Louie Giglio - A Severe Mercy
If you have your scripture today, you can open it up and get ready in Revelation 8. We’re going to try to tackle a couple of chapters together, and just like it says in the early part of Revelation in chapter 1, it says, «Blessed is the one who hears these words and who reads these words.» Revelation isn’t just to be read; it’s also to be heard, and I would encourage you to do that in these weeks that we’re digging around together. I know for me, I’m getting very familiar with the guy who reads the Bible to me because I’m just having him read Revelation often, and it’s so good to hear—not just to see the words on a page, but to hear this Revelation being proclaimed.
Before we jump in today, we see judgment; the Seven Seals are broken, and the wrath of God is being poured out. Last week, we saw that the wrath of God is closely accompanied by the grace of God. The seals are broken, and the wrath of God is being poured out. The seventh seal announces seven angels with seven trumpets, and the trumpets are now going to sound. As they sound, the Judgment of God on the sin of the world is coming, but there’s mercy near the judgment. So with the wrath, there was grace, and with the judgment, there’s mercy. I want us to see through that lens today as we navigate these chapters together.
I want to set up a presupposition because it’s important. When we come to concepts like wrath and judgment, we might think, «I don’t want a God who has wrath, and I don’t want a God who has judgment.» I would say, «No, yes, you do! Of course, you do!» You want things that are wrong to be put right in your life, in your family’s life, in that business deal where something went wrong—you want it to be made right. Something that was done to a friend, you want that to be made right. Something that happened to you, you want that to be made right. So we do want wrath, and we do want judgment; we just don’t want a God who has wrath and a God who has judgment. We want God to be love, and we want God to be grace. We want God to be kind—and God is love, grace, and kindness—but He’s also holy and righteous, and He won’t tolerate sin—not in your life, my life, not in this city, not in any place on Earth.
So we’re coming today with the presupposition: this is God’s world. This is not my world; this is not your world. I don’t get to decide about the world, and you don’t get to decide about the world. This is God’s world; God made the Earth. This presupposition matters. It’s not just some free-floating world. It was interesting this past week; one of the Apollo astronauts passed away, William Anders. Bill Anders took one of the most famous, if not the most famous, photograph of Earth ever taken—Christmas Eve 1968 on a lunar mission, Apollo 8. He captured this photo called «Earthrise,» and out of the blackness of the universe, the landscape of the moon reveals Earth. The reason this is likely the most well-known photograph ever taken is that it’s largely responsible for the environmental movement that has occurred since 1968, with people wanting to care more about the environment. As he said, looking out the window of the spacecraft and seeing Earth, he remarked that it looked like a Christmas ornament, beautiful and delicate. He realized what we realize: it’s the only place where there’s life.
You might say, «Well, we don’t know that for sure; maybe there are other planets and other civilizations out there.» Sure, maybe there are. But we’ve spent a lot of time, technology, energy, and money looking for them, and all we have is this gift of God called planet Earth. And it’s God’s Earth. This shows you a little bit about our presuppositions. On Christmas Eve, when this photograph was taken, earlier that day, Earth time, the three astronauts aboard this spacecraft greeted Earth by reading the creation account in Genesis chapter 1. Each of the three astronauts took a section: «And the Lord said, 'Let there be light, ' and He separated the light from the dark,» and then He created the Earth. They were reading this to the nation 56 years ago. Do you think that’s going to happen anytime soon? No, because presuppositions are changing, and the world is changing. But on that day, they presupposed what God presupposes, which is this: this is God’s world; it’s designed to work God’s way. You can try to make it work in different ways, but it was created to work God’s way, and it was created for God’s glory. Everything that He made, He made for His glory and for our good.
This is the presupposition we’re working with today. You may be coming with a different presupposition, and I respect that, but you have to understand how we’re approaching these chapters about the judgment that’s coming on sinful man. We’re coming from the perspective that this is God’s world, His world is supposed to work His way to bring Him glory and to bring us good. As soon as He put man on Earth, we messed it up. By the end of chapter 3, the Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. This is the mercy of God; this foreshadows Jesus giving His life for us. The Lord God said, «The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil; he must not be allowed to reach out his hand to take also from the tree of life, eat it, and live forever.» Why? Because he is spiritually separated from God in this moment. So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After He drove the man out, He placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim, and we’ve seen some of these in Revelation, along with a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life. Mercy and judgment; we find them together just as we did grace and wrath.
So if you have your text, we’ll start in Revelation 8, and I’m going to move pretty quickly through it. We read in chapter 1 of Revelation, «Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near.» This Revelation message is meant to be read; it’s meant to be read aloud; it’s meant to be shared in the company of believers and with the whole world. Let’s read through for a bit today and try to find our way through the mercy and the judgment that is coming.
The seventh seal and the golden censer: when He opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and to them were given seven trumpets. Let’s jump down to the first trumpet. Then the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared to sound them. The first angel sounded his trumpet, and there came hail and fire mixed with blood, and it was hurled down upon the Earth. A third of the Earth was burned up, a third of the trees were burned up, and all the green grass was burned up. The second angel sounded his trumpet, and something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea, and a third of the sea turned to blood. A third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed. The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The name of the star is Wormwood; a third of the waters turned bitter. This is what Wormwood does, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter. The fourth angel sounded his trumpet, and a third of the sun was struck, and a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of them turned dark. A third of the day was without light, and also a third of the night. As I watched, I heard an eagle flying in midair call out in a loud voice, «Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the Earth because of the trumpet blasts about to be sounded by the other three angels.»
I’m not going to dive into the details of what is happening sequentially or what that means for Earth and sky, but what we’re seeing here is that the seven seals are broken, and these seven angels are sounding seven trumpets. The end times are unfolding; the consequence of a fallen, sinful world is now coming due. Judgment is coming on the Earth. We keep reading. The fifth angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the Earth. The star was given the key to the shaft of the abyss, which is like the bottomless pit where evil resides. When he opened the abyss, smoke rose from it like the smoke from a gigantic furnace. Most people believe this refers to Satan; that he fell and was given authority to open the shaft to the abyss. So he’s operating under authority that he’s been given for a certain time. He opened the abyss, and smoke rose from it like smoke from a gigantic furnace; the sun and sky were darkened by the smoke from the abyss. Out of the smoke, locusts came down upon the Earth and were given power like that of scorpions on the Earth. They were told not to harm the grass of the Earth or any plant or tree but only those people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads. They were not given power to kill them but only to torture them for five months, and the agony they suffered was like that of the sting of a scorpion when it strikes a man.
During those days, men will seek death; that’s how bad it will be—but they will not find it. They will long to die, but death will elude them. The locusts looked like horses prepared for battle; on their heads, they wore something like crowns of gold. Their faces resembled human faces; their hair was like women’s hair, and their teeth were like lion’s teeth. They had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the thundering of many horses and chariots rushing into battle. They had tails and stings like scorpions, and in their tails, they had power to torment people for five months. They had a king over them, the angel of the abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon and in Greek, Apollyon (it may say «the Destroyer» in your translation). The first woe has passed; two other woes are yet to come.
How are we doing so far? I know someone brought a friend from work, and you’re thinking, «I had no idea; this is not going well.» The sixth angel sounded his trumpet, and I heard a voice coming from the horns of the golden altar that is before God. It said to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, «Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.» The four angels who had been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind. The number of the mounted troops was 200 million; I heard their number. The horses and riders I saw in my vision looked like this: their breastplates were fiery red, dark blue, and yellow as sulfur. The heads of the horses resembled the heads of lions, and out of their mouths came fire, smoke, and sulfur. A third of mankind was killed by the three plagues of fire, smoke, and sulfur that came out of their mouths. The power of the horses was in their mouths and in their tails, for their tails were like snakes having heads with which they inflicted injury. The rest of mankind that were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the work of their hands. They did not stop worshiping demons and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone, and wood—idols that cannot see or hear or walk. Nor did they repent of their murders, their magic arts, their sexual immorality, or their thefts.
What are we making of the trumpets so far? Well, they’re announcing the judgment of God on a sinful world; they’re bringing the consequences of the fall, and with them, there’s mercy. You might say, «I don’t see a lot of mercy going on here.» Well, there’s a lot of mercy here, and I think the one-third is giving us a picture of the mercy of God. So God isn’t just wiping out everyone. It’s the same as in the Garden of Eden; He didn’t just say to Adam and Eve, «Well, I told you there were consequences of eating from that tree, so you’re done.» No, He killed an animal and made coverings for their nakedness, and a plan for His Son to be the ultimate payment for their sin was already in motion. But there were consequences: «You’re going to work the fields, you’re going to sweat and toil, and you’re going to labor.» To the woman: «You’re going to have pain in childbirth.» There are going to be consequences. Everything is going out of the way I intended it to go now, and there’s going to be a consequence, but even in the consequence, there’s going to be mercy.
So a third, a third, a third, a third—meaning the most were not struck, the largest part not struck. Why? So that people can realize there’s still time to repent, there’s still time to turn, there’s still time to get my presupposition right, there’s still time to go back to the beginning. This is God’s world; it works best God’s way. It was created to bring God glory and to bring me good. If I do it God’s way, He gets glory, and I get good.
But interestingly, after all of the terrible that has happened, people still did not repent. We keep reading; we have a little bit of an interlude. This happens throughout Revelation; you’ll be at one point and suddenly—like at the sixth seal interlude, now an interlude. In chapter 10, then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven; he was robed in a cloud with a rainbow above his head. His face was like the sun, and his legs were like fiery pillars. He was holding a little scroll that lay open in his hand. He planted his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land, and he gave a loud shout like the roar of a lion. When he shouted, the voices of the seven thunders spoke. When the seven thunders spoke, I was about to write, but I heard a voice from heaven say, «Seal up what the seven thunders have said and do not write it down.» Then the angel I had seen standing on the sea and on the land raised his right hand to heaven and swore by him who lives forever and ever, who created the heavens and all that is in them, the Earth and all that is in it, and the sea and all that is in it. Our presupposition—he said, «There will be no more delay, but in the days when the seventh angel is about to sound his trumpet, the mystery of God will be accomplished just as he announced to his servants and prophets.»
Then the voice I had heard from heaven spoke to me once more: «Go take the scroll that lies open in the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land.» So I went to the angel and asked him to give me the little scroll. He said to me, «Take it and eat it; it will turn your stomach sour, but in your mouth, it will be as sweet as honey.» Now, what does that mean? It means that this message, this scroll—this message, this revelation—and we’ve seen this in the prophets of the Old Testament—it’s good news that God is telling us all of this. It’s good news that God is revealing to us how things play out, but as we sit with the good news, it turns sour in our stomachs because we realize the magnitude of what is happening around us. And when we do, we understand this next little section: «It tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach turned sour.» Then I was told, «You must prophesy again about many peoples, many nations, many languages, and many kings.»
In other words, knowing what is coming, knowing what’s happening—yes, thank you, God, that you’re unveiling; thank you for showing us; thank you that there is a king on a throne who is ruling time and eternity. But as I sit with that message, I’m beginning to understand the weight of that message for my neighbor, for my coworker, for my family member, for my city, for my nation, for my people, for my language, for my king. So go and prophesy. There are two big messages I think today. The first big takeaway is this: that even when a third was wiped away, the two-thirds—most of them did not repent. But for us who know this message, the second takeaway today is that we must prophesy. We are messengers.
John was given a reed like a measuring rod and told, «Go and measure the temple of God and the altar and its worshippers.» You can dive into these details; I know it would be easy if I walked in here every Sunday and said, «Now let me explain to you exactly what this verse means and what he’s talking about here.» But you can read 20 different amazing scholars, pastors, and Bible teachers on all of these texts, and all of them have different interpretations and views of what’s going on. So no one knows definitively every single thing that’s being referenced in Revelation, and I don’t know if Revelation is given to us to create a diagram, if you will. I think it’s given to us to provide a sense of what God is doing so that we can activate our time on Earth and be messengers of grace and mercy to everyone on this planet.
Is this the temple? Well, the temple had been destroyed at the time John was receiving this revelation. So the temple in Jerusalem had been wiped out; we don’t know if it refers to that temple, as it didn’t exist. Is this the temple in heaven? Is this referring to us, the temple of the Holy Spirit? Could be all of those things. The point, though, is clear: «Go and measure the temple of God and the altar with its worshippers, but exclude the outer court; do not measure it because it has been given to the Gentiles. They will trample on the holy city for 42 months.»
Again, all this is where we can get lost, but just stay with me for a moment. I will appoint my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1260 days. It’s interesting; most of you probably already know this, but 1260 days is 42 months, and 42 months appears a lot in scripture as a reference to a season of time that God is working. Interestingly, I don’t know if it really clicks or makes a big difference, but 1260 days is 3 and ½ years, and that’s half of seven, which is the number of completeness in Revelation. This isn’t complete; this is process, and they’ll prophesy for 1260 days clothed in sackcloth. That’s what you would put on when you were mourning a loss or repenting of something tragic.
They are the two olive trees and the two lampstands, and they stand before the Lord of the earth. These two messengers we’re talking аbout: «I will appoint my two witnesses. If anyone tries to harm them, fire comes from their mouths and devours their enemies.» We’ve seen this with a prophet in the Old Testament. This is how anyone who wants to harm them must die. They have the power to shut up the heavens to stop the rain, which we’ve seen in the Old Testament prophets, during the time they are prophesying. They have the power to turn the waters into blood and strike the Earth with every kind of plague as often as they want; we’ve seen that in the plagues coming out of Egypt. There’s a lot of symbolism in these two witnesses.
When they finish their testimony, the beast that comes up from the abyss will attack them and overpower them and kill them. Even though they can shoot fire out of their mouths, this beast comes up and will attack, overpower, and kill them. Their bodies will lie in the public square of the great city, which is figuratively called Sodom and Egypt. There are many opinions about what Sodom and Egypt represent, but it’s saying here that all the powers of Earth now witness the bodies of those who lie in the public square of the great city where also the Lord was crucified. We know where that was, but once again, that city had been devastated at this moment. For 3 and ½ days, some from every people, tribe, language, and nation will gaze on their bodies and refuse them burial.
The inhabitants of the Earth will gloat over them and celebrate by sending each other gifts because these two prophets had tormented those who live on the Earth. In other words, the world is so dark that people have been tormented by the testimony of these witnesses. Their truth about who God is is tormenting people. Their message of light is tormenting people; their message of the way is tormenting people; their message of Christ is tormenting people. When they are overpowered and killed, people are sending gifts; they’re sending each other money, or gift certificates for dinners at their favorite restaurants, celebrating across the Earth that the witnesses are dead, and the message is done.
But after 3 and ½ days—going back to the valley of dry bones—the breath of life from God entered them, and they stood on their feet, and terror struck those who saw them. Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, «Come up here.» They went up to heaven in a cloud while their enemies looked on. Sounds similar to Jesus; He’s walking on the Earth. He is in the great city. Jesus is measuring out the church that God wants to birth and create. Jesus was crucified, and people looked at him with scorn, relieved that this man was finally shut up. But the spirit and breath of God entered Him, and He was taken back up into heaven.
These witnesses are now alive, and at that very hour, there was a severe earthquake, and a tenth of the city collapsed. Again, that means that 90% of the city did not collapse. 7,000 people were killed in the earthquake; we don’t know how many were not, but it was way more than 7,000 if a tenth collapsed. The survivors were terrified, and they did what God intended—they gave glory to the God of heaven. So we’re seeing judgment, but we’re still seeing mercy. The second woe has passed, and the third woe is coming soon.
The seventh angel sounded his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven which said, «The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Messiah, and He will reign forever and ever.» The 24 elders who were seated on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying, «We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, the one who is and who was because you have taken your great power and begun to reign. The nations were angry, and your wrath has come; the time has come for judging the dead and for rewarding your servants the prophets and your people who revere your name, both great and small; and the time has come for destroying those who destroy the Earth.» This is what we talked about last week—the reckoning and the reward.
We are not operating on an arbitrary canvas as autonomous individuals who can choose and decide what is glorious and what is good with no consequence. We are in God’s world, designed to work God’s way for God’s glory and for our good. Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and within His temple was seen the Ark of His Covenant. I want you to hang on to that. There came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and a severe hailstorm. The kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Messiah, and He will reign forever and ever.
These two opposing worlds—the kingdom of light and the kingdom of dark, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the enemy—they are colliding even now. But there is a moment in time where everything is overcome by the kingdom of our God and the kingdom of our Lord. It would be amazing if someone wrote a song about that idea; if someone just put that to music, it would be amazing, would it not?
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Here it is. Take it! Amazingly, people stand for that and don’t even know. In the great symphony halls of the West, people stand for that, and they sing the seventh trumpet shout—one of the most recognized pieces of music in the West: «The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He will reign forever and ever.»
One last text, and we’ll close. Hebrews 9—while I was preparing for these chapters, the Lord kept bringing me back to this text. This is the end of Hebrews 9, and it’s talking about Christ being the final sacrifice. It’s talking about the temple we measured; it’s discussing how the priests went in once a year behind the veil to the Ark of the Covenant, which we just saw at the end of the seventh trumpet shout. I see into heaven, and there’s the Ark of the Covenant. We have the Ark of the Covenant described here, but at the end, it says, «Just as people are destined to die once.»
So that helps some people with their presupposition, which is, «Maybe we die a lot of times in life.» No, we just die once. Or «What happens after we die?» I don’t know; I think we just go off into oblivion or that’s the end of our life. We come from dust, and we return to dust. No—after we die, our one time, we face judgment. You say, «I don’t like judgment.» Well, yes, you do; you want everything wrong to be made right. But there’s a comma there. So our message isn’t judgment period; that’s why I don’t like church; I don’t like sermons; I don’t show up to stuff like this. I don’t like judgment; I don’t want a God who judges.
Well, yes, you do, because you want things wrong to be made right for your city, for your nation, for your family, and personally—some business dealing you were a part of and some relational situation that went sideways and a wrong that was done to your loved one or friend. You want that put right—that’s judgment. But I love that our message isn’t judgment period; our message is judgment comma. We are destined to die once. Can I just make it more personal? You are destined to die one time, and after you die, you are going to face the God of the presupposition. He’s the one who created that Christmas tree ornament that is so fragile, hanging out in the black of the universe. He put you on it, gave you the breath of life, and the gift of His Son. You are going to give Him an account for your life, your breath, and His Son.
But it’s not that gloomy when you keep reading: to face judgment. So Christ was sacrificed once—not every year like in the old days—one time to take away the sins of many, and He will appear a second time—not to bear sin but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for Him. Oh, come on, church! If you’re going to clap for something, clap for that! Praise God! This is our message—not this. This is our message.
I want you to see how it started, just really quickly. The first covenant had regulations for worship and also an earthly sanctuary. A tabernacle was set up, and in its first room, there was a lampstand, the table with consecrated bread. This was called the Holy Place. Behind the second curtain was a room called the Most Holy Place, which had the golden altar of incense and the gold-covered Ark of the Covenant. See how all this is making sense now that we’re reading through Revelation? We’re understanding the atmosphere of the presence of God in heaven. This ark contained the gold jar of manna, Aaron’s staff that had budded, and the stone tablets of the covenant. Above the ark were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the atonement cover.
We cannot discuss these things in detail now. Maybe in your translation, it says where it says atonement cover; it uses the proper term we see all through the Old Testament when we see the Ark of the Covenant. What is this atonement cover called, where these cherubim are above the ark? Here is the top where the blood is sprinkled—the sacrificial blood of the lamb, which is a picture of the coming of Christ, sprinkled on the Ark of the Covenant on this atonement cover, which is called the Mercy Seat. Because judgment and mercy are always found close together.
The chapter opens with a picture of the Mercy Seat, and it ends with each of us giving an account for how we have responded to a God who would say, «I’m not going to give you what you deserve; I’m going to give you mercy.» Beware anyone who refuses the mercy of God; the trumpets are going to sound. So the word that we see sometimes, nailed up to a pine tree on the side of a country road, spray-painted on the side of a barn: «Repent!» That’s the word; it means change your mind, your presupposition, so that you can change your life and turn around and go God’s way. Repent. Change your presupposition. That’s what the word literally means in Greek. Change your mind about this so that you can change your life to become His.