is that a grim experience to see? Those of you who have taken part in it, it's a pretty serious thing.

And that's what I'm likening this to. That's what Paul likened it to, that the world is giving, it's kind of like going through the movement of birth process here. And it is like a woman who has started labor.

But all of these judgments, in all of these judgments, brothers and sisters, do not lose heart for our King is on His way. Our King is on His way. So when we read these things, we look at it and we just say, wow, this is some heavy, heavy stuff.

But heavy, but joyous in that as we experience these things, as the world experiences earthquakes, when you read about an earthquake in the newspaper, there have been some pretty big ones recently and they seem to be more frequently.

I don't know if that's the case or not, but you hear about these big ones, what runs through your mind? I'm glad it wasn't in Japan. To what extent do you go? Or do you take it a step further and say, just one more step, one more reminder, that this world is not stable.

I mean that figuratively, literally it isn't, but figuratively, this world is not what there is and these are signs. When you hear about conquest, when you hear about wars, when you hear about these things, Jesus said these are just signs of the end.

Not that the end is near, not that we can then dictate, well, the frequency of earthquakes, and then Jesus is coming back, you know, it's not to predict that, it's just reminders that this world is not our ultimate, well, the world, a renovated world without sin is our ultimate destination.

But this is not as it should be yet. Don't lose heart for a king is on the way and let those things that you read about in the news be a reminder and maybe even offer those as a prayer. As you hear about devastation, as you experience hardship in your life, to say, come quickly, Lord.

Come quickly, Lord. I think it might be as you get older, it might be easier to say that. I think it has been for me. There's more waiting for me there. Some of you experience that. As you age and as you get older, there's more waiting for you there than here, right?

I mean, some of the glory of humanity and the glory of running fast or shooting hoops awesome or just being able to just excel at certain areas, and as that declines, you go, wait, what was my hope in again?

Come quickly, Lord. The third seal is broken, the third living creature calls, come, and out steps a rider on a jet black horse. He holds scales in his hand for measuring out dry goods. And a voice that John cannot identify, he doesn't know quite where it comes from, somewhere in the vicinity of the four living creatures, doesn't know who says it, but gives clarity to the meaning of the scales.

Why scales here for the black rider? Why is he carrying those? This rider is carrying scales because he is famine, and he will bring the economy and climate to a place where a whole day's wages would be required for enough bread to feed one person, or enough to feed them well or to feed three people poorly for a day.

And so you kind of go, well, they'd have food, right? Would you like to just have one quart of wheat for the day and that's all you can afford? Where's your housing? Where is anything else in that? Nothing.

You're not going to be buying meat, you're not going to be buying anything to drink, it's all just bread. A quart of wheat, by the way, we're talking a quart of wheat, not a quart of flour. So that has to be ground down and produced into flour and it produces less quantity than obviously you have in wheat and it's basically estimated that that's enough to feed one person for a day.

And then a denarius is a day's wage. So just barely able to get by. By the way, the mention of barley flour, barley is less nutritious in its value to our needs. And so to be able to buy three quarts, you go, okay, well maybe you could skimp and get better but it actually is less nutritional.

Either way, it's a losing battle in this economic scenario that is lined out here. By the way, the trade of one quart for a denarius, we have different historians that have wrote during Roman times to talk about the economy.

That's about 10 to 12 times the normal exchange showing the severity of this famine. It's a major, major blow to the economy. But the oil and the wine will remain untouched. Oh goody. Right? The oil and the wine and what is meant by that, it clarifies that the change will be caused by scarcity of wheat and barley which are more easily impacted by drought.

Usually the olive trees which would produce the oil in this era would run down deeper with their roots. The grape vines would run down deeper with their roots and so they might still be able to survive a drought that would destroy or hamper the wheat and the barley.

But the irony is, okay so think about it, wine and oil are still around but who can afford it if they're spending all their money to buy bread? And the answer is only the most wealthy could. So what many commentaries see and I think might be accurate as many scholars are kind of saying what we're seeing here is an indication that in the end, at this time, there's going to be a wider disparity between those with and those without.

It's going to increase. It's going to get even worse than it is. Now there's going to be an increased, there will be people who are buying plenty of bread for themselves and wine and oil on top of that.

And there will be some who don't even have hardly enough, don't have enough to feed their families for the day. A tough thing when famine hits. And the last rider, the last of the four living creatures, shouts, come!

And the last rider on a pale horse shows up and he is called Death. And walking closely behind this horse is Hades. These are not demigods, they're not Greek, they're not the Greek gods, Hades. It is, Hades is a straight up Greek word, it's a personification of the grave.

But Hades is the word that would be translated Sheol in the Old Testament. Any of you ever heard the word Sheol, it just means grave. And in the New Testament the word is Hades, which is grave. And so it's just basically a word picture that's being used there.

All of these are personifications, there's conquest as personified as somebody riding a horse, there's war, there's famine that we just saw, and now there is death and Hades. Don't let the names confuse you, does the Bible teach that the Greek gods are real?

Not at all. But the picture is a grim picture of death riding throughout the world, taking a fourth of its inhabitants, and Hades the grave is walking behind him collecting the bodies. Death is less limited by the way in his resources, conquest remember was given a bow, murder was given a sword, famine the scales, but death here has multiple avenues and tools at his disposal, he has swords, famines, diseases, and even wild beasts at his disposal.

Don't think of this as a one time culling, like I mean a lot of times in our minds because we've been literal, we've read the Left Behind series or something like that, we're picturing like on one day a quarter of the world died, well that's not necessarily what's happening here, this is probably over the expanse of time, but he is being given the right during an era to bring significant death and destruction to the world.

Now some of you may be confused and wondering, Don is all of this just future, is this some particular day that this all happens on, what's all of that look like? And I want to clarify that I think God intentionally wants you to ask that question and then equally he intentionally leaves it open ended because I really believe that these horsemen are nothing new, conquest, murder, famines, plagues, and death have all been a part of the world since the fall, remember that murder was there on that day when Cain killed Abel, very early on and so have these things been a part and parcel of our lives, it has been unfortunately since we busted it, conquest, all of those things are a part of it.

So why is God identifying these writers in our text now? Why highlight them, why bring them up as, aren't they a foregone conclusion, isn't that just the way of life on a fallen world? But I think he wants us to know two things as we move forward.

First he is in control of these writers, these writers are not outside of the hand of God. I also think he includes these seals here to show that there's a time coming when these things will indeed multiply, when they'll be more prevalent on the world.

We need to have hearts ready for this type of difficulty. You may say to me, but wait Don, aren't we gone when these trials take place on the earth? Are we gone then? I mean, so raise your hand if you've read the Left Behind series.

So a lot of us have a lot of things to unlearn and to work through and some baggage that we've got to handle. But let me just say this, if you read it then you know that we're supposed to be gone before bad things happen, right?

Isn't that the gist of the book? There's a rapture and the bad things don't happen to the good Christians, right? And is that real? Is that the way that it happens in life today? Cancer skips over the people who are good, no, not at all.

We know that that's not the case. Is there suffering? Is there devastation now? There is, absolutely. And so we've got to wrestle with this. If you start to try to figure out a timeline using the book of Revelation, if that's what you think it's there for, you're going to struggle.

You're going to struggle to get through this book. As a matter of fact, I'd suggest that you'll probably give up because it doesn't read like a timeline. It doesn't read to give you the detail that you want.

I think there's intention behind that. We've been, for years we've been caught up in the effects of conquest, strife, murder, famine and plague all down through the ages. And I want to be careful that as we read through this that we don't get so caught up in trying to figure out the timeline that we get lost in the weeds and don't really see the heart of God in the book of Revelation.

I do believe, by the way, I do believe in rapture. I do believe that he's going to come back for his church. But I'll confess that I don't know how it fits into chapter six, into this current text. These seals possibly occupy a large stretch of time.

But when we come to the fifth seal, we're reminded that God is working out his plan for redemption and that followers of Christ are not immune to the effects of sin in this world. I think it's there with that purpose in mind.

When Jesus opens the fifth seal, John saw the souls of martyrs under the altar of God. The images that they've been offered up as a sacrifice to God and they are in heaven awaiting a final vindication.