Revelation chapter 9 and 10.
One writer reminds us that Revelation is a picture book and not a puzzle book. It’s not an allegory that must be decoded before we can understand it, but the experience itself tells us what it means. So with that in mind, we’re going to look to the experience of what is being said to us. That we would be able to understand and to read through a book of this without feeling like we are deficient in all of its understandings because of the complexities that are there. As we look to the reading of God’s word, if you please join with me in prayer.
Living God, we do ask that you would help us to hear your holy word this morning, that we would truly understand, and that understanding we may believe, and believing we may follow, in all faithfulness and obedience to you, that we would seek your honor and your glory in everything that we do and how we live. And this we would pray and ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. All right, looking at two selections from chapter 9 and chapter 10. And the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit.
He opened the shaft of the bottomless pit, and from the shaft rose smoke like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke from the shaft. Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth. They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or the green plants or any tree, but only those who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads. They were allowed to torment them for 5 months, but not to kill them, and their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings someone. And in those days people will seek death and will not find it.
They will long to die, but death will flee from them. In appearance, the locusts were like horses prepared for battle. On their heads were what looked like crowns of gold. Their faces were like human faces, their hair like women’s hair, and their teeth like lions’ teeth. They had breastplates like the breastplates of iron, and the noise of their wings was like the noise of many chariots with horses rushing into battle.
They have tails and stings like scorpions, and their power to hurt people for 5 months is in their tails. They have a king over them, the angel of the bottomless pit. His name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he is called Apollyon. Revelation 10. Then the voice that I heard from the heavens spoke to me again, saying, go, take the scroll that is open in the hand of the angel who’s standing on the sea and on the land.
So I went to the angel and told him to give me the little scroll. 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 I ate it. It was sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten, my stomach was made bitter.
And I was told, you must again prophesy about many peoples and nations and languages and kings. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. The images given here are indeed fantastical. The very nature of the language tells us that we are firmly in the realm of biblical symbolism which is the hallmark of apocalyptic writing.
We see this dramatic language in other places in Scripture as well. We see it in the Psalms, in different places. Certainly Psalm 18, David sings a psalm of praise to God because of God’s deliverance of him from all of his enemies and from the hand of Saul. And this is how he describes the Lord answering his prayer. Speaking of God, he says, smoke went up from his nostrils and a devouring fire from his mouth.
Glowing coals flamed forth from him. He bowed the heavens and came down. Thick darkness was under his feet. He rode on a cherub and flew. He came swiftly on the wings of the wind.
He sent out his arrows and scattered them. He flashed forth lightning and routed them. Then the channels of the sea were seen. The foundations of the world were laid bare at your rebuke, O Lord. At the blast of the breath of your nostrils.
None of that literally happened to David. He’s using figurative speech to shape his praise and his gratitude to God for God delivering him from his enemies. It’s evocative and imaginative language that captures the truth that he’s conveying, but it does so in a different way than ordinary prose. And one of the difficulties and challenges we have is that we live in a technically exacting age. We go out well past the first decimal point.
We define things so precisely and so carefully. We’re probably not giving as much to a culture, to literary flourishes that we once were. Sonnets of love are probably best kept from the pens of engineers. Even as schematic diagrams are best kept from the pens of poets. And that’s what we see in part is the language that’s being used is conveying to us these deep truths of scripture in a very evocative way.
And John captures this vividly here. It’s the sense of judgment that has lain on the world from the fall until now. And these word pictures, they show us in a personified way the rule and the reign of our invisible God in his visible creation. God’s providence, his protective care and sovereign control are painted large in these words. And this is exactly what we need to know when we struggle with the chaos and destruction that marks our lives as we navigate living in a state of sin and misery in fallen humanity.
Because the Lord upholds, directs, and governs all his creatures and all their actions, and he does so according to his wise, unerring knowledge and unchanging counsel. We are absolutely secure in him. And as we look at Revelation with its symbolic view of human history, we do so with God’s providence firmly in mind. We considered the 7 letters, the 7 seals, and here are the 7 trumpets, and later the 7 bowls. Quickly see that this is a panoramic and symbolic view of our history.
And this is how many have understood these changes in these given scenes. Rather than something linear, like this thing follows this thing follows this thing, it has been understood, some, as speaking dramatic scenes of seals, trumpets, and bowls describing the same historical event and moment, but through a different vantage point. All under God’s rule and reign. Looking at and changing this perspective, these events that have marked repeatedly throughout human history, and intensification taking place as activities near the end. So whether you see it in cycles or linear, either way, what we do see though is God is the one who allows these events to occur.
Pointing to this intensification at the end, and that God has foretold all these events in his word. So looking what was have been allowed by God, and we move into the 5th and the 6th trumpet. John describes both of those in far greater detail. I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit. Some of your translations will say abyss, that’s the word.
The question immediately is Is this a good or a bad angel? And we’re reminded that we consider the picture of this and not the puzzle, even here, because commentators are divided. If the angel is good, rather than saying a star who falls, you would say a star who descends. The word means the same. In the non-biblical Book of Enoch, the archangel Uriel is in charge of the abyss, but others see this individual in much darker terms.
Doesn’t really matter either way. What’s important is this individual is given a key to the abyss. He has no authority independent from the Lord.
The other place we see this abyss besides Revelation is in the book of Luke in chapter 8, where Jesus had just cast out the demon Legion, and these demons are begging Jesus not to be cast back into the abyss. Apparently the abode of where they come from. And this angel, this angelic being, he opens the shaft of the abyss and says, from the shaft rose smoke and the smoke of a great furnace. The sun and the air were darkened with the smoke. Earlier we had read of the prayers of the saints coming up before the Lord as incense, incense of the prayers to God.
And here what is rising is the smoke of demonic rebellion. Satan’s kingdom exists as a counterfeit to the Lord’s. That is something you’re going to see repeatedly in Revelation, this counterfeit counterpoint that Satan is always offering contrary to God. In verse 3, these locusts have the power of scorpions— not, not their appearance, but the power. It’s biblical symbolism.
They are told not to harm the vegetation, the natural food of locusts. They were, it says, Verse 5, allowed to torment for 5 months, but not to kill. This picture is certainly of demonic torment. And we see they were told, they were allowed. They only have power that’s given to them.
They are under God’s rule and God’s reign. What are we to make of these locusts? The description is very terrifying. Like horses prepared for battle, crowns of gold on their heads, faces like human faces, hair like women’s hair, their teeth like lion’s teeth, breastplates like breastplates of iron. The noise of their wings was like the noise of many chariots with horses rushing into battle.
From Michael Wilcox, he said, the important thing about the locusts is not how such creatures could exist, but what they mean. People have gone crazy trying to understand a literal interpretation of these symbols. And I’ll say it again, the literal way to understand symbols is symbolically. These are not attack helicopters with missiles and bombs, which has now been upgraded to drones. And if you live long enough, that something else will take its place.
That’s not the point. The picture highlights the unnaturalness of these creatures. They are a Frankenstein, malformed horror contrary to God’s design. And the 5 months, it refers probably to the life cycle of a locust, which is about that time. And it speaks to them being limited.
There’s a limited time of their activity. The Bible, in one of the plagues of Egypt, is the locust horde. We see that there, as well as in the prophet Joel, who speaks of an army of locusts coming as God’s judgment on a rebellious people. This image then of the locusts coming is one steeped in the Old Testament, and they are allowed to harm who? Only those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads, which takes us right back to chapter 7 where the Lord had his people sealed with a mark, and also in the plagues of Egypt God protected Israel.
He made a distinction between the land of Israel where they were staying and those of the Egyptians. God protected and did not allow those plagues to fall on them. God’s people are saved here from spiritual harm. It’s a theme we also see in the prophet Ezekiel. There, as Ezekiel is given his vision of the terrible things that are happening in Jerusalem, he said the Lord said, pass through the city ‘Pass through Jerusalem, put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it.’ Same idea— God protecting his people.
Some then see this, the damage that is done, as the basic conditions of living in a sinful, fallen world. One notes the operation of the powers of darkness in the souls of the wicked during the present age. So not trying to find some fantastical interpretation, just seeing this is what it feels like as we live in a world with people given to sin, not following the ways of God.
And then immediately there’s this king of theirs that comes forward. It’s probably not a reference to Satan because he’s going to be introduced a little later, but his name’s Abaddon, Apollyon. It’s destruction, destroyer. And what may have registered with John’s hearers is that both the Emperor Nero and Domitian saw themselves as the incarnation of the god Apollo. Apollo, Apollyon, this is the same root.
Saying the very things that what people worship as a god is only a demon.
If more is meant by this attack from this horde, it will remain unknown until it’s revealed later in history, but it seems to capture the general ethos, the general feel of those who’ve given themselves over to everything but the ways of the Lord. And in verse 13, the sixth angel blew his trumpet and a voice from the four horns of the golden altar before God saying, release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates. Again, these angels are bound, probably not good ones, and then they’re loosed. And all of this is under the Lord’s control. No one is acting independent of him.
See that, that throughout this, God is the one who’s in charge. The angels are bound and then loosed. Verse 17, John says, this is how I saw the horses in my vision. This vision is explicitly given. It’s very similar to the Old Testament prophet’s experience of, of the things that they prophesied about.
In a similar manner. They’re given pictures and visions that speak of, of what God is doing generally. These angels cannot act until given reign by the Lord. It’s his time, his purpose, his authority. The result of this, Revelation 9:20 here says, the rest of mankind who are not killed by these plagues that came from the horses did not repent of the works of their hand, nor did they give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see, cannot hear, or walk, nor do they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.
See, people are suffering from the very beings they worship willingly or unwillingly, whether or not they are actively choosing this, or this is a part of it. They are dealing with the effects of turning from the Lord, who is the fountain of all good, and they have placed themselves at the mercy of those who only want to kill, rob, and destroy them. That’s the plight of fallen humanity. Nobody’s neutral. There’s no neutrality.
And the Lord protects his people. It’s a spiritual protection. We all know we too suffer physical trials, persecutions, but the Lord protects his people from the attacks of the evil one. Our eternal security, it rests in his hands. He is the one who’s going to accomplish and bring us to the end.
We do not need to fear the world. The flesh and the devil stand against us, but clearly we see the Lord is the one who stands on our side, and that is an important picture here in Revelation for his large and mighty and grand, who our God is in control of absolutely everything. Now, we are unable to predict how God’s judgments are going to unfold in history, but what is clear is that he is the one who directs them according to his divine purpose.
What happens, God allows. And not only that, These things are foretold by God, just like the seals back from the earlier chapter when there’s this moment or interlude between the 6th and the 7th. That’s what we see with this trumpet. There’s an interlude in chapter 10, and John says, I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven wrapped in a cloud, the rainbow over his head. His face was like the sun, his legs like pillars of fire.
He had a little scroll open in his hand. It’s a terrifying vision of the grandeur and the greatness of this angelic being coming from the Lord. Now, some wonder, is this the same scroll as the 7 seals? Probably not, but again, not super important. There are cage matches of people fighting over this issue.
It doesn’t make any difference, same scroll or not. God is the one who is giving this to John.
It says when the 7 thunders sounded, verse 4, he said, I was about to write, but I heard a voice from heaven saying, seal up what the 7 thunders have said and do not write it down. Very strange. Like, well, why are you mentioning it? Similar in 2 Corinthians 12, Paul, he speaks about this dramatic vision of the third and highest heaven that he is shown, and he’s told not to speak of it. You think, what’s the purpose of that?
You’ve all had people come say, I have a secret, but I’m not going to tell you. And it’s irritating. We don’t like to know. It’s like, well, why did you— don’t bother telling me if you’re not going to say anything about it. So why would you say, I’m going to not tell you about this?
We know that prophecy will be fulfilled by God’s design. He has foretold revealed some things to us. Other things that will happen by his design are not yet for us to know. Telling us that is a part of it giving us that security, saying the Father knows all these events. Some of them are revealed to you, others are not, but God knows them and he will bring them about in his way, in his time.
You can trust him. That’s the reassurance that’s given to us. To trust him. If you consider Deuteronomy 29:29, it’s a well-known verse that speaks to us about living in this tension. There Moses says, the secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of the law.
The secret things belong to God. What he has revealed belong to us and to our children. We don’t go diving and delving into the mysteries of God where he hasn’t told us to go. We don’t go into rampant speculation. What’s revealed, we live by.
What is yet to be revealed, we just entrust to his hands. And these events in some manner have been foretold. In verse 7, as he said, the mystery of God would be fulfilled just as he announced to his servants the prophets.
And John is told to take the scroll. Verse 9, so I went to the angel and told him to give me the little scroll. And he said to me, take and eat it. It’ll make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth it’ll taste sweet as honey. The prophet Ezekiel was told to do something similar, to eat a scroll in his vision, and it was sweet to his taste.
And it speaks of both John’s commissioning as a prophet and his need then to internalize the word of God. He’s not merely speaking. He’s actually to live these out in reality. Sweet to bitter. This idea then is that the good news pronounced to some is also the judgment to others because they will not repent.
It speaks of the bitterness that was often in store for God’s people because of persecutions of those who refuse the message. Good news to those who want nothing to do with God. Is painful to us. I’m sure you’ve experienced that when you’re telling people you love and you care for about the glory and the wonder of Jesus, the forgiveness of their sins, the transformation of who they could be, and you want them free in Christ, and they look at you and they turn it down and reject it. And it’s so painful because you love and you care for them and you want their highest and their greatest good, which is Jesus.
There’s a pain that comes with that objection. And finally, in verse 11, John was told, you must again prophesy about many peoples, nations, languages, and kings. And that’s what Revelation does. A little later, Revelation 19 says the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. John is speaking about the testimony of Christ.
It’s the testimony that we share, that we too proclaim. Which is the spirit of prophecy. God does reveal his plan, and he has done so through the history of his people. And Jesus is the connecting point. He’s the center of the history of redemption.
In the past, God raised up prophets to speak of what he’s doing, and that’s John’s role here. Much of biblical prophecy is clearest only after the fact. We have a hard time connecting the dots ahead of time. Just think about the The birth of Jesus, we read all those prophecies that none of the saints of the day really figured out until afterwards. Like, oh, that’s what that meant.
Oh, I see how this comes together now. So why did God do it that way? Again, he gives us enough to know ahead of time to strengthen our faith, but he still requires that we walk by faith and not by sight. He gives us enough for our trust and our security, and he withholds enough to make us walk according to that trust and that security.
And that means that ordinary events to us are charged with the great and important meaning of the Lord. What we think is just the ordinary living is filled with divine purpose and meaning. And what we see is that God does not allow human sin and rebellion to continue to continue uninterrupted in unending cycles of sin and misery. No, there’s an appointed end that he has foretold. And that’s part of the good news that he has for his people.
It’s not good news for those who want to persist in alienation and rebellion against him. Because no one is autonomous. We cannot live independent of God. How many people want to do that very thing? To live as if God doesn’t matter, doesn’t exist, and just do their own thing.
To be their little God. And it’s precisely this judgment that rests over humanity that is the objection of so many. It makes people mad. You’ve experienced this, but remove divinely appointed times of judgment and you are still left with the disasters that befall us. Getting upset with God or, or choosing not to believe in him doesn’t remove the sufferings from the world.
I know you’ve heard people say this, “I would never worship a God who allowed whatever.” That objection doesn’t take the whatever away, but it takes the meaning and significance of it away. So you’re still living with suffering, you’re still living with these terrible things that happen, but it’s now just from an arbitrary and capricious cosmos who doesn’t care one bit about you. You’re a little dust of nothing going off into a little dust of nothing. Why on earth would you want to complain about anything? Who are you going to complain to?
We are not left with arbitrary and senseless acts because we have a purposeful God who is bringing all things to His appointed end. And while we may not understand why these things connect in the way they do, what happens in our life, we can know that our loving and good God has not left the throne. None of this is happenstance.
Scripture tells us that there’s far more to the world than what we see, that there’s evil and then there’s evil, that we can shudder in horror at the demonically inspired terrors and destructions that we face. We can also lament at the toll of sickness and natural disasters that befall us. And what we see here is that even though these great terrors happen, they’re not independent of God’s providence. He has sealed and spiritually protected his people from them. In his great patience, he calls on people to repent and to turn to him through his Jesus is the one who came to bear the weight of demonic oppression and torment on the cross so that we who in rebellion would not be left under their rule and their reign, but we would be set free.
And all of this has come by God’s design and God’s foreknowledge. And what this means is that it is not the fear that we go, but to worship.
That God is in control of these things.
And when we see the news and we see all the things happening around us and we wonder, is this it? What’s going to happen to us? How are these things going to unfold?
And why it does cause us some sense of perplexity. Because we don’t know, we are given the firm assurance of a God who’s in control of those things. They don’t have to sweep us off our feet. Even if you’re living through some of the difficult moments, and they’re hard moments, we’ve lived those, we will continue to live those. And all of those are telling the world around us that as you stand in rebellion against a good and kind God, these are the effects that this is going to bring.
That calls us in his forbearance and patience to repentance. That’s the hope that’s set before us. That’s the hope that’s given in Revelation. It’s not meant to cause us to fear and to speculate endlessly about how to figure all these things out. It’s telling us God has got all these things figured out.
And the picture is amazing. Who’s in control of everything? It’s God who gives. God who allows, God who tells. Even the worst things that are happening in the world, they’re limited by his hand.
He has set boundaries on them, and he is the one who’s going to bring these things to a final culmination in the return of his Son to rule and to reign, when all things will be made new, which is where Revelation is taking us. That’s good news for God’s people. And where we have struggled with fear and anxiety and worry, we come repenting of that, laying that before God’s feet to walk in the security and the trust that he provides through the truth of Jesus Christ, through the reality of all that he has accomplished and completed.
That is what it means to follow after him.
That’s what it means then when we go into those hard places where we do feel the weight of that oppression at times, of that persecution, knowing that we have been sealed, that we have been marked, that we have been protected by God, that whatever happens in this life, we have been guaranteed an inheritance. That will not spoil, fade, or perish, that is being kept for the sons and the daughters of God, that that is where he has put us. And that enables us then, because the Spirit is dwelling in us, increasing our boldness, giving us courage rather than timidity, that we would step forward saying, God is going to accomplish his purposes even through me, and I don’t have to be afraid, and I can step forward forward into the midst of that and speak of his wonder and joy and goodness in my life, that that testimony indeed of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy that has been given to each one of us.
And where we fail and struggle and trip over events and the hard things, we come then to a good and a kind God who does pick us up, who does hold us near and dear to him in his son Jesus, who tells us very firmly, I got this.
I, I have this. It’s all under my control. You don’t have to worry about it. I’m gonna see you through to the end because my purpose is in my Son are not yet finished in your life. But I’m gonna see to that this will be completed.
‘Cause he’s the author and the perfecter of our faith. I hope then as we continue through this book and you continue reading and seeing the picture and not trying to get wrapped up in the puzzle, that you continue to move from fear to worship.
Move from timidity to a bold praise and declaration of the joy that we have in Jesus. Pray with me. Father Almighty, as we come before you, we do say thank you, Lord. Thank you even for telling us that you’re not going to tell us so that we could trust in what you’re doing. And Lord, we ask that you would continue to help us.
Lord, we struggle. It’s hard. There are things in this world, in this life, that’s difficult for us. And Lord, we ask that you would lift us up, that you would strengthen our faith, that you would encourage us moment by moment in Jesus. And Lord, that you would be pleased to use us for the proclamation of the good news of, of your Son, our Savior.
Father, that you would fill our hearts with expectation and wonder. At the purpose and the plan that you have, you have ordained from the beginning of time. We bless you and we praise you, declare your great worth, all through the mighty name of our Savior Jesus.
Discaimer: This sermon text was generated by an automated transcription service.