5/21 Revelation 11:1-6 The Two Witnesses I: Introduction
5/28 Revelation 11:7-13 The Two Witnesses II: Persecution & Rapture
6/4 Revelation 11:14-19 The Seventh Trumpet
6/11 Revelation 12:1-6 The Woman & the Dragon
6/18 Revelation 12:7-17 Satan Thrown Down to Earth
6/25 Revelation 12:12-17 The Devil’s Rampage
7/2 Revelation 13:1-10 The First Beast
7/9 Jerry Mead
7/16 Ben Price
7/23 Chuck Garriott
7/30 Revelation 13:11-18 The Second Beast
8/6 Revelation 14:1-5 The Lamb & the 144,000
8/13 Revelation 14:6-13 The Three Angels' Messages
8/20 Revelation 14:14-20 The Harvest of the Earth
8/27 Revelation 15:1-8 Seven Angels, Seven Plagues
9/3 Revelation 16:1-11 First Five Bowls of Wrath

9/10 Revelation 16:12-21 The Sixth & Seventh Bowls
9/17 Revelation 17:1-7 The Great Prostitute
9/24 Revelation 17:7-18 The Beast
10/1 Revelation 18:1-19 The Fall of Babylon
10/8 Revelation 18:20-19:5 Rejoicing in Her Fall
10/15 Revelation 19:6-10 The Marriage Supper of the Lamb
10/22 Revelation 19:11-21 The Rider on a White Horse
10/29 Revelation 20:1-6 The Millennium
11/5 Revelation 20:7-10 Satan Defeated
11/12 Revelation 20:11-15 Judgment Before the Throne
11/19 Revelation 21:1-8 New Heavens, New Earth
11/26 Revelation 21:9-14 The New Jerusalem I
12/3 Revelation 21:15-21 The New Jerusalem II
12/10 Revelation 21:22-27 No Temple
12/17 Revelation 22:1-5 River of Life
12/24 Revelation 22:6-13 I Am Coming Soon
12/31 Revelation 22:14-21 Come, Lord Jesus

Basically, her criticism of the show is summed up by the comments of her students, which I found extremely telling:

But when I pressed her and other students on why they all felt the show wasn’t as good as other television they loved, it had little to do with production values or Christians making cheesy art. They all felt like the show wanted something from them. It is not like other shows don’t want to be liked, they said. But the best thing about great shows is that you can disagree about what they mean or debate their merits with others, or love and hate them at the same time. “I can tell this show really, really wants me to like it and it feels like there is something wrong with me if I don’t,” one of them summed up.

According to this way of thinking, classical Christianity can never produce great art because it “wants something from” us and it makes people “feel like there is something wrong with me if I don’t” like its message. Great art, according to this claim, always let’s ME remain on the throne. But something like The Chosen can’t be great art because it asks me to get off the throne and bow to Someone else.

As most of you know, this last Tuesday night, Mary Ann had a miscarriage. I thought it would be helpful and constructive to reflect on the concept of grief with you this morning.

I am not elevating our pain over the pain of others. Many of experienced much more intense grief. For some, grief is virtually an everyday experience. But I thought that in the midst of our grief would be the best time to address the subject of grief in general. I will preach on this topic better now than when the subject is more abstract. And you may also listen better now as well, because you know that for me this is not merely theoretical.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-4 “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: 2 a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; 3 a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; 4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.”

There is a time when it is the right thing to weep, indeed, when it is wrong NOT to weep. The fact is, we live in a cursed world. And it is wrong to forget that. It is wrong to expect to escape from the power of the curse before the great day of resurrection when Christ returns. Grieving and weeping are a part of human life under the curse. It is true that one day all of our tears, and all of our griefs will be gone. But for today, it is wrong to act as if there is no reason for grieving on this earth. Some Christians have what the theologians call an over-realized eschatology: thinking about our lives here on the earth as if the last day has already arrived, as if we are now in paradise. They act as if a Christian is not supposed to ever be sad or grieved if he has enough faith. This is wrong-headed. In the Bible God tells us that there is a time to weep, there is a time to mourn. There is a time when it is not only permitted to grieve, but when it is the right thing to do.

We see this in the example of Jesus when His dear friend Lazarus died in John 11:33-36: “When Jesus saw Mary weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. And he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus wept. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”

The shortest verse in the Bible is right here in John 11:35: "Jesus wept." What a powerful verse! What a comforting verse! What an amazing verse! God the Son, the second person of the Holy Trinity, took upon Himself human nature to the extent that He even wept at the death of one He loved. As God the Son He was the One who had appointed the day for Lazarus to die. And presumably He knew He was going to raise him from the dead in a few minutes. But Jesus let Himself enter into the grief and mourning over this death of His beloved friend Lazarus. He was willing to serve God even by weeping. (Jesus, being who He was, was able to do things we cannot do, like fully and truly grieve even when He knew that Lazarus was to be raised up again.)

What if Jesus had not wept? What if He had remained emotionally detached – no identification with our pain, no suffering like us, no experiencing the agony of the curse upon human life, no feeling what it was like to be a real human being? But because He did weep, we know that “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses.” (Heb.4:15)

What a blessing it is to us that Jesus wept, that He identified with our pain, that He suffered like us, that He experienced the agony of the curse upon human life, that He truly felt what it was like to be human! As Heb.4:15 says, “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses.”

In John 11:1-16 it is clear that Jesus allowed Lazarus to die. It is equally clear from v.5-6 that He allowed Lazarus to die because of His love for Lazarus and others. Though Mary and Martha didn’t realize it at the time, it was actually a great blessing to them (and to us) that their loved one died. Otherwise, we would be deprived of this fabulous demonstration of the tender compassion of our Lord, who wept in love over the death of His friend. We would also have been deprived of this fabulous demonstration of the Lord’s resurrection power over the curse and death. Would they really have preferred it any other way? Would they really have preferred that Lazarus not get sick and die? I don’t think so. The death of their brother helped them in so many ways. And it helps us too – to deal with the deaths of OUR loved ones. And it gives us permission to weep.

In the days of the Bible, there was a period of grieving set aside when a person died. The friends and relatives gathered for a few days or even weeks devoted to mourning over the one who had passed away. They would weep and wail for a certain period of time and then they would get up and go home. There is some real wisdom in this. It is good to reflect on and consider and think about and receive and accept the hand that God has dealt you. It is often good when something like this happens to set aside some blocks of time: for special prayer and solitude and meditation, and to do some fasting. It is a good time to read and reflect on Psalms which call out to God in the midst of grief.

Some might wonder why we would grieve when we have seven other children? Our grief is not because we are so eager to have more kids. Nor is it because of the physical trauma and discomfort involved in a miscarriage. Our grief is because our child died, although we had never met or seen him/her. He/she was still our child. Seven children may sound like a lot, but suddenly to us, it sounds like one too few.

But there is another time the Bible tells us to weep besides when something grievous happens to us. It is when something grievous happens to another one of the Lord's people. We are told in the Scriptures to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice (Romans 12:15). It is our obligation. “If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.” (1Corinthians 12:26) And we are deeply grateful for our brothers and sisters who grieve with us.

Is there any hope in a loss like this? Is there anything but despair for us in a time like this? We trust in God's sovereignty. "The Lord gives and the Lord takes away" (Job 1:21). But we are not left to find rest merely in God's sovereignty. We also trust in God's goodness. And not just in the confidence that God is going to bring good out of this as He does in all things. We have real hope from an eternal perspective. In Jesus, there is an answer to death! There is victory over death! The story of Jesus Christ did not end at the cross! Christ has overcome death by His resurrection! And if Christ is not raised then we have no hope, no hope at all (1Cor.15:14-19). All is vanity! “But in fact Christ HAS been raised from the dead!” 1Corinthians 15:20.

I've read to you before the words that I love so much from the second verse of the song Because He Lives (William J. Gaither): “How sweet to hold a newborn baby, and feel the pride and joy he gives, but greater still the calm assurance this child can face uncertain days because He lives.” In light of our present circumstance, let me reword this: How sad to lose an unborn baby, to miss the love and joy he would have given, but even still we have assurance: this child can face the curse of death because He lives. "Because He lives, I can face tomorrow."

For some, the question still lingers: Why did God do this? (and not just to us) What good is there in a miscarriage? or a premature death? Though the Bible doesn’t answer this question specifically, it does give us reasons why God allows suffering: to reveal His comfort (How could He reveal it unless He allowed us to suffer?), to teach us to comfort others (2Cor.1:3-5), to teach us to trust in Him (2Cor.1:8-9), to help us appreciate what we have. Is God really willing to let a person die in order to teach us to be thankful? Yes. What is wrong with God ordaining a person's existence and sending him to earth for a very short time to fulfill a very short but significant mission like teaching us gratitude, like helping us to face our own mortality, like reminding us of the curse (how our hope is not here in this world), like cementing our marriage bond. Woe to us if we do not benefit from hard things like this. What a tragedy to waste a person's whole earthly life by neglect and default. This is why it is right and good to spend time pondering what the Lord is teaching us in these things.

So, although we are sad for ourselves that we will miss the joy of this little life, we are not bitter: “We are afflicted, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; struck down, but not destroyed.” 2Cor.4:8-9 There is good in all things because God ordains all things, and in the end all things will be reconciled in Jesus, even believing parents with their departed children.

It’s not that I didn’t have good teeth to begin with. I was the only one in my family who didn’t require braces; I had plenty of room for all four wisdom teeth; and until my fateful experiment, I had a perfect no-cavity record. That one irresponsible year did me in.

In my opinion, our planet is suffering today from the same exploitative spirit which ruined my teeth. We were given a great treasure, but instead of taking care of it, we indulged ourselves without limit, with little regard to the consequences. But neither our teeth nor our planet can be enjoyed long-term with complete freedom. It may be that for a long time the consequences are not obvious, but eventually our exploitation comes back to haunt us. As the Bible says, “You reap what you sow” (Galatians 6:7). It’s easy to blame it on prior generations, but this is a human problem, a characteristic of us all.

I think we’re doing the same thing when it comes to sex, when as a society we demand complete freedom to do whatever is in our hearts to do. Like our planet, sex is a precious treasure we’ve been given by God. But we’ve got to enjoy this great gift within the limits of its design. It is not designed to be exploited without restraint. And when we insist on sexual freedom, not only will we destroy sex, but we will destroy ourselves in the process. There are so many ways this exploitation and insistence on complete freedom has already begun to wreak havoc upon us. And yet, there are many deniers of this who, similar to their environment-exploiting counterparts, seem to prefer riding the bandwagon of sexual freedom to the disintegration of the family, the disintegration of society, the disintegration of the future, and the disintegration of their own souls rather than yield to the limitations lovingly imposed upon us by our all-wise and all-good Creator.

Ultimately, of course, my hope is not in mankind, or else all of this would be very discouraging. The great thing is that God’s grace is greater than human corruption! And His power to heal is greater than our power to destroy! Not only this, but in Christ He has provided a way that people like you and me can be forgiven for all our misdeeds: dental, environmental, sexual and otherwise.

I would like to tell you how I think. And I think it would be wise to pay attention because a lot of people think like me.

I think it is good to be open-minded. For instance, when two people have different memories about what happened, as my wife and I often do, I have learned that it is good to be open-minded – because sometimes my memory does not serve me correctly. When another person is offended by something I say, I feel an inner impulse to defend myself, but it is far better to be open-minded. It is good to be open-minded about all sorts of things: food, culture, music, beauty, even history (what we were taught might not be true).

But is it not obvious that in certain circumstances open-mindedness is bad? Think about it. Do we want little children to be open-minded when a stranger in a car pulls up to offer them candy and a ride home? Is it good for teenagers to be open-minded when their peers offer them heroin? And is it not bad if a person is open-minded when someone is trying to convince them to join ISIS or the KKK? We should all be able to agree that sometimes open-mindedness is dangerous and foolish.

So, I would suggest that as a society the location of our disagreement is actually not whether we are for open-mindedness or against it. The disagreement is over what we are open-minded about and what we are not open-minded about.

We all have convictions we are not open-minded about, convictions we indeed do not want to be open-minded about. For instance, it is not good to be open-minded if someone wants to persuade us that it is a good thing to get pleasure from another person’s pain.

I grew up in a self-consciously open-minded environment, so I understand the concern about being entrenched in harmful, old-fashioned ideas. I could not agree more that it can be deadly to be set in your ways, to believe something just because you have always believed it, or just because your parents believed it. Some convictions are just plain wrong, even if people have built their lives on that conviction or based their whole identity on that conviction. Obvious examples of this kind of conviction are racial superiority, chauvinism and the convictions which are rampant in mafia families (and I don’t mean criminal convictions).

Perhaps partly as a result of this, I once had a seemingly unshakable conviction that no God exists. I saw belief in God as a destructive force, not a constructive one. Fortunately, God did not respect my opinion on the matter and did not wait for me to become open-minded. Without invitation, He crashed into my life and introduced Himself to me. Since December 6, 1970, His reality has been as fixed in me as the existence of the world around me. But this God does not only exist, He speaks. And so I began a life-long journey in God’s book.

Open-mindedness is very important in studying the Bible. You have to be willing to set aside your pre-conceived notions. You have to be willing to listen to things you don’t want to hear. You have to be open to new understandings and interpretations, and to seeing things you have never seen before. You have to be willing to disregard what the world around you thinks. You have to be willing to disregard your own preferences and what seems good to you. You have to be completely open-minded to God speaking in His word. But this open-mindedness which I seek to practice excludes another kind of open-mindedness. It excludes being open-minded to the possibility that God is not who the Bible says He is. It excludes being open-minded to the possibility that the Bible is not God’s word. It excludes being open-minded to the possibility that the Bible is wrong.

Some disagree with my convictions. I understand that; I once did myself. We will just have to agree to disagree. And I know it is inevitable that some are going to think my unwillingness to be open-minded about these things is mindless adherence to destructive, old-fashioned ideas – though for me these are radical, new ideas I didn’t grow up with. I don’t mind that – because but for the grace of God that would be me. Jesus said that most people will follow the wide and easy path which leads to death, not the narrow and difficult path which leads to life (Matthew 7:13-14).

All I ask of those who come to this conclusion about me (and others like me) is that they admit that they also have things which they are just as unwilling to be open-minded about. Folks can laugh at me for believing in the Bible’s God; they can snarl at me for adhering to the Bible’s morality instead of accepting modern morality. But if so, let them be honest enough to admit that they are close-minded toward the claims of the Bible. It is hypocritical to ridicule us for being dogmatic when they are just as dogmatic about what they believe. No one can be open-minded about everything. We each act according to how we see things. Folks can think I am blind. I may think they are blind. People may think I am not open-minded. That’s OK. I probably would think the same thing about them.

Say you had a time machine and could go back and live in any time in history. Where would YOU go? Whatever time you go back to (with the exception of the garden of Eden before the fall), I can tell you one thing you’ll find: you will find people saying, “The old days were better than these.” If we could listen in to conversations from thousands of years ago, you know what we would hear? We would hear them talking about the good old days and how much better they were.

The fact is, the world changes. Ps.102:25-27 talks about how the creation is like clothing which God changes, while He remains the same. So, everything else changes; God stays the same.

A lot of times we don’t like things changing. We often get attached to a specific time and wish it could always be so.

Even in the Bible we find the people of God looking back longingly on the days of the past.
• Psalm 44:1-3 O God, we have heard with our ears, our fathers have told us, what deeds you performed in their days, in the days of old: you with your own hand drove out the nations, but them you planted; you afflicted the peoples, but them you set free; for not by their own sword did they win the land, nor did their own arm save them, but your right hand and your arm, and the light of your face, for you delighted in them.
• Judges 6:13 And Gideon said to him, “Please, sir, if the LORD is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us, saying, ‘Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the LORD has forsaken us and given us into the hand of Midian.”

There is certainly an appropriate time to ponder the past. Repentance involves this. Learning lessons from our experiences involves this (e.g. Deut.8:2-5, 11-16). Testimonies of God’s faithfulness involve this (e.g. Ps.78:3-4). Sometimes petitioning God involves this (e.g. Psalm 68:28). Remembering the past is an important discipline. God wants us to remember what He has done. He wants us to remember our mistakes so we don’t repeat them.

And yet, Ecclesiastes 7:10 makes it clear that it is tempting to have an unhealthy bond with the past. In other words, nostalgia can be a sin. Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles in Babylon in Jeremiah 29 is a good example of this. The Jews in Babylon were having this problem of not being able to move on in the place God had placed them because of their fond memories of the past. The bitterness of these exiles can be seen in Psalm 137:1-6 “By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our lyres. For there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors, mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ How shall we sing the LORD’s song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill! Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy!”

And so God spoke to them through a letter of Jeremiah in 29:4–7 “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”

This is the context in which, a few verses later, God says the famous words of Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” In other words, when we are not content with our lives as they are, when we don’t like where we are or what’s happening around us or who we’re with, God says to us, “Trust Me. I have plans for you here, good plans, plans for your welfare and not for your harm, plans to lead into a good and hopeful future.”

“At the set time that I appoint I will judge with equity. When the earth totters, and all its inhabitants, it is I who keep steady its pillars.” – Psalm 75:2–3 

The greatest way to harm the environment is to rebel against the God who created it.

First, we must pay close attention to what the survey actually measures. It does not measure the percentage of Christians in America, only the percentage who CALL THEMSELVES Christians. The survey does not define what a Christian is; it leaves that up to the responders.

So, what IS a Christian? The answer to that question depends on who you are. From a sociological perspective, ‘Christian’ may refer to all those who consider themselves Christians, who claim to adhere to the tenets of Christianity. But that is not what Bible-believing Christians say a Christian is according to the Bible. They make the point that the Bible talks a lot about false Christians. If this is true, it means that, according to the Bible, a Christian is not just anyone who claims to be one.

But why would people claim to be Christians who are not? There are lots of reasons. They might be trying to please their family or faith community, or trying to feel eternally safe, or associating themselves with the most loving people they have ever known. They might not have any idea what a true Christian really is. But one thing is undeniable. Overall, it is getting less and less socially beneficial to be a Christian in America. So, it makes sense that less and less people are pretending.

This means that it is entirely possible that the percentage of true Christians in America is not decreasing, but that the survey results are just getting more accurate, because less and less people are falsely calling themselves Christian. If less people are pretending to be Christians than before, then that is not bad news for Christianity in America.

False Christians may warm the pews of churches, they may even add to their finances. However, in the end they do the church more harm than good. Like my fat (I am trying to lose weight), they add dead weight while compromising the health of the body. They likely do most of the complaining, most of the squabbling over trivial matters, most of the gossiping, most of the self-righteous judging. They likely contribute majorly to the church’s preoccupation with buildings instead of souls, with entertainment instead of worship, and with the church’s hypocrisy. The fewer false Christians there are, the better; everyone should be able to agree with that.

Another factor which is signoficant to this has to do with history. About 100 years ago, most of the mainline denominations in America began to abandon the faith of their fathers, rejecting the Bible as the authoritative word of God, along with many classic beliefs of the Christian faith. Since then, many smaller Bible-believing denominations have formed as well as many independent Bible-believing churches. As the Bible-believing churches have flourished, the increasingly Bible-denying mainline churches have lost members dramatically. As the children of these churches have grown up, many of them have left the church altogether. Over the last 50 years, by and large, it is the mainline denominations which have shrunk.

But what if the percentage of true Christians in America really is declining, which it might well be? Well, while the faith is shriveling in one part of the world, it may be thriving in another. While more and more Americans grow publically antagonistic to Christ (which is indeed sad), there are others around the world who are welcoming Him in unprecedented ways. Muslims are embracing Him in record numbers. So many folks in Iran have been becoming Christians that the president of Iran has been publically complaining about it. Christianity has spread so much in Africa and Asia that those regions have supplanted the west as the center of the Christian faith in the world. In spite of the strenuous efforts of the world’s most powerful government, the church in China has grown so much that there are now considerably more Christians in China than there have ever been in the USA. Internationally-speaking, Christianity is doing better than at any other point in history.

Even if this is not true, however, even if (as many hope) we are in the beginning stages of a massive decline of Christianity in the world, this does not mean that Christianity is close to its death. If you look at church history, you will see that the Christian faith has always experienced ebbs and flows. It has gone through very dark times and come back again. This pattern can even be seen in the Bible; it is one of the main themes of the book of Judges, for instance. God allows this, partly to teach His people to walk by faith, not by sight.

You see, true Christians believe that Jesus really is who He said He was in Revelation 1:8, namely: “the One who was, who is, and who is to come.” Now most everybody agrees that Jesus WAS — 2000 years ago. But true Christians believe that He also IS — in other words, that He is alive today, more real than you and me, building His church, able to be personally known though He is hidden from our eyes (Colossians 3:3). And they also believe that He WILL BE; that He will come again at the end of history to judge and to recreate the heavens and the earth. However silly that may sound to the modern ear, anyone should be able to understand why this makes it hard for true believers to take the “Christianity is dead!” declarations seriously.

In fact, the Scriptures themselves talk about this kind of premature triumphalism over the Bible’s God. In Psalm 2:1-3, the world’s elite are found plotting to escape from and overthrow God and His Messiah:

Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against his Anointed {Hebrew: MESSIAH}, saying, “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.”

What is God’s response to this human defiance? Is He afraid? Is He in a panic in the face of such unpopularity? Not at all. “He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision” (v.4). It goes on to tell us that God will give the nations of the earth as an inheritance to His Son, who will “break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces” like a pot (v.5-9).

God does not need human assistance for His church to thrive. In Luke 19:40, when the Pharisees complained to Jesus about all the loud noise people were making to celebrate His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, He answered: “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.” As He did in Nineveh in the days of Jonah, God could make all America worship Him in an instant, if He so willed.

I know this power personally. I grew up as a militant atheist. I despised everything religious. Then God showed up in my life, and suddenly He was as undeniable as my own existence.

Those who oppose Christ can hope all they want, they can even celebrate what they perceive as His demise. Some folks in the first century did that when He died on the cross, and it did not turn out well for them.

As a pastor, I know well the lust for worldly success and recognition. I so want my church to grow and prosper that it is hard to be content without it. It is an idol I struggle with constantly. But even as my sinful heart yearns for a feeling of accomplishment, and for human approval, my Lord keeps entreating me, “Feed My sheep. Care for My little lambs.” (John 21:15-17) And so I do. I wait for Him and I seek to serve His people well, without growing weary. I believe God’s promise that “in due season we will reap, if we do not give up” (Galatians 6:9).