Speaker: Dustin Scott

Passage: Revelation 12:11

REVELATION 12:11

Isn’t God good? I think the danger at this third gathering is the ever-present temptation just to sit in the presence of God and go, We’ll get to the Scriptures next week. But no, we’ll dive back in. We’re in the Book of Revelation again. Who’s excited? Some of us, yeah, good. I’m excited, too. 

REVIEWING OUR REVELATION STUDY

Who’s a little scared? We’re getting to the second half of the book, and it starts to get a little wild, doesn’t it? Well, it feels like landing in Revelation 12 is a bit like trying to land a helicopter in a hurricane and so in order to resettle ourselves, let’s momentarily go back to chapter 1 and explore Revelation’s own interpretive principles. 

What does John say this letter is intended to do? Well, in verse 1, we’re hit with the obvious. This is a revelation of Jesus, the Anointed One. The number one preeminent concern of the Book of Revelation is that the person of Jesus would be revealed to His people and to the world. 

If we go to verse 3, I get excited because we’re told that this book is intended to bring about practical blessing and change in the lives of those who read, hear, and obey the words of this prophecy. 

Why does that make me excited? I grew up in a tradition where Revelation was esoteric; it was strange, it was terrifying. No one knew what it was saying, but all we knew was it was really, really scary. And I’m so liberated to know that’s not what this book is about. It’s about bringing about practical change and growth in the people of God. 

Lastly– well, not lastly, we got two more to go– in verse 4 and verse 11, who’s the audience of Revelation? We find that this book is written to seven churches in Asia Minor, which means that this was written to real people living in real places with real problems. 

And it also means that, well, for us, the book of Revelation exists as Scripture. It’s for our growth. It’s for our edification in the Kingdom. We have to remember that this letter was not written to us. We can’t just pull it out of its context and apply it to our own lives and situations. 

And lastly, what I would like to call the timeline of the Book of Revelation. We find in verse 1 and verse 3 that the things, the features of this prophecy must take place soon, and then in verse 3, for the time is near. Which shows us the Book of Revelation was chiefly intended to speak to a crisis in the first-century church. It’s not primarily about the end of the world, no matter what the pop stars of our day have to say. Sorry, pop stars. 

As a letter, Revelation is written to seven historical communities. As Scripture, its truths are for the benefit of every generation of believers throughout history. But why did we, as the family of Vintage, embark on this crazy book? Why? We embarked on it because in this book, there’s a truth that Jesus is speaking to every church, and our question as a church was, What is Jesus saying to Vintage today? What is He challenging within us? What is He encouraging? And what does He desire to transform in our lives and in our testimony to Him? 

CAPTIVITY LANGUAGE IN REVELATION

Before we dive into chapter 12, we’ve been in a mini-series throughout the month of January. Pastor Greg has been teaching from Jeremiah 29, and in it, we find the people of God– the Jews– are living in Babylonian exile. And what does God instruct them to do? He tells them to seek the welfare of the city God has placed them in. He tells them to multiply, not to fade away. And lastly, He encourages them to engage with and transform the surrounding culture, not to hide and reclude. 

And within the Scriptures– and this is going to become more and more apparent as we move through the book of Revelation– there’s an inherent connection between Jeremiah’s prophecy and the book of Revelation. What is it? You guys are like, Oh no, it’s pop quiz time. Well, the good news for you is it’s a multiple-choice test, and there’s only one answer, so you’re going to be okay. 

Where were the Jews during the Babylonian exile? They were in Babylon. All right, Revelation is going to use a lot of plague imagery derived from the Exodus. Where were the Israelites during the Egyptian plagues? They were in Goshen, Egypt, which shows us that John is trying to paint a picture for us as the people of God. He’s conveying a message. Just like the Jews were captives in Babylon, just like the Israelites were captives in Egypt, so we, the people of God, are captives in our world under judgment. 

Why does that matter? Because we aren’t going anywhere. You know what name, what title, John is going to use for this world under judgment in the chapters to come? He calls it Babylon. And if you don’t believe me, here’s that captivity language in Revelation 13:10: it says of us, “If anyone is to be taken captive, into captivity, he goes; if anyone is to be killed with the sword, with the sword, he must be killed. Here is a call for the endurance and the faith of the saints.” 

EXAMINING THE RAPTURE

As I’ve been studying this, there’s a Baptist kid within me who really struggles with it. I grew up in a tradition where something called the Rapture was taught all the time, that we were told the church is going to escape this world, we’re not going to go through tribulation, we’re not going to suffer, we’re going to be taken away to Heaven. 

It’s time for a rabbit trail, isn’t it? I want to go to 1 Thessalonians 4, and I want to talk about this Rapture idea as Paul speaks to it in his first letter. Let’s start in verse 14. “For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. For this we declare to you, by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will forever be with the Lord.” 

Paul was addressing a very particular concern in the Thessalonian church. There were those in the Thessalonian church who were teaching the Christians there that Jesus had already come back. And if you were one of those Christians who heard this message for the first time, you’d say, What, I missed it? When did this happen? And so Paul is going to use language and verbiage drawn from his Greco-Roman and Jewish context to explain the future history of God. 

He’s going to use a word, harpazo, which means, I catch up. That’s where we get the Rapture from. He’s going to use this Greek term, aér, which the good news for us is, what does that mean in English? It means air. He’s going to use this term, parousia, to describe the coming of the Lord. And he’s going to use this term, apantēsis, to describe the meeting of the Lord and His people in the air. 

And you guys are like, What does this mean? Why does this matter? The parousia was a well-known situation in the Roman imperial period. As an emperor would travel throughout the empire, he would come to an occupied city, and the Roman citizens within that city had an obligation to go out of it and greet him and then join him in a royal procession as they went back into the city. 

They didn’t go somewhere else, which means this passage isn’t talking about a rapture. It’s talking about the second coming of Jesus when He comes to this world, when He destroys evil once and for all, and the Kingdom of God lives in fullness upon the earth. 

I want to ask a question. We’re told we’re going to meet the Lord in the air. Is the air ever conflated with Heaven in Scripture? Who’s the prince of the power of the air? Satan is. The enemy is. This is the Lord coming downward, us going to meet Him, but we’re not going upward; Jesus isn’t doing a 180 for us, we are accompanying Him as He returns to the earth to establish His Kingdom forever. 

Now, maybe you’re in here, and you’re like, Pastor Dustin has gone crazy. What’s happening? Sometimes, I wonder that, too. Have I gone crazy? Should I go back to my Baptist upbringing and just, you know, go back to those things that I believed? 

Hey, here’s the good news. If you’ve looked through our statement of faith, there’s nothing on it about our beliefs about the Rapture and the second coming, except that Jesus is coming back. And that when He does, we will resurrect from the dead. 

One of my great friends, Randy Morrowski, is on the study team with me, and we land in different perspectives here. But guess what we do? We talk about it, and we have fun. So if you’re in here and you’re like, I don’t know, I’ve got to study this. I don’t think so. I have studied it, and I don’t think I accept that position. Guess what? We can coexist and talk about the Scriptures together. Isn’t that awesome? 

Here’s my concern: if the Rapture isn’t a Biblical idea, if the rapture wasn’t taught for 1800 years of church history, if the rapture is a new and novel thing that tells us that the point of the Christian life is to fly off to Heaven instead of stay here to testify to Jesus until the resurrection of the dead and the fullness of the Kingdom, how does that false idea– if it is false– inform the way we live? Are we waiting for an escape? Are we just clinging on until Jesus comes back? Because if we are, Jesus didn’t command us to do that. 

Throughout chapters 12 and onward, we will repeatedly find believers– that’s us– in the midst of a world under judgment, which means that just like the Jews in the Babylonian captivity, we have been strategically placed by the Lord in our city and in our world for a reason. We are here to testify to Him until His ultimate return. We’re here to stay. 

TESTIFYING TO JESUS

You guys ready for chapter 12? You’re like, Get us out of Thessalonians and back to Revelation. According to my calculations, and without accounting for manuscript disparities, there are 9,520 Greek words in the Book of Revelation. And I’m sorry, that’s probably not going to win you a trivia night, but here’s why I was calculating that out. 

I wanted to figure out what is sitting at the very center of John’s letter. What’s the punchline? What is the heart of everything he’s trying to share with these churches? And what Jesus is revealing to him in the midst of this vision? 

Well, the center of Revelation is in chapter 12. It concerns the central person of Jesus, which shouldn’t surprise us. And lastly, if we go to the message at the exact center of this letter, at the 4,760th word, what does it say? Revelation 12:17, “Those who keep the commandments of God and hold the testimony of Jesus.” The entire book of Revelation is the Lord’s challenge to the Church. Will you keep My commandments, and will you testify to Me in the midst of this world? 

Throughout John’s letter, churches are going to be called what? Lampstands. And what does a lampstand do? It elevates and gives out light. We remember from our study in chapters 2 and 3 that Jesus threatens to remove any church which does not elevate and does not reveal His light. 

And at first, this seems so harsh, didn’t it? And yet, doesn’t it fit with the wider message of Scripture? Like when Jesus says of Himself, “I am the light of the world, whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” 

Or when Jesus says of us, His disciples, “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. People don’t light a lamp and put it under a basket. Instead, they put it where? On a lampstand so that everyone in the house can receive its light.”

We, if we live as fully surrendered believers, are the light of Jesus in a world under judgment. God has strategically placed us here so that the testimony of our lives would carry the authority of Heaven and bring about real and tangible change in this world. 

When we share, and when we live out our story and our testimony of being translated by God from the kingdom of darkness to the Kingdom of light, what happens? Revelation tells us the kingdom of the earth becomes the Kingdom of our God and of his Christ, and He will reign forever and ever. 

That’s the power of testimony. But how does this expansion, how does this testimony take place? In Acts 1, Jesus tells the disciples, “You will be my witnesses, and when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you will receive power.” 

In Revelation 12, we found two witnesses, yet there was something strange about them. They were called two lampstands. They only spoke with one mouth. They shared one body. Oh, yeah, like when Jesus said, “Wherever two or more are gathered in my name, there I am with them, also.” 

The two witnesses are a picture of the uncompromised church testifying to Jesus in the midst of a world under judgment, and what happens in response to their testimony? And this is really important because it almost never happens in the Book of Revelation. It says that those who remained, who saw their testimony, were terrified and gave glory to the God of Heaven. They repented and turned to Jesus. 

And we don’t realize how rare that is, because we find that uncompromised believers bring unbelievers to Jesus, and yet, according to Revelation, even God’s judgment alone doesn’t bring the world to repentance. 

We find it in chapter 6 and chapter 9 and chapter 16 that God is judging the world, and yet it has this exasperated statement, that those who are there still blasphemed God, and they didn’t repent. Which means God has given us a unique vocation, a unique purpose in this world, which even God’s judgment can’t bring about– not because He can’t do it– but because He’s given it to us as our job. 

And for this reason, testimony thunders forth, as the central message of John’s letter. It says in chapter 12, verse 11, “They have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they did not cling to life even in the face of death.” 

Let me paraphrase that: You and I, through the finished work of Jesus, through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, have been given capacity to overcome works of darkness through our testimony. 

WHAT DOES TESTIMONY LOOK LIKE?

But what exactly is testimony? Is it a short video talking about Jesus? Is it those stories we used to tell on Saturday night at youth camp, and everyone would start to cry. I don’t think that those are bad things. They’re a part of testimony, but they aren’t the whole picture of what Biblical testimony is. 

In Scripture, the word witness and the word testimony are both traced to this word martys. And in the Greco-Roman context of the time, the term martys carried the connotation of being an expert witness or professional authority on a topic. It meant you were a specialist. Think about that, specialists in following Jesus. 

In the New Testament, a martys is a person who has surrendered the whole of themselves to Jesus; they’re prepared to follow Him unto any end, even if that end is their own death. Have you guys heard the English word martyr before? Speaking of someone who’s lost their life for the faith? It comes from this Greek word. 

It’s an all-encompassing definition, and the book of Revelation urges the seven churches– and us– to consider, are we testifying to Jesus with the whole of our lives? Are we working to become experts in following Him? And if not, what’s holding us back from that all-in commitment? 

SALVATION IS DEPENDENT UPON TESTIMONY

Jesus declares in Matthew 10, “Everyone, therefore, who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.” Aren’t those verses in Scripture where you’re like, Man, it would be a lot better if that verse wasn’t there? 

That’s a little terrifying. And you know why it’s terrifying? That much against popular opinion, much against theologies of our day, much against many of the traditions we were raised in, the Scriptures teach that salvation is dependent upon testimony; if you don’t testify to Jesus, you aren’t living the life of salvation. And testimony means that when the watching world sees, hears, and interacts with us, they are to see, hear, and interact with Jesus through us. We are the ones giving out His light. 

Now, these are hard questions. I wrote them down as I was searching myself. I’d invite us to consider them. 

Are we testifying to Jesus when we despise, slander, and hold grudges against others, even though He’s commanded us to love and forgive them? 

Are we testifying to Jesus when we lie, exaggerate, and distort the truth? 

Are we testifying to Jesus when we lust after money, possessions, relationship, attention, pornography, and every form of unholy sex which has infiltrated the church, when at the same time we’re proclaiming to the world, Hey, come to Jesus. He’ll meet your every need. 

Are we testifying to Jesus when we declare that God is eternally faithful, yet in our own lives, we can’t even honor our most basic covenantal commitments to our marriage? Who is going to believe us with the divorce rates that have infiltrated the church? 

Do we testify to Jesus when we slack off at work, when we dishonor our employees and employers, when we break the law or cheat on our taxes? 

Do we testify to Jesus when we whine on social media instead of going to prayer? 

Do we testify to Jesus– this hits our culture quite hard– when we scroll through endless streams of fifteen-second videos instead of engaging in conversations with our fellow human beings?

Do we testify to Jesus when we neglect prayer, worship, and fasting and then wonder to ourselves, why is our culture so godless? 

Do we testify to Jesus when we hide and wait for some escape out of the world rather than charging into the world to seek out those who don’t know the Lord yet? They’re still lost, they’re still broken, they’re still hopeless. Who has God placed to witness to them? 

And lastly, do we testify to Jesus when we refuse to talk about Him out of fear of unpopularity, rejection, or danger? 

You see, testimony is so much more than words. It’s so challenging. It’s so hard. And you know what else is hard about it? If we go back to chapters 2 and 3 of the Book of Revelation, what we find is that we, as a church, have a five out of seven chance of having a compromised testimony. That’s terrible odds, isn’t it? 

So what’s the answer? What’s the good news? How does the Triune God reconcile us and transform us so that we can be His light in this world under judgment? We first have to acknowledge that testimony requires a fully surrendered life. 

THE TESTIMONY OF THE SEVEN CHURCHES

Jesus rebuked five out of the seven mentioned churches because they didn’t testify to Him. They didn’t seek the welfare of their city, they compromised with sin. They didn’t multiply and make disciples, they faded away. They didn’t pray and seek after God’s voice, they lived life on their own terms. And they didn’t testify to Jesus, they lived lives of selfishness and idolatry. 

Ephesus went after loveless achievement. Pergamum hid disunity under respectable appearances. Thyatira embraced a tolerance for sexual sin and idolatry. Sardis was busy maintaining a lifeless reputation. And Laodicea surrendered to the comforts of greed, apathy, and just checking out of their spiritual life. 

What can we deduce a visitor to five of these churches might have experienced in their gatherings? And the bad news is it wasn’t Jesus. 

At Ephesus, you found a hard-working and goal-oriented organization, but not Jesus. 

In Pergamum, you found a charming and agreeable group of people, but not Jesus. 

In Thyatira, you found an inclusive and tolerant community. If it was popular at the time, they would have had one of those signs that said, All are welcome outside, except not Jesus. 

Sardis was a thriving church with great programs and booming attendance. It was the largest synagogue within the region, but there was no Jesus there. 

And lastly, in Laodicea, you would find a well-to-do and successful group of individuals; we would have loved them as Americans, but yet you wouldn’t find Jesus. 

WHAT IS JESUS SAYING TO US?

This leads to the most challenging of questions: what is Jesus speaking to us as a church today? What areas is He addressing within us? What makes for an uncompromised testimony? 

By this point, we’ve learned if John wants to get our attention, if he’s looking to give us an answer, we’ll know that he’s clumped it in a carefully arranged set of seven, won’t he? And within all of these addresses to the churches, you find this phrase: “Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.” 

What’s the answer? Faithful testimony requires regular conversation with the God who is speaking. In the secret place, where we commune with Him, in conversation and in the Scriptures, He warns us, He corrects us, He comforts us, and He encourages us. Isn’t that exactly what He did with the seven churches? 

And regarding this point, I must go back and re-emphasize one of Revelation’s own interpretive principles: we have to remember that Revelation was written for us, but not to us. Why does that matter? Because we are not the church of Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, or Laodicea. We can’t just copy and paste their situation and the Lord’s solution for them onto our own church. 

Why? Because we’re believers of Vintage City Church. We live in Fort Collins, Colorado. We’re not in first-century Asia Minor. We’ve got our own problems, our own weaknesses, and our own strengths. Therefore, we have to listen to what the Spirit of God is saying to the church today. 

WE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR OUR PERSONAL DISCIPLESHIP

A second principle can be derived from Jesus’s addresses to the seven churches. It’s this: I am responsible for my personal discipleship. In the churches of Pergamum, Thyatira, and Sardis, there were both those who listened for the voice of God and followed Him, and there were those who rejected the voice of God and walked away from their discipleship. 

Why does that matter? Because no one else can be a disciple of Jesus in our place. We have to follow Him. We can’t rely on our parents, on our church leaders, on our friends, on our social group, on what some guy on Instagram has to say; we have to be disciples of Him. We cannot export that responsibility. Why? Because Christianity is a new life. It’s not a spectator sport. 

I’m just taking in how hard the words I’m saying are. It’s a challenge to all of us, isn’t it? I’m not any better or holier than any of you are. I’m in this journey with you. I’ve got deadlines. I’ve got morning debacles, like when my daughter’s screaming and I’m like, Man, I really need to go spend time with Jesus, but I really want Amelia to stop screaming, so maybe I’ll come over here to this situation instead of addressing that one. Instead of going, Kelly, why don’t we take turns and each have time with Jesus because we so desperately need it. 

I’m in the middle of this war with you, and Revelation is going to get wild. We’re going to find things that relate to the historical context of the seven churches. We’re going to find challenges faced by every generation of believers throughout history, and we’re even going to find crazy things which relate to the future and the end of the world, and we’re going to do our best to understand what it all means. 

LISTEN TO WHAT THE SPIRIT IS SAYING

But if I– and I think I can speak for our teaching team and pastoral team– were to leave you with one message from our Revelation series, one truth, one practical lifestyle to live by, it would be this: let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying. 

The glory of Revelation is that we overcome the works of darkness. We conquer evil with our King, new creation begins, and death is a far distant memory, and yet that victory only exists in one place and in one person: it’s in Jesus. We have to have relationship with Him. He has to be our Lord. 

So, how do we conquer the darkness of our present age? It’s pretty simple. We listen to His voice, we read His truth in Scripture. We obey what He speaks. And when we don’t, we repent of it, and we go back to His way. 

And through that process, we live lives of uncompromised testimony, that when the sinful world sees us and experiences us, their answer is, Man, I’m full of darkness and you’re full of light, I’ve got to figure out what you have. 

And that’s when we can go, It’s not a what, it’s a Who. And not only that, He sent the Holy Spirit to live within us. So now, our life, our vocation, is not just a temporary thing. It’s a foretaste of what’s to come in new creation. 

I think about Ephesians 1, where Paul says that the church, the people of God, are the visible fullness of Christ, expanding and growing until God becomes all-in-all. The time is coming, where church is going to encompass all of existence, where this relationship we have with Him has infiltrated everyone and everything in new creation. Isn’t that a gorgeous picture?

And we get to live it now. How do we live it? By listening to His voice and being His light in this world under judgment. We’re not going anywhere. He’s left us to testify to Him. 

Would you guys pray with me? I might make you stand to pray. I don’t think it makes prayers more efficacious, but it’s kind of the thing we do. Lord, as we embrace this word, as we go through the hard task of asking the question, where is my testimony compromised? I would invite Your comfort, Your guidance, Your leadership, to just begin to overshadow us. 

Lord over every situation in this room, the situations where it’s agonizing to testify to You, and also those places where it gets just to be a little bit annoying, would You give Your peace, would You give Your power, would You give Your grace to overcome? 

Lord, if there’s ways You want us to adjust our day-to-day lives so that we have more structured, regular time with You, would You give us the knowledge and the strategic planning to just engage in that and fulfill it? 

Lord, I Speak Your Peace over our families, over our spouses, over our children, and Lord ultimately, over everyone we encounter in this world who so desperately needs You. May Jesus’s name be glorified in all things until He becomes all in all. 

Thank You for this church. Thank You for our family. Thank You for what Your Spirit is saying to the church today, we ask this in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.