Matt Chandler - Army of the Lamb

Well, if you have your Bibles, I would love for you to grab those and open them. I am going to pull out and highlight some things from this passage that I personally found to be edifying, encouraging, and challenging, and I am eager to dive into this. So, we are in our last week of looking at what’s called the interlude in the book of Revelation. If you are just now tuning in, some of this may sound really strange to you. There are a lot of images and meanings behind those images, and we have been swimming through them for the last seven weeks. If this is your first time, some of this might sound odd to you. If you have time, go do the background work on it; otherwise, you will leave here thinking these people believe in dragons and monsters, and that freaks me out a little bit. And we really do believe that, but we don’t think they are actual dragons, just monsters. So, anyway, I might have just confused you even more. Let’s dive into this.

The interlude we have spent the last three weeks on is now in its third week. If you remember, Revelation is not written in chronological order; it is a series of windows. The question you have to ask yourself while reading it is not what happens next, but what does John see next? If you recall, all the way back to week three, we were in the throne room of heaven, asking the question, «Who can open the seal on the scroll?» We found out the answer to that question: it is the slain Lamb, the Lion, who can open the scroll. It is Jesus who can open it. As the scroll was opened, there were these seven trumpets, and at the blast of the seventh trumpet, silence filled the heavens. Do you remember that? If not, I don’t have any more time to elaborate; that’s all I have for you. From there, we enter this interlude. It’s like it pauses there, and Jesus thinks, «Oh, maybe they don’t really get what they’re caught up in, so let me remind them.»

In this interlude, Jesus pulls us into ultimate reality and helps us understand the world, the universe, and the cosmos that we are actually in. At this point, everyone has been brought to light. As we saw in week three, all of creation is pointed toward this throne room. In this throne room, you and I join in what we call convergent space. When the saints of God gather, when we sing, when we rejoice in our salvation, we are actually joining in with what is taking place right now in heaven—not what is going on in the future, but what is occurring right now. Christ is being praised, exalted, and rejoiced over. We see God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

Jesus wanted to make sure we knew that this is not the only Trinity at work here. There is another Trinity that mimics this one. It’s weaker; its version is inferior to the real one. That is the dragon, which the Bible tells us is Satan, along with the two beasts we learned about last weekend. These represent dragon-manipulated political power and dragon-manipulated false religion, both of which attempt to distract us from worshipping the real King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Their sole aim, as we discussed last week, is to divert us from true worship.

The interlude exposes the whole game, revealing what we are in. Now, one thing we haven’t discussed yet is that not only do we have the triune God of the universe—the King of Kings and Lord of Lords—and this mimicking Trinity that tries to rob us of right worship, but you and I are also exposed. Here is what I need you to hear: you’re not neutral. There is a war between the dragon and Jesus, a cosmic struggle playing out on earth. Look at me; I love you, but you are not Sweden. I know you think you are, but to be indifferent is the way of the dragon. This is why I feel like I have spent 20 years with you, trying to shake you awake and let you know that to be indifferent, to be nominal, is to be out of the fight altogether. It is complicity with the dragon. You are not neutral; you are on a side. You are either following the way of the Lamb or the way of the dragon. If you think, «Oh no, I’m really not; I don’t worship the devil,» I think you might believe that worship involves candles and pentagrams. Instead, it often looks like indifference toward the true King of the universe.