Let’s pray together. Father, we are thankful for another time to gather.

Lord, in the grace of community,

look to your son Jesus and be reminded of your great love, of how fast you hold us, how sure your promises are, Lord, Lord, through many trials and many seasons, you are unimaginably faithful to us. We praise you and thank you for your goodness and your kindness in Christ Jesus. God, we ask that you would reveal yourself to us in your word as we consider it together.

Father, we pray you would receive our… tithe and our offering.

Lord, that we would gladly

make financial sacrifices to you. Lord, that we would give faithfully, cheerfully, and generously to you. Oh, God. We pray it in Christ’s name. Amen.

Well, good evening. It’s good to be with you.

We’re going to be in Revelation chapter 10.

Revelation chapter 10.

And I know that tonight we have several families out sick and traveling, and that’s going to kind of be the way it is with summer. So just a reminder, these are… on the website, because I know especially in Revelation, man, you miss one verse, and you’re like, I don’t even know where to take the rest of this, right? So it’s good to be able to kind of go back. Or sometimes you might hear one of these sermons and think, I’d like to listen to that again, just to kind of process on it, because there’s so much there. So that’s available as well. But I’m glad to be with you this evening. Amen.

Revelation chapter 10. And I’m just going to kind of always work through passages verse by verse, but I’m just going to kind of go slow and kind of piece it together, because I think if I read the whole chapter, you’d be like, whoa, what do we do with that? So I’m just going to kind of go piece by piece here, starting in verse 1.

And the title of my sermon is simply, The Word Stands Forever. The Word Stands Forever.

Fashion changes.

I saw the other day something about the 90s are coming back and people start to dress like the 90s again, right? Culture changes, the kind of food we like, seasons of life change. There’s all kinds of change in all kinds of seasons. Yet the Word of God, it is the same and it stands forever.

It stands forever.

Verse 1. Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven,

wrapped in a cloud with a rainbow over his head, and his face was like the sun and his legs like pillars of fire. Now, remember what we had just seen if you were here. If you weren’t, what happened? Look at this. And last week, as we saw the ending of the 5th and 6th trumpets. I remember those trumpets were judgment. It was the demonic locust plague and it was demonic horses and their riders and they tortured and the locusts tortured, the horses tortured and killed the unbelievers. So it ends on a really sober note of God’s judgment, judgment on the wicked. And at the end of that chapter, chapter 9, it said that after that horrible plague, those who were left alive still would not repent of their sin.

So there’s this kind of hardness over the hearts of people left on the earth in the end times. And so we kind of suspend that storyline. It doesn’t go straight to the 7th trumpet the same way that it was suspended between the 6th and 7th seal. And John’s getting a separate, separate vision altogether. And this vision is happening on earth. And so what does he see? What does John see in this vision suspended from the vision of the trumpets in between the 6th and 7th trumpet yet to come? Okay. He sees a mighty angel. So he’s on earth. He’s not in heaven as he was in his last vision. He’s on earth.

And he sees this angel coming down. Who is this mighty angel? Well, it’s possible. Possibly, I think someone would want to say it was Jesus. I think it’s highly unlikely that it’s Jesus. I think it’s highly unlikely that this is Jesus because this angel we’ll see further on in this passage takes an oath before God, which I think would be odd for Jesus, who is God, to take an oath to God.

Secondly, he’s referred to as another mighty angel. And we hear that phrase a couple other times. I think it’s a little bit different. It pinpoints it’s the same angel.

So this seems to be a messenger, not deity.

This angel comes with cloud as a garment. We see the Lord ascend and descend with a cloud as a means of transportation. In the Old Testament, it’s talked about that. And in the New Testament, when Jesus ascends. Now, it does say he has a face like the sun. And you’ll remember that’s a phraseology describing Christ. In the first chapter, when John gets his vision of Jesus, Jesus has a face like a sun. So this angel does well. That’s similar also at Jesus’s transfiguration. In the gospel accounts, it says he has a face like a sun. And then we see that his legs are like pillars of fire. That may remind you of the Exodus, when it’s the angel of the Lord leads God’s people by the pillar of cloud by day and the fire by night. So a couple of similarities. You have the rainbow again. Over his head there. This seems to be a reflection of God’s glory, a reflection of it. But I don’t think it can be Jesus. It’s a little too early on for Christ to be revealed in all of his glory at the end, as we will see. So what does this angelic messenger come to do? Why is he here? Why is John seeing this? Okay, verse 2.

It says he had a little scroll open in his hand and he sat down. His right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land.

And he called out with a loud voice like a roaring lion. So the little scroll, what’s this little scroll? Okay, we had a big scroll. Remember when we looked at that big scroll for a long time, that was the seals. That’s different. The Greek word is different. So it’s not the same. It’s not the same document. The big scroll was the one sealed up. And remember, John freaks out. He’s like, nobody can open the thing. Then Jesus shows up and he opens the seals. And that’s the telling, the unfolding of the end of time. This little scroll that’s in the angel’s hand, it’s details about what’s to come in chapter 11. It’s details of the suffering of the church. It’s the details of evil’s attempt to conquer the world in the coming chapters.

So the angel places his feet on the sea, on the land. So you can imagine this isn’t for John, a really big creature who can plant one foot on the land and one foot on the sea. And in his hand is this scroll detailing what’s to come for the church, what’s coming down the pike in terms of satanic forces. Then the angel roars like a lion. So I want you to get the picture. I’ll think of what’s symbolically happening. If this creature is so big that one foot’s planted on the sea and one foot’s planted on the land, and then he can roar or talk, say what he’s saying with the sound, the authority of a lion, what we’re understanding is his message is not a message that can be ignored. With both feet planted, this is something that’s going to happen to the entirety of planet Earth.

In other words, you may be able to marginalize God in your life now. There comes a time in the end when God, his messengers, his word, the unfolding of revelation, certainly as we saw it last week, as much as the wicked didn’t want it to be, they could not escape the demonic plagues. There comes a time in everyone’s life, certainly when you die. But if we were to live in the end times, when you die, you could not marginalize God. His authority is exhaustive.

Go on to verse, the rest of verse three. So the angel with a loud voice, like a luring lion, when he called out, it says the seven thunders sounded.

And when the seven thunders had sounded, I was about to write, but I heard a voice, a voice from heaven saying, seal up what the seven thunders have said and do not write it down. Do not write it down. So you’re thinking the seven thunders. Am I supposed to know that? Did they teach that in Sunday school growing up? What’s the seven thunders? That’s a new phrase. The first time we’re seeing it. So you haven’t fallen asleep in a sermon. This is the very first time seeing the seven thunders. What are the seven thunders? The seven thunders are a heavenly response to this angel roaring like a lion. And it’s not inaudible. It’s not just this thunder noise. It’s articulate because John whips out his pen or whatever he was writing with, probably not a pen. And he’s going to go write this down. Like, ooh, more information. I’m supposed to grab this. But that voice says, don’t write it down. Don’t write it down.

Why doesn’t he write it down? I want to read a couple. A couple commentators I think are useful on it.

The only hint we have as to the message of the seven thunders is to be found in the fact that in all other passages in Revelation where thunder occurs, they form a premonition of coming judgments of divine wrath. This fits the present context for the angel announces that the consummation of the divine judgments is about to take place. So anytime we see thunder in Revelation, we’re going to interpret it as, put the book against itself. It’s not a good thing. It’s not a good thing. It means more judgment is coming. And remember, the time of warning has passed and God is bringing judgment on the unbelieving nations. But I want to add something that Mount says to that because I think it’s really good. He says, the seven thunders, like the seals and trumpets, formed another series of warning plagues. The adamant decision of the human race not to repent would render another series useless. In other words, what he’s saying is this. If you have all the seals unfold and then you had all those trumpets unfold from the fire and the volcano being thrown into the sea and you have locusts with the face of a human and the crown and they sting and you can’t die and then the horses that breathe the fire and the sulfur. If God can do all that and you’re still unwilling to repent, what would it help if the seven thunders was spelled out? I think nothing. And I think it’s a scary thought that at some point there’s nothing left but judgment on earth. There comes a place in time where it seems the spirit doesn’t work the way that he does today. There comes a time when people stop seeing God’s message, his word as authoritative. And I think you could say in our time, people are desperately attempting, to cease from seeing God’s word as authoritative.

So first point, the word of the Lord stands forever because its message is powerful and its message is authoritative.

We live in a name your own truth society. I don’t think anyone would disagree. We live in a time that doesn’t just tolerate wickedness, but promotes it and is hostile to truth. And again, if I were to give you a bunch of stories about the way we’re trying to reinvent marriage and reinvent gender and reinvent abortion and come up with all new kinds of sexuality, unfortunately, it would be a big yawn fest to you because you read the same news headlines I do. We live in a time that doesn’t just tolerate wickedness, we live in a world that has an openness to spirituality, but not doctrine, not absolutes. We live in a time where people love to live under the illusion of control, as if we are our own masters and masters of our own faith. And I’m reminded of the Proverbs.

The Proverbs say, a man, he charts his own course, but God, God determines the end.

Life, certainly life eternal, is not about you discovering your truth. It’s not about you on your quest for wholeness. It’s not about you realizing your identity. It’s not about you discovering what makes you happy. Those are really popular phrases, and you know what they are, is they’re very inward-looking phrases, as if there’s something good inside of you, and there’s something good inside of you, and there’s something good inside of me, and what you and I need to do is realize our potential, and realize our goodness, and find our own path. I even heard a very popular pastor saying that. That’s what’s happening in the gospel. That’s what’s happening in truth, is God revealing what’s already inside of you. And that is the truth. A lot of that spiritual garbage, it’s not just happening in the world. It’s being co-opted today by pastors. That stuff’s being co-opted. The gospel is being co-opted. It’s being co-opted to mean God exists to make you happy and assist you in your approval of your beliefs in your life. God can’t really be the God of the Old Testament that would send Israel to wipe out a nation for their sins. That’s imbalanced. That’s unfair. That can’t be my God.

God wouldn’t really want me to remain in this loveless marriage. Would He? Because God wants me to be happy.

God wants me to be healthy. God wants me to be successful. God wants me to be rich. Friends, we have taken God from who He is and we have made Him into our own image. Problem, our image is marred. You and I are broken and hideously prideful. Hideously prideful. And it’s fun, isn’t it, to play in the illusion? That’s what sin is. It’s disillusionment. It’s disillusionment and it feels real and it feels exciting and it raises your heartbeat

until, until the Lord’s angel firmly plants His feet on the earth and on the sea and roars like a lion and God thunders and judgment comes and you cannot in that day marginalize the God who is there. You cannot marginalize His Word then.

I was attempting to share the gospel with this man the other day

and, you know, I’m no professional at personal evangelism, but I feel convicted I should do it. And so I tried to bring up to him, hey, and I gave him one of my church cards. Like, I’m a pastor. We’d love to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he quickly changed his subject and I said, okay. And then kind of came back around. I said, yeah, you know, you know, such and such. And it’s really important that we get our lives right with God and change the subject again real quick. And I said, hey, do you know who Jesus is? He changed the subject again. He kept dancing around me. And I thought, well, I tried.

Friends, you can marginalize and you can push the issue out only so long when judgment comes. Judgment comes and oh, the finality of it. When it’s here, it’s here. Death, the next life, the apocalypse. It feels like it’s here. It feels like it’s far away, but it’s right here. It’s just around the corner. And when the thunder of God’s judgment shakes the ground, friend, will it be coming for you?

How many times does God owe you? I want you to think about this. How many times does God owe you the chance to repent?

None times is the answer. None. None. Friend, how we have abused the grace of God and that we who have the spirit of God, we often push off sin and we don’t take it serious in our life. And how much worse when someone hears the gospel and they’re not a believer, yet they don’t take it serious and they’re not promised they’re going to hear it one more time. What does the Bible say? The Bible says today is the day of salvation. Tomorrow never comes. Tomorrow never comes. Tomorrow, it’s too late. And as a side note, if this is starting to feel, feel hyper repetitious, like we’re in these sermons, we’ve been in revelations for 10 chapters now, and it feels like we kept getting back to this theme of you need to repent. You need to make sure your heart’s right with God. That’s a grace to you. You shouldn’t be bored by that. It’s a grace that God tells us, not even just throughout revelation, but throughout the entire Bible. You’ve got to take sin serious. You’ve got to take your own soul serious because you and I are leaky. We hear good things and what do they do? They just kind of, they just kind of leak out of us and go away. I need God to constantly remind me of my sinfulness that I would repent. The world needs to constantly hear the gospel that it would repent. So it’s a grace to us to hear the same point of application every week. God is in control. Jesus is coming back in judgment. Are you ready? That’s the whole book of Revelation right there. That’s the whole thesis of the thing. Are you ready for Christ’s return? Are you not just, have you repented? Friend, are we repenting under the power and weight of this holy and perfect word, the gospel of Jesus?

Let’s go on to verse five.

It says, And the angel whom I saw standing on the sea and on the land raised his right hand to heaven

and swore by him who lives forever and ever who created heaven and what is in it, the earth and what is in it and the sea and what is in it that there would be no more delay but that in the days of the trumpet called to be sounded by the seventh angel the mystery of God would be fulfilled just as he announced to his servants the prophets.

So in Daniel chapter 12, Daniel has, has a similar question. Daniel, Daniel says, how long? Daniel’s been shown like all these visions of the very end of the thing. And God says to Daniel, shut up. He says, go your way. It’s shut up for the time. Go your way. And then you remember back the martyrs under the altar a few chapters ago. They’re, they’re begging God, like when God, when will you bring vengeance? And God says, rest a little while longer. Right. And this is what I was talking about. You always got to be super skeptical. Super skeptical of that guy. You’ve probably met that guy. I have too. He’s a sign watcher. And he like saw on the news the other night that this happened in the Middle East. And so that means Russia is going to do this pretty soon. And before you know it, it’s going to be Armageddon. It’s like, would you stop? Would you please stop? So people, people want to see what can’t be seen because it’s sealed up. But the angel is telling us here, this is it. This is it. Once that seventh trumpet blows, that’s it. Like the end has come and he raises, he raises his hand and he makes an oath to God. He makes an oath. And this oath should comfort you as a follower of Jesus. Remember in Matthew, several years ago, we talked about oaths, what Jesus said about oaths. Oaths are only as good as the thing upon which you make the oath. Right. So if you’re like, hey, I swear by this guy. I know who’s a liar. I’m going to be here next week. Like what? You can’t swear on something that’s not reliable. It’s got to be something reliable to be an oath. I can believe in. This is why Jesus says just don’t even make oaths. Just have good character or people just trust you when you say yes or no. But for this angel to make an oath and what’s the thing upon which he’s making an oath?

He says by him who lives forever and ever and who created heaven and what’s in it, the earth and what’s in it and the sea and what’s in it, that there would be no more delay. In other words, he owes before God. He owes upon God. That the end will come and nothing, nothing is going to delay it now. Rest on the oath that God would have this angel make by the eternal God who lives forever, by the eternal God who has created all things, that nothing will be delayed anymore and the end will come. And he spells out something that I think is really so important for us to see. He says that the end will come, no more delay in the days of the seventh angel when he blows his trumpet. And then he says the mystery of God would be fulfilled. The mystery of God would be fulfilled. What’s that? We’re already in Revelation. How many more mysteries can we come up with? What’s this mystery? This mystery, you already know about. And this is great. You’re going to love, you’re going to love this mystery. Colossians chapter 1, verse 26 through 29.

Paul says, the mystery hidden for ages and generations, but now revealed to his saints. To them, God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

The angel is saying the gospel story will be brought to its glorious end by the power of the word of God. So the gospel is not, it is, but it’s more than you’re a sinner, repent, and you’ll be good with God and you won’t go to hell. Well, I love that. You should love that and you should preach that. But I think what we’re seeing here is a gospel that’s got way more dimensions to it and it’s far more beautiful than I think sometimes we allow ourselves to believe because the gospel is the story from the garden of the fall, right? All the way to the cross of Christ, but it goes beyond that to just you and I believing that and I can’t, you know, wait till I die and go to heaven to be with Jesus and get out of this scary place with all the sin and all the bad stuff. No, that’s not it. The mystery to be fulfilled is the day when Christ comes back in vain. He vanquishes evil once and forever. The gospel starts in the garden and it goes to the cross, but friends, it goes all the way to the end of the book of the Revelation. So we can just say, really, I think the gospel is God, isn’t it? The gospel is a story of what God has chosen to do before time began through His Son, Jesus, not to just die and be resurrected, but to come back a second time and once for all vanquish evil. That’s a bigger gospel.

The foretaste of what you and I have now in Jesus, it won’t be realized until the mystery is fulfilled in the very end. We should long, absolutely long for Jesus to come back because until He does, the mystery of the gospel isn’t entirely fulfilled.

In Amos chapter 3, it says, for the Lord does nothing, without revealing His secrets to His servants, the prophets. And it’s the very same thing the angel says in verse 7. It says, just as He announced to His servants the prophets. And that’s really amazing when you think about it this way, that God, whom the psalmist says lives in the heavens and does as He pleases, God has had the humility for all time. Think about it. He has done all this to document Himself and what He’s up to to you. You ever thought about that? Did God have to have Old Testament prophets come and speak His words?

No. But it’s amazing that God would have His servants come and God would say to the nation Israel, hey, this is what I’m doing and let me tell you, this is what I’m going to do someday. And then how much more amazing that the Word became flesh and Jesus says, hey, you know what God did by the prophets in the Old Testament. Hey, let me tell you what God’s doing right now and it’s me. And then how much more amazing we get a picture of what hasn’t even happened yet and John as a New Testament prophet is able to say, hey, let me tell you what God is going to do. So the agnostic position, I think it’s terribly convenient, isn’t it? And it’s a popular thing you hear people say. There’s a higher power, but He’s just not knowing. He’s just not knowable. So I’m off the hook, right? He’s just not knowable. He’s out there doing His thing, but He’s not revealed Himself to you and I. And it’s just not true. He’s revealed Himself in the Word. He’s revealed Himself in the Word made flesh. And John spells out for us with great clarity exactly what God is up to and He’s all about fulfilling the Gospel of Jesus for His own glory, for the good of His people. That’s what God is doing. So friends, this mystery to be fulfilled, it should leave us in the here and now with no despair because He will save you because He said He would save you and then Christ did die and He was raised again and Jesus will come back. And there’s no reason for you to live dejected. I think sometimes as Christians we can live dejected like, oh, have you seen the news? Things are getting really bad. You know, like, oh gosh, what are we going to do? We need to find a cave to live in and they’re going to take away our rights as Christians and we get all fearful and afraid. And I just don’t read that kind of gloom and defeated attitude in Paul. And I certainly don’t read it here in Revelation. What I see is a people victorious because they know their king reigns and they know their king’s coming back and because they can live faithfully in the moment they’re in because they believe those things to be true.

Don’t live as a dejected Christian. Don’t live as a despairing Christian. The mystery of the gospel will be fulfilled and when it does, it will be for God’s glory and your good.

And by the way, that’s a really great message to share with your mechanic or your plumber or whoever. It’s a really great story to share and we should, as we talk about, we should be sharing it everywhere we go. Everywhere we go.

Verse 8, chapter 10 of Revelation.

It says, Then the voice that I heard from heaven spoke to me again, saying, Go, take the scroll that is open in the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land. So I went to the angel and told him to give me the little scroll. And he said, He said to me, Take and eat it. It will make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth it will be sweet as honey. And I took the little scroll from the hand of the angel and ate it. It was sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach was made bitter. And I was told, You must again prophesy about many peoples and nations and languages, kings and kings.

It’s interesting, three times we’re told that this angel stands on the land and on the sea. And again, I think that is showing us the expansive, exhaustive power and control of God. And as he stands there, the same voice that said, Hey, don’t write down what the seven thunders said. That voice says, Go to this angel standing on the land and the sea and this message in his hand, I want you to take it and I want you to eat it. To eat it. We read in Psalm 119, 103,

How sweet are your words to my taste. Sweeter than honey to my mouth. Through your precepts I get understanding.

The word of God for us as believers and we talked about this earlier, it is life. There is no life outside of God’s words. I can’t create my truth. God gives life. Adam and Eve knew death not because it was the natural order. It’s because they feasted on a different word than God’s word, right? Isn’t that right? Isn’t that what happened?

And when we look at Ezekiel in chapter 2, Ezekiel is told the exact same thing. He’s given a document and it’s got words of lamentations on it and he’s told to eat it. And Ezekiel says, It’s sweet in my mouth. And a very similar thing happens with Jeremiah. It’s interesting though when you think about it for both Jeremiah and Ezekiel and even John, all of them, the actual, the actual content of their message, it’s one of great lamentation and woe for a lot of people. It’s a really difficult message for hard-hearted Israel in the Old Testament. It’s the promise of Babylon exile. It’s the promise of suffering because they’re so unfaithful. Yet still for the one who loves God and God’s word, it’s sweet in their mouth. God’s word is always enlivening.

John doesn’t just read it. He eats it. He eats it. Is there any more graphic of a way for a person to be joined with something? He’s told to eat it.

Remember in the Gospel of John, when Jesus says to the people, you’ve got to eat my flesh and you’ve got to drink my blood and everybody starts wandering away. Right? And Jesus says to his disciples who would like an explanation, do you want to go away as well? And Simon Peter says this, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. So church, if we’re united to God, if we’re truly faithful servants of Jesus, if we’re laborers in his kingdom, living for the great end that God’s directing human history for the destruction of evil and the glorious consummation of a new heaven and a new earth, the word must be, the word must be all-consuming. For it directs, it guides, it teaches, it comforts, it informs, it promises, it sanctifies, it protects. The word of God is life. And if the word of God is not truly internalized in you, it is nothing to you. It must be internalized to be meaningful, to truly submit to it. Even when, especially when, that word speaks something difficult over you. And oftentimes, as we read in the Bible, God brings to pass difficult trials for his people that they’d rather not go through. Sometimes in life, God brings really difficult things to pass in your life that you would say, well, gosh, I wish I hadn’t had to experience that. But it’s through submitting to the word of God when it’s both sweet and bitter that God works it in me into such a way to produce eternal life. For John, it’s bitter in his stomach because he’s been set about the task of prophesying the church is going to experience some really, really difficult stuff and evil is going to look like it’s going to win for a minute. It’s bitter in his stomach. It’s bitter in his stomach. But he’s faithful to submit to it and to proclaim it all of its parts, its hardest parts. You can’t sandpaper the gospel. You can’t get out your buffer and get rid of its rougher edges. You can’t do that to revelation. It’s God’s word. And in the inference, if we receive it and we internalize it and we submit to it, it will well up to a spring of life.

John eats it because though it’s bitter for a time, it will be ultimately sweet. And so, friends, it’s so sweet. It’s so true for you and I. It’s so true for you and I in an age, in a society when all things are flexible and all things are as you would have them to be. There’s never been a time, I think, in modern history when the truth of God’s word, when the gospel itself has been under such threat inside and outside the walls of the church and you and I must continue to be people of the word. People of the word loving the scriptures, loving it, submitting to it, believing it for all things.

So the word stands forever.

Its message is powerful. Its message is authoritative.

The word stands forever. It will bring about the glorious end of the gospel story. The word stands forever. The word stands forever. So we must, we must fully receive it. We must eat it with John. We must submit to it. For in the end, it will well up to eternal life. And it’s really that simple again. This is the Bible. This is the gospel. This is revelation. If we do, it’s life. And if we don’t, it’s destruction. So I think we can just end this praying, Lord, have your way in the world. I believe it’s going to come about the way that you say it’s going to come about. Lord, have your way in the world. Lord, have your way in my church. Let us be a people of your word, submitting to you, being made holy by your word in the spirit. Lord, have your way with my family. Have your way with my life. Help me, God, to surrender and to obey and to trust you and feast on your word. For it stands forever.

Let’s pray together.

Lord, we know how prone we are to doubt and we know how quick we are to forget. Lord, we pray that Lord, we could be called to trust you. That we could be called faithful in our own generation. That we could be called true and we could be called steadfast. Not because we are those things, but by your grace. And we pray by the working of your spirit. Lord, we would be faithful servants. But Lord, we would love and we would submit to, regardless of the trial, regardless of the popularity of it. Lord, we would submit to and believe and obey and proclaim your word.

Let us not be swept up and swept away with the wicked and evil generation.

Let us not be deceived by our own lusts and desires for sin. Let us not be held captive by the enemy, O God.

We just pray your grace to save. Lord Jesus, we pray your grace to keep us and keep us to the end. We pray it in Jesus’ name. Amen.