The Prayers of Saints and Sinners and the Wrath of the Lamb
by Pastor Charles Webb
March 12, 2007
12I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red, 13and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as late figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. 14The sky receded like a scroll, rolling up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.
15Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and every slave and every free man hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains.
16They called to the mountains and the rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb!
17For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?"
Introduction.
Martyrdom. For millennia Christians have been persecuted beginning with the stoning of Stephen. From the coliseums of Rome, to the Spanish inquisition, to present-day Sudan, Christians have been burned at the stake, drawn and quartered, drowned, stoned, dismembered alive and humiliated in countless ways for professing Christ
Martyrdom. The Greek word really means “witness”, referring to those who tell what they have seen. In the case of Christians, the witness to Christ’s sacrifice. Over the years the message has been coupled with the suffering and the word has come to mean, “those who were slain because of the Word of God and the testimony they had maintained.”
So many Christians in our era have stopped testifying. Christ is not popular. Technology is in! Christ is out! The pain and gain of martyrdom has given way today to the reign and gain of “the good life”. Religion has become “feel good and do good and everything will be OK”. It is against this backdrop that we consider
The Prayers of Saints and Sinners and the Wrath of the Lamb
9When 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.”
Does this only refer to those dead Christians who suffered physically and died violent deaths for Christ? Consider Mark 8:34-35 “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. AND 1 John 3:16 "By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers."
You see, since the word “martyr” really means “witness”, it refers to all Christians who have witnessed and will for the Gospel for all time. All Christians must die in the sense that they die to the old man and sacrifice themselves to Christ through faith. All Christians whether they die violently or not are witnesses for the Gospel – martyrs for Christ in word and deed.
The redeemed in heaven have a prayer. 10They 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
These martyred souls in glory pray to the Lord with a loud questioning voice. The Greek word used here is only used once in scripture and means “DESPOT”, a ruler with absolute, unlimited power. They acknowledge that the Lord is supreme over all. His rule is eternal and absolute.
Are they asking for vengeance? Are they disobeying Jesus’command to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us?
No! It’s not the prayer of Jesus on Calvary, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Luke 23:34.
It is not a prayer of Stephen prayed as lay dying, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them." Acts 7:60.
It is a prayer that asks God to fulfill His promise to deal with the ungodly. Vengeance is mine, I will repay says the Lord. In Psalm 94 we read, “O God who avenges, shine forth. Rise up, O Judge of the earth; pay back to the proud what they deserve. How long will the wicked, O LORD, how long will the wicked be jubilant? They pour out arrogant words; all the evildoers are full of boasting.”
The redeemed are simply asking, “O Lord, we see the righteous suffering. We see the wicked of the world prospering. Isn’t it time to act and give them what they deserve for their constant refusal to receive the Gospel?
Rather than rebuke the saints under the altar, the Lord answers. Listen:
It is not yet God’s time. In an action and a word, he comforts them: He give them each a white robe of holiness signifying that they have been washed in the blood of the Lamb. Their blood has been shed for him, they have kept the faith. The blood of the Lamb has been shed for them. The robes symbolize it.
God completes the glorification of His name through the suffering of His people. We with all living Christians have daily opportunities to glorify God and to show through acts of mercy our love for him and our fellow man. God will eventually wipe away all tears and all suffering will end. But, wait a little while. He does not specify the time frame. None of this can happen until the final day of Judgment, the day that the number of believers is completed and all of Christ’s lambs are ready to enter heaven. Be patient. I will do it. Rest.
My dear fellow Christians. How often we want justice and it seems to far away from us? How often we expect the Lord to descend quickly at our bidding and quash the evil around us and He does not? How often do we pray for deliverance from our ills and yet suffer more? How often we look around and discover that we are not faring well? How often do we wonder, “God, why me?” How often is faith tested almost to the very threshold of unbelief? How often do we feel that the despots of this world deserve immediate divine justice?
Yet still God’s word rings out through our discomfort, “wait a little longer” and we realize that God has not forsaken us. It will happen! In saying, “wait”, God has answered our prayer. His promises to uphold us, to forgive us, to bolster our faith and our resolve in the face of our trials and He will never fail.
When we cry to Him, He always answers. So many times in my life I have asked God to do something and I just knew that the answer was obvious, only to find that nothing happened or that just the opposite came true. You just have to realize that His answer is not always the tailored answer you were hoping for. He is with us even to the end of the age. His promises sustain us. He promises: “come unto me ye who are heavy laden and I will give you rest.” Matt 11:28. Romans 8 28 “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”
In our text, we see that God does answer the pleas of the saints in heaven. The sixth seal is opened and the wrath of the Lamb is fully revealed:
12I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red, 13and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as late figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. 14The sky receded like a scroll, rolling up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.
John reveals the cosmos in final turmoil and the prayer of the unredeemed in response to it.
Everyone has seen a disaster movie. From Armageddon and Deep Impact which depicted objects from space on a collision course with earth to the erupting volcano in Dante’s Peak, to devastating attacks by aliens in Independence Day and War of the Worlds to disaster spoofs like Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) - people have a fascination with the end of the world.
Thinking about this I realized that a god is never mentioned in any of them. The theme, rather, is the indomitable spirit of humankind to survive. They always include a hero who gives himself freely and dies. You are never told where he went after death, but his redemption seems to be in his selfless sacrifice for the survival of the planet.
Under it all is the unspoken, unanswered question, “What’s next?” People approach the end of the world as if to say, “If we save the world, we save ourselves”, little realizing that the world dissolves when THEY DIE! The fate of each human soul is never mentioned. It’s as if to say, “If we can preserve all of this, then we will somehow live.” Preposterous! If we keep the world intact, mankind should survive forever!
As extensive as effects of disaster film is, it doesn’t begin to match the final dissolution of the universe. Its íncomprehensible!
The worst earthquake of all time precedes the sun being blotted out and the moon turning red and the stars falling from heaven like figs falling off a tree, the mountains and islands disappear and even the vault of heaven is rolled up. Life as we know it on earth disappears making way for a new heaven and a new earth.
Everything is all gone! Every atom, every molecule, the stones, the waters, the seas, the mountains, the earth, the sky above and the earth below simply disappear. The cosmos – obliterated.
In the face of all this desolation, you would think that the unsaved would think of grace, redemption, forgiveness, but listen to the text:
“Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and every slave and every free man hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. They called to the mountains and the rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb!
As everything dissolves and disappears, we hear another prayer, quite different from that of the saints in heaven earlier. In it, the unrepentant, true to form, plead: Here we are. Hidden among the rocks. Please fall upon us and crush us and kill us so that we can avoid the wrath of the Lamb. Like some kid hiding from dad to avoid punishment for breaking the cookie jar.
It is a prayer directed to an unspeaking and unhearing universe. A plea of sheer futility. We do not hear a cry for grace. There is no confession of sins. Even in the face of biting judgment, they remain lost, selfish and unchanged.
Notice that six different classes of people are outlined in the text: the kings, princes, generals, the rich, the mighty, the free and the slave represent all levels of society. Unbelief is not limited by possessions, position or power. Everyone who rejects the saving Word of God will be affected. All are equal under the law.
We are also equal under the law, but the blood of Christ has been substituted for us. His righteousness is shown to God.
Now, they have to fear and dread that same God who is our refuge and strength who we are told not to fear even if the mountains fall into the sea and the waters roar and foam. They are devastated.
The wrath of the Lamb has come. Jesus said: "But I say to all of you: In the future you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven." John 5:27 27And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man.
Now it is time to separate the Sheep from the Goats.
The wrath of the Lamb is a jarring statement. We have seen Christ as the Good Shepherd, taking care of His lambs, a gentle, loving, caring tender of His flocks. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. The old testament image “the Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want,” is just as comforting. It’s hard to think of a Lamb as being anything but gentle. I grew up on farms and have this image of them as creatures almost impossible to provoke.
The Lamb of God and wrath seem mutually exclusive. A wrathful lamb meting out justice. Hard to believe. Yet if you really think about it, it is fitting that the Son of God, the Lamb who shed his precious blood for all should judge all. He knows his Lambs and they know Him. The Gospel has been proclaimed for hundreds of years. It has also been widely rejected for hundreds of years. And because of that, the wrath of the Lamb has been growing and growing for centuries. Like water
building behind and dam, it suddenly breaks forth on that final day of the universe, the day of wrath. The little while of waiting has come to an end.
It is time. He separates the saved from the damned, the sheep from the goats. Those redeemed and faithful servants don’t remember specifics of their good works: “when did we see you hungry, thirsty,” Of course not, they did them automatically out of love for Christ.
Serving man and God selflessly through faith. They did it to the least of Christ’s brothers. The goats, the damned, having consistently rejected God and the Gospel of salvation will face the full wrath of the Lamb. He has tolerated their unbelief long enough. They are relegated to eternal punishment. Their excuse is that Lord, we didn’t see you thirsty or hungry or wanting or we would have helped. They did not look for a chance because they were fulfilling the lusts and goals of their unregenerate natures. The wrath of the Lamb is swift, sure. There is no “Father, forgive them”, because they have rejected the forgiveness and salvation that He offered for so many centuries.
CONCLUSION Wrath reminds us that God never does evil or tempts to evil. He always turns evil to suit his purpose. If evil happens, it is a warning to unbelievers and a sign that he is perfecting his church. He is displaying his glory in suffering.We need to hold the picture of the Lamb’s dreadful wrath in front of us. Not as a threat, but as a reminder to spread that same Gospel to our unrepentant friends and relatives and neighbors so that they will never have to face that wrath of Christ the Lamb who judges.
“God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” 2 Corinthians 5:21. Daily we rise with our Lord to a new life.
The little while is not yet over. God is still perfecting his plan. The end
time is coming. You are to preach the Gospel of grace to all. Your witness is needed to
help fill the ranks of the saints. The blood of Christ is yours. It can be theirs also.As we daily put on the new man and rise with our Lord to a new life, we face the same, demons, defeats and dangers that the saints of all time have faced. Daily we receive that same forgiveness that all the saints have received. Daily we receive the gifts of the forgiving Lamb of God.
Pray God that you may always so hear, read, and learn and keep the scriptures close to your heart through that forgiveness, peace, and the hope He gives in the Gospel.
Abiding in Him you will never face the wrath of His coming. Standing on this rock, by the grace of God, you will be able to stand when heaven and earth pass away and all your tears will be washed away.
Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness My beauty are, my glorious dress;
Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed With joy shall I lift up my head.
Bold shall I stand in that great day, For who aught to my charge shall lay?
Fully absolved through these I am, From sin and fear, from guilt and shame.
We end as Revelations ends: "Yes, I am coming soon." Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God's people. Amen.