Would you turn, with me, to the last book of the Bible, to the book of Revelation? And there we have another one of the visions of John the Apostle about the end of time and the coming of the Lord and the beginning of the New World. It's good to remind you that the book of Revelation is a book of visions. In terms of literature, the genre or type of literature, it is called apocalyptic from the Greek word that means to unveil or to reveal or to take what is hidden and make it known. That word apocalyptic finds the noun, the apocalypse, which is the opening word of this book, the apocalypse of Jesus Christ or the revelation of Jesus Christ. It's a kind of literature that has these certain aspects to it. There's a dualistic view of the world, the evil world and the good world yet to come. It's highly symbolical. It's numbers and imagery symbolize things. Lots of visions, lots of dreams, portents in the sky. It's found in the book of Daniel and in the book of Ezekiel, the book of Zechariah, the portions of Isaiah and Joel and other prophets and in the New Testament, it's found in the book of Revelation. It's important that we keep that in mind because if we don't, then the way we interpret the book and try to understand it becomes not only frustrating but confusing, lead us to wrong ideas and false hopes. It's like that with any kind of literature. It wouldn't interpret a poem literally. For example, if you were to turn to the book of the song of Solomon, you'd find Solomon writing about this absolutely lovely girl he caused the Shunamaid girl. She has dark, thick curly hair and big brown eyes. She's petite and slender. She is rosy-cheeked tall with pearly white teeth. She's a noble young person and you say, well, who wouldn't want to bring down home to mom and say, here's my fiance? But if we interpreted his poem literally, this is what this young lady looks like if you look up on the screen. How beautiful you are, my darling. How beautiful you are. Your eyes are like doves behind your veil. Your hair is like a flock of goats. Your teeth are like the flock of newly-sorned hues. Your lips are like a scarlet thread. Your temple are like slices of pomegranate. Your neck is like the tower of David, built with rows of stones on which are hung the thousand shields. Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle, which feed among the lilies. Your lips, my bride, drip honey, honey and milk are under your tongue, and the fragrance of your garment is like the fragrance of Lebanon. Your navel is around goblet. Your belly is like a heap of wheat. Your nose is like the tower of Lebanon which faces towards Damascus. Now who would like to take her home to meet mom? So it's important, thank you, folks, for that silliness to interpret these things correctly. But that's what we do with the Book of Revelation. We try to make these symbolical things, these images, into transposed realities. Well we can't do that with apocalyptic literature. There was no real valley of dry bones that is equal. So that was a vision of a spiritually dead nation waiting for revival. And Peter didn't really expect animals to come down out of the sky on a sheet. It was a symbol that he was free to eat any food you want to do, that the old testament, dietary prescriptions and limitations were gone. And Daniel didn't really see four beasts. He saw images of four kingdoms that were yet to come. So one commentator, Bruce Metzko says, so too is the Book of Revelation. It is the description of things that are spiritually real. But the descriptions are not descriptions of real occurrences. But they are symbols of real things. The idea that the symbol is but a language used to designate a deeper reality is something that we must keep in mind if we are to understand this book successfully. We've all read these books like The Late Great Planet Earth, or seen conferences like we're in this city a couple of weeks ago, where we're supposed to learn the secret cycle of prophecy or about the lost day of history that was supposed to change our lives, or the treasures from the golden art that had somehow been rediscovered again in order for us to stand the Book of Revelation. It is my friend a prescription for weirdness and silliness and embarrassing foolishness that not only confuses the church, but honestly discredits Christianity and makes people think that this most important book at the end of the Bible is not worth their time to read and is beyond their ability to understand. That's not true. This book was written to seven churches. It is expected by John and by Jesus who gives the revelation to John that these pastors read and explain the book to the seven churches. And so in the Book of Revelation, we have a series of sevens. There are seven major visions. And in this fourth vision that we're looking at, we have a vision that has an interlude in it. There are three series of judgments, seal judgments, trumpet judgments and bowl judgments. And in between each one of these series, there's an interlude, a pause in the action of judgment and a turning to the church. These interludes are meant we think for dramatic effect, we're wanting to get to the end of the story. We know the climax is coming, the return of Christ, and we want to see it explained. But John keeps us waiting, almost teasing us, to the end of the book where in chapter 19 that unveiling that apocalypse happens. And so in these interludes, John is reminding us that the church remains in the world and in the tribulation, recipients of this revelation preparing for the return of Christ. In the first interlude between the seal judgments and the trumpet judgments, we saw the church sealed and protected even in the midst of martyrdom and then triumphant in heaven. Here's a second interlude between the trumpet judgments and the bowl judgments, where there are two pictures of the church. In chapter 10 and 11, the church receiving a small scroll, chapter 10, and in chapter 11, the church as God's faithful witness, even unto death. Now let's turn to chapter 10 and look at this image of the church receiving a small scroll. Again, we have two goals with each one of these sermons. We want to understand the vision and then apply it to our lives today. In this 10th chapter, there are only two paragraphs because there's only two people, two beings, two individuals who were interacting and angel from the Lord and John the Apostle. And so we have in the first paragraph the angel from God and the little scroll. Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, wrapped in a cloud with a rainbow over his head and his face was like the sun and his legs like pillars of fire. He had a little scroll open in his hand. He set his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land. And he called out with a loud voice like a lion roaring. When he called out the seven thunders sounded. And when the seven thunders had sounded, 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. The angel whom I saw 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 heaven and what is in it, the earth and what is in it, the sea and what is in it that there would be no more delay. But that in the days of the trumpet call to be sounded by the seventh angel, the mystery of God would be fulfilled just as he announced to his servants the prophets. Now John begins as he's looking at these trumpet judgments unfold. He turns his mind to something else and he sees what he calls another great or mighty angel. It's another because it's the second. There's only two times in the book of Revelation where a mighty angel is referred to. The book is full of angels, dozens of them, but there's only two times that they are referred to a great or a mighty or a powerful angel. Once in chapter 5 has that angel introduces us to the great scroll with seven seals that Jesus Christ takes hold of. And once in chapter 10 this other great angel introduces us to a small scroll that John takes hold of. This indicates, we think, that there is a definite connection both in theme and in purpose between the great scroll that Jesus Christ is unfolding in the small scroll that John is given. We're out with a loud voice and both have tremendous glory about them. This angel is described as one who has a glory like the sun. He has a rainbow over his head, his voice is like thunder. It makes the earth shake and his hips and legs and feet are like burnish bronze glowing out of a furnace so that many commentators think that this is Jesus Christ because this is some of the imagery in which Jesus Christ is described in chapter 1. It also has to do with God the Father who's seen in chapter 4 sitting on the throne with a rainbow over his head and the voice of thunder. So people think, well, this great angel is really Jesus Christ, but in fact it is not. It is another angel summoned by Jesus Christ, but not summoning Christ. It's a picture of the angel that Daniel sees by a river in the book of Daniel. I lit up my eyes and looked and behold there was a man clothed in linen with a belt of fine gold from Hufaz wrapped around his waist. His body was like burl, his face like the appearance of lightning. His eyes were like flaming fire from torches. His arms and legs were like the gleam of burnish bronze and the sound of his words were like the sounds of multitudes like thunder. So here's an angel that comes clothe in the glory of God. Over his head is a rainbow, a testimony from this angel that God is a God of covenant faithfulness and just as he gave to Noah and to mankind a rainbow to remind them that he would never forsake his promises. So this angel comes to remind us that God is a covenant-kicking God who will remember his promises to protect and eventually to resurrect his church to glory. It's a resemblance of the Shakaina glory, the glory that led the children of Israel all through the wilderness and this angel's strong presence is meant to assure us that God will protect us, he will guide us, he will provide for us and finally rescue us from destruction in the great day of the Lord. The angel has a little scroll in his hand. It's a compliment to the big scroll that Christ has in chapter 5, but there's a difference. The big scroll that Christ has is sealed with seven seals. It's locked so that only Jesus Christ knows what's in it. But the little scroll is open, open to bread by John or by anyone else. He had a little scroll open in his hand and he said his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land. The little scroll opened means revealed or apocalyptic, the word that means apocalypse. He had an apocalyptic and open revealed a revelation in his hand that he would give to us. And this revelation is borrowed from, on the imagery at least, from the book of Ezekiel. Ezekiel encountered someone who gave him a little scroll. But you, son of man, hear what I say to you, do not be rebellious, like that rebellious house of mine. But open your mouth and eat what I give you. And when I looked behold, a hand was stretched out toward me and in the hand was the scroll of a book. And he spread it before me and it had riding on the front and on the back. And there were written on it words of lamentation and mourning and woe. This similar imagery now finds a swing to John's vision. The angel hands this scroll towards him. In fact, he says, come and get it. And John says, I went up to him and said, give me the scroll. And as he did, I heard seven peals of thunder. The seven thunders, he said, spoke with a great voice. Who are these seven thunders? Well, the word thunders all through the book of Revelation. In fact, every time God speaks in the book of Revelation, it's likened to thunder because John has the imagery of Moses going up to Mount Sinai to receive the revelation, the covenant from God and the mountain shook with fire and lightning and thunder so much so that the people covered their ears and said, we can't bear it. You go here with the Lord has to say, and you come and tell us. Thunders mentioned 10 times in the book of Revelation, but here there are seven thunders, likening what John hears to Psalm 29. The voice of the Lord is powerful. The voice of the Lord is full of majesty. The voice of the Lord is over the waters, the God of glory thunders. The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars. The Lord breaks the cedars of leaven and he makes leaven and skips like a calf and serian danced like a young wild ox. The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire. The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness. The Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh. The voice of the Lord makes the deer give birth and strips the forest bear and in his temple all who hear cry out, glory. Seven times Psalm 29 mentions the voice of the Lord like thunder. John actually hears what this voice from God says, but he's told that you cannot write down. And when the seven thunders had sounded, I was about to write, but I heard a voice from heaven saying, seal up what the seven thunders have said and do not write it down. It's kind of similar to Paul. Remember the apostle Paul and second prince said he was caught up to heaven. He didn't know if he went up bodily or in a vision, in a dream, but he was there. And he said, and I heard things that cannot be told which a man's mouth may not be allowed to utter. It's the secret things that belong to the Lord, but the things revealed to us belong to us and our children, that we might keep all the words of the law. In this commentary on Revelation, Doug Kelly says, there are many things that God will not tell his beloved bloodbought church beforehand. He keeps us in the dark about several things. He says it's not unlike the status of our own life when we're converted. We were not told by God who we're going to marry or what kind of job we're going to do or how many children we're going to have or how long we're going to live or what kind of difficulties we're going to undergo. Kelly goes on to say, similarly, there are many things about the future of the church. In world history, the God simply is not going to tell us why because we don't need to know. God knows. But what we need to know, we are given here. This is the mystery of God. He is unknowable. He is incomprehensible unless and until he makes himself known. And so it is with everything he tells us. It's never the whole story. The Bible is the Word of God from beginning to end, from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22, but that's not all the Word of the Lord. There was more. And what God knows, he keeps to himself, I suspect, and it's just my guess, so that we don't worry about these things and we trust him. But there are things we need to know and he feeds us those things. That's the second picture we have here, but the angel takes the scroll and he gives it to John in verse 8. In the voice that I heard from heaven spoke to me again, saying, go take the scroll that is open in the hand of the angel who was standing on the sea and on the land. So I went to the angel and told him to give me the little scroll. And he said to me, take and eat it. It will make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth it will be sweet as honey. And I took the little scroll from the hand of the angel and I ate it. It was sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach was made bitter. And I was told you must again prophesy about many peoples and nations and languages and kings. The angel tells John to do the weirdest thing. He tells him to take this little parchment and to eat it. And again, it would be surprising to us if we had read the book of Ezekiel. For Ezekiel tells us that the angel of God told him to do the same thing. But now you son of man, hear what I say and do not be rebellious. Take what I have given you, open your mouth and eat what it is. And what I looked to be hold a hand was stretching out to me and a scroll of a book was in the hand. And he spread it out before me and it had riding on the front and on the back. It was riding the words of lamentation and mourning and woe. And then he said, son of man, whatever you find here, eat this scroll and go speak to the house of Israel. So I opened my mouth and he gave me this scroll to eat and he said to me, son of man, feed your belly with this scroll that I give you and fill your stomach with it. Then I ate it and it was in my mouth as sweet as honey. The spirit lifted me up and took me away and I went in bitterness in the heart of my spirit for the hand of the Lord was heavy upon me and I came to the exiles and sat there where they were dwelling with them and I sat there overwhelmed for seven days. I said nothing, scroll is equal eight. With sweet as honey when it went into his mouth but he says it filled my heart with a bitter spirit. Why? Because he said I had to go to these exiles and tell them things of lamentation and woe and suffering. The message we have for the world is the language that was telling us is a message that is bitter sweet. It is sweet when we take it into our mouth. The Bible says so, oh taste and see that the Lord is good. Bless is the man who takes refuge in him. How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth. Your testimony are my heritage forever for they are the joy of my heart, but it also has a way of turning bitter inside us. What is sweet to the taste becomes bitter to the soul at times. It becomes distasteful to us to do some of the things that the Scripture says painful like a stomach ache. They can even upset us giving us a great sense of spiritual nausea. I suggest that that is why not everything in this scroll was explained to us, but when we eat this scroll we feel it is bitterness. John is told to go like a zikil and speak this word to many people. You get verse 11 and I was told you must again prophesy about many people's and nations and languages and kings. The nations of the world, all the tribes and kings and languages and tongues are to hear what is in this little scroll and now what is in John, the Christian, the witness. That little picture of peoples and nations and languages and kings occurs seven times in the book of Revelation, almost in each one of the visions, showing us that what this book is about written to the churches, the seven churches of Revelation, is to be again and again repeated and spread through all the nations of the earth. This little scroll that is sweet to the taste and bitter in this stomach, that John ingests, that he takes into his own soul that becomes part of his spiritual DNA is a message both for the church and for the world. Before Jesus comes again, all people must hear the sweetness of his gospel offer of salvation and the bitterness of his promise of judgment for those who will not receive this word. Chapter 10 sets up chapter 11. John who ingests this scroll to be a witness to the world is seen in symbolic form witnessing to the world in chapter 11. And therefore, this bitter word from the church becomes a bitter sweet word for the world. It is both good and bad news. It's so for those who witness. Eugene Peterson talks about the fact that when we receive Christ as our Lord and Savior, it is sweet, nothing sweeter. When we go with that sweetness and that excitement to share with another person and we share with them and they reject not only the message but us, all the sweetness becomes bitter, doesn't it? The anger and rejection of our loved ones, no pun intended is a bitter pill to swallow. It's also true that this is a bitter sweet word for the church. It's a sweet thing to know that Jesus is coming again. And then when the great judgment occurs, you and I who believe in Christ will escape the wrath that is to come. We rise only to a resurrection of glory, not to judgment. But the bitterness of that story is that before he comes again, we will go with a greater knowledge of what's happening than the world has through this great tribulation and that is the bitter part of the story for us. There's a sense in which this word of God is for the whole world. Who does not like to hear about the love of God, his forgiveness, his grace, his acceptance, his adoption? I mean, ask any people in the world and they'll tell you, God is a God of love who loves everybody. That's true, but that's only one side of the sandwich. He's also a God of judgment, a God who will not leave the guilt to go on punish, he says. And who has told us words that are bitter to us that unless we turn in faith to Jesus Christ, we cannot be saved, we will be destroyed in judgment. And this is a hard thing to swallow. And yet, I say to you this morning, with all sobriety, neither a great angel from heaven, nor the very last apostle who was Jesus Christ, most close and intimate earthly friend, nor any pastor, including myself, has the authority or the luxury to change what's on this scroll. God says, what I have written, I have written, so let it be done. Now, what do you and I do with this? What this is mean to us? Well, I want to suggest you five very straightforward applications. I'm not hard to understand, but the things we need to do a double check on for ourselves. Number one, we cannot save ourselves or loved ones, especially our children, from the bitter that comes with the sweet. We want to do that. We want our children to not suffer, to never be disappointed, to never fail the course, to always give what they want. And so we feed them, I'm afraid, with a spiritual diet of cotton candy. We give them whatever they want. We fill them up with sports and recreation, and with vacations, and with friends, and we let them get on the internet, and on the smartphone, and always hear a lesson, a message, an advertisement, a program that tells them that life is good, and they will never have to suffer, but it's not true. I remember when Joanna, my oldest one was about five years old, one night, Jane served as Brussels sprouts, which takes any child years to develop a taste for. I hear people say, well, you know, coffee is something you have to develop a taste for. Yeah, so as Brussels sprouts. And Joanna was a very compliant, easygoing child. But that day, she just reached in her plate and got a handful of these Brussels sprouts and sent them on my plate. And I said, well, thank you Joanna, she said, I don't like those. I said, well, they're good for you. No, daddy, she said, good for you, they're bad for me. So we had discussion, I said, well Joanna, what would you like to eat? Well, you know what it was? It was pop tarts and popcorn and coolade and all these things. If I don't let Joanna design her diet, she'd have been dead by the age of seven. If there's such a thing as sugar poisoning, I don't know if there is, but she'd have had it. And you see, when we take in a diet of cotton candy, you know what we're doing? We're not preparing the souls of us or our children to grow strong in grace. We are spiritually anemic. And we can't bear the load of the reality around us. And we came, that is why. I believe this is, God is my Savior. I think that's why young people are leaving the church and droves, not because they disagree with the message, that's because they understand the message. The following Christ is hard and dangerous, but they've had a life of cotton candy. And so they're simply reaching over and taking the Brussels sprouts of Christianity and saying, boom, they're daddy, good for you, but not for me. Because they've not been prepared for the things that are coming. That's the second application, I think. The only way to survive and to thrive during these last days is to eat a little scroll of God's Word on a daily basis. They tell me that if you want to enoculate yourself and prepare your immune system to respond to all the allergens and the pollen and all the other things that happen, then what you do is you eat local honey, a couple spoonfuls a day, and the sweetness of that honey that has all the elements from the bees in the honey that are around you, inoculates you. It builds up your immunities and you don't suffer as much. And so it is with the Word of God. When we take in the sweetness of the Lord's Word and our daily doses morning and evening, two doses a day, come see me in the morning if you don't get better, then we do get inoculated. We're able to stand against the world and our souls are no longer inemic. Thirdly, the church must not change the bittersweet message of the gospel for in doing so they rob the world of salvation. I would gain many more members if I were a more positive person in the pulpit. If I told people only the good news, we'd have three or four services. But here's the danger with that. There's a train coming down the track and you can hear the whistle. Every once in a while you catch the vibrations on the earth as it clatters towards you. Now, if that upset you, you can do this and close your eyes and you'll never know when the train hits you. But the train is not going to stop. It's heading towards eternity. And either we get on that train or destroyed by it and that I think is good news. You don't have to stand on the track and wait for the inevitable to happen. You can go up to the depot of Jesus Christ and through him you can enter his kingdom, the church and ride to safety to the kingdom of God. Fourthly, the little scroll informs us as to why God allows evil and suffering intribulation to exist in the world. It's because it's part of what he's putting the world through. And yet he doesn't explain all of it does he? There's a mystery to both the good news, the sweetness and the mystery to the bitterness of the bad news of the Bible. And it takes faith to believe that the one who gives us the grace to be saved from his own judgment is also the one who judges those who reject the grace and yet he is a good God, shielding us from many things that would be disturbing for us to hear while putting into our souls and into our lives only the things that through his Holy Spirit we can bear. We forget that most of the misery in life, most of the sorrow and pain and suffering and evil is borne up by God and not carried by us. And that leads us to our fifth and our final truth is that on that cross, Jesus Christ bore a great deal of bitterness. You want to know why Jesus Christ holds a big scroll and you and I eat a little one? Because Jesus Christ bore the sins of the world. He said this disciples that he would drink from a bitter cup. Shall I avoid this cup? He said no. It was for this cup that I have come forth while it was on the cross dying they fed him a cup of bitter wine. He prophesied in the salt root it would be so. Jesus Christ has taken the wrath of God upon himself and full measure. When he broke the seals of that scroll, he broke open his own suffering. He foreordained his own death. He absorbed the wrath of God and became a sponge that soaked up all of the bitterness of life. And then died, died for every person in the whole world. You and I, our misery is little. We only die to self. That's all. It's a tiny scroll. The bitterness is little. And so as we feel the bitterness of what it is to be a Christian and sometimes it does hurt, this is not an easy life Jesus said before we come to him we need to count the cost. But compared to what people outside of Christ there, it's a no-brainer. John is told to go tell all the nations and kings and all the peoples and languages about these two scrolls. What God has foreordained for the world and what God offers to the individual. The good news of Jesus Christ and we have a choice. We can say no, Daddy, this is good for you but not for me. We can open our mouths and eat what God gives us and it has the miraculous way of turning into eternal life deep down in our souls. The bitter with the sweet, the Christ with the church, repentance with faith, dying to self to live for God, tribulation in this world for glory in heaven. And Jesus said, take comfort, I have overcome the world, I have drunk all of your bitterness. There is left for you an eternity only the sweet. Father it is our preference not to suffer. We often pray and I think rightly so Lord that you would deliver us from evil and all the ramifications of it. We pray, as Jbez prayed in the Old Testament that you would keep us from paying and cause your face to shine upon us. And you so often do that, you answer that prayer and are so good to us. And yet we know that some of the things that we are called to encounter, some of the bitter things of turning from sins and dying to self and sacrificing for others and weaning ourselves off of the world, appears to be bitter. It gives us a sour stomach sometimes about the things of the Lord and yet it doesn't last for long. It yields what you call the peaceful fruit of righteousness, the sweetness of your grace. So with faith this day we invite you into our souls. We open our mouths and ask you to feed us with the good news of Jesus Christ, not a message about Him but Himself. He the Redeemer. We embrace, we receive, we feast upon, we live in, for we have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer us that live, but Christ who lives in us so that the life that we now live in our flesh, we live by faith in your Son, who loved us and drank this bitter cup for us that He might save us from the wrath to come. If there are some here this morning who have not done that, who have not entered into that train, who have not eaten this scroll, who have not taken into themselves Christ Himself, we pray that you would give them faith and humility to do so today and that they would embark upon a life of the bitter in the sweet knowing that they have only waiting for them, the unsearchable riches of Christ and the glories yet to be and that you would sustain them with this hope through all of the vicissitudes and variations of life and the troubles we face. You said that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God and that you promised in your covenant to never leave us or forsake us but to take us home safely to heaven and we are counting on that as we put our faith in Jesus Christ and as we pray these things in His name, Amen.