Revelation 6 - The Wrath of the Lamb
Unveiled Hope: The Reigning Christ of Revelation • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 38:38
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· 261 viewsA people who will not receive the salvation of the Lamb cannot escape the wrath of the Lamb
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Introduction
Introduction
When our kids were little, trips to places like the mall, or going to an attraction like an amusement park were a lot more work than they are today. When you have small children, you have to be constantly aware of where they are and what they are doing when you go out—make sure to hold mommy or daddy’s hand (or keep one hand on the shopping cart at all times), and don’t leave my sight—where’s your sister? Don’t go down that aisle without one of us—that kind of thing. (That’s right where some of you are right now, isn’t it?)
But the day comes (sooner that you want it to, frankly), when you can walk through the door of the mall (or the amusement park, or whatever), and say, “OK, everybody, see you at lunch—stay here, don’t leave the property, and we’ll all meet at the food court at 12:30”. And then you don’t see them again for three hours!
Well, that’s where we are here in Revelation 6. Up to this point, pretty much all of the different interpreters and commentators are on the same page. But here as the Lamb begins opening the seals they all shake hands and go their own ways, saying, “OK, we’ll all meet up again at Chapter 20 for the resurrection!” And John MacArthur and Jack Van Impe go down the dispensational premil aisle while C. S. Lewis and R. C. Sproul head off the the amil section and George Elton Ladd and John Piper head off towards the historic premil area and Ken Gentry and R.C. Sproul take off for the postmil preterist section.
There are a lot of different interpretative directions in this book—and just like your teenagers splitting up at the mall, Bible-believing Christians can go in many different directions in this book and still stay within the bounds of Bible-believing, evangelical Christian truth! Jack Van Impe and R. C. Sproul may be on opposite sides of the mall all day, but they are both within the walls of orthodoxy.
I want to belabor this point, because I guarantee you that, at one point or another, we are going to go down an interpretive path during this series that differs from what you’ve heard or read. But that does not mean that we are leaving the mall, so to speak. Honest and faithful Christians can differ—honestly and faithfully—with each other on the best way to read the Book of Revelation. Don’t forget: We are all going to meet up at the food court for the Marriage Supper of the Lamb in Revelation 19, and there won’t be any bickering and arguing over interpretive differences allowed when we get there!
Last week we saw Jesus Christ, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Lamb of God bearing the marks of His death, standing in all of the power and authority of His resurrection, approaching the Throne of God to take up the scroll of His dominion and authority. And here in Chapter 6, the Lamb begins to open that scroll.
Picture a rolled-up piece of parchment or papyrus with seven pieces of twine wrapped around its length, each twine sealed in place with a wax or clay seal. The scroll is not actually opened until all seven seals have been broken. So what we are seeing here in this chapter is the Lamb preparing to execute His judgment—each seal opened brings another one of the elements of His judgment on the scene, but the judgment will not begin until all of the seals are broken and the scroll is opened.
And here is where we must make some interpretive and contextual decisions in order to proceed with this chapter—the question is, what is the judgment that the Lamb is preparing to execute as He is opening the seals? If we begin with the guideline that John himself gives us, that he is writing about things that will “soon take place” (1:1)—things for which “the time is near” (1:3), and then couple that with Jesus’ prophecy that we read earlier from Matthew 24, I believe it presents a compelling case that this chapter describes the judgment on Jerusalem that took place in A.D. 70. And the destruction that we see described here is a powerful message to us in the 21st Century that
A people who will not receive the salvation of the Lamb will not escape the wrath of the Lamb.
A people who will not receive the salvation of the Lamb will not escape the wrath of the Lamb.
The same turmoil that is described here in this chapter—war, famine, pestilence and death—are an all-too-real part of our own world today. But what we need to understand from this passage today is that when we look around and see all that turmoil around us of the pandemic and race riots and economic collapse, we are not seeing a world that is spiraling out of control—we are seeing a world that is coming under the judgment of the wrath of the Lamb. As we study this chapter we need to keep in the front of our minds the realization that God judged His own city of Jerusalem this way for rejecting Him, how much more does our nation deserve judgment for our rejection of Him?
A people who will not receive the salvation of the Lamb will not escape the wrath of the Lamb. And the first thing we see in these verses is that
I. The wrath of the Lamb judges His enemies (Rev. 6:1-8)
I. The wrath of the Lamb judges His enemies (Rev. 6:1-8)
Look at verses 1-2:
Now I watched when the Lamb opened one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures say with a voice like thunder, “Come!” And I looked, and behold, a white horse! And its rider had a bow, and a crown was given to him, and he came out conquering, and to conquer.
This is one of the most well-known sections of Revelation: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The other three riders are clearly identified in the text, but there is a great deal of debate as to the identity of this first rider. Some interpreters take this to be a representation of continual conquest on the earth, some take it to be the Roman emperors (or just one particular emperor), but others see here a parallel with the description of Christ riding as conqueror on a white horse in Revelation 19. For reasons which I hope will become clear shortly, I am taking this first rider as a description of Jesus Christ riding out to judge the generation of Jerusalem that rejected Him, as He prophesied in Matthew 24. Opening the first seal reveals the Lamb riding out as the conqueror bringing judgment on His enemies. And the second seal reveals the Lamb’s judgment on His enemies as He
Makes war on those who reject His peace (cp. Luke 19:42)
Makes war on those who reject His peace (cp. Luke 19:42)
Verses 3-4 say
When he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.
It is important to note that the word “earth” here (and in verse 8) is usually translated as a synonym for “arable soil” or “ground” or “land” (it’s translated “soil” in Matthew 13, in the parable of the sower and the seeds, for instance). When we read “earth” here and reflexively think Planet Earth, that automatically brings in a whole set of assumptions that these events must refer to the end of the world (since we’ve never seen a quarter of the planet’s population die in a famine, for instance).
But if we take the common meaning of the word and read here that the rider was “permitted to take peace from the land”, then the specific judgment of Jerusalem springs into focus. Because throughout the Scriptures, the “Land” was a common way to refer to the Promised Land, the Land of the Covenant, the Land of Israel.
And when we read about the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, that is exactly what we see—there was no peace in the Land of Israel. The Roman armies were garrisoned everywhere, and even during Jesus’ ministry we read about the early years of the war with Rome in the story of Pilate slaughtering Galileans during their sacrifices (Luke 13). As the years went on the fighting spilled over from Galilee into the rest of the land, not only between the Romans and the Jews, but also among three or four rival factions among the Jews themselves. Jesus Himself, when He was riding into Jerusalem before His crucifixion lamented over Jerusalem,
saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.
And in the next breath He goes on to describe how the Romans would come and barricade the city and level it to the ground. Here in Revelation 6 we see the horseman of war riding into Israel, taking their peace away.
In verses 5-6 we see that the wrath of the Lamb
Starves those who will not receive the Bread of Life (cp. John 6:35)
Starves those who will not receive the Bread of Life (cp. John 6:35)
When he opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come!” And I looked, and behold, a black horse! And its rider had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the four living creatures, saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius, and do not harm the oil and wine!”
This rider has a pair of scales, indicating that grain and bread was so scarce that it had to be weighed—it’s a reference to Leviticus 26:26, where God warns of His judgment for the people’s faithlessness:
When I break your supply of bread, ten women shall bake your bread in a single oven and shall dole out your bread again by weight, and you shall eat and not be satisfied.
And in fact, during the siege of Jerusalem there was a terrible famine. There had been a lot of food stored up in the city, but rival factions among the rebels would periodically destroy the supplies of the other factions. The end result was, naturally, a terrible famine. The black horse did ride through Jerusalem. (Wilson, When The Man Comes Around, Moscow, ID: 2019) The Jewish historian Josephus writes in The Wars of the Jews that:
Many there were indeed who sold what they had for one quart; it was of wheat, if they were of the richer sort, but of barley if they were poorer. (Wars, 5.10.2)
In John 6:35-36, Jesus tells the Jewish leaders of that generation,
Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe.
They rejected Jesus as the Bread of Life, and so now they cannot escape starvation under the wrath of the Lamb.
The fourth horseman is revealed as the Lamb breaks the next seal in verses 7-8:
When he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, “Come!” And I looked, and behold, a pale horse! And its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed him. And they were given authority over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth.
The word translated “pale” here is the Greek word chloros, which indicates a sickly grey-green or yellow-green—the color of a decaying corpse. Death rides the horse, and Hades (the grave) follows after. Death was given authority over a fourth of the “land”, to kill with the sword, and famine and pestilence and wild beasts of the earth. This is a reference back to the way the Babylonian armies swept through Jerusalem centuries earlier:
“For thus says the Lord God: How much more when I send upon Jerusalem my four disastrous acts of judgment, sword, famine, wild beasts, and pestilence, to cut off from it man and beast!
The Romans were to bring upon Jerusalem the exact same kind of judgment that the Babylonians had brought. They marched up with the sword, besieged it with their army, shut them up to famine and pestilence within, and there were more than enough dead bodies for the ravaging dogs (Wilson, ibid). In Matthew 27:25, when Pilate rejected the Jewish leaders’ demand to crucify Jesus Christ, they answered,
And all the people answered, “His blood be on us and on our children!”
Here in Revelation 6 those words come back upon them in the wrath of the Lamb judging His enemies.
A people who reject the salvation of the Lamb will not escape the wrath of the Lamb. The wrath of the Lamb judges his enemies, and in verses 9-11 we see that
II. The wrath of the Lamb avenges His people (Rev. 6:9-11)
II. The wrath of the Lamb avenges His people (Rev. 6:9-11)
When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been.
Jerusalem had a reputation for brutality against God’s prophets—Jesus said in Luke 13:34 that Jerusalem was “the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it”. Jerusalem was the place where prophets went to die. And so as the Lamb breaks the fifth seal,
He repays their persecutors (cp. Luke 13:34)
He repays their persecutors (cp. Luke 13:34)
The judgment that fell on Jerusalem fell in part because of the way that the city had persecuted Christians—people like the first Christian martyr, Stephen in Acts 7, who was stoned to death for “the word of God and the witness he bore” to the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. His soul (along with the others under the altar) cry out for vengeance “on those who dwell in the Land”—the wicked and corrupt generation that Jesus warned would suffer all these things. In His wrath He repays His children’s persecutors, and
He remembers their suffering (cp. Luke 18:7-8)
He remembers their suffering (cp. Luke 18:7-8)
The cries of the martyrs here in these verses are very similar to the way Jesus described the prayers of His suffering children in the parable of the unjust judge in Luke 18:
And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
The wrath of the Lamb did not delay long, but came speedily as He avenged the death of His saints on the generation of Jerusalem that killed them.
Note here as well where the voices of the martyrs are coming from in these verses: “under the altar”. Again, when we understand how thoroughly Revelation is rooted in the Old Testament, it helps us to understand what is being depicted here. In Leviticus 4:7 we read that when a bull was offered on the altar, its blood was to be poured out at “the base of the altar”. And remember that the people were forbidden to eat anything with blood in it, because “the life of the flesh is in the blood” (Leviticus 17:11). And so in Revelation 6 when we hear the voices of the martyrs coming from the base of the altar, this is meant to show us that those who die for their faith are accepted by God as sacrifices. And in these verses we see that
He receives their sacrifice (cp. Leviticus 4:7; 17:11)
He receives their sacrifice (cp. Leviticus 4:7; 17:11)
There is no one who has lost their life for the sake of the Gospel who is ever forgotten by God, whose sacrifice goes unnoticed. The blood of those who have been killed for their testimony of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ for sin are precious in His sight, and He will execute justice for them just as He did on the rebellious generation of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.
A people who reject the salvation of the Lamb will not escape the wrath of the Lamb. His wrath judges His enemies, it avenges His people, and in verses 12-17 we read that
III. The wrath of the Lamb overthrows His rivals (Rev. 6:12-17)
III. The wrath of the Lamb overthrows His rivals (Rev. 6:12-17)
Look at verses 12-14:
When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale. The sky vanished like a scroll that is being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.
The wrath of the Lamb overthrows His rivals as
He unmakes the world order (cp. Isa. 13; Ezekiel 32)
He unmakes the world order (cp. Isa. 13; Ezekiel 32)
At first glance, it seems that we are reading about some great cosmic and astronomical event that has never taken place in the history of the world, and so we assume that this must be some event that will take place far in the future. But when we take the Book of Revelation in its context as part of the whole of the Scriptures, we see that this same imagery is used several times throughout the Old and New Testaments to describe the utter and complete downfall of the existing world order.
As Isaiah describes the downfall of Babylon in Isaiah 13, he writes that “the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light; the sun will be dark at its rising, and the moon will not shed its light” (Isa. 13:10). Ezekiel uses the same imagery to describe the downfall of Egypt, that God would “cover the heavens and make their stars dark… All the bright lights of heaven I will make dark over you” (Ezekiel 32:7-8). And Jesus uses the same imagery when He foretells the destruction of Jerusalem in Matthew 24:29, that “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken”.
In A.D. 70 when Jerusalem fell, it really was like the end of the world—the city that had stood for eight hundred years as the symbol of God’s dwelling with His people, the city that had been the center of religious, cultural and economic life for the nation—was utterly and totally destroyed—Josephus says that the Romans leveled the entire city to the point where no one would have ever even known it had been an inhabited place. Imagine waking up one morning to find that Washington D.C. had simply ceased to exist because it had been utterly vaporized by America’s enemies—the entire world order would completely collapse, just as surely as if God had begun unraveling Creation itself.
In the wrath of His judgment, the Lamb unmakes the world, and
He unnerves the world’s leaders (cp. Luke 23:30-31)
He unnerves the world’s leaders (cp. Luke 23:30-31)
In verses 15-17, we read
Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?”
Jesus warned the inhabitants of Jerusalem that this very thing would happen to them, saying in Luke 23:30-31 that the days were coming when
Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us,’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’ For if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?”
Once again, this very thing happened when Jerusalem fell—Josephus writes in Book 6 of The Wars of the Jews
So now the last hope which supported the tyrants, and that crew of robbers which were with them, was in the caves and caverns under ground. Whither, if they could once fly, they did not expect to be searched for… This was no better than a dream of theirs. For they were not able to lie hid either from God, or from the Romans" (Wars, 6.7.3)
A people who refuse the salvation of the Lamb will not escape the wrath of the Lamb. Here in Revelation 6 we see the wrath of Jesus Christ, the conquering King, as He judges His enemies, avenges His people and overthrows His rivals in the destruction of Jerusalem.
Beloved, look at the world around you today, and you see what happens when a people reject the salvation of the Lamb. We are a people who “do not know the things that make for peace”—our cities erupt in senseless violence, our elected officials tear at each other with hatred and scorn, brutality and hatred and injustice hem us in on every side. We have rejected the peace offered us in the blood of the Lamb, and so He makes war on us. He sends pestilence upon us, destroying our economic prosperity, crippling our food supply so that we have signs over the meat counter saying “one per customer”—limiting how much we can eat. A people who reject the Bread of Life will eventually be denied bread for the mouth. We scorn and ridicule His atoning death on the Cross, and so He sends the pale horseman of death through our nation, killing in the pestilence and in the economic famine—suicide rates have skyrocketed during the shutdown, with suicide hotline calls increasing one thousand percent (https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/05/04/mental-health-coronavirus/). Beloved, this is not a nation that “needs God to take control”—this is a nation that is under the control of God. This is a nation that is being judged by the wrath of the Lamb.
And even now, there is an escape. Even now, the blood of the Lamb is powerful to wash away the sin and rebellion of our nation. There is nowhere else to turn, there is no one else to call upon—we cannot hide from Him, we cannot escape—all we can do is fall at His feet as a nation and beg for His wrath to be turned away from us. And He has promised that when we repent and come to Him, He will hear us: “Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation!” So pray, beloved—pray like never before for our nation, that we will turn away from our sin and rebellion and repent in the Name of Jesus Christ alone. Because if God would strike His own city of Jerusalem, the city where He set His Name and covenant, where His Temple marked His dwelling place on earth—if He would do this to His own nation, what makes us think He cannot or will not do the same here? “For the great day of the wrath of the Lamb has come, and who can stand?” Not Jerusalem, not Rome, not Washington D.C., and not you.
If you are here this morning apart from Christ, see here in this chapter the terrifying warnings of what awaits you if you refuse the salvation of the Lamb. If you reject His peace, He will make war on you. If you refuse Him as the Bread of Life, He will shut your mouth with starvation of the soul and body. If you scorn His death on the Cross and turn away from it and deny that you need it for the forgiveness of your sins, then you have nothing to look forward to but eternal death away from His presence in Hell. When you walk out of here today, you don’t know what kind of calamity, turmoil and collapse awaits you in the coming days—as one writer put it, these things are previews of what your sin deserves, previews of what you will “someday receive in judgment a thousand times worse. They are warnings. They are wake-up calls to see the moral horror and spiritual ugliness of sin against God” (John Piper, Coronavirus and Christ).
So let this “wake up call” wake you up—we will be happy to talk with you after the service so that you can know for sure that the wrath of the Lamb has been turned away from you, that He will be for you and not against you, that He will give you the white robe of His own perfect righteousness so that your life will be a precious sacrifice to Him, and you will have a place with Him in the throne room of Heaven for all eternity—don’t reject His salvation, don’t delay any longer. Come—and welcome!—to Jesus Christ!
BENEDICTION
Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.
QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION:
QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION:
What are some of the different interpretations you have heard of Revelation 6? Why is it important to remember that faithful, Bible-believing Christians can honestly differ on how to understand the book of Revelation?
What are some of the different interpretations you have heard of Revelation 6? Why is it important to remember that faithful, Bible-believing Christians can honestly differ on how to understand the book of Revelation?
Read Isaiah 13:1-10 and Matthew 24:29-30. Note that Isaiah uses the same imagery for the fall of Babylon as Jesus uses for the fall of Jerusalem. How might this help us interpret Revelation 6:12-14 in the context of the judgment of the Lamb?
Read Isaiah 13:1-10 and Matthew 24:29-30. Note that Isaiah uses the same imagery for the fall of Babylon as Jesus uses for the fall of Jerusalem. How might this help us interpret Revelation 6:12-14 in the context of the judgment of the Lamb?
Read Revelation 6:11. The martyrs are told that they must rest “until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been”. This verse tells us that God has set a specific limit on the number of Christians who will die for their faith. How does that fact comfort us as we face persecution in this world?
Read Revelation 6:11. The martyrs are told that they must rest “until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been”. This verse tells us that God has set a specific limit on the number of Christians who will die for their faith. How does that fact comfort us as we face persecution in this world?