Revelation 11:15-18

I hope you have your Bibles open to Revelation chapter 11. John's vision here throughout this book has been slowly building up with this idea of these seven trumpets, each trumpet sort of very slightly giving a foretaste of this coming judgment on the last day, and then to be climaxed with that seventh trumpet, that number of completion, bringing history to an end and wrapping it up with that final day of judgment. And what will happen when that seventh trumpet sounds? We'll see in our text tonight what happens is worship in heaven for what Christ has done for his bride. So let's go ahead and read the passage now, Revelation chapter 11, verses 15 through 18. 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. And the twenty-four elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying, We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, who is and who was, for you have taken your great power and begun to reign. The nations raged, but your wrath came, and the time for the dead to be judged, and for rewarding your servants. The prophets and saints, and those who fear your name, both small and great, and for destroying the destroyers of the earth. This is God's word. Little roadmap for where we're going tonight. We're just going to cover three reasons to join in this praise of heaven. Three reasons to join in this praise of heaven. Reason number one: Christ will rescue us from sojourning. Christ will rescue us from sojourning. Reason number two: Christ will remove all evil. And reason number three: Christ will lavish upon us a kingdom. So let's go ahead and look at the first reason. Christ will rescue us from our sojourning. As mentioned before, the seventh trumpet wraps up history, and finally this kingdom of Christ is consummated. The kingdom he began inaugurated at his first coming is finalized and completed when that seventh trumpet sounds, and we see here two kingdoms merged into one. The text says, The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever. Maybe you remember Jesus saying before Pontius Pilate, My kingdom is not of this world. The great news of his second coming is one day it will be. One day his kingdom will be of this world when he returns. But as we look in this age at our lives, we see a real sense where this kingdom of the world and the kingdom of Christ are in still great opposition to each other. We see that not only in the fact that Christians are persecuted, places like North Korea that we prayed for tonight, but also just in our daily lives, the frustration, the suffering, death, decay. We know in the consummated kingdom of Christ those things do not exist. And yet we live still in this kingdom of the world. And that's the already not yet reality that we live in right now. We live in this already not yet reality. We live life in two different kingdoms right now. You know, later on the book of Revelation will refer to this earthly kingdom, this kingdom of the world, as Babylon. Why does it refer to it as Babylon? Babylon carries this idea of suffering for the people of God and also exile for the people of God, referring back to the Old Testament when the people of Judah were in exile in Babylon, awaiting their return to come home. We have been made citizens of the kingdom of Christ, that heavenly kingdom, and yet we are here in this Babylon, this kingdom of the world, in exile but awaiting, anxiously awaiting our return home and our deliverance. And one day. There will be a glorious invasion. There will be a glorious coup that takes place as the Lord Jesus rides in on the clouds, and he who has all authority even right now over heaven and earth, he will take his rightful throne. And it will be a glorious invasion. The kingdom of this world will become the kingdom of Christ. So, what do we do right now in this already-not-yet situation? What do we do as we wait? Well, we ought to do what they're already doing in that kingdom we belong to. What are they doing? We see here, it says, the twenty-four elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God. What do they do in the kingdom we belong to? They worship God. They worship the Lamb for what he's doing and what he will do when he returns. You know, you picture, if you can put yourself in the shoes of Judah in Babylon in the Old Testament, just picture yourself there. You know, these people of Judah are downtrodden, they're oppressed, and yet one day they receive this news that this remnant of Judah will be delivered home. The people of Judah who believe in the promises will be delivered from their exile. And so these Babylonians, they start to be kind of creeped out because there's these people of Judah who seem, for some reason, joyous in their worship. Their oppression and their suffering in exile seems not to be hitting them as it ought to. There seems to be this level of joy and anticipation about them, almost like they know somebody's going to come and get them. Brothers and sisters, would the world characterize our joyful worship like that? Would the people out in Babylon look at our joyous worship and say, Why are they doing that? They must believe that the suffering they're going through in this world will come to an end, and they'll be taken home. And that is the case. That leads us to point number two: Christ will remove all evil. So we come now to the content of this song of praise in verse 17. It says, We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, who is and who was, for you have taken your great power and begun to reign. The nations raged, but your wrath came, and the time for the dead to be judged, and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints and those who fear your name, both small and great, and for destroying the destroyers of the earth. We see in the content of this song, Christ will do two things in particular when he comes and takes this world as his own. He will destroy, and he will reward. He will destroy, and he will reward. And so in this second point, we're going to focus on that fact that he will come and destroy. The entire idea— Of God destroying in his wrath, this entire idea that runs through this song, really that very last phrase is a perfect summary of it. If you look in the very last phrase of that song, destroying the destroyers of the earth. What a wonderful way to describe God's wrath: destroying the destroyers of the earth. We can be tempted sometimes to sort of picture God's wrath as cruel, or maybe sort of just some uncontrolled anger, or maybe a grotesque way of treating your enemies. We can be tempted to think of God's wrath that way. But brothers and sisters, his wrath is not that. His wrath is controlled. It's under control. His wrath is just. His wrath is fair. And here's why those of us who are safe in Christ can praise him for his wrath on that day. Here's why we can praise him for it. His wrath will destroy the destroyers of the earth. In other words, his wrath will erase everything horrible that you could ever imagine. His wrath will eradicate everything that was evil and bitter and sorrowful about this world. The sin that destroyed the goodness of the earth, the sin and just the curse that made this world not as it ought to be, and the fact that it backfired now on us who caused that curse, all of that will be removed, and the world will be as it was meant to be in all of its glory. Because God will destroy the destroyers of the earth. He will free the earth from its destroyers. In the words of one writer, everything sad will become untrue, because he will destroy the destroyers of the earth. So, believer, this day is not something to fear. You can praise God for what he will do on this day, because you are safe in him, and he will get rid of everything that is a danger to you. But if you are in this room and you have not trusted in the Lord Jesus to protect you on that day, to hide you in his righteousness, you need to be warned. Your own sin is partaking of this destroying of the earth. Your own sin, just like Adam's, is bringing, is just piling on this curse that destroys the earth from the glory it was meant for. And that means when the Lord Jesus comes, if you are not hidden under him in his salvation, you also will be destroyed. But he does offer you today to run to him before that day, before that seventh trumpet. You can run to him and you can be saved from his wrath on that day, and in fact, you will be perfectly safe on that day. That leads us to point number three: Christ will lavish upon us a kingdom. So we come to see that we can praise God because of the second thing he does on that judgment day. We saw he destroys; now we see he rewards. He rewards his people. Again, at the beginning of that passage, we see the seventh trumpet sounding. As good Bible readers, what should that remind us of? A seventh trumpet. It should remind us of Jericho. These people of Israel commanded to blow the trumpet, and on the seventh time, as they're waiting to enter the promised land, as Jericho stands as sort of this big obstacle in their way to finally receiving their inheritance, at the seventh trumpet, that obstacle will fall, and the enemies will be destroyed, and the people of God will enter into their homeland. And that's exactly what we see here. Jesus Christ gives his people the reward of his kingdom. It says there, for rewarding your servants. That's what this day is about. For rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints, and those who fear your name, both small and great. And I want us to notice here how all-encompassing for the people of God this reward is. Rewarding your servants, the prophets and the saints, those who fear your name, both small and great. The point here is to give this picture: this is for every single person. This reward is for everyone who is in Christ. We do believe that there is this category of extra rewards in heaven. We do believe in that. The Bible does speak of that. There will be some rewards given to some in heaven that won't be given to others. But I want us to just stop and see. That for every single believer, even the weakest believer, there is this reward of an entire kingdom given to them. So, believer, do not let your own shortcomings, your own struggles, the weakness of your faith, how your Christian life goes up and down every single day, do not let that make you think that he will be stingy with you on that day. Your weakness does not stop his lavishness. And that's why we can praise him for coming on that day. You know, it reminds me, one of my best friends grew up in the Dominican Republic in just deep, deep poverty, lived a very difficult life. And when he was a teenager, he was adopted by a family here in the U.S. This family, I've met them, they're very godly, and they're also extremely wealthy. I was just—my jaw was on the floor when I walked into their house. I was not expecting that. And, you know, my friend described to me what it was like when he first arrived, this boy living in just deep poverty all the way through until he's 16. His amazement coming to McDonald's for the first time, being just in awe of the soda machine, being terrified when he went to go get ice because he didn't know that there was going to be ice coming out of that thing. Just in awe, one thing after another as he's going on discovering what is here. And then walking into this house that his family has, just being in absolute awe of what is now his by grace. That continual amazement, actually an everlasting amazement, is awaiting us when Christ rewards to us his kingdom on that last day because of his obedience on our behalf. That eternal lavishness of his kingdom will make us forever amazed, never bored, always praising him for his goodness, for all who are in him. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you that we can praise you even now as we anticipate the hope of this day, this seventh trumpet to sound. Lord, that we do not need to be afraid of. If we are in you, we can await it joyfully. We thank you, Lord. By your grace, you will lavish upon us a kingdom. You will bring us home and make the kingdom of this world yours. We praise you for that. In Jesus' name, amen.