The Book of Revelation 5:1-14

Speaker: Greg Sanders

Passage: Revelation 5:1-14

WE ARE TO PRAY FOR ALL PEOPLE

I want to make some quick statements before we dive in because we’ve been in a season where I feel like the Lord has demanded our attention.

I feel like He’s addressing that in the church, and His command is, Get your eyes on me. Do you ever notice what happens when events in the culture spike up? How easy is it to get our eyes off the Lord and instead on what’s going on around us?

1st Timothy 2 says, “I urge you, first of all, to pray for all people.” This means our first responsibility and mandate is to pray for all people.

How many would be honest enough to assess your own prayerfulness towards the world around you? We talk about it a lot, correct? How many would agree with me? We talk about prayer a lot as people of God, but sometimes it doesn’t make it to the top of our to-do list for the day.

We don’t want to say that in church, like, I can’t admit that. But why would we not admit what’s honest? Yeah, I probably don’t pray for the world around me like I’m supposed to. Yet Paul says right here, “I urge you…to pray for all people.”

Why? We’ll see, based on where we’re going in Revelation 5, that there’s a reason.

PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS TRIGGER SUPERNATURAL ACTIVITY

I don’t know if we’ll get to it today, but in the back half of chapter five, there’s this collection mechanism that is in the hands of the elders. There are twenty-four elders around the throne; in one hand they have a harp, and in the other they have a bowl. What is being collected in the bowl? The prayers of the saints are being collected.

So Paul’s statement in Timothy is to say first of all, i.e. as your ordinal priority, the first thing in life that you are to be doing while you’re on the earth is praying for all men. Anthropos is the word in Greek, and it’s not a gender-specific term. It means we are to be praying for all people.

Why? Because of the power in the prayers of saints. For the record, you are a saint and always will be because of Jesus’ blood. It doesn’t mean you get a pass to go be an idiot; it just means there’s grace. The prayers of the saints rise from the earth and are collected in Heaven, and then something happens according to the revelation. 

According to the revelation, those prayers reach a tipping point where they’re full and are turned back on the earth. When they land back on the earth they create the activity of the supernatural. To put it another way, supernatural activity begins to take place on the earth when those prayers are dumped back out. 

THANKFULNESS SHAPES OUR PERSPECTIVE

1st Timothy goes on to say, As you make your requests, plead for God’s mercy upon them and give thanks. It is vital that we understand that as we pray for the people on the earth, we do it with a spirit of gratitude and thanks. Because otherwise, we start to digress into this place where all we want to do is nitpick all the stupidity we see around us. We want to take it to the Lord as a complaint factory instead of doing what Paul says here, which is we are to plead for all men before God, but with gratitude.

How many have ever noticed that thankfulness gives a specific lens to how you feel? Thankfulness shapes your perspective.

How many husbands and wives have decided to try to be grateful for each other, and have you noticed how much it changes the home? How many have been married long enough to find fault with your spouse? How many believe that your spouse has found a fault with you? How many have learned the discipline of focusing on what’s right instead of what’s wrong?

COVER THE EARTH IN PRAYER

Okay, so Paul’s statement here is to pray with gratitude. Why? Because it’s going to give you the right perspective from which to pray. Jesus had the ability on the cross, while he was being crucified, nails through his hands, through his feet, to say, Hey, Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing. Think about the gratitude level it takes to pray that way. Hey, I know what they’re doing to me right now. It hurts so bad, but they don’t get it. Would you please be merciful to them?

The passage goes on to say, “Pray this way for kings and all who are in authority so that we can live peaceful and quiet lives marked by godliness and dignity.”

So, we had an event happen in the nation yesterday: an assassination attempt on a prior president. It doesn’t matter if it’s an assassination attempt on an average person; it’s wrong. But our job in the church has always been, and always will be, to pray. It should not take these kinds of events to get us to pray. But in the face of these, it should cause us to pray. 

When I say pray, I don’t mean we gather together as a church family and we pray. I mean we, as the people of God, get on our faces at home and pray. And when we see things like that, our first response is, Hey Lord, thank you. Thank you for protection. We’re crying out for mercy; we’re praying. Why? Because He told us to cover the earth in prayer.

Steve Anderson made a statement last week when he was teaching. He said, I believe part of what’s wrong in the earth right now, what’s wrong in America right now, is because the church has failed to be who she’s called to be.

My goal is not to beat a dead horse. My goal is to have an honest moment to say we have to go back to understanding that something’s been put in us, and when we set our face towards Heaven and we release prayers on the earth, for the earth, these prayers go to Heaven. They’re caught in these bowls that the elders have, and then all of a sudden the Lamb steps forward and they begin to worship the Lamb. They begin to grab all these prayers and they pour them out, and the activity of Heaven comes to earth—all when the people of God pray.

HOW DO WE RESPOND TO CATASTROPHE?

Let’s go to 2nd Chronicles 7. I clearly am not going to Revelation today. Verse 14 says, “Then if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from Heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land.”

When are we going to get it? When are we going to move past stupid religion and understand the terra firma that’s been put under our feet is ours to declare? It’s ours to win, and we win it with weapons of warfare that come from the other side. We win it with prayer. We win it with intercession. We win it with worship.

I want to read 2nd Chronicles 7:13: “At times I might shut up the heavens so that no rain falls, or command grasshoppers to devour your crops, or send plagues among you.”

This is Yahweh speaking to Israel, and He says, There will be times when I’m going to send catastrophic physical and geographical circumstances. I’m going to send them to your land. Why? Because I’m hoping to see a response from you.

I would suggest that the church has a tendency through history to get complacent, to get soft, to lose her edge. And so the King, in His glory, decides to send things to push and test the church. Why? Because He understands that what He wants to be done on the earth will never happen until the church becomes who she’s been called to be on the earth.

He has set a mechanism in place where we carry the very remedy for the earth. Our remedy isn’t to say, Please Lord, would You come back? Our remedy is to stand in our place and to declare the authority that He’s put in us. 

Paul’s clear that the weapons of our warfare are not of flesh and blood, but they’re incredibly powerful for the pulling down of strongholds. All of Paul’s language is spiritual. It’s prayer-based. It’s intercession-based. It is guerrilla warfare-based. We are to be a people that no matter what we see on the horizon, we go into the secret place, we begin to hunker down, we begin to cry out for what’s around us, and we begin to invade the earth with our prayers—not with our mouth.

“At times I might shut up the heavens so that no rain falls…” What was the significance of rainfall in their culture? It helped crops grow, and crops were connected to the economy. For an agricultural community, rain is the lifeblood of the economy. So what He is saying is, There might be times when I shut up the economy to get your attention.

“…I might command locusts to devour your crops…” Dealing with money again, but in a way that’s outside of our control. It’s called a natural disaster. “…or send plagues among you…” This deals with health.

I want us to understand something as the church. Every phrase He spoke to Israel is a phrase that cascades to us. Some promises are unique to the people of Israel, but they overarch when they’re to the people of God in general like this. He said, There’s going to be times when I will affect your finances, your health, your circumstances, and I have an agenda. What’s His agenda? It’s in verse 14, “Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land.”

I want to reverse-engineer this for just a minute. He’s dealing with His people. He’s not dealing with humanity needing to get saved; He’s dealing with the church. All of us, unless you’re here and you’ve never given your life to Jesus, then at this moment this excludes you. 

SEEK HUMILITY

“…If they will humble themselves…”

This tells me that the first step in seeing our land healed is we drop our pride and adopt humility. We understand that the Son of Man didn’t come to be served, but came to serve and give His life away. The way we give our life away is through prayer. 

There has to be discipline in the secret place for the sake of the world around us, not just for the sake of us. And we have to deal authentically with a lack of it. We cannot walk past this and go, Yeah, he talked about spending more time in prayer, and then move on into prayerlessness.

We have to ask ourselves an honest question: Am I willing to discipline myself?

There are two pains you will feel in life: the pain of discipline and the pain of regret. One you choose, one you don’t. Will you discipline yourself to pray? Or will we stand before Him someday and watch the world dissipate and fall apart with regret?

I don’t want to stand before the Lord and have Him say, I put you on the earth, on this day, in this time, in this hour. Why didn’t you pray about it? Why didn’t you carry these needs before Me? I have a deep belief that He will assess this for each of us. Hey, I know your prayers. They came before me. They were caught up. Hey, we sifted the bowls, but none of yours were in there.

The point isn’t to teach a strong message. The point is to say we get super reactionary when we see stuff on the news and it’s right for us to be praying, declaring health, and asking the Lord for grace. There’s a family that lost a dad. He was my age, he was fifty, and he’s gone. It’s right for our prayers and our compassion to go out.

We have an ex-president who had an assassination attempt on his life. If you have any response to that other than, God have mercy, thank you for saving his life, you have problems. If you could sit in here and go, Hey, I have a political perspective; I wish he had been taken out, that is a sin, period. It doesn’t matter which side of the fence it’s on; it’s a sin.

Our job is to stand for the King’s culture, not for our culture. You lost your right to have your own personal culture when you gave your life to Jesus. The moment you gave your life to Jesus, you adopted His culture, and that’s it. You adopted His political system. You adopted His allegiance. That’s it.

Part of what’s wrong with the church at large right now is we’re trying to live in two systems instead of understanding we have one system and it will teach us how to live in the other. The one system has a methodology to change the world, and it’s prayer.

If My people, who are called by My name, will first and foremost get over their pride and humble themselves, then they will begin to pray and change the world. This tells me arrogance is the enemy of intercession and seeking God’s face.

SEEK HIS FACE

“…and seek My face…”

I love this. I don’t think we’ll ever find the knowledge of the King until we learn how to pray for the world around us. This tells me that as we serve the culture around us, as we serve the world around us through intercession, we’re going to learn about who He is. We’re going to grab His heart. We grab revelation, and we grab knowledge. Why? Because it helps us worship.

I want you to catch something. Those elders have a musical instrument, they have an intercession instrument, and they’re worshiping. Three things are happening with those twenty-four elders around the throne all the time. Night and day they’re offering music, they’re offering prayer, and they’re releasing worship.

We are supposed to emulate that dynamic when we come to church. We need to understand there’s an authority when we gather where we can, with music, begin to worship and pray and change the atmosphere of the world we live in.

SEEK GODLINESS

“…and turn from their wicked ways…”

Pretty obvious. The time to put away foolishness is now. The situation in the world around us, if it hasn’t been dire enough, it sure is now. We have a world that is in chaos, and she desperately needs the church to be who God has called her to be.

I know some of us might struggle with this. I mean, I struggle with it at times too. If I’m honest, my heart is, I don’t know if I care about them. They’re idiots anyway. Don’t be surprised, I’m just saying what you’re thinking.

But we have a King who gave His life. He said, “For God so loved the world he sent His only begotten son that whosoever believes…” For God so loved the world. Anthropos. He loved them all and He loved them all in hopes that they would come.

He desires that none would perish. How do we live in a world where none will perish if the church isn’t going to pray? How do you know if you’re a believer? Where is your first instinct? Is your first instinct to go to  Facebook, or is it to your knees? Is your first instinct to call somebody and talk about it, or is it to go to the Lord?

PRAY FOR A CHAOTIC WORLD

According to what I see in 2nd Chronicles, our first instinct as the people of God is to be on our face. It’s not an issue of being a good believer. We have kind of moved into a season where we have some people who are intercessors, but according to this, we’re all intercessors. That intercession is to be a station that we grab onto and understand that our prayers affect the atmosphere of Heaven and the atmosphere of the earth. If you don’t like what you see, pray about it. Pray about it until you see change.

Pastor Gary exemplifies the idea that a man with experience trumps a man with an argument. I’m not saying he’s old. I’m saying he’s getting older. We’ve done a lot of life together, and tragically he’s been saying for a while, Hey, I think 2024 is going to be a hard year. It’s going to be a deep challenge for the church.

Please, hear my heart. If a message like this causes you to want to go find someplace else that teaches a different message, then that is wrong. This is the Scripture. We are to be a people that go to our knees to heal the land around us.

I don’t know if it’s going to get a whole lot less crazy over the next few months. There has never been a time that I can remember in my lifetime when the church needed to pray more. Where every time there’s an opportunity to pray, we should be amassing with one agenda. Let’s pray for the world around us. 

Why? Well, because it says, “If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves and pray…” and then in 2nd Timothy it says, “Pray for those around you…” Pray for all people. Especially pray for leadership and authority. The tragedy of Israel’s history is God always gave them the leaders they deserved. He would challenge His people to return to righteousness, and then He would give them a righteous leader. 

HEALING THE WORLD BEGINS WITH US

Unfortunately, it begins with us. We have to heal our prayerlessness if we want to heal the nation. If we want to see a system around us that reflects the King, we have to do our job. We can no longer hunker into a position that says I’m just going to manage my world and let them figure it out.

If that was His agenda, He would have taken us the moment we gave our life to Him. He left us with an agenda to be an agency of righteousness and impact the world around us.

I have one desire: to make our time about Him. To worship Him. To get in the glory and stay in the glory. We get to do that if we live prayer-filled lives outside of the Sunday morning service. I believe the manifest presence of God on the people of God is the most important thing in our day and in our time. We have to return to being good soldiers and knowing how to hold up our end on the battlefront.

My questions would be for all of us. Take 2nd Timothy and assess: am I praying for all people? Am I praying for leadership? Am I praying with gratitude and thanks? What have I put in the way of prayer? What have I offered as a justification for my prayerlessness? Because that is the root of the pride I’m dealing with.

If the answer is I don’t have time, that’s not true. You have twenty-four hours every day. We’re all given the same amount. How we choose to use it is an issue of stewardship. 

Lord, that’s not where I was planning on going. Hopefully, it’s where You wanted us to go. Holy Spirit, anything that was spoken that is not of You, please deal with it quickly.

Let it be forgettable. But what was of You, would You let it linger in our hearts? Would You let it take root and grow?

Lord, I think we could do a mass repentance for prayerlessness. But I’m not interested in a collective prayer. I’m interested in each of us taking seriously what You called us to do. Let our days be constantly before You, our minds be upon You, and our prayers for the world around us be rising at all times. Let that be our first response, not our emergency response.

It’s a fairly solemn moment in the room right now. I can feel it for sure. I’m asking You to create in us a clean heart, God. Renew in us a right spirit. Return to us the joy that comes from simply obeying what You said to do. We love You and we honor You. In Jesus’ name, amen.