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We are accustomed to questions as a regular part of life. We face questions from the most mundane things to the most serious matters of life. ‘How long will it be until we eat?’ a very common question in all of our lives. ‘What are we having for dinner?’ ‘Is there anything to eat in the house?’ Those are questions commonly asked. When traveling, parents most often hear, ‘How long ‘till we get there?’ Then of course, there’s the dreaded, ‘Can I have some money?’ School teachers hear, ‘Do I have to do this homework?’ There are all kinds of questions that we ask. Some are for answers in order to communicate. While other questions attempt to manipulate, to move things, to dislodge attitudes and make things happen.
Sometimes our questions reveal our deepest thoughts, the inner workings of mind and heart. When a young man looks at a young lady and says, “Will you marry me?” that is not just a simple question. That is a declaration! It’s much different than the question he might ask, “Why won’t you marry me?” In that case, he’s trying to get some different kind of answers. He’s perhaps trying to persuade her, because she is not persuaded. And so we ask questions; we’re accustomed to questions to express life.
The Bible has many questions. Some are rather startling, and sometimes shattering to our whole being. I think of that question that the prophet Elijah asked of Israel after years of living in spiritual apathy, embracing idolatry, and following after Baalism. He said, “How long will you halt between two opinions?” In other words, ‘How long will you try to sit on the fence? You can’t stay there. How long will you straddle this?’ Or consider the question asked after Peter preached on the day of Pentecost. He declared with great power and authority the gospel of the crucified, risen Lord, and the whole audience listening to the sermon responded, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” They really wanted some answers. There was a sense of desperation. They were brought to a point of decisiveness. There’s also the Philippian jailer, who after the great earthquake and listening to Paul and Silas all night singing hymns, quoting Scripture, praying, encouraging each other, and speaking of the gospel, asked the question, “What must I do to be saved?” It’s a very serious, searching kind of question.
The fifth and sixth seals stand on two questions. The answers to these questions reveal to us that God is on the throne, that His timing is His timing, and that He will bring things to pass as it pleases Him. God is unfolding His eternal plans. These questions reveal something of what our God is doing. You’ll notice the two questions standing out in the text. The first one is in verse ten, “How long, O sovereign Lord?” or the Greek puts it, “How long, O Despotes?” “How long, O sovereign Lord, holy and true, will you refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” The second question is found at the end of verse seventeen, after the people who dwell on the earth cry out to the mountains and to the rocks. That’s rather strange language, isn’t it? Crying out to the mountains and to the rocks as if they could hear, “Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of their wrath has come.” And then this question is posed, “Who is able to stand?” The first question, asked by believers, aims to settle the question of when, not if, but when God would bring vengeance and justice upon the world that has rebelled against Him, rejecting His Son and the good news of the gospel. And it, very particularly, asks when God will bring justice for those who have put to death His people for the sake of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The second question is asked by unbelievers, and it aims to qualify that the end will come. In their sight, as John gives us this foreshadowing, the end has come, and it comes with such cataclysmic actions of divine proportions, that all of creation will be affected. All presence of sin and rebellion will be justly removed; every strata of the human race will brought to divine justice. And so, there is that reality of divine justice. The question itself is not showing that men are afraid of death. That’s not the issue. Their greatest dread is the wrath of Him who sits on the throne and the wrath of the Lamb. “Hide us from their presence,” they cry to the mountains and rocks. The very God that they denied, the Savior that they rejected and scoffed at and saw no need for, are now their greatest dread. And so, we consider this passage built upon two questions.
Our first consideration with the fifth seal is the question “How long?” Here we face a question of divine vengeance.
Now, the first thing that we have to think about is what brought on the question. John gives us this scene in verse nine. He peels back the curtains of heaven for a moment, “and the Lamb broke the fifth seal.” The seal is not the contents of the book that is described in chapter five, but rather, it is all of those things that precede the opening of the book. It is the unfolding of the judgments of God. It is the unfolding of the working of God. As the Lamb breaks the fifth seal, John said, “And I saw underneath the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the Word of God and because of the testimony which they had maintained.” We know that in the tabernacle and in the temple there were two different altars. There was a brazen altar, upon which the sacrifices were offered, and there was the altar of incense near the Holy of Holies that would waft up its fragrance unto the Lord. Those visible pictures that were given in the Old Testament are now helping us to grasp and see something.
It’s interesting how scholars will debate, “Oh, exactly which one of these altars is this?” John was not really getting into all of that. He just wanted us to think about what you do with an altar. What happens at an altar? There’s a sacrifice that is laid on the altar; something is poured out to God. And in this case he is helping us to understand that the scene under the altar is the reality that heaven recognizes those that have been slain for the sake of the gospel. There is the reality that these who have been slain are now in heaven. They’re in the presence of the Lord, and we see them underneath this giant altar—as it seems to be pictured for us by John. We understand by this that what happened on earth is never lost in heaven. And so, there is the consciousness on the part of those now quickened in their senses, no longer distracted by all the things of the world, quickened in their senses to understand the consciousness of God’s name being vindicated. And what we see are not a bunch of martyrs seething with anger, ready for God to lay it on their enemies. No, it’s not that picture at all. They’ve come into the glories of heaven. They’ve seen the full effect of the gospel. They’ve seen what God in Christ has done. They’ve seen the power of the cross and the resurrection. They’ve experienced that to the fullest, and now they are in the very presence of the Lord himself, so they cry out for justice. “Lord it’s time for justice, so that your name might be vindicated.”
Why were they slain? John tells us that they’d been slain because of the Word of God, and because of the testimony which they had maintained. Now, when John speaks of the Word of God here, he’s speaking of the gospel. It’s the same thing that we see so often in the Scripture. I think about what the apostle Paul said to the Thessalonians, “For this reason, we also constantly thank God that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it, not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe” (1 Thess. 2:13). Now, it’s very clear what he means. He is not talking necessarily about genealogies and trying to figure out all those kinds of things or talking about the implements in the tabernacle and trying to figure out all of those kinds of things. No, when he uses that term, “the word of God,” in this context, he’s talking about the gospel. And he said, “It is that gospel which you heard and you believed that gospel and that gospel was working mightily or effectively in you.” And so John says that these believers who have been killed for the sake of the gospel were now in heaven because they believed this word.
But not only did they believe it, but they practiced the gospel: “because of the testimony which they had maintained.” The language describes the testimony of Jesus Christ that was given to them in the gospel. Look in John chapter three, and we will find help in understanding what he’s talking about. It is not simply the fact that they lived out their Christian testimonies; it includes that. They were killed because their life and their lips bore the gospel. But they were killed because the testimony of Christ belonged to them. It was given to them by Christ himself. It was applied to them by Christ. “He who comes from above is above all. He who is of the earth is from the earth and speaks of the earth. He who comes from heaven is above all” (3:31–obviously, he is speaking about Christ). “What He has seen and heard of that He testifies, and no one receives His testimony. He who has received His testimony has set His seal to this: God is true. For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for He gives the Spirit without measure” (3:32-34). I think this is the background of what John has in mind of what he saw, that this testimony that Jesus Christ Himself bore He now has given to His people. And because of that they were slain, slain for the gospel, slain for the testimony of Jesus Christ.
Who did the slaying? You’ll notice what these martyrs begin to cry out in verse ten. They ask the Lord to bring justice to avenge their blood on “those who dwell on the earth.” Now, that in itself is an interesting phrase. You’ll see the same used throughout the book of Revelation in 8:13, 11:10, 13:8, 13:12, 17:2, 17:8, and a number of other places. In those passages, “those who dwell on the earth,” refers to the unbelievers—those who have that settled opposition to Jesus Christ and the gospel. And so, they’ve reacted to the gospel, and in that reaction, they’ve killed some of God’s people.
Perhaps, you’ve read John Foxe’s very well known book, written several hundred years ago, called Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Next to the Bible, that was the book many of our Christian fathers read and reread. They read it as the families gathered for worship, and the children read it and reread it, because they understood the price by men, women, and children for bearing the gospel. There needs to be many new versions of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs going on in our own day. Between a hundred and thirty to two hundred to as many as three hundred thousand are killed every year for the gospel. And we look at that and we go, “How can people do that?” Or, to use something much, much lighter, we get appalled when we hear something on the news about a city that has banned a nativity scene or a school that has banned the singing of “Silent Night.” And we’re aghast that they would dare do that! Why are we so surprised? It’s because the elements of the gospel are contained in those things. You start singing “Silent Night”; what happened on that night? Who has born? You start recognizing this One that was born into the world. You start singing “Joy to the world, the Lord has come.” What are you doing in those songs? What are you doing in the celebration? You’re recognizing that we are desperate sinners, and only by the mercy of God in having sent His Son to become part of our race in the incarnation and to go to the cross and bear the judgment of God for us and be raised from the dead, do we have any hope.
And so, yes, we are aghast at all of those things, and we get upset, and we write letters, and we let the particular perpetrators know that we’re concerned about all that. But are we surprised at the world? My brethren, we need to recognize something. The world has a settled opposition to Jesus Christ and the gospel. Don’t let that shock you. Don’t come unglued if someone mistreats you because you’re a Christian. Don’t let that shatter you and bring you to the point of despair. Learn a lesson from these martyrs. The day of vengeance will come. The reality is that those who dwell on the earth, those living in opposition to God and His gospel through His Son are going to continue opposing His work and the spread of the gospel. But that doesn’t stop the spread of the gospel. They’re beating their heads against the Rock of Gibraltar. They cannot stop the spread of the gospel, even by killing Christians. As one of the church fathers said centuries ago, ‘the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.’ The more Christians that get killed, it seems, the more Christians that begin to spring up. God just raises them up, even using the shedding of their blood—not to atone, that’s already been done by the work of Christ; not for merit, all the merit we need is in Christ. Rather, God uses even the death of His precious children because of the gospel to bring others to their senses and to repentance. There have been areas of the world that have been opened to the gospel only because Christians laid down their lives.
What’s the nature of this question? The nature is that these martyrs in heaven recognize the sovereign rule of the Lord. The title they use of the Lord is used some ten times in the New Testament. The normal title that we see for Lord is the Greek word kurios. It’s used all over the New Testament. But this particular word is the word despotes; from it we get our word, despot, one who has absolute authority. The right use of that term, despotes, is to recognize that the Lord has absolute sovereignty. And these martyrs recognize that. They’re in heaven. They see what happened to them. They see what’s going on. And so, they confess, “Lord, you are absolute sovereign over all things. When are you going to vindicate your great name?” And so they pray, “‘How long, O Lord, holy and true,’” that is, You who are altogether pure, You who are altogether faithful, or You who are good, You upon whom we can absolutely rely, when will You bring these things about? There is a certainty of judgment in the minds of these martyrs and in their prayer. They see God’s justice so clearly that it must happen.
And so the question that we have to face this morning is this: Do we fear the judgment of God? Does the cross of Christ alone that can take from us that dread of divine judgment, does that cross become our only hope before God? Do we know that Christ has borne God’s judgment for us? Or do we fear the judgment of God for those who have no fear of God, for those who are unbelieving? Do we fear the judgment of God on them? Do we have that kind of heart concern? There is, in this passage, an expectation that the Lord must settle things and the Lord will set things right. And if you do not believe that God is serious about judgment, then read what the Scripture says about the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. That shows us how absolutely serious and certain it is that God will bring all things into judgment; for he has already judged our sins, those who are believers, in the person of Christ at the cross. Be certain that those who dwell on the earth, as these martyrs put it, will face the judging and the avenging of God.
Why the delay? “‘How long, O Lord, holy and true, will you refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth?’” Look what he says in verse eleven, “And there was given to each of them a white robe; and they were told that they should rest for a little while longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brethren who were to be killed even as they had been, would be completed also.” The first thing that we see here about the delay is that God is saying, “I just want to take care of you.” They’re given white robes. The white robe is a symbol of conquering as we saw earlier with that first seal broken and the white horse. And so these martyrs were not defeated in death; they were victors in death, because they shared in the suffering of Christ, and so they therefore shared in the triumph of Jesus Christ. And we see this time of divine patience. They were told they should rest for a little while, resting in the care of the Lord, and they were to wait just a little bit longer, and the wait of a little longer, as one writer put it, is in God’s estimate but a fleeting moment, though for us it may stretch out for ages. That little while; remember, Jesus told the disciples, “In a little while you will se me no more, and then in a little while you will see me.” And that kind of language is used to help us be patient ourselves and to wait upon the Lord in his great patience. Well, this passage gives us an anticipation of more martyrs. Why the delay? Why does God delay on bringing vengeance? Because there are more to be martyred.
We generally think of those martyrs being some that are in Asia or Central Asia or maybe some folks on the African continent. We don’t think too much about it’s happening here, do we? My brethren, we do not need to become comfortable and think that could never happen here, because it could very well happen here. There are parts of the world, for instance Turkey, one of the earliest places where the gospel came, the churches of Asia Minor that we saw in chapters two and three, and yet in Turkey, a place that has had the gospel a whole lot longer than we have, a number of believers have been killed for the sake of the gospel. We dare not think that we are immune to that. Now, I’m not trying to be morbid; I’m trying to be celebrative with that reality, for if we are not prepared to die for the Lord, we are not presently living for His glory. And I think that’s the thing that stymies us, when there are those thoughts, “What if I had to die for the Lord?” If you are living for Him, if you recognize what it is to be a disciple, and that you have taken up your cross, you remember what Jesus said, “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow after me” (Luke 9:23). What does it mean to take up a cross? A cross is an instrument of death. You are dying to yourself because the day may come that you literally die because you believe the gospel.
Are you willing to lay down your life for the gospel? If you are not living for the glory of Christ, then you are not willing to lay down your life for the gospel. If you don’t have time for the Lord, if you don’t have time to worship Him, if you don’t have time to study His Word, if you don’t have time to pray, if you don’t have time to declare Christ to others, if you don’t have time to discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness, do not think if that day came that you would stand faithfully and be willing to die for Christ. You’re not going to die for Him if you’re not willing to live for Him. So we are rebuked by these martyrs. These are just ordinary Christians. They weren’t super-Christians. They were ordinary disciples of Jesus Christ. They were James, Stephen, Antipas, Polycarp, Tertullian, Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, and many more. That’s who they were, just Christians; and God called them out. Even though we don’t feel the threat of death about us, let us feel the weight of the cross upon us day after day if we’re going to live as disciples of Jesus Christ.
Now in this particular one, the scene jumps to the Day of Judgment. I’ve mentioned this before and I will reiterate this from time to time: Revelation is not chronologically precise. If you’ve got your chart out, and you’re going through the chapters of Revelation, and you’re charting everything, and you’re trying to put a date on it, then you are going to be squeezing some square pegs in round holes. John doesn’t operate like that. What he’s doing is helping us to look, to think about the context. He’s helping these struggling Christians. They’re struggling over persevering, over endurance, over pressing on, over being faithful, over living to the glory of Christ, instead of living for themselves and falling back into idolatry. And so he helps them by giving them occasional views of The End. John keeps The End in view without losing sight of the present, and he shows that present endurance will be vindicated in the end. So there’s this overlapping that takes place in Revelation. And so, here we get to the sixth seal, and John shows us The End. Now, he’s not going to stay there, but he wants us to see what happens in The End.
And so, the first thing we notice is that the Day of Judgment is cataclysmic. The language that is used here is borrowed from the Old Testament, as well as the Olivet Discourse in Matthew twenty four and Mark thirteen. John said, “I looked, when he broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake.” Now these people understood about earthquakes. The folks that lived in Sardis and Philadelphia and Laodicea had already seen their cities totally destroyed by earthquakes. They had heard of what had happened just a decade or so before in the area known as Pompey, when Mount Vesuvius blew its top, and that whole area was shaken by a gigantic volcano and earthquake. They knew about these things. He said, “There was a great earthquake. The sun became black as sackcloth made of hair,” and that was this black, scratchy goat’s hair; sackcloth was picturesque of mourning, not morning as in the day, but mourning as in weeping. “And the whole moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind. The sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.” If you took a scroll, and you had it rolled up and then you unrolled it; then you cut one half of it; that half that had been rolled is going to quickly roll up. It’s kind of like a blind that you pull down; it’s going to just flop back up! He’s using pictures in order to give them some ideas about physical and natural occurrences of tragedy; but he’s showing them something of much greater proportion. John is not trying to give them literal descriptions of what’s taking place. Instead, he is stretching their imaginations and our imaginations. For instance, the stars falling to the earth: now, how big are stars? The sun is a star that’s a whole vastly larger than the earth. Now, we understand that, we know those kinds of things; so he’s not trying to be literal. He’s trying to help us understand that everything is being shaken, that the Day of Judgment is an unrepeatable event, and it is an incomparable event, and when it happens it’s going to affect everything.
And that’s the second thing; not only is it cataclysmic, but it is universal. In the Old Testament, Joel prophesied, “The sun will be turned to darkness, the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful Day of the Lord. Before them the earth shakes, the sky trembles, the sun and moon are darkened, and the stars no longer shine.” Isaiah says, “All the stars of the heavens will be dissolved and the sky rolled up like a scroll and the starry host will fall like withered leaves from the vine, like shriveled figs from the fig tree.” Why all of that? To show the universality of divine judgment: it’s not just a judgment on those countries that were most in opposition to the gospel. It’s a judgment upon everything. It’s a rearranging of the earthly order. To help us see that, he begins to describe seven different strata of humanity. He says in verse fifteen, “Then the kings of the earth,” those who thought of themselves as being omnipotent in the world, “and the great men,” those who thought the world was centered on them and revolved around them, “and the commanders,” the men who thought that they controlled the affairs of the world, “and the rich,” those who thought they owned the world by reason of their wealth, “and the strong,” those who were self-reliant, those who had no need for God, “and the slave,” those who saw themselves mistreated and maligned so that they were angry with God and angry with everyone else, “and the free man,” those who had worked and bought themselves out of slavery, that is, the self-made men who had the attitude, “I don’t really need God, because I’ve made my own way.”
Now, what is he doing by giving that whole seven-step, strata of humanity? He’s showing completeness, because that’s what the word seven implies in Revelation. It is a totality. It is completeness. It is all of humanity apart from the redeemed. And what does he say happens? They cry out to the rocks and to the trees to hide them. They hide themselves in caves. Can you imagine these great kings trying to hide in a cave, these wealthy men who own land and people, and they’re hiding themselves in caves? You see the picture that John’s giving us? When the Day of Judgment comes, all the things you have, all that you have acquired, all the status that you have in life means absolutely nothing, nothing! All those things that you’ve given yourself to, all of those things that you thought were so important, so that you had no need for God becomes totally unimportant on that great day.
And he shows us in the third place that the Day of Judgment displays the wrath of the Lamb. It is so interesting that this crowd of people is asking for rocks and for mountains to listen to them. Have you ever gone out and talked to a rock? It is inanimate. “Rock, why don’t you do this?” You say, well, that’s just stupid. Yeah, it really is, because when you follow the foolish line, “I’ve seen no need for God through Christ,” you’ll do the most stupid things. You’ll ask a rock and a mountain to fall on you. And so here is this cry, “Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb.” Now, you’ve got to see that this language is ironic. You don’t think of a lamb as being wrathful, do you? You think of something peaceful and calm and gentle, and yet what John is showing us is that this Lamb has already borne the wrath of God at the cross. He did it for people from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation; but the day will come when the Lamb of God will display His wrath. Now, what does he mean by wrath? It’s not a temper tantrum. It’s not the divine just being upset and flying off the handle. No, wrath pictures the settled, righteous justice of God that has built up, and built up, and built up—like water held back by a gigantic dam—and then one day it opens and it lets loose and it’s poured out! That’s the picture that’s being given. When that day comes, there is the cry, “‘Fall on us, hide us from the presence of God and the Lamb, for the great day of the wrath has come!’” Then they ask this question, “Who is able to stand?” You know the answer. No one. No one; except for those upon whom the wrath of God was spent on Jesus Christ. Do you fear God? The writer of Ecclesiastes boiled it down and said, “Fear God and keep His commandments.” Do you fear God? Do you fear God in a right way, with a holy reverence, with a sense of awe, with a sense of wonder, with the deepest respect that has affected you in every way?
There are two questions that this passage calls for us to respond to: “‘How long, O sovereign Lord?’”—that plea for God’s name to be vindicated. We do not know how long; the certainty is that it will happen. And then the question, “‘Who is able to stand?’” At least it’s an honest question, an honest admission, but it’s an admission far too late, because it points to that time when God’s patience is given over to His wrath. There’s only one place where the wrath of God doesn’t strike, and that is where the Lamb has already felt the blow of divine wrath at the cross. That is our refuge. That is our hope. And we press on, we endure with the certainty that God is going to unfold everything in His time; and you can count on that.
Here are these martyrs up in Heaven. We admire them. Yes, we do. Do we have enough of a sense of admiration that we would feel something of the sobering conviction that maybe we’re not even too serious about living for Christ day after day? Then, I call you to repentance. I call you take seriously what it is to be willing to die for the gospel. Some of us in this room could die for the gospel. I would imagine that when Jim Elliot died in the late 1950’s in Ecuador, put to death for the sake of the gospel, I would imagine when he was nine or ten years old or twelve years old sitting in his church, hearing the preaching of the Word, and worshipping with people, that probably no one in that church thought that any of their number would be martyrs. We just don’t think about it, do we? And I’m not trying to get us to go around, again, with morbidity, but I am calling us to reality. We live in a world that’s hostile to the gospel, and so we must brace ourselves to live in faithfulness. We must rejoice in what the Lamb of God has done. If you do not have joy in the death and resurrection of Christ being for you, then I call you to repentance and faith—to look to Christ.
Father, we need such grace, that we might live as disciples. We thank you that you are faithful to accomplish all that you had declared you will do. And Lord, help us to be faithful people, to be faithful to our own confession of you. Lord, we pray for those among us that are unbelieving that you might crush the stoniness of their hearts. O Lord, we plead for them that they might know the favor of the Lamb of God and not His wrath. We pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.
(This sermon was transcribed from the recorded message with some modifications for ease of reading)
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