Let's pray. Great God, in heaven, we ask for your help as we come to your word. Give us ears to hear, minds to understand, hearts to believe, and wills to obey. In Christ we pray, amen. The book of Revelation is structured around a series of sedans. In chapter 1, we're introduced to seven stars, and seven lamp stands, which lead us into Revelation 2 and 3, which are letters to seven churches, and then we see the one who is seated on the throne, in the Lamb, before them, the seven spirits of God, and that leads to the question who is worthy to open the scroll and to break its seven seals, and so we've been looking in chapter 6, and interlude in chapter 7, and in chapter 8, and one by one the breaking of the seven seals, which now this morning are leading right into the sounding of seven trumpets, and then a few weeks from now the seven bowls. So the bulk of Revelation is turning through these cycles of seven, seven seals, seven trumpets, seven bowls, and as you've heard me say many times, this is the same basic story looked at from different camera angles, or it's the same musical melody or theme played again and again, but with a different variation, something different is happening even though it's the same basic scene, that's what we find. So the seals, the trumpets and the bowls, are really signifying the same kinds of things, but those are not used simply interchangeably, they each speak to something. So the seals are on a scroll, because as each seal is broken it's like the revealing of God's plan for the world. Seven trumpets, they're because each trumpet blast is to issue a warning that God is coming in judgment, and then the seven bowls because they will pour out the plagues of God's wrath. This morning we come to the seven trumpets, we're going to look at trumpets one through five, the first four go together, and then the next three go together, and we'll look at just the first of those, the fifth trumpet, and the old testament, a trumpet which of course was not a brass instrument like this, but probably a shofar, some kind of ram's horn. The sounding of the trumpet could signal any number of things, it could be the enthronement of the king, the gathering of God's people, a summon for battle, a warning of an enemy, a signal to repents, but it's really this warning element that is here, that God is arriving and with God His judgments upon His people in parts, but much more so upon the wicked. As we'll see, just like with the seals, some of what's happening here is going to affect everyone good and bad, and then there are some aspects that are really a particular judgment upon the wicked and the unbelieving. So follow along as I read, hopefully you're there, the last book in the Bible, Revelation, chapter eight, the middle of this chapter, beginning at verse six. Now the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared to blow them, the first angel blew His trumpets, and there followed hail and fire mixed with blood, and these were thrown upon the earth, and a third of the earth was burned up, and a third of the trees were burned up, and all green grass was burned up. The second angel blew His trumpet, and something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea, and a third of the sea became blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed. The third angel blew His trumpet, and a great star fell from heaven. Belazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers, in the springs of water, the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became Wormwood, and many people died from the water because it had been made bitter. The fourth angel blew 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 their light might be darkened, and a third of the day might be kept from shining, and likewise a third of the night. Then I looked, and I heard an eagle, crying with a loud voice as it flew directly overhead. Whoa, whoa, whoa to those who dwell on the earth, at the blast of the other trumpets, that the three angels are about to blow. And the fifth angel blew His trumpet, and I saw a star falling from heaven to earth, and He was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit. He opened the shaft of the bottomless pit, and from the shaft rose smoke, like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke from the shaft, and from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given power, like the power of scorpions of the earth. They were told not to harm the grass of the earth, or any green plants, or any tree, but only those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. They were allowed to torment them for five months, but not to kill them. And their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings someone, and in those days people will seek death, and will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them. In appearance, the locusts were like horses prepared for battle. On their heads were what looked like crowns of gold, their faces were like human faces, their hair like women's hair, and their teeth like lion's teeth. They had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the noise of their wings was like the noise of many chariots with horses rushing into battle. They have tails and stings like scorpions, and their power to hurt people for five months is in their tails. They have as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit. His name in Hebrew is Abadon, and in Greek he is called Apollion. The first woe has passed, the hold two woes are still to come. The sermon is entitled Doom and Gloom. There is much frightening visions of doom and gloom. Both the seals and the trumpets are grouped into four and then three. You recall the first four seals were a unit, the four horsemen of the apocalypse, so called, and in the sixth and the seventh were their own kind of unit. The martyrs pray beneath the altar and the fifth seal, and then their prayers are answered in the sixth and the seventh seals, so there is four and then three. Likewise, the first four trumpets form a unit, which as we'll see in just a moment are reminiscent of the plagues of Egypt, and in the fifth the sixth and the seventh form a unit, three woes, and we'll just look at the first of those this morning. Both the seals and the trumpets rely heavily on Old Testament imagery. The four horsemen, if you were here, you may recall they are drawn from the prophet Zachariah and then these first four trumpets are drawn from the ten plagues in Egypt. So let's look first at these first four trumpets, and what we'll see with each of these trumpet judgments, there's an Old Testament counterpart, there's a possible natural explanation and then there is a more likely spiritual or metaphorical explanation. So let's just quickly move through these first four trumpets. So trumpet number one, you can look there, beginning at verse 7, this is the judgment of hail and fire. So here's the Old Testament counterpart, the seventh plague from Exodus 9. So the Lord reigned hail on the land of Egypt, hail fell and lightning flashed back and forth. It was the worst storm in all the land of Egypt since it had become a nation. So this is an obvious illusion to that plague which befell Egypt. You know, you could try to make, as some commentators do, a natural explanation for each of these trumpets so that hail is going to fall with some sort of tannic lismic thunder storm or perhaps fire is a reference to a real human army which would often burn cities with fire so that this hail falls and then fire falls and it affects a part of the vegetation. You see a third of the earth was burned up a third of the trees in all of the green grass. So it's possible that we're meant to think, well, this is literally going to happen. But I think a more likely explanation is that this is spiritual, more than physical in nature. So hail, destroying vegetation is a metaphor for what's the result of that famine. Trees and grass are burnt up. So this is similar to the Four Horsemen where one of them was scarcity. This is a picture of what happens especially in the ancient world, in the Grarian society, when grass and trees and vegetation are being destroyed and burnt up, you are going to have scarcity in famine. Trumpet number two. Look at verse eight, a mountain is thrown into the sea which turns to blood. Again, there's an Old Testament counterpart. Think of the first plague of Egypt, Exodus 7. Moses raised his staff in the presence of Pharaoh and his officials and struck the water of the Nile. And all the water was changed into blood. The fish in the Nile died, the river smelled so bad the Egyptians could not drink. Its water blood was everywhere in Egypt. Now, the natural explanation, there was a dramatic, massive volcanic eruption in 79 Mount Vesuvius, which covered Pompeii. You remember that trivia question from your history class. So maybe John is seeing a vision of some volcanic eruption on the earth. And maybe that's the picture they had in mind. But again, I think a spiritual metaphorical meaning is more to the point that the great mountain thrown into the sea is common apocalyptic language for a kingdom being thrown down. Revelation 18, a mighty angel picked up a boulder the size of a large millstone through it into the sea, with such violence, the great city of Babylon will be thrown down. So mountains being thrown into the sea, mountains representing strength and dominion. This is likely a picture of earthly kingdoms being cast down. Jeremiah 51. I am against you, O destroying mountain, you who destroy the whole earth. So the second trumpet is a picture of God judging the kingdoms of the earth so that, again, notice partial. Why do we have these thirds? It's not to present to you your enemy fractions, but to say the judgment is not total. This is not the end. This is partial. So it's a third. So we've moved from a plague upon the earth to now being thrown into the sea so that the sea creatures and the ships are destroyed. The third trumpet is a fallen star and bitter water. Again, the Old Testament counterpart, you might think of the first plague when the water turns a blood and they're unable to drink it, or even the bitter water at Mara in the Exodus in chapter 15. They need to make the water suitable to drink. So again, maybe there's a natural explanation that this is for telling, water becoming polluted and poisonous. To drink, wormwood is a bitter herb that can make water deadly if you drink enough of it. But even more than that, I think there's a spiritual explanation. That because of these judgments on the earth, people will experience the bitterness of suffering. The prophets sometimes speak of the wormwood and the gall that phrase actually is in one of our hymns. The wormwood and the gall to speak to the bitter experience of human suffering. And then the fourth trumpet, look at verse 12. So we've had a trumpet that affects the earth and in the sea and in the sky and now the firmament in the heavens. Darkness. The Old Testament counterpart is obvious, Exodus 10, then the Lord said, the Moses stretch out your hand for the sky so that darkness will spread over Egypt, darkness that can be felt. And maybe in real time they experience this kind of darkness, a dark forevoting storm, or sometimes when the battle would be so fierce and there would be siege works laid against and fire smoldering that the smoke would cover the sky and it would be as if the sky itself became dark and the sun and the moon and the stars were blotted out. But once again, I think the imagery is mainly to talk about our spiritual darkness. Spiritual blindness, people deluded, led astray. There's a Jewish book called The Wisdom of Solomon which makes this connection, it says, for when lawless people, supposed that they held the holy nation in their power, they themselves lay as captives of darkness and prisoners of long night, shots under their roofs, exiles from eternal providence. Did you catch the irony saying that when the enemies of God's people thought that they had them kept this? So think about Egypt, this Jewish source is saying you know who the real captives were? You know who the real people in bondage were? It wasn't Israel. They were in physical bondage, but the real slaves, the real people in prison were the Egyptians because they were enslaved in their own sin and they were exiles from God's eternal providence, groping around, blinded by idolatry, their hearts hardened against the Lord. So these first four trumpet blasts are meant to tell us something. Two things, one, notice as God judges the earth, he's executing a pattern of de-creation. Each trumpet affects a third of three parts of the created order. First trumpet affects the third of the earth, third of the trees, third of the grass, both as all the green grass was burned up, the third of the rest, the seventh, second affects the third of the sea, the living creatures, the shifts, the third, third of the rivers, the springs, the waters, the fourth, third of the sun, the moon, the stars, there's an obvious pattern. It's a pattern of continuing de-creation, just like when Noah's flood. You can compare Noah's flood in Genesis 6.79 with creation in chapters one and two, and creation is being unraveled in the flood. Everything that God did to create the world and to separate the waters, there in Noah's flood, he's opening the restraining gates so that the flood from a below and the floods from above, it's the de-creation of God's cosmos. So we see the same thing here. God, in the beginning, created the sea, living creatures, vegetation. And now, suffering under the curse, he's de-creating the natural world. Vegetation, creatures, sea, land, sky, he's making his way for a final re-creation. So what we see, and again, I think the argument here, with the four horsemen and the first four seals, similar to the four trumpet judgments, these are judgments that we should not expect just to be sometime in the future, but have been working themselves out all throughout history, that we see these kinds of judgments on the earth, that the world, in other words, is under a curse, and is so often in rebellion against God. So the first thing we see with these first four trumpets is God judging the earth in a pattern of de-creation. The second thing to note is that with each trumpet blast, the Lord is proclaiming his victory, and he is issuing a warning to traders on the earth that they might repent. So this is the point of when you have in Revelation judgments like this that are limited. Sometimes the duration is limited, sometimes the span of time is limited. Here it's in thirds. Why? A third of the trees and the waters, etc. It's not a literal percentage that you could go off and you could 33.3 repeating. It's a way of showing this is not all of God's wrath. These judgments, which affect the world from the first century to the final century, are warning blasts so that each trumpet is a way of proclaiming, like a herald might, hear ye, hear ye. King Jesus is coming. Repents for the time is near. It's one of the explanations for suffering on the earth. There's lots of ways and lots of things you would want to say about the problem of evil and suffering, but here's one of. One part of the explanation is that each occasion of judgment and suffering is at the same time an offer of clemency, just like the tower of siloam cell in Jesus' day and the people said, well, why did that fall? Was it because they were wicked? And Jesus says, no, it doesn't always work like that. You can't just draw a straight line from, well, the tower fell on them. They must have been worse than other people. Doesn't work like that. But Jesus says, you should repent or you likewise will perish. Every instance of suffering, every act of temporal and partial judgments is an opportunity to repent and give God glory before worse calamities come. You say, well, I don't know. This is this is medieval or this is puritanical fire in Brimstone. Well, actually fire in Brimstone are in the Bible. That's what we just read here. This is not the invention of some grotesque medieval imagination or some nasty peritons. It's right here, a warning of worst judgment to come. We'll look at chapter 9. So there are four trumpets and then three. We're going to look at just the fifth, so the first of the third. Revelation 4, the four living creatures never stop saying. Think about Revelation 4, what do they cry out? Holy, holy, holy, the trice haggion, the threefold holy, Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus. Well, look at verse 13 at the end of chapter 8. This is the diabolical reverse. Instead of all of God's people, the four living creatures, it's 24 elders, crying out, holy, holy, holy. An eagle is heard with a loud voice, crying out, doom, doom, doom. It's the anti-gospel, bad news. You see, woe to those who dwell on the earth, or the inhabitants of the earth. This is a technical phrase in Revelation. Don't miss this. The inhabitants of the earth, that phrase occurs. I'll let you guess, get the number in your mind, how many times this might occur? It occurs seven times, and it always refers to the ungodly and the idolatrous. So the first four, like the four horsemen, go out and they affect the earth and the people are going to suffer as a result. But now these affect the inhabitants of the earth, the ungodly, the idolatrous. If the saints, true and everlasting, home is in heaven, the wicked and the unbelieving have earth as their dwelling place. So unlike the other four judgments, these three woes are specifically for the wicked. That's why the fifth seal, back to the seals, unveiled the martyrs. They were killed because of the people on the earth doing evil, and then who can withstand the six and seven seal, it's the 144,000, the great multitude. So notice too, the Lord's judgment has turned particularly to people. Now with the first four trumpets, I spoke of people suffering, but you'll notice actually, doesn't mention people, it mentions the cosmos. Talks about rivers and trees and mountains and light and land and stars and ships by implication people are going to suffer. But now it's not just the environments or the natural resources of the earth, but directly the evil and idolatrous people. Look at chapter 9, verse 1. Fifth angel, blue is trumpet, and I saw a star. And we already saw with the third angel in verse 10, a great star fell from heaven in the name of the star, and it's capitalized there in the ESV, is wormwood. Here we have again a prophecy of a star falling from heaven to earth, and this fallen star is given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit. This fallen star is almost certainly a reference to a fallen angel. The stars are like a fallen angel. Isaiah 14 depicts Satan as one fallen from heaven, Ezekiel 28. Talks about the king of tire, and he's likened to one who was in the garden of Eden, a guardian cherub. Many scholars think that's a reference to Satan there, who in rebellion in pride was then cast down. Second Peter 2, 4, Jude 6 speaks of prior to humans on the earth, some kind of angelic rebellion. So at some point in time, the angels, presumably led by this one angel, rebelled against God's authority, and were cast down. Think too, perhaps you remember, a story in the Gospels. Jesus sends out the 72 disciples, some accounts, the 70 disciples, and they go out and declare to the towns and villages, the kingdom of God is at hand. They heal the sick, they preach the Word, they cast out demons, they perform miracles, and when they return, Luke's Gospel reports that Jesus, they say to Jesus, Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name to which Jesus replies, Luke 10-18, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Jesus says, when you were casting out demons in my name, it was as if Satan was falling like lightning from heaven. As you announced the kingdom administered in my name, I saw the devil being defeated. John 12-31, Jesus is now as the time for judgment on this world. Now the Prince of this world will be driven out. John 16-11 at the cross, the Prince of this world now stands condemned. This is a key point that is going to shape how we understand several key passages in the book of Revelation. So I belabor this point to show from Jesus' own list. He understood that provisionally when the disciples cast out demons, it was like Satan falling from the sky, and then ultimately his death on the cross was that almost but not quite final death blow to Satan. So in the ministry and life and death and resurrection and ascension of Christ, there has been dealt a sentence which will result in the final destruction of the devil. That has already happened. And Jesus describes that defeat of the devil as I saw Satan fall like lightning. So I think, as many other commentators do, going back to Revelation 9, the star falling from heaven is Satan, the devil, Lucifer. Is this fallen angel not only who fell in some rebellion long ago, not just fallen but it's fallen. He has power as we'll see in a moment, but it is a granted power. Notice this passive language he was given, scholars call this a divine passive when we have this language, it was given, or he was given. This authority that the devil has on the earth is an authority that God allows him to grant. So do not ever think that it's sort of the devil and then God and they're almost equal foes. The devil only operates at God's sovereign allowance. He is given a key to the shaft of the bottomless pit. This authority that the fallen star, who I think is the devil, wheels on the earth is a granted authority. It is power that the slain lamb of God grants to him for a time, which is why it says for five months, kind of weird, why five months. Again, it's a way of saying it's limited. There is no real contest between Christ and Satan, of course there is, but there's no real contest where the outcome is endowed. The picture we have here with the fifth trumpet is of a granted authority that yet the devil is allowed to wreak great havoc on the earth. Now you may say here, now wait a minute, aren't we taught to pray in the Lord's Prayer, lead us not into temptation, deliver us from the evil one. I thought we're praying that God would deliver us from the evil one, but here you're saying that he's granted the devil to have some power on the earth. Well, which is it? I want you to notice very carefully the work of the devil in this passage is not against God's people. It is against the devil's own people. He opened the shaft, verse two, of the bottomless pit. This smoke comes out. They were told, verse four, not to harm the grass. Parenthesis here, here's another reason why we are meant to take revelation as an apocalyptic literature, and we're not meant to read it overly literally, because remember what we saw already with the first trumpet? All the green grass was burned up, but what happened? Some scholars have to go to amazing lengths to say, well, through a miraculous thing, all the grass grew again. So now I guess they don't touch the grass. It's not a literal picture. These are symbols of things that are happening. So go back to chapter 9, verse four. They were told not to harm the grass or any green plant, but only those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. Now we've seen that already. The 144,000, God's people who are sealed. It's another reason for understanding that 144,000 are not a literal Jewish remnant, but our God's people, because there's two categories. Those who are sealed belong to God and those who don't have the seal. Later in Revelation, we'll see they have the seal of the beast. So the people who are afflicted in this first world are the devil's own people. Don't miss this diabolical irony, tragedy. Those who are sealed belong to God. Those who do not have the seal are said elsewhere to be worshippers of the beast, followers of the devil, and yet whom does the devil harm? Those who don't have the seal of God, which is to say his own followers. We'll come back to this in just a moment, explain what I think this means, but don't miss this tragic irony. Bondage to God is the only freedom, and freedom from God is the worst slavery. Listen, Satan is not your friend. The devil is not on your side. He makes promises to us. He would love to lead astray the elect if it were possible. He does not want what is best for his followers. You do not want to bargain with the devil. He knows the plans he has for you, plans to harm you, not to prosper you, to give you no hope and no future. And the lie he tells you is that you know where the real freedom is? Leave this God behind with all of his commands, with his authority, with his will. Follow me and all will be well. The last thing you want God to do in your life is to give the devil power to do with you what he wants to do because he is not your friend. Look at verse 5, they were allowed this demonic army to torment them for five months. So it's not the end. That's what five months means, but not to kill them. The torment is so bad. Verse 6, people will seek death. They will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them. This is a picture of total despair. It's a picture of what being tormented by the devil is like. So John's vision draws from Joel 2, which is a locust invasion, and also from the eighth plague in Exodus, which is a locust plague. So it would have been very familiar. It seems strange to us, but in the ancient world what's one of the worst things that can happen is a plague of millions of locusts come into power your harvest. It would seem to you like a conquering army was coming your way, and there was nothing you could do. There's no pesticides, there's no swords, there's no walls, when the locusts come that famine and death and disaster is upon you. So verses 7 through 11, we're not meant to go through and say, well what are the lion's teeth pertain to and what is the breastplate and the worrying? These are like helicopters. It's some vision of helicopters. No, you're just supposed to have a terrifying picture where this demonic army is like a locust invasion grotesque with soldiers, armor, and faces of men and hair of women. It's an apocalyptic vision. So here's the big question with this first woe. We see there's torments and it's likened to a locust and it's an army and it's a scorpion with a tail and a sting. What actually is the torments? What is the punishment? That Satan is allowed to inflict on those who do not belong to Christ. What can Satan do to non-Christians that he can't do to Christians? What's the torment? It's not cancer. Christians get cancer. It's not car accidents. Christians get into car accidents. It's not political upheaval or famine. Those things fall on Christians as well. It's not even death. We saw in the fifth seal. Those who are martyred because of the testimony of Christ. So what earthly torments do unbelievers face that Christians don't or at least that Christians should not face? Here's what I think is the answer and we'll see it in the weeks ahead in Revelation. The answer, I think, guilt and despair. Christian suffer. God has not promised all comfort and ease. But here's what Christians should not have. We should not wallow in the hopeless abyss of guilt and despair. You say, well, okay, it sounds good. Reformation Sunday. Where do you get this from? Well, you see, again, verse 6, their despair, the point of it, is a kind of hopelessness. They want to die. They've given up, but they can't. It's a perfect description of what it feels like to be in the mire of total and utter despondency. So obvious there's despair. What about guilt? Like at that from Revelation 12, where Satan is called the accuser of the brethren. We'll see this again. Satan chiefly has two weapons. He's not interested in haunting your house, making babies head spin around. He has two weapons. He lies and he accuses. He's a deceiver and an accuser. So chapter 12 is called an accuser. Here, look at verse 11. He's given two names, one in Hebrew, Abaddon, one in Greek, a polyon, and you can look at a footnote there in the ESV. They both mean destruction or destroyer. He seeks to destroy those who do not have the seal of God. He torments them, I think, by excusing them, of reminding them of purposelessness by driving them farther away from God. He brings up to them their dark past. He shows to them a dark future. He speaks to them that their lives are riddled with doubts and fears, hopelessness and guilt to such a point that the unbeliever would rather die. Now you say, hold on, pastor, you just described me. I live with doubts and fears. And sometimes I feel quite hopeless. And I live with the crushing sense of guilt and despair. Are you saying that I am not a Christian?
Well, it is good to consider that possibility. And yet, if you're asking that question, likely, you are a Christian. Remember, revelation depicts a battle. And the battle, the cry is constantly nicotine victory overcome to the one who conquers the chief battle in your life. It's not against flesh and blood. It gets the lies and it's against the accusations of the enemy. Satan has no authority over you, if you are a Christian. But that doesn't mean he doesn't get up into your business and tell you things. Do thoughts through media? He excuses. So it is possible that Christians feel the same sense of despair, but you ought not. God has not granted to the devil any authority over you in your life. We may suffer in most of the same ways that the world suffers, except for this one chief way. We are not meant to suffer from the despondency and the despair of guilt. No one understood this. More vividly than John Bunyan. What a close by just giving a line or two from his famous book. I hope you read it. Pilgrim's progress. Let me set the scene for you. Christian, that's the Pilgrim, is on his way from the city of destruction to the celestial city. And there he encounters, do you remember? He encounters this grotesque, fierce dragon-like figure called Apollion. This name. In Apollion tries to stop Christian and he makes a claim on his life, and Apollion says to Christian, you belong to me. Christian says, well I did belong to you, but now I swear allegiance to the prince. Apollion says, well he's a rotten prince. Come back to me, and Christian stands fast as I have sworn to him my allegiance. And there's this dialogue for two or three pages, and then Apollion tries a different tactic with Christian. And he reminds Christian of all of his offenses, all the ways he's betrayed his prince, all the ways that Christian has been unfaithful to the prince. He says, Christian, don't you remember, you almost fainted when you set out, and you almost choked, and you did things the wrong way, and you fell asleep, and you lost your precious things, and you have not done the right things, and when you've done the right things, you've done them for vain glory. He would bun you and understand, this is what Apollion is doing. He's accusing. Here's Christian's reply to Apollion, Abaddon, the fallen star, the accuser. All this is true, Christian says. All that you say about me is true, and much more, which thou hast left out. But the prince whom I serve and honor is merciful and ready to forgive. But besides these infirmities possess me in thy country, for there I sucked them in and have grown under them, been sorry for them and have since obtained pardon of my prince. That's good biblical psychology here. Bunyan's telling us, in the Bible is telling us, Christian, you do not need to despair. This torment that the devil is given over his followers in the first woe is not meant to be our woe. The terrible demonic army should not fall on us. You remember the story of Martin Luther? He made his pilgrimage to Rome, and he was there to earn a plenary indulgence so his sins could be forgiven. And Luther was a nervous, anxious wreck. He said in a famous line, if anyone could have ever been saved by sheer munkery it was I. No one was a better monk than he was. And so he went and he ascended the Skala Sancta, the Holy Staircase, which was said to be the very steps Christ ascended during his trial with Pontius Pilate. They weren't, but they were believed to be. And that staircase was filled with relics and carved crosses and pilgrims would have an opportunity to procure a plenary indulgence. There's sins forgiven, and maybe some of their loved ones in purgatory. And as a young man racked with guilt, Luther dutifully climbed all 28 steps on his knees, kissing each step, venerating the various icons and crosses, repeating the Lord's prayer every step. And when he got to the very top without any relief for his anxiety, Luther looked back down and said to himself, who can know if these things are so? Even then he thought, did that do anything? Who can know if I've done enough to earn forgiveness with God? And it would be in the years ahead that God would show to Luther that there was no hope for forgiveness of sins and that kind of sheer munkery in procuring plenary indulgences, but that what he needed and we needed was a righteousness from God, a righteousness outside of ourselves, a righteousness credited to us. None of us are saved through pilgrimages. We're not saved through indulgences. You are not saved by punishing yourself by making yourself feel miserable. You're not saved by saying the right prayer enough times. It is only through the finished work of Christ. And I don't think this is exactly what John's vision had in mind, but the connection is too rich not to at least make that the locusts. The locusts have a tale like a scorpion and the pain, the torment is in the sting of that scorpion. How can we not think of Paul's famous words in 1 Corinthians 15? Where O death is I sting? You might think of it, these locusts scorpions are like those wasps that only sting once and then they die. They have one opportunity to release their sting, release their venom only once. So Christ, as it were, sucked out all of the venom, took it on his own body and soul, all of that sting so that we can say with the Apostle Paul, where O death is I sting? For we have the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we lift high the cross and we proclaim to all the world and adore the sacred name of Christ. For only in the name of Christ our risen and conquering King, can we have true freedom only in bondage to this good prince? Can we be free from the slavery and the torment of the devil? Set us free. Make us your servants that we may live forever with you in Jesus we pray. Amen.