No Rest for the Wicked-Another Book pt. 4

This is the fourth part in a series that begins with The Conqueror.  I am pasting here the introduction from Part 1 that serves as the introduction to the whole series.

"We are wrong about everything else but we are right about the Gospel."  It's a pretty good one liner and I have kind of been using it as the unofficial motto of our church.  "We are wrong about everything else but we are right about the Gospel."  What I mean to imply by that is that the Gospel is the only thing that matters.  The Gospel, quite literally, justifies all of our other mistakes, errors, and failures.  So, I don't know how far our little look into Revelation will get but the key that I intend to use is something like this.  "I am wrong about eschatology.  I am wrong about numerology.  I am wrong about symbolism.  But I intend to be right about what the Revelation says about Christ."  Where it is necessary to try and interpret John's visions to tell my story, I don't intend to seek a coherent system of symbolism, I don't intend to offer any opinion on the chronology of the "End Times", not even in the most general of ways.  Instead, I will shamelessly use all of the imagery and mysticism to try and illustrate the Christ of Revelation.  If that is how John intended it to be used then it might work out pretty well.  If it isn't, "Oh well." 

From Revelation 14 starting at verse 9:
Then a third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, “If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives his mark on his forehead or on his hand, he himself shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out full strength into the cup of His indignation. He shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever; and they have no rest day or night, who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name.”
Here is the patience of the saints; here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.
Then I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, “Write: ‘Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.’ ”
“Yes,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, and their works follow them.”

So, what I want to talk about today is Rest.  I think that most of us want rest but we can't seem to get it.  I suppose that our text today is the source of the saying, "No rest for the wicked.", and that's a pretty good summary of the first part of the passage we read, "they have no rest day or night" it says about God's enemies, it also mentions them being tormented, and that word torment suggests not so much being locked up in the torture chamber as it does hard labor, a job that is irksome, irritating, that makes you miserable.  One other issue, before we move on, with the way our text reads is with the torment of the wicked occuring "in the presence" of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.  The word translated "in the presence" is enOPion, literally in the eyes of and it is often used exactly the way that we use the phrase "in somebody's eyes" in English.  Often in the New Testament this word is used to contrast something being one way in the eyes of God and another in the eyes of men.  And I can't help but wonder if there is some of that here.  Whenever we hear about the suffering of the damned in Scripture we are hearing about it from the point of view of the Lamb and the saints, in their eyes, but I suspect that it might look different to the ones who are doing this hard, unending, tormenting labor.  We imagine that the work with which we have filled up our lives is purposeful, meaningful and that the slavery which characterizes our lives is the way that good people live their lives.  And the Lamb, and the Saints look on in pity wandering how to show us what we are missing, searching for words that will convince us of the rest that God has in store for us, if we will only put our labors away.

God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high Hebrews 1

God, is not engaged in continual labor.  He is not always working.  He sat down.  He wrapped it all up.  Moses says that on the seventh day He rested, but actually Jesus said, "It is finished" and knocked off Friday at about 3, which is a very good example to follow.  Jammed right into the middle of His Law, shoved into the face of all of us who seek our own righteousness, is the Sabbath, the express image of God thumbing His nose in our faces, trying to wake us up to the rest we are missing.  And don't let the characterization of the "wicked" following the Beast and what not fool you, seeking righteousness is exactly what they are doing.  They are working 24/7 at being good parents, good husbands, good human beings, going ninety miles an hour the wrong way down a one way street.

Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says:
“Today, if you will hear His voice,
Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion,
In the day of trial in the wilderness,
Where your fathers tested Me, tried Me,
And saw My works forty years.
Therefore I was angry with that generation,
And said, ‘They always go astray in their heart,
And they have not known My ways.’
So I swore in My wrath,
‘They shall not enter My rest.’ ”
Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God; but exhort one another daily, while it is called “Today,” lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end, while it is said:
“Today, if you will hear His voice,
Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”
For who, having heard, rebelled? Indeed, was it not all who came out of Egypt, led by Moses? Now with whom was He angry forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose corpses fell in the wilderness? And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who did not obey? So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief. from Hebrews 3

Those awful rascals with the Mark of the Beast get the same treatment as who, the Children of Israel who followed Moses out of Egypt.  And what is the sin that is being pointed out to us by their example?  "We become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence unchanged to the end."  And those who do not do this are accused of unbelief.  The beginning of our confidence, is simply the unmerited favor of Christ, we begin, confessedly unworthy, appealing for mercy based on His goodness not our deservingness.  And then, we think maybe His goodness is missing a little around the edges, we think that there are things that we need to do to complete Christ's work.  I mean, He should have at least kept going right up until the Sabbath, even if He was gonna take Saturday off, shouldn't He?  He went and sat down and left us this whole kingdom to build, this whole world to win, all this work to do.  So we see that we can not enter in because of unbelief, we cannot rest because we refuse to believe that our righteousness, our goodness is entirely superfluous, is in fact an obstacle, as much as anything can be an obstacle to the relentless, furious, saving love of God.

Our life of works and worthiness is the problem, all of the things that we are trying to contribute, to add on top of the works which were finished at the foundation of the world.  What then is the solution?

Then I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, “Write: ‘Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.’ ”
“Yes,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, and their works follow them.”

The solution is to die.  To stop contributing, stop adding to the work of Christ, stop using our fig leaves to accessorize His pure, unalloyed, unmixed, goodness clean and white.  It's not just ok to give up, it's commanded.  The only thing that is required of us is something that all of us can do.  Die.

But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation. Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? And for this reason He is the Mediator of the new covenant, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.

The Old Covenant said, The man who keeps the Law shall live by the Law.  And no one kept the Law and so all died without that covenant providing the promised inheritance, the promised rest.  The New Covenant works by means of death, it brings life, by means of failure we become more than conquerors, by means of condemnation we are justified.  Our life, which in the eyes of God is really death, is replaced by the death of Christ, which is truest life.  Our righteous works, which in the eyes of God are sin, are replaced by the rest of Christ, an idleness which powerfully upholds all things.  Our accomplishments are buried in the depths of the sea and we obtain rest.

For where there is a testament, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator. For a testament is in force after men are dead, since it has no power at all while the testator lives. Therefore not even the first covenant was dedicated without blood. For when Moses had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water, scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, saying, “This is the blood of the covenant which God has commanded you.” Then likewise he sprinkled with blood both the tabernacle and all the vessels of the ministry. And according to the law almost all things are purified with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no remission.
Therefore it was necessary that the copies of the things in the heavens should be purified with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us; not that He should offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood of another— He then would have had to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now, once at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment, so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation.

The War In Heaven-Another Book pt. 3

This is the third part in a series that begins with The Conqueror.  I am pasting here the introduction from Part 1 that serves as the introduction to the whole series.

"We are wrong about everything else but we are right about the Gospel."  It's a pretty good one liner and I have kind of been using it as the unofficial motto of our church.  "We are wrong about everything else but we are right about the Gospel."  What I mean to imply by that is that the Gospel is the only thing that matters.  The Gospel, quite literally, justifies all of our other mistakes, errors, and failures.  So, I don't know how far our little look into Revelation will get but the key that I intend to use is something like this.  "I am wrong about eschatology.  I am wrong about numerology.  I am wrong about symbolism.  But I intend to be right about what the Revelation says about Christ."  Where it is necessary to try and interpret John's visions to tell my story, I don't intend to seek a coherent system of symbolism, I don't intend to offer any opinion on the chronology of the "End Times", not even in the most general of ways.  Instead, I will shamelessly use all of the imagery and mysticism to try and illustrate the Christ of Revelation.  If that is how John intended it to be used then it might work out pretty well.  If it isn't, "Oh well."

Before we get to our text for today I want to say that when dealing with dreams and visions, it is definitely possible to be overly analytical.   Such poetry is not aimed at the rational mind, but at deeper and more primal parts of us.  So, at least to begin with, let's not focus on identifying the characters or significance of the story.  Not worry about the timing of the events.  But try and feel the story.

From Revelation 12:
Now a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a garland of twelve stars. Then being with child, she cried out in labor and in pain to give birth.
And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great, fiery red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads. His tail drew a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth, to devour her Child as soon as it was born. She bore a male Child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron. And her Child was caught up to God and His throne. Then the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, that they should feed her there one thousand two hundred and sixty days.
And war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer. So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, “Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death. Therefore rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea! For the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows that he has a short time.”
Now when the dragon saw that he had been cast to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male Child. But the woman was given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness to her place, where she is nourished for a time and times and half a time, from the presence of the serpent. So the serpent spewed water out of his mouth like a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away by the flood. But the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed up the flood which the dragon had spewed out of his mouth. And the dragon was enraged with the woman, and he went to make war with the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.

 War in Heaven, the very idea touches something deep inside of us.  It feels like the Heavens should be perfect, that the wars and difficulties which trouble mankind should not reach to Heaven.  I guess the first thing that strikes me when I hear this story is, "Who would dare to bring war to Heaven? and Why?"  We aren't given a lot of background for this story, but the first thing that I would say is that the text we just read is the only source of information about this war.  There are other passages of Scripture that are sometimes thought to refer to Satan's fall, or to him as an angel, but the only time that this story is deliberately dealt with in Scripture instead of sort of a passing reference is right here before us, so this is where we need to look for our answers, we shouldn't build a story with inferences from somewhere else and then try and fit this story into our prebuilt scenario.

So, in the text, "Michael" is the aggressor.  Telling this story, for me at least, begins with a whole lot of caveats and here is the next one.  "Michael" is a rather mysterious character.  He appears I think a total of four times in the Bible and on his rather unknown shoulders a lot of angelology has been built up.  Books have been written about who he is, what armies he commands, his history, his future.  He has been represented in countless artworks and prayed to by almost every branch of the church.  On the other hand, going back to Calvin's Commentary on the Prophet Daniel and extending through various arms of the faith, there is a suspicion that perhaps this is another name for Christ.  To me, there is only one reason to spend as much time as I already have on the question of his identity.  I simply bring it up to make the point, that it doesn't matter.  In the long run the question of whether something is done by the physical body of Christ or some member of the mystical Body of Christ, the Church, is meaningless.  Whether something is done by Jesus of Nazareth or by Dennis Darnell, in whom the Spirit of Christ dwells, is for all intents and purposes the same.  Whoever Michael is personally, what we need to know about him is simply what spirit is within him.  Whether he is Christ personally or he is Christ sacramentally is irrelevant.  Those who are in communion with Christ are One with Him just as He and His Father are one.  So the main point, and it is to me at least a bit of a curve ball, is that the aggressor in the War in Heaven is Christ.  I realize that before the war started the dragon made some threatening gestures towards the Child's mother, his intentions were clearly hostile, but as soon as the Child ascended to His Father's throne, His angels, fired the first shots.  So, is Christ righteous when He makes war?

So, why does this war happen?  The classic answers about Satan arrogantly challenging God, or being jealous of man, are probably on the right track but I think that they leave out the part of the story that is most important for us to know, that neither of those theories is really indicated by the text in any way supports my abandoning them.  But the text does give us a reason.

Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, “Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down.

The one who was cast out, spent all of his time accusing the Saints.

So Satan answered the Lord and said, “Does Job fear God for nothing? Have You not made a hedge around him, around his household, and around all that he has on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But now, stretch out Your hand and touch all that he has, and he will surely curse You to Your face!” Job 1

From Zechariah 3: Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the Angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to oppose him. And the Lord said to Satan, “The Lord rebuke you, Satan! The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is this not a brand plucked from the fire?”
Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and was standing before the Angel.
Then He answered and spoke to those who stood before Him, saying, “Take away the filthy garments from him.” And to him He said, “See, I have removed your iniquity from you, and I will clothe you with rich robes.”
And I said, “Let them put a clean turban on his head.”
So they put a clean turban on his head, and they put the clothes on him. And the Angel of the Lord stood beside him.

When Judah came back from captivity in Babylon, they were led by two men.  Zerubbabel, the heir to the throne of David, and this Joshua, the high priest.  He is called here a brand plucked from the fire, and we have a picture of him being clothed in the righteousness of Christ.  He was a lost soul, lost in his sins pictured by his filthy clothes, born in Babylon the epitome of a place under the curse of God, this is the fire that he was in.  But he was plucked from that fire, taken from a poor, enslaved, exile to be the Priest of the Living God and to dwell in His House, and clothed in pure linen, clean and white, the righteousness of the Saints given to him graciously.  Satan's accusations against him aren't recorded but they don't really need to be do they?  We can easily imagine what we would accuse him of and that must be the sorts of things Satan accused him of.  No doubt he had broken the law in many points.  He was born and raised in Babylon, all of his notions of righteousness would have fallen far below our idea of what the Law requires, far below Satan's idea of what righteousness is.

And now I need to break off a little, because I need to dispose of our cartoon supervillain notions of Satan.  God has no opposite.  There is no personification of evil.  Everyone acts out of what they believe is good.  Evil comes from wrong ideas of what is good.  All sins come from wrong ideas of what is good.  Selfishness, to take a simple example, is simply equating what we want with what is good.  So, what is Satan's wrong idea of what is good?  His idea is that people and things that aren't good should be quarantined from the righteous, especially from God.  And that quarantine which can never make the sinners clean turns into a giant garbage dump, the never ending tire fire, landfill outside of Jerusalem which is the prototype of Hell.  Which sounds a lot like the Law or at least with the way that I have always understood it.  The Accuser goes hand in hand with the "handwriting that was against us", and his being cast down with the erasing of that handwriting.

I suspect that angels and heavenly creatures are not personal and separate in the way that we think that they are.  If we are members of Christ and members of one another then that at least suggests that existence is not the disconnected, individual thing that we think it is.  I guess what I am getting at is that it seems to me that a lot of angels are what we call Ideas or Beliefs or Dreams or Hopes or Fears.  And The Law must be a very chief sort of angel, an archangel if you like that term, exactly as the rumors suggest the Devil once was.  How can I equate the Law which is holy, and just, and good with the Devil?

From Romans 9: For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

It doesn't say that humanity was subjected to futility, or that Earth was subjected to futility.  Our text today is the obvious proof that heaven and the celestial beings have been subjected to futility.  "The Creation" was subjected to futility, the whole creation.  Just to be clear, "the creation" means everything that was created, which is another way of saying everything except God Himself.  Which includes angels and drumroll please, The Law.  However good, and holy, and just, however perfect the Law is, we have one question that we have to ask about it.  Is the Law God?  If the answer is no, then it has been subjected to futility, the Law as we know it, even the Law as delivered by a man inspired by the spirit of God, even the Law as written on tablets of stone with the burning finger of God, is in the same sinking boat as the rest of us, which strongly implies that it is not the solution to our problems.  And what is true of the Law is also true of its angel.

But how is the Law, which is true, equated with the Liar?  We often assume that the way things are now is the way that they have always been.  And it is generally believed that Satan fell before the creation of man.  But that isn't what the Revelation of Jesus Christ says.  It places the war as occurring shortly after the Lord's ascension, the Child's ascension to the throne of God.  And to understand this text and understand our world, we must realize that the very foundations the world was built on were unmoored when the Child put His little flock of the last, the lost, the little and the least in possession of the whole kingdom of Heaven.  In Job and Zechariah, there is no suggestion that Satan is at all unwelcome in Heaven or before the throne of God.  When he accuses Joshua the high priest we hear a very restrained reply, "The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you."  Civility might be strained but it is maintained.  Satan has a place and a role in Heaven, or at least he did.  The Angel of the Law must have had a rather depressing life.  He went out going to and from upon the earth, searching, hunting for a righteous man and he never found one.  He jealously protected the purity and righteousness of God by keeping all sinners far from Him.  He kept us in our filthy clothes out of the clean, bright City of God.  But the whole time he was a liar, although no one could see it.

Satan is the accuser.  And all of his accusations against us are true.  Everytime he calls me a sinner, he is dead on.  He is a liar, but no one knows that he is lying, because the things he is saying happen to be true.  It seems confusing.  But what it all comes down to is that he doesn't accuse me of being a sinner because it is true.  It just happens to be true.  It all went fine until he accused the Innocent Man.  Keeping sinners like you and me separate from God seems eminently reasonable, but the Law condemned Christ and demanded that His Father forsake Him.  That is the legal theory of purity, of holiness, to keep all of the sinners locked up, and it marks us all as sinners.  But when the Accuser accused Christ he tipped his hand.  Although his accusations against us are true, he never made them because they were true, if it was about truth he wouldn't have accused the Righteous Man.  The Law has become futile.  It can make us conscious of our failure, it can mark us as sinners, but that is the extent of its power.  It cannot make sinners righteous.  The Law should be a happy thing, keeping good people on the right track, but having no good people to work with and being unable to help people like you and me, it became sick, it became darkened, and it had to go.  So the whole concept of keeping sinners away from God has been rejected.  The purity which avoids all contact with the impure has been replaced with a purity which makes the impure pure, with a Messiah who touches lepers and makes them clean.

When Adam sinned, it wasn't just him and his children that fell.  Everything fell with him.  Maybe the angels and the better natures understood what was happening and submitted willingly to this strange prelude to the Revelation of Divine Grace and maybe they didn't.  But they fell either way.  The Law is called holy and just and good, but no created thing can be holy and just and good in and of itself, and when a part of creation thinks that it is good on its own then it is a wicked liar.  The Father of Lies is the one who thinks he is righteous apart from Christ.  I proved earlier that the Law is fallen and become futile by the fact that it is not the Creator, that all things besides Him are fallen, but when everything else had fallen, He Himself descended lower than any of them.  He placed Himself under the Law, under the self-righteous ones, under the criminals, even under the earth so that He might place all things on His shoulders and bear us with Him when He returned to His Father and Our Father.  However good and holy a thing is, like the Law or however evil and dirty a thing is, like the Devil all must come to the One who is full of Grace and Truth and all are called.  The angel flies over the whole earth crying out the Everlasting Gospel, "the Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let him who hears say, “Come!” And let him who thirsts come. Whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely."


Finally, let's look at how the war was fought and won.  They, identified earlier as Michael's angels, overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and the Word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.  I don't know a lot about angels but that sounds like the Apostles and Martyrs of the Church Militant, the church on this earth at war with the world, the flesh, and yes the Devil.  Satan has been defeated and cast out of Heaven by the exact same weapons and tactics that we are given that are called mighty for casting down strongholds and everything that exalts itself against the knowledge of God.  What is the flaming archangel's sword that wins the war?  It is the Word of God, the truth that Christ is righteous though not according to our ideas of righteousness, righteous when He judges and when He makes war.  The great weapons of our warfare are our testimonies.  The testimony that though we are sinful men still, that we are Michael's Angels, messengers of the Heavenly Prince entrusted with the ministry of gracious reconciliation.  Our testimony is that we are brands plucked from the fire, like Joshua.  Still liable to all of the accusations of the futile interpretation of the Law that our minds and Satan's produce, but righteous by the Divine declaration of the Angel of the Lord who clothes us in His own righteousness.  And as usual with Revelation, the instrument of our glorification is our death, and acceptance of that death, to not love our lives to the death,  unites us with the death of Christ, to hate our lives and welcome the Return, the Presence of the God who kills and makes alive is our victory.   Woe to the inhabitants of the Earth and the Sea because Satan has cone to them in great wrath.  But the good news is that though we appear to be inhabiting Earth it isnt true.  Your reality and mine is that we are hidden in God with Christ, a reality that we can't see with our eyes, but can hear in the preaching of the Gospel and feel and taste in the Communion of the Saints.