It is so good to be back with you after what feels like just a long long time even though it was like two weeks. So thank you. It’s last week I was away with our small group. If you don’t have a small group, I definitely recommend. It’s one of the ways that we see just a beautiful growth in following Jesus.

And if you have a group, I definitely recommend taking away for the weekend and just spending some time together. And then the week before that. Man, I was just the sickest, I’ve been in like 30 years. Just couldn’t get out of bed, just lay there. Just just didn’t wanna do a anything. And funnily enough, ju just that week before I, I preached on Sabbath and rest and how, if you don’t take rest.

Seriously. Then sickness becomes your Sabbath sickness becomes your rest. And turns out just because you’re preaching it, you don’t get a pass from having to do it to get the benefits of it. So there I was just getting that space. I did not. As the rumor was that I heard floating around from multiple people sneak into church on the Sunday morning just to check everything was fine.

I had six or seven people say, like, why were you there on, on Sunday? You were sick. I’m like I was at home in bed. I was even like checking in on the live stream. So if you were here. And look exactly like me. I would love to meet you because apparently you convinced some of the people that know me best that but it’s good to be back.

And this series is now I recognize gonna feel. Just a little bit funky as we try to reorg just some of the flow of it. Aaron preached amazingly on the dragon last week. This week was supposed to come before that. And so now the order will feel a little off. It’ll certainly be off chronologically, but as always, we will get through it together.

And this week I’m healthy here. And ready to preach. I think this is the church calendar. If you’re new to following Jesus new to south, you may not know that there’s a calendar that’s been around for like hundreds of years wise. People who said, just like the seasons have a flow, we have spring that’s followed by sour, by four by winter, and it repeats.

So does life following Jesus there’s a flow to perhaps how we intu things, how we learn things together. So to these people that put this together, and we follow this pretty closely. We don’t do the lectionary, which is a sign passages, but we do certainly follow this flow. It begins in advent. So in Advent, we began the journey of waiting for Jesus.

As we move through that time of Christmas, we’ve remembered that idea that Christmas God is with us, the announcement that Jesus is Emanuel. As we move beyond Christmas, we move into what’s called sometimes Christmas tides, some called, sometimes called epiphany all the way through to Lent, which is roughly where we are right now.

This period coming here. And Lent brings us slowly contemplatively towards East Easter. And one of the things that I say over and over again is this, you will get out of Easter what you put into Lent. The contemplation, the space that you’re able to give to Lent will heighten the experience of Easter.

Just like when you fast physically, you have this moment where you eat for the first time and every single flavor seems to catch you off guard. That, that’s real here in the church calendar. And because at South Pentecost is a big deal, we’re now actually in this flow that will take us through Easter with this idea that God is for us.

Jesus did this work for us all the way through to Pentecost. We startlingly. Surprisingly, God is in us working through us. Two big surprises to the early church, to the people that followed Jesus. First one, that Jesus died and came back to life again. Second one was this gift of the Spirit to literally transform the way that you and I do life.

Len is a seasoned, surprisingly. Of bright sadness. One of the things, it’s labeled heavily as in the Greek Orthodox Church. It’s a season that cannot help but be colored by the resurrection. We simply can’t quite forget that Jesus rose again. That resurrection Sunday is approaching that. We’re moving towards it.

It’s like a tunnel where the light at the end of it is genuine, resurrection, light, not an oncoming train as it can often feel like in life. We can’t help but color lent a little bit by that idea that it’s still bright. The word lent literally comes from the old English word, LinkedIn, which means spring.

Everything around us tells us that new life is emerging, and Easter will be that full emergence for us. And so through this season, we’re taking images from the book called Revelation. Images, some of them that are prominent, some of them that are important in the church, some of them like this one that just happened.

To become popular in the culture around us. There was something about the image of today that just has been picked up and lifted and used in all sorts of contexts. And so we’re gonna process those. Now, if I ask you to throw up a quick hand, how many of you are reading Revelation for your daily devotional morning moment right now?

How many of you’re waking up and saying, there are some people, I love that you guys are doing that but the, for the most of. Us the, there’s this moment of waking up and saying, you know what I’m really looking for? I’m looking for some rich encouragement this morning. And for whatever reason, revelation is rarely where we feel led to end up.

A couple of reasons maybe for that. The first is probably that revelation is intimidating because it is Im imagery that we can’t easily get our hands on. We’re told that it means all sorts of things and that it’s primary orientation is towards things that are going to happen in the future.

In actual fact, lots of other books have similar types of imagery. But not quite as intimidating as Revelation when the primary orientation feels like this is going to happen at some point in the near, perhaps future. What that does to us is this, it quickly takes our mind off, God, what are you doing? And puts it on what’s gonna happen to me.

What’s gonna happen to my kids, my grandkids, the people that I love. We quickly go there and it’s hard for us to maintain this posture of God. What are you up to in the world? If Revelation pushes you to assume like worst case scenarios, then here’s just a quick pointer. Revelation had. An original audience, just based on how we tend to interpret scripture, how we should, I would argue, interpret scripture.

It cannot mean for us what it did not mean for them. This scripture meant something to them in the context they were in. That means if you can just imagine yourself for a moment as a first century follower of Jesus. When you read in one part of Revelation about a city surrounded by seven Hills called Babylon that we’ll get to in a couple of weeks, what they wouldn’t have done is said, you know what?

I bet at some point in the far future some kind of guy will appear, some kind of charismatic ruler that’s really evil, undercover, and he’s gonna build this huge brand new city in Babylon. And then probably build some hills around it so that it’s got the seven hills that are described. They would probably have looked at Rome.

The superpower of the day that was built on Seven Hills and said, I wonder if this book is trying to tell us something about Rome or without, on the surface saying something about Rome. There’s an original group of people that heard this letter, heard this book, and received something from it from them.

Second quick tip. If you start to spend time creating worse case scenarios, maybe hold onto this. The main purpose of Revelation is to reveal Jesus, not to predict the future. Does it have some future orientated ideas? Does history repeat itself in all kinds of strange ways? Does the conclusion of Revelation conclude that God is ultimately in charge of all things?

Absolutely. But the main point is that Jesus is the king of the universe in charge of all things, directing all things. And so on that note, we get to turn to today’s passage, which I’ll actually read to you from my copy of the Scriptures. You can follow along. We’re in Revelation chapter six today. Just to get the conversation starting, I’m gonna throw this terrifying image onto the.

Stage I love horses, but not like that first one I watched as the lamb opened the first of the seven seals. Then I heard one of the four living creatures say in a voice like thunder come. I looked and there before me was a white horse. It’s right. I held a bow and it was given a crown and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest.

I. When the lamb opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, come. And then another horse came out, a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make people kill each other to them was given a large sword. When the lamb opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, come.

I looked and there before me was a black horse. Its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand. Then I heard what sounded like a voice amongst the living creatures saying two pounds of wheat for a day’s wages, six pounds of Bali for a day’s wages do not damage the oil and the wine. And when the lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of a fourth living creature say, come.

I looked and there before me was a paal horse. Its rider was named death and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine, and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth. When I opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of all those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained.

They called out in a loud voice. How long sovereign Lord holy and true until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood. Then each of them was given a white robe and they were told to wait a little while longer until the full numbers of their fellow servants and their brothers and sisters were killed just as they had been.

Jesus. As we open this passage and we ask some questions would you guide us? There’s a lot about this passage that sounds terrifying. It pictures a world in which most of us say would say, I don’t want to live there. When we place our mind on what might be, we tend to get a little nervous. Remind us that the main point of these scriptures is what you are up to, not what we might face in the future.

Help us to keep our eyes on you, to trust that you are at work, that ultimately this is your story and not ours, and not anybody else’s. Help us to take what you have from this. With the things that I’ve planned to say. God made the meditation of my heart the word of my lips. May they be pleasing to you today.

Amen. This is the passage, the image, images, or image of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. I asked AI to generate some images just to give you some visuals. And so this was one that they gave, which truly is terrifying for whatever reason. This image or the basis of this image has found its way into pop culture, maybe more than any other book and any other image in Revelation.

There’s been songs written about these four horsemen. If you were into big time wrestling in the nineties and two thousands, there was a group called The Four Horsemen that were always bad guys, as you might expect looking that picture. TV shows have had episodes called The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse apocalypse.

For whatever reason, it’s just gathered like people’s attention. There’s something about it that draws us to it. And yet here’s my thesis on this, right on the top, and let me just say quickly if you have questions, ’cause there should be some, feel free to ask them. Here’s my thesis right on the top as we look at these images, today’s passage I would suggest is not ultimately about horseman, it’s actually about justice.

If you have ever felt that angst of something is wrong here. Something is wrong about the way the world works. Maybe it’s personal, so you feel it happening to you or to someone you love, or maybe it’s systemic. As in you look at the wider world and say, this shouldn’t be this way. You are in good company.

I, I was reminded of the angst of justice. Just the other day, my wife and I were returning from a trip to Orlando. We were out there for a conference and as we got back, I was waiting for a shuttle, got back late. I was waiting for my bags. They finally arrived. We went and joined the shuttle for the Pikes Peak Glot over at Denver.

And when we got there, there’s maybe 20, 25 people in the line. And quickly people get added. So suddenly the line is 60 to 80 people deep and you’re waiting and waiting for a shuttle with more irritation as no shuttle arrives. Plenty of shuttles for car dealers, but no shuttle for Pike’s Peak, more and more anger, and then a shuttle arrives.

And as the shuttle pulls up slowly our line begins to proceed towards the shuttle. Except for two people who didn’t feel like rules applied to them, they just came in on the side and they jumped on the shuttle really quick before anyone could notice. I noticed, and instantly I was furious.

I I went over to to have a strong word with them. ’cause I’m. A follower of Jesus and I’m a pastor, I can’t do anything else but have a strong word with them, but they got onto the bus, the shuttle before I could get there. And so as we’re waiting for our turn, like good, normal citizens to get onto this shut, my wife looks at me and she says this, if you argue with them, you are arguing with me too.

If you like, just let it go. But he can’t let it go ’cause it’s wrong. So we got on the bus and I went up to this guy and I just looked at him in the face and I pointed at him because again, that’s all I can do. And I just said you’re a joker. You are. That’s the best I had because again, trying to keep it pg.

But to me it was just this angst of like, why, what is wrong with this guy? This kid standing out in the cold waiting for a bus. There’s some of us that have been here for 20, 30 minutes and you feel like just there’s this right to just just to wander straight on. And he looked at me and he said, Hey man, that’s my American accent.

Hey man. I saw an opportunity, so I took it and I’m like, dude, that is no way to live. And so for the rest of the bus ride, I just stared like daggers at him because again, that’s all I can actually do. And throughout the journey I wrestled with this angst of, on one hand, like on an over spiritual sense.

I’m like, this must be what Jesus felt like when he kicked the guys out of the temple. This is now my actions aren’t like Jesus, but my angst somewhere. It felt just a tiny bit similar. And on the other hand, I’m wrestling with a couple of senses of what I should do. Everything I know tells me I should pray for this person, that God would redeem them from the broken life they’re clearly living.

That tells ’em they can just jump onto shut offs when everyone else is waiting next to a shuttle sign that says, line up here for Pikes Peak. Shut off. And the other half of me, as I see him with the skis coming in from out of town, he’s dude, you don’t even deserve to ski our mountains. I hope you.

Tear your ACL the first day out there. I am just wishing just just retribution on this guy. It’s like this angst, this justice that comes up that if you’ve ever felt anything like that, and I hope you have not for something as stupid as this, I gr you. But for real stuff, you’re gonna find yourself in good company, I think.

With some of the people that respond to the work of these four horsemen. So let’s get into the text with that preamble, chapter one verse one, chapter six. I watched as the lamb open the first of the seven seals. If you can remember back as far as advent, pre-Christmas, we talked about there’s this scroll with seven seals and there’s a weeping because nobody can open it.

And then this lamb, who also looks like a lion, he appears and he can open the seals. Then I heard one of the four living creatures say in a voice like thunder, come, you might have in your translation, if you’ve got in front of you, it might say, come and look at this, or come and see. That’s a terrible translation.

That kind of shift of the translation is trying to absolve God of any of the responsibility for what happens here. It’s trying to make it look like a separate action. In actual fact, as you’ll see, God never. Refuses to take ownership for what’s about to happen. This is happening because he allows it to happen.

Then I heard the four, one of the four living creatures say in a voice like thunder. Come. I looked and there before me was a white horse. The first horseman of the apocalypse is a white rider. Its rider held a bow and he was given a crown and he rode out as a conquer bent on conquest. This is actually the hardest of these four horsemen to decipher a meaning behind commentators.

A split maybe close to 50 50, 60 40 on is this Jesus. Or is it somebody else? The arguments based on it being Jesus are quite simply the person’s wearing white. White is almost. Universally described as being something that Jesus has or Jesus does. There’s also no like downsides to this rider.

He doesn’t do anything as the others do that harm the world or the people in it. So there’s some kind of point as towards this feels like it could be Jesus that he starts this whole thing off. But a whole bunch of other arguments that I would say are probably more compelling On the other side the phrase conquer.

There how it’s translated in Greek is quite often negative in the rest of Revelation. Everywhere else it’s positive, but in Revelation it has this negative connotation as we’ll. See, when we get to another passage that this seems to really be based upon, there’s a list of things that Jesus says will happen, and the first one is the.

False Messiahs will appear in this time period that’s been described, and it feels like this is maybe that happening. There’s just enough there for me to say. It probably feels like the first horse is described as a false savior, a, a horse that rides out and offers. A way to God that is not the way of Jesus.

The, there’s a, an oddity to it a tweak to it. Every one of these horses, I would say and we will look at this idea that they’re really like an embodiment of evil. Every one of them has what you might call a corporate outworking. And then an individual outworking. So given Christianity’s exclusive Cain exclusive claims, which can feel uncomfortable at times, especially if you have friends that follow different religious pasts, but are what Jesus says is true about the world that he describes himself as the way.

To his father. They can look like other religions that look a little bit like Jesus, but are maybe a twist on that. Individually, it’s probably a pursuit of feeling like life is enough through all the different means that we might be able to chase after it’s just possible to live a life in this world that says I’m gonna redeem myself through meaningful work.

That, that’s gonna provide me everything that I need. It’s just possible to say I’m gonna find it through family and family being enough. I’m gonna find it through leisure activity. I’m gonna find it through power. I’m gonna find it through sex. I’m gonna find it through all sorts of different things that are not bad.

None of this is described as bad, but if this horse represents what Jesus calls like false Messiahs, then on a corporate level that might like look like a political figure that says, I’m gonna answer all the questions. I’m gonna fix everything. And we know from our back and forth conversations in this group where we have a whole bunch of people on the right and a whole bunch of people on the left that nobody’s doing that.

Y you can put your faith in anybody you want, but they’ll never quite deliver what we need in this world. They just don’t have it in them. And so this rider that’s described here is remember, not a real horseman, but is a figure and illustration, an image that says if you’ve got your hopes in a person to fix everything.

That’s just not gonna happen. There. There was a time that people talk about in the, like mid 20th century, maybe around the time of the first World War actually, so maybe a bit earlier, where they were like, we just need one big war and we’re gonna settle everything and then everything’s just gonna be good forever.

We got this guys we fixed it. Industrial revolution’s happening, technology’s happening. We’re gonna get rid of poverty, we’re gonna get rid of suffering. Life’s just gonna be great. And then of course there’s this twist what, 20 years later where the same thing happens again. And now we’re dropping nuclear bombs on each other.

So this horse represents the idea that something’s gonna make life just good and ultimately, like as good as some of those things are. Individually, they’re, they just don’t last forever. And so this is the horse that like, pulls us away from finding that Jesus is enough which is really the scriptural answer.

So the first horse fits this category of a false savior. The second horse, verse three. When the lamb opened the second seal, I heard the living creature say, come. And again, this is like the creatures around the throne that are calling forth these horses that, again, are just analogies, just pictures, just types.

Then another horse came out, a fiery red one, it’s ride who was given power to take peace from the earth, to make people kill each other. To him was given a large hor, a large sword that the second horse brings war. On a corporate level it’s those things we were just talking about. It’s that constant ability to find conflict to, to try and get everything that we can as a nation.

In the first World War, there were people that became conscientious objectors because they said there’s no side here that is actually worth fighting for. It. It’s all just kingdoms that want to be bigger kingdoms. It’s just people trying to gain more for themselves. So on a corporate level, it’s like our national interest and our desire to defeat everyone around us.

So we ultimately, it can be victorious, but on an individual level, it’s present in a different way. How many of you have a toddler? If you have a toddler or know a toddler, you know that we’re born at war with everyone around us. Con convince a toddler that there’s a win-win scenario over an object that they love and they’ll quickly tell you, there is no win-win scenario.

There’s I win and everybody else loses because I have to get what I want now. Now we may grow out of that to degrees, but still there’s a human nature. That says what I want goes there. There’s an Arabic proverb that I’ve quoted to you before that says me against my brothers, me and my brothers against my cousins, me and my cousins against my clan, me and my clan against the world.

Like eventually it reduces down to it’s me that gets what I want. And so on a corporate level, the horse might be war that’s against other nations but on a, on an individual level. We can maybe get to a point of confessing. I actually have to get what I want most of the time. That, that actually my happiness tends to trump almost everybody else’s happiness.

And when I, in following Jesus, maybe see a shift in that, it’s a surprise to me because actually I’m used to it being, I want what I want. Perhaps you’re familiar with the phrase, right? That all fair in love and war. And so we see that, that sense of. Like I have to win. Somebody else is I’m growing up, A friend is dating someone that I feel like I have an attraction to.

I have to win. I can’t surrender that. If someone’s going for a job that I want I have to get that job. We live and be centric world, and that’s the narrative with this horse called war. Verse five. When the lamb opened the third seal, I heard the living creature say, come and I looked and there before me was a black horse.

Its rider was holding a pair of scales in its hand. And this is the third horse that brings famine. It brings a lack. This one has like interesting details that are not provided. It’s in most of the other horses. Then I heard the sound like a voice of the four living creatures saying two pounds of wheat for a day’s wages.

I think the actual Greek translation is a denari for a court of wheat. It’s what happens when, what two pounds is like subsistence living for a family. It’s like buying groceries in Denver in 2025. It’s I’m just gonna send my income to the grocery store and you just give me enough to live on that.

That’s this horse. That is reducing people down to a level of having nothing. On a corporate level, we’ll get to it on a moment, but on a, on an individual level, it’s like. Not having enough, and then surprisingly, and do not damage the oil and the wine. It’s a whole bunches of people that can’t afford to buy basic necessities.

At least that’s the narrative, but can afford to buy luxuries. The price of luxuries in this horse’s narrative, they don’t change they stay the same. So that’s within easy reach. And in this narrative the people that are wealthy, they can afford everything. But the people that are poor can afford nothing.

And so there’s a whole kind of like broken systemic thing going on here. This is Haiti. Some of these pictures are back from the 19th century. Some of these pictures are from the 20th century. When I was working in Haiti in around 2018, I met a man that seemed to understand the history of the country.

So I said to him, tell me why Haiti looks the way it does. The Dominican Republic on the same island has 10 times the income per capita as Haiti does. And I said tell me what went wrong. And he said it’s really a whole list of things, but he said, part of the thing we have to own as a nation is we just constantly harm ourselves.

We’re against each other. He told me the story of the sugar industry, which these pictures represent here, which it supported about 300,000 Haitians. And if you support 300,000 Haitians, you actually probably support about 3 million Haitians. And they found, the government found, or valier, who was the dictator at the time, found that, you know what we can do?

We can import sugar from Brazil. For less than we can produce it here. So what I’m gonna do is I’m just gonna start importing it and I’ll sell it to people for a lower price. Knowing that it would put 300,000 people out of work, but saying, ultimately that doesn’t matter to me. This is the culture that this third horse brings.

It brings the horse of reducing people down to just numbers, to nothing. A guy who was quoted in an article, Lucian Felix, said this, we’re dead and it’s the government that’s causing us to die. But the argument of Revelation would be it’s actually forces behind people. It’s a spiritual influence that’s pushing the country in that direction.

Elijah Del Mego, who’s a a philosopher who lives out on the East Coast, it’s a pseudonym that he writes under, said this, the brutal, painful fact is this. The average person living in Western, the western country increasingly has nothing to live for. He has little family, few friends, no neighborhood, no community, and no God.

He exists moly as a ritual of economic activity. A number on a balance sheet. The reasonable thing for him to do would simply be to call up and die. And as the individual goes, so goes the civilization. He said, this is what life looks like when you’re just subsisting, when there’s nothing else on offer.

And finally, this force or forethought which seems like a catchall for everything else. When the lamb opened the Force seal, I heard the voice of the force fourth living creature say, come. I looked and before me was a pale horse. Its rider was named death. Now, when you hear the term pale, I always pictured can you remember, for those of you who are fans of the office, like Dwight Fruit’s, mustard colored, sure like a, not a great color, but it’s actually worse than that.

It’s actually described as this color. It’s plant life grass that’s begun to die. It’s like the color of unhealth. None of you have ever said, I’m gonna go and paint my house. Can you find me this color? I’d like it to be like a yellowish green. It’s like the color of Mountain Dew or something like that.

There’s nothing natural that ends up this color, and that’s how this horse is described. This horse, or this horse is two riders, death and Hades, the place of the dead. In Greek, they were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine, and plague. And by the wild beasts of the earth, the fourth horse represents death or is actually more correctly named as death.

So these horses in the way that revelation works with its imagery, they are what you might describe as the embodiment of evil. Th this is Evil at Work in the Earth. And then look what follows, because generally there’s is tradition in Revelation. This is just the way the passages align.

There’ll be something that happens, an image and then a song. And the song is always connected to just what happened before. And so when we flick over a little further, hold on. I’m out of line with my, where am I? Oh, there we go. When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained.

They called out in a loud voice, how long, sovereign Lord, holy and true until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood. Most of the commentators on these passages agree that somewhere these four horses in a particular space and time are mostly directed towards followers of Jesus.

That the work of this spiritual force is a directed towards people that have said yes to Jesus, that are faithful to him in a particular way. Now, there’s nothing here. As intense as the imagery is, as hard as it is to understand the hasn’t been described before. If I get my slides back in order for just a second, look at what Jesus said in Matthew 24 of four, in Matthew’s biography of Jesus, as Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately tell us, they said, when all this will happen and what will be the sign of your coming and the end.

Of the age, Jesus has just predicted that the temple in Jerusalem will be destroyed. And the question is, when’s all this going to happen? And Jesus says this, watch out that no one deceives you. Many will come in my name, proclaiming I am the Messiah, Whitehorse, and will deceive many you will hear of wars, rumors of wars, Redhorse.

But see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen. But the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation. Kingdom against Kingdom. It’s the whole war thing that we just talked about. There will be famines, third horse and earthquakes in various places. Fourth Horse, all of these are the beginnings of the birth pains.

Revelation six. It’s just repeating in poetic form all the things that Jesus said would happen at some point. It’s been described before, but what happens when we read the next verse, the one that I just skipped over. When he opened the fifth seal, I saw the altar, the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained.

They called out in a loud voice, how long, sovereign Lord, holy and true until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood. What this verse does is he asks the question that the disciples never thought to answer. They asked Jesus what would happen. They even asked like some details about like when the things were going to begin, but when Jesus said, these are just the birth pains, these are just the things that must begin to happen before the end comes before God comes and redeems all things they never thought to ask.

How long is that gonna take? How long can we survive? That kind of thing. How can we survive living in that way? That’s their question. In the midst of everything you described that’s now happening to followers of Jesus in this revelation passage, how long? How long do we have to deal with a horse that kind of is constantly deceiving, people leading the mystery?

How long do we have to deal with the constant wars and the fighting and the conflict? How long do we have to deal with just not having enough, just surviving? How do we long would we have to deal with losing so many people? If you’ve ever lost anyone, ever not had enough, ever found yourself in a conflict, you can’t control any of those things.

You might have asked a question like that. How long can I put up with this? How long is the refrain? It’s a justice question. Jesus describes all of those things in this book Revelation and then leaves the same question hanging. That’s hanging in Psalm 13. How long though, Lord, will you forget me? Forever?

I. How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? This is the question that many of us ask at our lowest points, and this is the answer that they’re given an answer that may not feel enough when you read it.

Then each of them was given a white robe. And they were told to wait a little longer until the full numbers of their fellow servants, their brothers and sisters were killed just as they had been. When these saints, these martyrs, these people that have suffered for following Jesus, ask how long the answer in revelation is, just wait, so that more of you can experience the same thing.

On the surface, it doesn’t feel enough at times, does it? One of the eternal floating questions is, what is God’s role in suffering? Why doesn’t he just put an end to it? The question is named theodicy? Broadly the sies? Is God good? Does God know and he’s God able to fix it? And theoretically, not all three can be true and yet.

We feel like there may be like something then is wrong. Something feels off. God knows if he cares. If he’s able to act, why doesn’t he fix the things that cause us angst? John Walton, the Old Testament professor says this, there is a good reason why Christian Theo theologians consider the Odyssey the unsolvable theological issue.

The reason is this. It is unsolvable. There isn’t an easy answer to that conundrum, Eugene Peter says, and says this, in Revelation, evil is not minimized, but it is put in its place, bracketed between Christ and prayer. There’s a detailed listing of evil and a courageous facing of evil, but no explanation of it.

Nowhere in the Bible is any, is there any attempt to answer the question, why does God permit evil? Why do you allow people to just climb on a bus when they haven’t been stood in line with everybody else? Why do they suffer? No consequence for that? And all the things that are way worse than that at

evil is a fact in scripture. Evil is not explained, but it is surrounded. By putting evil in its place, it is seen in the end as a finite episode, not a total triumph. That’s actually the comfort we’ll give. God will give. It won’t last forever. You may have to wait. But it won’t be a forever thing. Tim Mackey from the Bible Project says of job.

Job does not know what he’s asking for when he demands that God uses the strict principle of retribution to reward every good deed and to punish those that climb on shuttles without waiting in line. In theory, it sounds right, but in execution it will create a universe where no human would have a chance for trial and error, or more importantly, for growth.

Or change if God instantly throws out retribution on everyone who ever deserved it? How many of us would be sat here today? It seems I. That God allows certain evil because somewhere it allows people to be tested in following him and come to follow him themselves. As unsatisfactory as that answer may at times seem to be in Matthew chapter 13, really quick, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a man who sowed good seeds in his field, but while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sold weeds amongst the.

Weed amongst the weed and went away when the weed sprouted and formed heads. Then the weeds also appeared. The owner’s servant came to him and said, sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Whether, where then did the weeds come from? An enemy did this? He replied, the servant asked him, do you want us to go and pull them up?

No answer because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the weed with them. This parable caused confusion for so many people when they asked Why isn’t it possible to simply pick up the weeds and take them away and leave the weed where it is until someone said some years ago, perhaps each of us represent the field.

The problem is it’s harder at times to distinguish the good and the bad in each of us redeemed as we are. We still overreact to people who simply climbed on a bus in front of us and wish ACL injuries upon them as they go out skiing. We are all still those broken people. Alexander Zenni and famously said, the line separating good and evil passes not through states, not between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart and through all human hearts, this line shifts inside us.

It oscillates with the years and even within a hearts overwhelmed by evil. One small bridgehead of good is re retained. It seems that God’s graciousness in holding off justice is just the possibility. That those who are guilty of even atrocious evils may possibly repent. Here seems to be a broad truth about Revelation as a book and about God’s work in creation as a whole.

The Book of Revelation understands that the timing of God’s justice is determined by God’s wisdom, his knowledge of how the world is working, and as He told Job unfortunately. We actually aren’t capable of grasping that it’s beyond us and also infects us too in our own brokenness. Tim Mackey again says, the pastoral role of Revelation is to summon every generation of readers to follow the lamb in its footsteps, to resist the beast within and without and to suffer along with the lamb.

If need be in bearing witness to what he’s done, that’s not where it ends. We’ve totally missed the purpose of apocalyptic. Literature, it seems as hard as that can be to accept that God will allow us to suffer to a degree if it has the possibility of bringing redemption to anybody, and that is hard to hear.

What we do know is in Revelation chapter seven, this is his concluding remarks, this particular section, he says, of all of those people who cry at how long, never again will they hunger. Never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat down on them nor any scorching. Heat for the lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd.

He will lead them to springs of living water and God will wipe away every tear from their eye. It seems like God asks us to trust that at some point in a future not yet known in a place with God, each of us will look at him with tears wiped away. And say, I understand now. I understand now I see what you have done.

It is complete and it is good. It is very good. But now from this root point, we cannot see. I. We cannot understand. Eugene Peterson last quote says this, history tumbles out of a massive data wars, famines, murders, and accidents, along with sunrises and still waters and lilies of the field and green pastures.

God’s people have been convinced that it is possible in prayer and praise, in listening and believing to discern meaning in this apparent chaos, and therefore to read good news in the daily life of history. Whatever you are going through, whatever you are watching people go through, however you feel about the present evil, the onslaught of the embodiment of evil pictured in this image.

Can you hold to this idea that God is wiser than us and he will bring it to the conclusion it’s meant to come to Jesus. Thank you for your goodness. Even when it’s hidden for your work in creation, we turn as best we can. Our trust to you, as hard as it is to see your justice play out or not play out.

Help us to trust your wisdom that knows all things is patient weights. Help us to trust that wisdom. Amen.