Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Does Revelation Promote Violence? | New Testament | Revelation 15

Episode Date: November 10, 2023

Should we be waiting for evil to happen according to Revelation? Should we be excited for God's judgement? What is the right way to talk about justice? In today's episode, Tanya walks through Revelation 15 to discover how prayer and justice go together. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Prepare your heart to celebrate Jesus. Sign up to have the 'I Am Your God' Advent Devotional delivered directly to your inbox starting Sunday, Dec. 3, 2023. Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in one year. Get your FREE reading plan here. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Revelation 15

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Tanya Wilmuth. Now, when we read Revelation, we see lots of things happening. We see crazy beast and bowls of wrath, and just the imagery is so vivid and sometimes so violent. And as we look at it, we just want to say, well, does Revelation promote violence? But I would actually say no revelation, at least for God's followers, promotes and endorses a lot of prayer. We're going to talk about that today in Revelation 15. So chapter 15 starts like this.

It says, there will be a day when God's justice is complete. So is it our job to bring justice? Or what is our job, basically, as we wait for justice? See, the New Testament teaches followers of Jesus to bless those who persecute. you and overcome evil with good. We're not to respond with malice. We're not to take vengeance on our enemies. We're not to take justice into our own hands. But it's not that justice doesn't exist or that it doesn't matter. Clearly it does matter or God wouldn't have needed to send his son to atone for the penalty of sin and evil. The message of Revelation remains the same as the rest of the Bible. God's People are to overcome evil with good and look to God to provide justice.

So where does prayer come into the mix? How does it relate to God's wrath and justice? Well, that's what we're going to explore today in Revelation 15. The big idea we're going to talk about is keep praying. When you see a world that's being undone by evil, or when you experience evil done to you, your prayers matter. See, Revelation says, yes, justice is coming. God will judge evil. And for the original readers, this gave them hope to endure because they were facing persecution and martyrdom.

For us, it still means endurance is not beyond us. We still need the message of Revelation 15 today. We aren't to judge and turn against people who wrong us because we trust God for his timing that is all knowing and is justice that is complete. But let's be honest, our human nature wants lightning bolt justice sometimes. Like the kind you see in the cartoons, if someone hurts you, it would be nice if they got a jolt and felt the same kind of pain you feel. When people are using evil in ways that are beyond our comprehension, we would like God to intervene in a visible way to stop them in their tracks.

But Revelation helps answer a question about God's justice. It is coming. But right now, God is giving people time to turn from their sin and turn toward him. We long for a world where there is right and wrong and the ones who are wrong are clearly punished. But we don't want to live under those same standards when we're the ones on the wrong. We want God to make an exception for us. And we sometimes get fooled into believing we create our own exception by doing good or being good. But that's not the way it works.

Justice is coming and the Lamb, Jesus Christ, is the only way to escape God's wrath. Like the blood over the door on Passover, it's the blood of Jesus covering you that God sees when he judges the earth. There's only one way to be right before God. So what do we do with this? Well, Revelation 15 shows us how to turn to prayer instead of violence. Now, before I read you a little excerpt from chapter 15, don't think it's just big things like murder and slander that this applies to. It is all evil done to us and to others. When we experience the backlash of any kind of sin, from gossip to be intentionally left out, to being overlooked,

or anything else, we endure the same way. A posture of humility, knowing that without the blood of the lamb, we would be nothing but sinners. And a posture of hope, knowing God will not only punish but destroy evil. A posture of prayer, depending on God to hear us, keep us, and bring us into his presence for eternity. Here's a description of the martyrs and their prayer in Revelation 15. John says, Then I saw in heaven another marvelous event of great significance.

Seven angels were holding the last seven plagues which would bring God's wrath to completion. I saw before me what seemed to be a glass seat mixed with fire. And on it stood all the people who had been victorious over the beast and his statue and the number of representing his name. They were all holding harps that God had given them, and they were singing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the lamb. Okay, now listen to their prayer. It goes like this. Great and marvelous are your works, O Lord God the Almighty. Just and true are your ways, O king of the nations. Who will not fear you, Lord, and glorify your name?

For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship before you, for your righteous deeds have been revealed. See, the martyrs here are praying for God's justice to come. And how does it come? Through their prayer. We love to fix things, don't we? I recently heard the term lawnmower parents, which basically means you go in front of your kids and mow down the obstacles before they even get there.

It's like a prefixing. This is the attitude we use to respond to those who hurt us and others. Mow them down. Yet scripture tells us something different. It tells us to never stop praying for them. We're encouraged to depend on God through prayer, we're encouraged to pray in the spirit at all times, and to pray on every occasion.

In other words, our first response, in the face of evil and suffering, is prayerful dependence on God. The prayer of the martyrs for God to bring justice really challenges us. It's more than just a daily nature of prayer, but a charge to never give up on praying. Don't give up on praying that your mom or dad will know God in a genuine way. Don't give up on praying that your spouse will have a desire to open God's word and study it. Don't give up on praying that that person who always leaves you out will have a heart

that's changed. Don't give up praying that your kids will have friends to come alongside them in the pursuit of Jesus. Don't give up praying that you'll have the grace and strength to manage the next hard situation you're put in. Don't give up praying. That your church will passionately pursue Jesus and passionately love the people in your community. See, we can give up judging, but never praying. We can give up arbitrating justice. but never stop praying. We can give up fixing, but never prayer. We can give up worrying about things outside our control, but never give up praying about things outside of our control. We can give up our despair in prayer to God. Lord, forgive us for being either aloof to evil or consumed by it. Neither is the way you

want us to respond. When we hear of people being hurt and wronged, let our compassion bring us into prayer with you. When we are wronged, teach us to turn to you instead of depending on ourselves. Amen.