The Answer of the Trumpets

Series on Revelation

II The Viewpoint

B Cycle Two, The Seven Angels and Trumpets

1 The Throne

Text: 8:2-6

Introduction

In verse 2 John sees the seven angels ready and waiting to engage their task, And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and to them were given seven trumpets. However, Before they can do this God wishes to show John and us another development that is taking place at the altar. The scene shifts cause a delay in the sounding of the trumpets, but it reveals the effect that the prayers of the saints have on the course of history. Let us understand then that Revelation 8:2-6 shows us that what is going to happen as the trumpets blow is a response, an answer to the cry of God’s people. When God’s chosen people, the children of Abraham were in bondage in Egypt God said in Exodus 6:4 and 5, And I have also established my covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, wherein they were strangers. And I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage; and I have remembered my covenant. God hears our groans and cries arising from the miseries and afflictions of this life. He knows our pain when we call out “How Long,” as we read in Isaiah 63:9, In all their distress he too was distressed, and the angel of his presence saved them. In his love and mercy he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old. When I came to the second church I served there was a sign on the pulpit that said prayer changes things. I did not put the sign there but, eventually, I found myself in the strange position of defending it. Those who objected to the sign said that the Holy scriptures are crystal clear that the mind of God is to do His will, not ours. They are right of course if it meant that the plan of God is altered or the mind of God is changed by our prayers. However that is only one way of looking at it. We read in James 5 that Elijah prayed that it might not rain. Did God suddenly decide to bring a drought? We might assume from this that God had no intention of holding back rain, and then Elijah’s prayer changed His mind. But assumption is the mother of most errors. In point of fact, God had every intention of bringing this judgment of holding back rain, and inspired the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man to bring it to pass. Thus from God’s perspective, His will was accomplished as planned, but from our perspective something changed. Thus we are assured that the cry for help and the help it brings are all part of God’s plan and so we are reminded of the importance of prayer because God uses us in executing His plan. That is exactly what we are looking at in Revelation 8:2-6. The prayer of the martyrs is answered and I would have you notice three things, the preparation, the plea, and the punishment.

I The Preparation

The location of the prayers is something we might deem unimportant but it is actually vital. As we read in verses 3 and 4, the place is the altar of incense, Another angel, who had a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense to offer, with the prayers of all the saints, on the golden altar before the throne. The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of the saints, went up before God from the angel’s hand. In the Old Testament the altar of incense was an important piece of furniture used in the worship of Israel. The instructions were first given to Moses in Exodus 30:1-10 You shall make an altar to burn incense on; you shall make it of acacia wood. A cubit shall be its length and a cubit its width– it shall be square– and two cubits shall be its height. Its horns shall be of one piece with it. And you shall overlay its top, its sides all around, and its horns with pure gold; and you shall make for it a molding of gold all around. Two gold rings you shall make for it, under the molding on both its sides. You shall place them on its two sides, and they will be holders for the poles with which to bear it. You shall make the poles of acacia wood, and overlay them with gold. And you shall put it before the veil that is before the ark of the Testimony, before the mercy seat that is over the Testimony, where I will meet with you. Aaron shall burn on it sweet incense every morning; when he tends the lamps, he shall burn incense on it. And when Aaron lights the lamps at twilight, he shall burn incense on it, a perpetual incense before the LORD throughout your generations. You shall not offer strange incense on it, or a burnt offering, or a grain offering; nor shall you pour a drink offering on it. And Aaron shall make atonement upon its horns once a year with the blood of the sin offering of atonement; once a year he shall make atonement upon it throughout your generations. It is most holy to the LORD. This golden altar of incense was in the temple later throughout all the generations of Israel. It’s location is very important it was the last piece of furniture before the Holiest place which held the ark of the covenant, situated right before the curtain that sealed the Holy of Holies. In John’s visions of glory it is in the exact same place, before the throne of God which is the ark of the covenant. So we read in 6: 9 and 10, And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held: And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? Here in chapter 8 the angel is “given much incense to offer, with the prayers of all the saints, on the golden altar before the throne.” The throne is over the altar and the suffering saints and their prayers are before the throne, or under the throne and the smoke of their prayers ascends to God. Why this location in the vision. The reason is that, as we read in Exodus, it is the blood of atonement, the blood from the mercy seat that makes the prayers acceptable to God. They are offered through the atoning blood of Jesus who is our mercy seat. I John 2:2 says that Jesus is the propitiation or atoning sacrifice for our sins, and it is, literally, the mercy seat for our sins. The prayers ascend from the angel’s hand, but through the blood of the cross of Christ. Because of our sinful human nature, human prayers are incomplete and faulty. All our prayers show deficiency, with selfishness, formalism, and haste being their major detractors. All our applications and utterances of thanksgiving need to be sanctified and perfected to enter into God’s presence. In one of his psalms David prays, May my prayer be set before you like incense; may the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice. For this reason they must be presented with the fragrance of incense from the blood stained altar to make them acceptable to God.

II The Plea

The actual plea does not occur in this vision, but we are already acquainted with what it is from a previous vision in chapter 6. There we read, And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held: And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? Here in 8:5, that very same prayer ascends with the smoke of the incense to God’s throne, Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and hurled it on the earth; and there came peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake. The answer to prayer flows from the throne of God as judgment; it is retribution, it is recompense, it is vengeance. We should take note of the fact that the angels with the trumpets do not “prepare” to sound them until the prayer offerings are completed, but we know what the trumpets will bring because verse 5 tells us there are “thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake.” Jesus taught in Matthew 24:7 and 8 that the end would bring judgment and vengeance on those who have opposed God and persecuted His people, Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains. Now the apostle Paul reminds us in Romans 12:19 that we should not take vengeance on other people because this leaves room for God’s vengeance to work, Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. Since God is going to take up your cause and see to it that justice is done, you can lay it down. You don’t have to carry anger and bitterness and resentment and revenge. So vengeance is wrong for us because of our limitations but for the Lord who is infinite, eternal and unchanging in His wisdom, power and holiness it is not. Thus from the beginning God’s wrath is made known as Paul states in Romans 1:18 and 19, The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. This wrath was surely revealed in the universal flood in Noah’s day, and in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. It is explicitly stated as a warning about the Philistines in Ezekiel 25:17, I will carry out great vengeance on them and punish them in my wrath. Then they will know that I am the Lord, when I take vengeance on them. Thus when the martyrs under the altar cry out for their deaths to be avenged they are simply asking God to do what he plainly promised. The vengeance belongs to the judge, the magistrate, the Lord, and not to the martyrs. In Similar fashion there are those in society who are ordained to execute vengeance, but it is not their vengeance, rather, it is the vengeance of the Lord as Paul states in Romans 13:4. Paul is talking about the ruler, the civil magistrate, and he writes, For he is God’s servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.

III The Punishment

The purpose of trumpets is to warn and so we read in verse 6, Then the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared to sound them. We are brought face to face with the reality of God’s wrath. As plain as it is in the Bible, people do not like to, think about it, and even preachers do not like to preach about it. We live in an age that characterizes old fashioned sermons about God’s wrath as “fire and brimstone,” and mocks them. We preach love and grace so much that we have left the reality of divine justice in the dust. We convince ourselves that we have left that allegedly antiquated religion behind. We think we are too good and too smart for that. That’s the way they felt in the days of Noah and the great flood, and Jesus says the end will be like the days of Noah, in Matthew 24:38 and 39, For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. On July 8, 1741, in Enfield, Connecticut, Jonathan Edwards preached the famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God.” It was instrumental in the spread of the “Great Awakening” an American revival which Edwards later chronicled. Today references to Edwards’ historic sermon caricature it as a heartless diatribe dooming sinners to hell revealing nothing of God but vengeance and anger. It is as if Edwards portrayed nothing but what is in many persons’ minds the bleak, cruel, and hell-bent disposition of God. The truth is, however, Edwards believed that it was because of God’s grace, what he calls “mere pleasure,” that sinners were not yet destroyed, and he pleaded with his audience to respond to God’s grace in faith and repentance. As he pleaded with his audience he used picturesque language to persuade them to turn to Christ now, but with the understanding that it was God’s love and grace that was giving them the opportunity, “And if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider’s web would have to stop a falling rock. Were it not that so is the sovereign pleasure of God, the earth would not bear you one moment; for you are a burden to it; the creation groans with you.” Edwards gives a Biblically balanced view of God. The problem is that so many of today’s preachers are more concerned with big churches and big congregations than they are with the real truth. Edwards says no more than what we read in Revelation 8 and following but people don’t want to hear it. How many times in Revelation 2 and 3 does Jesus say, He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches? The answer is seven times. Men need to stop closing their ears to the things they don’t want to hear and listen to the authentic voice of God. The seven angels will sound their trumpets whether we like it or not.