Mount Zion
The Conquering Lamb • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
When chapter 12 of Revelation ended, Satan was standing on the shore, seething in anger and ominously scheming on how he will make war on the church. How he will kill her since he failed to kill Jesus.
In chapter 13, he summons two beasts:
The First Beast = Governments used by Satan to attempt to destroy the church
The Second Beast = Deceiving messages that Satan uses to deceive people and keep them from believing the Gospel.
These messages come from sources like the Roman Imperial Cult
Or any antichrist spirit in any age
And then finally the False Prophet—the Antichrist—in the end
When you hear that there is a great scheme being undertaken by your enemy with hopes of devouring and destroying you, it should cause you to take notice.
That is the situation we are in tonight.
Satan wants to destroy the church with hateful persecution and hell-born lies
He is deploying his minions and monsters to accomplish the task
What will we do?
Some say the church must respond by taking the nation back.
Others say we have to support the right candidate in order to reform the beast.
But can we even point to a mandate for actions like that in the New Testament?
Are those our answers if we are Bible people?
Maybe there is a vision that will get our eyes up off the kingdoms of this world to see a better Kingdom that is coming?
Maybe the church on earth needs a picture of the church in heaven before they can faithfully respond at all.
We will work through John’s heavenly vision in 14:1-5 and consider how the church on earth should respond to Satan’s beasts
And we will do it by asking some questions:
Who is the Lamb?
Where is Mt. Zion?
Who are the 144,000?
How do we defeat the beasts?
Then I looked, and behold, on Mount Zion stood the Lamb, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads. And I heard a voice from heaven like the roar of many waters and like the sound of loud thunder. The voice I heard was like the sound of harpists playing on their harps, and they were singing a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and before the elders. No one could learn that song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth. It is these who have not defiled themselves with women, for they are virgins. It is these who follow the Lamb wherever he goes. These have been redeemed from mankind as firstfruits for God and the Lamb, and in their mouth no lie was found, for they are blameless.
WHO IS THE LAMB?
WHO IS THE LAMB?
We have quite a few elements that need identification in this passage. Have you wondered why that is in Revelation?
Why didn’t John write much more straightforward about these things?
Why not write the same way he did in the book of John or in the pastoral letters?
Well, remember that the church was being persecuted by the government because they would not bow the knee to the emperor as god.
They are living their lives under threat and they must be careful about how they talk about things, otherwise, they will end up dead.
Therefore, John writes to them in code, knowing that if the letter fell into Roman hands, they wouldn’t know what to make of the letter:
Revelation is written in symbols because the people of God to whom John writes are being persecuted by the Roman Empire. If John’s book gets into the hands of the Roman authorities, the Christians already under attack will suffer even more. So John writes this vision in coded, symbolic language.
Joel Beeke
The written code protected those that read it.
That is why we have so many symbols throughout the book that require us to dig back into the Old Testament in order to understand the allusions and references.
Well we have some code to work through this evening, don’t we? We start with the easiest bit—The Lamb.
1. Jesus Christ is the Lamb (v. 1).
1. Jesus Christ is the Lamb (v. 1).
John looks away from the beasts and now he has something much sweeter and more glorious in his sight—the Lamb, standing on Mt. Zion.
We will get to Mt. Zion in a moment, but identifying the Lamb is not difficult.
This is the same slain, but standing Lamb from chapter 5 who was worthy to take the scroll and open it.
And one of the elders said to me, “Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.”
And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.
This is that same Lamb.
The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
After all, isn’t this how John the Baptist identified Him?
The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
When you compare the Lamb with the beasts, He seems weak and vulnerable.
After all, lambs have never been the picture of strength and unmovable power—not in 1st century Asia Minor and not now.
The beasts on the other hand are these terrifying creatures.
Monsters with multiple heads and horns
Feet like a bear
Body like a leopard
Mouth like a lion
In the case of the 2nd Beast, he speaks like a Dragon.
Many would expect that God’s plan to deal with the Dragon and his beasts would involved bombs and battalions, but that is not so.
His entire solution is summed up in John’s words of “Then I looked, and behold, on Mount Zion stood the Lamb.”
That is it.
That is God’s solution the world’s sin problem—the Lamb.
And yet, the world rejects God’s solution.
The Jewish people say that the Messiah being born and then living and dying and being hung on a tree is too far.
Cursed is the man who is hung on the tree.
This cannot be the Messiah!
And so the Jewish people count the idea of Jesus being the Christ as a stumbling block to be rejected.
The Greco-Roman culture around the church in Asia Minor counted the Cross as a joke.
God became a man? The divine entered this disgusting flesh? This was repugnant.
God became a man so that He could die? This was preposterous.
And so they scoffed at the claims of Christ and His church.
It was folly to them.
Paul sums all of this up in 1 Corinthians 1:23
but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles,
But for believers, the Lamb is not stumbling block or a joke.
No—He is the power of God and wisdom of God to save the souls of men.
but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
This Jesus, the Lamb of God, who is the power of God and wisdom of God, is the only hope for the world.
Without Him, the world will perish apart from God.
But if a soul is hidden in Him, they are counted righteous before God and they are saved.
But the strength and wisdom of God in Christ is not apparent to the world, so they reject Him and they count Him as weak.
However, we see here that Jesus is not weak. He stands on Mt. Zion.
He stands on heavenly ground (Spoiler Alert for verse #2).
The First Beast rises from the sea and the second stands on the earth, but the Lamb is above them both.
This shows His majestic power and governing authority
The fact He is on Mt. Zion and they are below, cemented in the elements of the earth, shows that He is the true authority.
Their authority is limited.
They are but counterfeits of the true Lamb and the true Spirit.
And yet, we know that the Lamb who stands on Mt. Zion in power did not win His Kingdom in strength, but in weakness.
He did not count equality with God as a thing to be grasped.
Instead, He humiliated Himself be being obedient to the point of death—even death on a Cross.
He won His Kingdom by suffering.
And then He sets the pattern for us, leaving Paul to promise Timothy that if we suffer with Him, we reign with Him.
But Christ won the day through a bloody, humiliating death—not a boastful act of strength.
He overcame by suffering.
This is a great reminder to us as believers that the Kingdom is won in weakness.
In servanthood.
In humility.
In taking up the towel and washing feet.
And Revelation is proof of that.
There is nowhere in the Bible that Satan seems as active and successful as Revelation.
Christians are being killed
Churches are struggling
The Gospel witness is being persecuted
And yet—this active and successful Dragon is killed by a Child.
He is killed by a Lamb.
He is slain by One who was slain.
So often, we want to be strong in the face of our enemies and answer their unrighteous anger with unrighteous anger. We want to answer their accusations with accusations. We want to answer their violent protests with violent protests.
You won’t find a single New Testament verse justifying that behavior out of you as a Christian, no matter what politician tells you its okay.
Instead, we have a Lamb who invites us to join in His victory by showing up to the slaughter.
He offers a share of His reign for those willing to taste a share of His suffering.
If we say we are Christians—little Christs—then we must act like Christ.
We must be willing to win through weakness, even if it would mean our death for the sake of the truth.
The Asia Minor Christians faced all the same stuff we are facing today as American Christians.
Sexual ethics gone wild
The government failing in its job to protect and instead forcing warped morality on society
The church has false teachers inside of it
The church struggles with nominalism—losing its first love
Being Christian in name, but not loving Christ in the heart
Abusive leaders on the national and global stage
In fact—it was all worse for them than it is for us because they were getting killed for it. We aren’t there yet.
And what was the answer for those churches?
It wasn’t politicians.
It wasn’t a Herod.
It wasn’t taking up arms.
It was looking to Christ, overcoming by sharing in His suffering, witnessing to truth of the Gospel of the Kingdom and holding fast to the end.
That is the only solution Revelation offers the church.
Christ and the preaching of Him.
WHERE IS MOUNT ZION? (v. 1)
WHERE IS MOUNT ZION? (v. 1)
Let’s move on to our second question for the night—Where is Mount Zion? The answer is our second teaching point:
2. Heaven is represented by Mount Zion (v. 1).
2. Heaven is represented by Mount Zion (v. 1).
If “The Lamb,” is code for Jesus, then “Mount Zion” is code for heaven. Let me tell you how I get there.
In the Old Testament, Zion is most often referred to as Jerusalem—the city of the King.
This has led many interpret Revelation 14 literally and say that when the Lord comes back, He will physically return to Mount Zion in Jerusalem.
He will battle the Antichrist and his legions there at the end of time.
But this is not how the New Testament views Mount Zion.
The earthly Zion was pointing beyond itself to a perfect city to come.
In light of that, the New Testament doesn’t focus on the earthly Jerusalem, but on the heavenly Jerusalem.
But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.
It is not concerned with earthly citizenship, but heavenly citizenship.
But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,
In fact, the New Testament never tells you to find your identity in the nation you have an address in on the earth
It is always telling you to get your eyes up over the horizon
This is probably because Jesus told us clearly that His Kingdom is not here.
Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.”
And indeed, John’s revelation is right in line with the focus of the other New Testament writers and Christ Himself, whose Spirit inspired John’s words.
This is not the earthly city that David established and Solomon adorned in Old Covenant glory.
This is the heavenly city that will come down in New Covenant splendor when Christ returns.
We can be absolutely sure of this because of the clear parallel to Psalm 2.
In many ways, Psalm 2 is a summary of what we have seen in Revelation 13 and now in the beginning of 14.
Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying,
“Let us burst their bonds apart
and cast away their cords from us.”
This is Revelation 13.
You have fallen governments and their mouthpieces conspiring against the Lord and His church, in hopes of taking over land and sea.
They want to deceive the people who dwell on the earth and take over the world.
Satan wants the whole world bowing down the first beast and trusting in it for security and safety.
And the people of the earth are happy to oblige because the 2nd Beast has convinced them that the Dragon’s Beast is worthy and Jesus is not.
But while we watch whoever replaces Tucker Carlson and we wring our hands about the future, God laughs.
He who sits in the heavens laughs;
the Lord holds them in derision.
Then he will speak to them in his wrath,
and terrify them in his fury, saying,
“As for me, I have set my King
on Zion, my holy hill.”
So while the people of the earth are rioting and raging and burning the world down, God responds by setting His King upon His holy hill.
What does that sound like?
It sounds a lot like a Lamb standing on Mount Zion.
So then, I don’t believe that John’s imagery is meant to cause first-century believers to hear it and think of a future event where Jesus descends to the temple mount in Jerusalem.
Instead, I believe the believers are meant to contrast the beasts on the earth with Lamb on Zion.
And it is a parallel to Psalm 2 because The Lord is showing them the same principle of Psalm 2.
The world is in the grip of dragon’s beast and the antichrist spirit. That much is clear.
The institutions are fallen
The people leading them are fallen
The path to destruction is broad and the majority of the people on the earth are taking the beast’s mark, and bowing down to the beast as their hope for security and safety
The Dragon is pleased to see so many deceived.
And yet, there is no reason to despair.
For while things are horrible in the world, the Lamb stands firmly on Mount Zion.
The Jerusalem above is not burning.
There are no protests there.
There’s no elections.
The Lamb rules and reigns. And one day, when He returns, His Kingdom will come and every single kingdom of this world, including the one we live in, will be swallowed up.
The Dragon can’t stop it. The Beast can’t thwart it. The False Prophet can’t reverse it.
He died. He rose. He ascended. And He will return.
So do not panic and run around screaming that the sky is falling.
You believe in a Book that has told you the sky won’t fall until the Son steps through it and enters back into this world in His physical, glorious body.
You know better.
Instead, look to heaven. Look to Zion.
The Lamb is in control.
THE 144,000 (v. 1)
THE 144,000 (v. 1)
So Christ is the Lamb. Zion is heaven.
So then, who are the 144,000?
3. The 144,000 are the church triumphant (v. 1).
3. The 144,000 are the church triumphant (v. 1).
To understand who the 144,000 are, we would do well to turn back to chapter 7 because we already saw them there.
saying, “Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads.” And I heard the number of the sealed, 144,000, sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel:
If you will remember—those were Christians. Followers of Christ. Members of the church.
They are represented by the number 144,000.
Twelve is a good number in the Bible that represents the people of God (12 sons, 12 tribes, 12 disciples)
Ten and multiples of ten signify completeness from a human perspective
The 144,000 is arrived at by multiplying 12 against itself and then multiplying it by 1000.
This is the multiplying, numbered and known people of God.
But here is what is important to remember from chapter 7.
The 144,000 who were sealed on their foreheads were not in heaven. They were on the earth.
How do we know? Well, God told the four angels not to harm the earth until the believers who are on it are sealed on their foreheads.
But where are they in chapter 14? They aren’t on the earth anymore.
The Lord’s militant church, lined up in rank and file to serve Him, are now in heaven.
They have endured to the end and overcome.
Then I looked, and behold, on Mount Zion stood the Lamb, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads.
The message to the seven Asia Minor churches is clear.
If you are a sealed saint, you will not take the mark of the beast.
It might cost you everything.
You might not even be able to buy and sell in the marketplace because you identify with the Lamb.
But don’t worry—the Lamb is on His throne.
And all those who have already endured are with Him.
They were sealed by Him and now in Him, they have overcome the tribulation of the world.
And so it will be for all who endure to the end. All who are truly in the grip of Christ and belong to the Lamb.
They are sealed, therefore they overcome. They overcome, therefore, they are sealed.
We learn quite a few things about this 144,000.
They are worshippers (v. 2-3).
Their collective voice is loud in verse 2—like the roar of many waters and the sound of loud thunder
This is reminiscent of the voice of Christ in chapter 1
his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters.
They sound like Christ because they follow Christ. They are His body.
The glory they offer reflects the glory He possesses.
Their worshipping voice is also like the sound of harpists playing on their harps (v. 2).
The harp was the heavenly instrument of worship in Hebrew culture.
The sound of it is transcendent.
The church of heaven sings with a collective glorified voice that is clearly otherworldly.
It is clearly spiritual.
This should be no surprise. How else could they sing in the presence of the Lamb who stands on Zion?
When we see heaven again in chapter 15, the choir of overcomers are actually holding instruments of praise in their hands:
And I saw what appeared to be a sea of glass mingled with fire—and also those who had conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name, standing beside the sea of glass with harps of God in their hands.
The song they sing before the throne and the four living creatures and the elders is a new song.
It a response to the awesome work of the Lord like what we see called for in the beginning of Psalm 98.
Oh sing to the Lord a new song,
for he has done marvelous things!
His right hand and his holy arm
have worked salvation for him.
Other Psalms call on God’s people to sing a new song and play skillfully on the strings
Psalm 40 speaks of a new song being placed in the mouth
Psalm 96 precedes Psalm 98 in calling for a new song.
In Psalm 144, the Psalmist promises to sing a new song to God.
Isaiah’s prophecy commands a new song in Isaiah 42:10.
And back in Revelation 5:9, we heard a new song:
And they sang a new song, saying,
“Worthy are you to take the scroll
and to open its seals,
for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God
from every tribe and language and people and nation,
The ages of eternity will roll on and on and God’s people will keep writing more and more new songs as we behold the Lamb’s brilliance day after day.
But that isn’t to say we don’t sing old songs, too.
When we see heaven in chapter 15, those believers with harps in their hands break out in the song of Moses.
They sing an old song.
In Christ Alone. A Mighty Fortress.
They’re both good!
But that is not all—the song they sing is a covenant song.
No one can sing it except the 144,000 who have been redeemed from the earth—meaning—unless you have overcome, you cannot sing the song.
The songs of heaven—the songs of triumph—the songs of the Kingdom—they belong to the saints.
Those who have taken the mark of the beast worship the beast.
They bow down to it because of the signs and wonders performed by the False Prophet.
They have no song of praise for the Lamb. His praise is an instrument they don’t have hands to play.
We also see that the 144,000 are redeemed (v. 3).
They have been purchased. They have been bought.
It wasn’t their work. They were imprisoned by their own sin debt to God. Chained to an eternal punishment like a dog to a post.
It was the work of God to save them through the blood of Christ. He paid for their sins.
And as you see in verse 4, these are just the firstfruits.
As John and the Asia Minor believers look to those who have overcome, surely there are more who will be saved.
One day heaven will be full, but for now, it is being filled.
The church militant on earth adds to their number through baptism, but we lose from our number when we place brothers and sisters in the ground.
Then they enter through the door of paradise and become a part of the church triumphant.
Our loss becomes heaven’s gain.
So yes—these overcomers who stand with the Lamb are just the beginning of the harvest. More is on the way.
Go and tell.
They are pure (v. 4).
John says they had not defiled themselves with women.
This is why you get in trouble playing with literalism in Revelation.
If Zion is literal, then are the 144,000 literal? And if they are, are they all males? Well, of course not.
The male virgins are symbolic of a pure church. A church that did not deviate from God’s design for sexuality and give into the ethics of the culture.
When we get into the rest of chapter 14, we will meet a new character in the epic. Babylon.
Babylon will represent world powers that refuse to submit to God.
Babylon has a cup of passionate sexual immorality that she makes all of the nations drink.
The church triumphant did not drink that cup. They refused.
They are committed (v. 4).
They follow the Lamb wherever He goes.
This is the opposite of those who dwell on the earth.
They follow the Beast wherever he goes.
They are idol worshippers who are devoted to bowing down.
But the church triumphant mimics Christ.
Nothing is more fatal to us than to refuse to give ourselves in obedience to God.
John Calvin
If that is true, then we could say the opposite:
Nothing is more life-giving than surrendering to God.
Then it should be no surprise to us that in God’s throne room, a place of utter perfection, there is utter surrender.
They are blameless (v. 5).
Their sin has been traded in for the righteousness of the spotless Lamb.
God made Jesus, who knew no sin, to be sin, so that in Jesus, we become the righteousness of God.
We become blameless living sacrifices of praise to our God for all of eternity because the righteousness of Christ makes us fit for the throne.
They are truthful (v. 5).
This is in contrast to the two beasts.
The First Beast uttered haughty and blasphemous words
The Second Beast uttered the lies of the Dragon
But since the 144,000 did not take the mark, they don’t sound like the beast.
They tell the truth.
Here is the thing—while I am spiritually seated in the heavenly places, I am not yet fully a part of the church triumphant. Neither are you.
We are the church militant. We are on earth.
We are still in the midst of the tribulation.
In a sense, we have already overcome in Christ because we are more than conquerors, and in another sense, we are still waiting to overcome.
But with that said—as we wait—the church on earth must reflect the church in heaven.
While we still have sin and that will show in our falls and failings, the church militant should be striving for purity.
For blamelessness
For truthfulness
For a worshipping life that is witness to an idolatrous world
We should be committed—following the Lamb wherever He goes
The only way the church on earth will be these things is if it stays close to the Word of God.
The Word teaches us. The Word rebukes us. The Word corrects us. The Word trains us in righteousness.
The Word tells us what to believe and how to behave.
The Word is our life and our authority.
You must be vigilant about making sure the Word is the primary voice shaping your life.
Your pastors must be vigilant about making sure the Word is primary in the church.
Without it, we will drift from our mission.
We will downgrade from our rich theology.
And we will melt under the heat of tribulation.
The Word will ensure that we grow up into completion.
It will purify the church and make its witness clear.
The world will know that we don’t come representing an earthly city.
They will know we are heavenly ambassadors.
REPRESENTING ZION
REPRESENTING ZION
So all of this brings us to that final question—How do we defeat the Dragon and his beasts?
And boy is it tempting to leave the book of Revelation for that answer.
We want to ask Allie Beth Stuckey
We want to ask Ben Shapiro
We want to ask Greg Kelly
We see oppressive governments persecuting the church on the world stage
We hear the antichrist spirit of the age being blasted into our ears
It feels like that oppression on the world stage could be coming to an America near you
But we can’t leave the Bible to seek answers for problems that the Bible has diagnosed.
If the Bible is actually sufficient, then we must not act that way.
If it is our life and our authority, then we must come to the Bible for solutions regarding these beasts.
As Jesus spoke to the Asia Minor churches in the first couple of chapters, He called on all of them to overcome. He called on them to conquer and promised them great reward if they would.
He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.’
He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death.’
He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.’
The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations,
The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the book of life. I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels.
The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name.
The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.
Okay—GREAT. So how do we conquer? How do we overcome?
How have these believers in Revelation 14 conquered their enemies and become a part of the church triumphant? Well we already learned what that looks like in chapter 13, right? If you die, you die—but you hold on if you are truly a saint by the grace of God.
If anyone is to be taken captive,
to captivity he goes;
if anyone is to be slain with the sword,
with the sword must he be slain.
Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints.
They endured in faith to the end.
Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus.
After a grave warning about the coming judgment, John reminds the believers that judgment should motivate them to endure.
For only those who endure to the end prove themselves to truly be saints that were saved by God’s grace in the gift of His Son.
Not that they are earning salvation by enduring to the end—no. But their endurance is the fruit of it.
Their obedience and faith to the end is the evidence of Christ as their Lord.
Now, here is the problem—enduring to the end is hard because the Dragon and the Beasts are seeking to kill you. And remember why—why did the beast kill the witnesses, which represent the church in chapter 11? Because they were witnesses!
And when they have finished their testimony, the beast that rises from the bottomless pit will make war on them and conquer them and kill them,
And NOW we have a full picture of what it looks like for the saints of God to stand firm in the face of the Dragon’s beasts:
We believe in Christ and profess faith.
We witness and testify that He is Lord and the only hope for salvation and that His Kingdom is coming so people must repent
And we do not stop that witness until the day we die, even if they would kill us.
That is how you overcome.
And relating that back to Zion, the picture is quite beautiful.
There are two kingdoms.
There is the Kingdom of God, with the New Jerusalem as its capital city.
The Lamb standing on Mount Zion with the church triumphant
And then there is the kingdom of man. The fallen world, lying in the hands of the Dragon, duped into worshiping his beast.
We are citizens in the Kingdom of God, but we currently live in the kingdom of man.
As citizens of the Kingdom of God, we do not have a home here. No address. No primary country. Our country is Zion.
One day, Zion will come down out of heaven, when the Lord Jesus returns:
And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
And on that day, every kingdom of this world, including the one we are currently residents of, will be swallowed up.
In one sense, they will be judged and purified with the fire of God’s wrath.
In another sense, they will be redeemed as the dead in Christ from the nations resurrect and are caught up with those who are alive.
This is described in beautiful language in Revelation 11:15
Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.”
Until, here is your job as a Christian.
Be a heavenly ambassador for Christ, sent our by your heaven embassy (Seaford Baptist Church) to preach the heavenly message (the Gospel of the Kingdom) so that people will be rescued by the heavenly King (Jesus) and brought into His Kingdom.
That is it. That is your job until you die or Christ returns.
As long as you are in the church militant, this is your primary objective.
This is why we start new churches and strengthen the ones we have.
These are our embassies. The more we have, the more ambassadors we are producing.
As we gain ground for the Kingdom, we are getting closer to that day when Zion comes to earth.
This is the whole point of the Great Commission.
DEFENDING OUR NEIGHBORS
DEFENDING OUR NEIGHBORS
Now, I know this is where a lot of Christians say, “Well, what about government? We can’t just let the Republic fall apart, man?”
Here is what the New Testament has to say to you about that:
Romans 13:1 says you must be subject to governing authorities, assuming they are not requiring you to disobey the ultimate authority, who is God.
Romans 13:7 says you should pay taxes to your governing authorities.
Romans 13:7 also says you should give honor and respect to whom honor and respect is owed.
1 Timothy 2:1-2 says you should pray for your leaders that are in high positions.
And that is the list.
That is your regular, expected responsibility toward government as a Christian.
However, here is the thing about the Great Commission.
It is fulfilled through the witness of the local church, but the witness of the local church will inevitably impact culture and governments.
It isn’t our primary goal, but it is a byproduct of the work.
And I am not even saying that it is incidental.
When the church is being purified by the Word and she is properly on her mission, she will at times step into the public square and confront government.
And the Scriptures show us when to do this.
Right after Paul’s teaching on government being a "servant of God,” he says this:
Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
Why does Paul go from talking about government to talking about neighborly love?
Because a government that is doing its job well will create an environment in which neighborly love can flourish. That is assumed in that text.
When the government fails in this, the church walks into the public square with the posture of a prophet and says, “You have to repent.”
For example, when babies are being killed in the name of convenience and so-called liberty, the church says, “Repent of this.”
When Africans were being treated as property in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, it was the more honorable sections of the church that walked into the square and said “Repent of this.”
When women could not vote and be a part of the political process, the American suffrage movement was born out of the church, as Christian women came into the public square and said “Repent of this.”
If we do not stand up to oppressive rule that endangers basic neighborly ethics that have been written onto the conscience of every person, I believe we actually endanger the Great Commission.
Because if I won’t defend my neighbor, will they believe my Gospel?
We speak to Washington in the public square for the sake of our Zion witness.
But that is a far cry from “take back the culture.”
This is “fulfill the Commission.” Represent Christ.
This is the church holding the government accountable for the sake of neighborly love, so that when we proclaim the coming Kingdom, they believe us.
Because we have shown them the nature of the King in how we have defended our neighbor.
THINKING LONG-TERM
THINKING LONG-TERM
But when you wake up tomorrow, you do not have a mission to save your neighbor from the evil liberals or the return of Trump.
You do not have a mission to take over a government or win political victories in the Kingdom of man.
You have a mission to make disciples.
If you can convince your neighbor to vote red, but your neighbor is not a disciple of Christ, he will go to hell voting the way you want while he hates God in his heart.
You political party offers no hope to your neighbor.
It is another solution made by man to fix man.
So start thinking more long-term.
Not just about 2024
Not just about how America will look for our kids and grandkids
Start thinking very long-term.
700 billion years from now.
I plan to be in Zion. I know you plan to be in Zion.
Who will be there with us? Who will be a part of that Kingdom?
Those are the questions that the New Testament demands you answer in the action of your life.
You must be a fisher of men if you will follow the Lamb wherever He goes.
You must cast the lure of the Gospel witness upon the dark and deadly waters of the world, trusting that God will use His Spirit to pluck a sinner up from the water to bite down on the Gospel you preach.
This is the best thing you can do for your community and country. The best thing you can do for this society or any society is be thoroughly Christian in it.
Go to church and give to it and help make it pure by being obedient to God’s Word yourself and encouraging others to do the same
Help start new churches through the ministry of your local church
Share the good news of the Gospel with people and invite them to your local church
Disciple a younger Christian in the faith in the local church
Be salt and light
Live a peaceable a quiet life that all men may come to a saving knowledge of the Lord
Raise Christian families
Submit to the authority and pay your taxes
Use the legal means provided in your society to push back against Caesar if Caesar is failing your neighbors
Vote as a Christian
Write a representative as a Christian
Protest in peaceable, Christian ways
Because this is how people come to faith. Through the ordinary means God has given us.
The grace of faith, whereby the elect are enabled to believe to the saving of their souls, is the work of the Spirit of Christ in their hearts,1 and is ordinarily wrought by the ministry of the Word;2 by which also, and by the administration of baptism and the Lord's supper, prayer, and other means appointed of God, it is increased and strengthened.3
1689 London Baptist Confession, 14.1
Ordinarily wrought...
Keep doing those things which God has uses to ordinarily wrought faith from the hearts of dead sinners.
This is what America needs from her church
This is how the Great Commission will be fulfilled
Not by swords and elections—but by Christians being Christians
In the pubic square and in the backyard
And if you are a part of the church militant, on your way to a victorious eternity as the church triumphant, standing with the Lamb in joy over the bodies of the Dragon and his beasts, then you will hold this witness to the very end.