Week 7 | “The Pressure to Compromise”

Revelation 21 3 says and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying look God's dwelling place is now among the people and He will dwell with them They will be his people and God himself will be with them and be their God He will wipe every tear from their eyes There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain For the old order of things has passed away All right, good morning, how's everybody doing this morning? Great to have you here. I want to welcome those of you joining us online also welcome all of our willow locations And there's always big shout out to our brothers who join us from the Jefferson City Correctional Center. Great to have you here As we continue this series through the book of Revelation now if you're newer with us We're in week seven of this study of the last book of the Bible the book of Revelation If you're newer with us, let me just say this right out of the gates. It's a weird book It's kind of crazy, it's got all kinds of images and symbols and it's widely misunderstood And we've been taking this really methodical journey through the book of Revelation for those who've been around for the series How's it been so far? Okay good so far. I Hope you still think that's true after today. Today's a doozy, which is alright But but what we've discovered is that when we lean into this book and I think properly understand this book. It's incredibly powerful It's really practical. It's really really challenging this week is no different. So this week we're gonna be in the book of Revelation chapter 13 Buckle your seatbelts. This was gonna be a little challenging. If this is your first time at willow Ecstatic that you're here. No matter what happens today. Come back next week because I promise it will get I promise it will get better Let's start with this kind of idea Oftentimes following Jesus is incredibly inspiring But sometimes following Jesus is incredibly costly Now as I think about that sometimes the cost of following Jesus is really obvious, you know because of your faith Maybe you lost a relationship or because your faith Maybe you lost a deal or maybe you know because of your faith. There was a door that closed for whatever reason Sometimes it's really obvious

Sometimes it's way more subtle Sometimes the the costs we feel in terms of pressure We experienced it all as very young kids out on the school playground We all experienced the scene where the kid who was a classmate was bullied and we had to wrestle with the decision Do we stick up for that person? But if we stick up for them that's gonna cost our standing in the group or do we just play it safe and we stay quiet Kind of protecting ourselves within the group And so we all kind of wrestle with this because the question is not is it right? The question is what does it cost us? And it starts on the playground, but it doesn't stop on the playground that same pressure It takes us into the classroom. It takes us into the office. It takes us into the boardroom It takes us around our family dinner tables. It certainly takes us around our holiday dinner tables And so the question becomes about whatever the issue might be because of a faith perspective It's not just is it right? The question is what does it cost me? And am I willing to pay the price for whatever the cost is? That's the question that we're gonna take into the book of Revelation chapter 13 Let me start with this kind of idea I would say this the greatest threat to your faith probably won't be somebody trying to make you stop believing in Jesus It will be the thousand quiet invitations to love something else. Just a little bit more and That's the subtle pressure That we're gonna wrestle with today as we wrestle with Revelation chapter 13 now if you're here last week with us You know that we met some new figures some new characters in the book of Revelation And and they're kind of these weird weird images chapter 13 is no different So I I introduced you to a few characters last week. I got to introduce you to a few more this week These characters are weird. We just start there. It's weird. It's crazy It's highly symbolic, but I think if we can break it down and we can make some sense of it Okay, and so the first character we actually met last week, and so who's the dragon? Satan

Some of you here last week you remember John actually tells us that the dragon is a reference to Satan to the devil like our enemy, the accuser. And if you were here last week, you know, we looked at Satan's tactics on a very personal level. And he has strategies that he wants to steal, kill, and destroy every good thing that God wants to give you in life. If you weren't here last week, I would encourage you to go watch that back. Because we have to understand the schemes of our enemy or we will fall prey to his tactic. But the Bible hasn't left us unaware or unequipped. God wants to make us aware and fully equipped so that we aren't taken down by the tactics of the enemy. Well, he shows back up in chapter 13. And so if chapter 12 was more specifically about his tactics toward you personally, chapter 13 really takes a macro look at his strategy as he works on greater scales through like governments and politics and those types of things. I just said the word politics in church and we all got a little nervous. Buckle your seatbelt, it is chapter 13. I'm just gonna try to be honest with the text as much as I possibly can. So we meet two beasts in Revelation chapter 13. So the question becomes, who is the beast of the sea? Well, the beast of the sea is a reference to some sort of political power, governmental power, that kind of thing.

We'll also meet the beast of the earth. And the beast of the earth is representation of some sort of false religion. Now, depending on your interpretive methodology when it comes to Revelation, sometimes people see this as governmental entities. Sometimes people see this as individuals in particular. So sometimes when referenced to the beast of the sea and the beast of the earth, you'll hear people talk about the antichrist and you'll hear people talk about a false prophet. Same kind of idea. Whether it's a reference to individuals or representative of entities, it is a scheme of the enemy that he has deployed all throughout human history. Now, what's fascinating about this, if you've been with us over the course of series, you know that there's multiple ways to look at this crazy book, which is the last book of the Bible. But our approach is he says, we're not gonna look at it as a timeline of future events, we're gonna look at it as a template. Now, there's some great, brilliant, godly people that see it more as a future timeline. And though I don't see it that way and we disagree with our perspective, again, they may be right. It's very possible that it does play out

in a timeline type of situation. However, I think the better way to look at Revelation is not just that it will happen, it's that it has happened and it continues to happen. These are schemes that the enemy has used literally for thousands of years. He doesn't have new plays in his playbook. And so again, whether we take these as individuals or entities doesn't really matter. The point is, how do we understand the schemes of the enemy so that we don't fall prey to them? Good so far? Okay, now here's what's true about the schemes of the enemy. I would say this, whatever God creates, Satan counterfeits. He just takes it one degree off or twists it just a little bit so that it still looks like the good thing that God created, but it's more of a bait that will take us to a place that we don't want to experience. So for example, God created love. Satan counterfeited it and made it lust. Or God created rest and Satan counterfeits it and makes it addiction or whatever we use to escape the hard that we experience. The counterfeit will always cost us. God created truth. Satan will counterfeit some sort of propaganda. Now the same is true when it comes to governments or political entities or types of things. They are an entity created by God.

The Bible's really clear. The Bible talks about government institutions are instituted by God himself. That's why the Bible tells us to pray for our leaders and to submit to our government authority, those types of things, because they are created by God. Now there's a very specific reason why God created governments and political entities. I'll name a few. He created governments to create order because God is a God of order and not chaos. God created governments in order to protect its citizens. God created governments in order to ensure justice, to create policies for the sake of human thriving. There's a lot of good and godly reasons why God establishes different governments on planet Earth. But what God creates, Satan tries to counterfeit. And how he counterfeits is he wants to take the good thing that God has created and he wants you to make it ultimate. He wants you to take the allegiance that was supposed to be given to God and that you would give your allegiance to some sort of earthly entity of some kind. And that's where you meet Revelation chapter 13. So a couple of principles that we'll see in Revelation 13. Here's the first. The state makes a terrible God. Again, it's created by God. It's created by God to do good in our world.

Now, no state's been perfect. It was created to do good, but it's a great servant. It's a terrible, terrible God. All right, let's jump into Revelation chapter 13. Buckle your seatbelt, quickly turn to somebody near you and say, it's gonna be okay. All right. Chapter 13, verse one, it says this. The dragon stood on the shore of the sea. It says, and I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had 10 heads, sorry, 10 horns and seven heads and 10 crowns on the horns. And so the crowns meaning authority. Remember, whatever God creates, the enemy wants to counterfeit. Why did I forget that word? Thank you for your help. And then it says, on each one of the head, there was this blasphemous name. The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but it had the feet of the bear and a mouth like that of a lion. Pay attention to that, it's a reference to Daniel 7. We'll come back to that in just a minute. The dragon gave the beast power and his throne and great authority. One of the heads seemed to have a fatal wound and the fatal wound had been healed. Really important detail, we'll come back to that as well. It says, the whole world was filled with wonder

and followed the beast. People worshiped the dragon because they had given authority to the beast and they also worshiped the beast and asked, who's like the beast? Who can wage war against it? So what in the world is going on? So a couple things here. You'll notice that the ultimate goal is stated. The ultimate goal of the enemy and of the beast is that of worship. It's all about our allegiance. It's that you and I would take the trust, the hope, the dependence that should be placed on God and we would misplace it on some sort of earthly authority. That's the goal. That he doesn't just want something, he wants your devotion, he wants your worship. Whatever God creates, Satan wants to counterfeit so that he's the beneficiary of your ultimate worship and allegiance. Now, what's interesting is that's not just something that has happened or will happen, it's just something that happens. Now, did you catch the animals that were listed? This leopard, this lion, the bear, that's a reference to the Old Testament prophet of Daniel. When he was naming these really, really powerful countries of the day, countries like Babylon and Persia and Greece, ultimately Rome,

what Daniel was trying to highlight is when any country displaces God at the center, it's all the same script. That they want to be the ultimate authority. They want to have all the allegiance. That's what any political entity does when they displace God at the center, they want to be the center. It was true about Babylon, it was true about Persia, it was true about Greece, and in the first century when John's writing the book of Revelation, it was true about Rome. And so it's kind of this idea that the players change, that the times change, that the countries change, but the spirit of the enemy is the same. It's woven throughout all of it. Now, notice it says that this beast had this mortal wound that appeared to be healed. Now, what's that about? Now, think about it from a biblical perspective. Who was killed and then resurrected? Jesus is always a good answer in church, right? What's fascinating about what's happening here is John's setting up that there is a trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Revelation 13 talks about an unholy trinity, the dragon and then the two beasts. The dragon is the counterfeit of the Father. He wants to worship, he wants all the authority. The first beast is a counterfeit of the Son,

the one who is actually reigning, the one who's actually in control. He's the counterfeit, he makes it look like I'm kind of like the Lamb, but I fall a little short of it. Eugene Peterson gets at this idea. He says this, the dragon, the sea beast, the lamb beast, they are the satanic trinity. I would call them the unholy trinity that infiltrates the political world in order to deflect our worship from the God whom we cannot see to authorities that we can see. What the enemy tries to do is to get us to put our faith, our hope, our trust in kingdoms that we can see because that's so much easier than to put it into a kingdom that we cannot see. The challenge with the beast is, and probably the scariest part of the beast, is that our hearts sometimes actually bend that direction. We want to put hope into things that are more tangible. And so there's this aspect of our heart, it's kind of this unveiling and understanding about who I am that there's this natural tendency in me is to bend and to put my allegiance, my trust, into that which I can see and to misplace my allegiance. That's all that the enemy is trying to do is to get you to misplace where you put your faith and hope, that it's no longer in God,

it's something that God has created. So it goes on to describe this beast, verse five. The beast was given a mouth to utter profound, proud words and blasphemies and to exercise his authority for 42 months. It opened its mouth to blaspheme God and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live in heaven. It was given power to wage war against God's holy people and to conquer them. It was given authority over every tribe, people, language, and nation, but then he qualifies it. Says all inhabitants on earth will worship the beast. Here's the qualification. All those whose names have not been written in the Lamb's Book of Life. The Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world. Now, what John's getting at is simply this, that these political entities, you see how many times it says it was given power? It was given authority? And it said 42 months. Now, I don't take that to mean a literal three and a half year time period. I take that to mean his run is temporary. That every bit of authority that he has, it's on lien. He's on borrowed time and he's on borrowed authority. He's not the ultimate one to worship. And so to displace our worship and our allegiance to him is a really bad trade to make.

Now here's practically what that meant in the first century. So if I'm a first century Christian living in Rome at the time, what we know about Rome is that Rome was this political power and entity that actually demanded that Caesar was Lord, that he was the one to be worshiped. This was a very literal thing playing out. That before you, like when you woke up on a Monday morning and you went to your job and before you could trade at the market, before you could operate your guild, before you could have a promotion at work, somebody would put some incense in front of you and you have to pinch a little bit off, you have to throw it in a fire and you have to say these three words, Caesar is Lord. Everybody was doing it. It's how the world operated at the time. And to not do it would have been costly. And that was the dilemma that Christians faced, that I could just go along with what everybody else is doing and I would save my place professionally, I would save my place relationally. But the moment that I do that, I'm actually shifting my allegiance because anybody who says Jesus is Lord can't also say that Caesar is Lord. And so if you hold to your conviction that Jesus is actually Lord, that's gonna cost you. And in the first century, it would cost you your job,

it would cost you your ability to trade in the market. In some cases, it would cost you relationships, in other cases, it actually might cost you your life. And so it wasn't an issue of what's right. It was an issue of, are you willing to pay the price? Are you willing to stand up for God no matter what the cost is? Will you allow your ultimate allegiance to be in a kingdom you cannot see versus the kingdom that's demanding something from you in the here and now? But at the end of the day, it's a temporary kingdom. That's why John goes on to say the very next verse, whoever has ears, let him hear. If anyone is to go into captivity, into captivity they will go. If anyone is to be killed with the sword, with the sword they will be killed. This calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of God's people. In other words, there might be a price to pay and that price could be captivity. If so, hold out that your allegiance is Jesus as Lord even if it costs you. Hold out that Jesus is Lord even if you die by the sword. And it says, this calls for patient endurance and faithfulness. Stand strong with God when the entire world demands you to do something else. That's the heartbeat of Revelation 13.

Now in each one of these sections, I'm gonna close it by asking a question that's not meant to be a question you answer out loud. It's just one that I just want you to think about in your own journey. I don't want you to apply it to somebody else, I don't want you to apply it to me. If you think about somebody else with it, I want you to think about your own journey, your own heart. Here's my first question. Whose agenda are you more fluent in? God's agenda or your political party's agenda? If you were to take an honest look in your heart, which agenda are you personally more fluent in? Here's the second truth. The most dangerous lies sound spiritual. Here's where Revelation 13 gets pretty challenging. So you got this beast of the sea, which is kind of these political entities, means government entities, and then you get these kind of twisted sense of false religion that comes through the next beast, the beast of the earth. Here's what it says. Then I saw a second beast coming out of the earth. It had horns like a lamb. Who's the lamb in Revelation? Again, always a good answer in church is Jesus. Okay.

It spoke like a dragon. It exercised all the authority of the first beast on its behalf. It made the earth and its inhabitants worship the beast, the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed. It performed great signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to the earth in full view of the people. Because of the signs, it was given power to perform on behalf of the first beast. It deceived the inhabitants of the earth. It ordered them to set up an image in order to honor the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. And so it paints this picture of this one or this group that's able to do profoundly powerful religious things, but it's some form of a false, misconstrued religion that supports the power of the entity or the political entity of what had happened. Now, what's interesting about that is again, it's another counterfeit. Think about the unholy trinity. If the trinity is the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, the unholy trinity is the dragon mimicking the Father, the first beast mimicking the Son, the second beast mimicking the Holy Spirit, which is the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. What the enemy wants to do is to counterfeit that. And so in other words, if I can twist the religion,

if I can bend people's understanding of it, if I can help people misconstrue it and they think that it's of God, it gives the political entity far more power. And so it's this kind of constant misunderstanding. Now, again, it's not just something that will happen, it's something that has happened and it just continues to happen. Now, back in the first century, there were royal priests employed by Rome that were really exercising the religious side of the equation. They had a lot at stake when it came to this. Their wealth, their power, it was all contingent on the system functioning in the way they did. And so they functioned to continue to push the entire nation to Caesar is Lord. And again, it wasn't the last empire to do similar kinds of things. Let me talk about some extreme examples of how this has played out even through human history. Think about Nazi Germany. In Nazi Germany, at least early on in Hitler's reign, there were lots and lots of church leaders that used spiritual language to justify the things that God would never condone, but it gave it power. You may be thinking about another extreme example of you may call like ISIS is a political entity.

In a gross misunderstanding or an extreme version of Islam, if you bought into it, you would come to believe that God will honor and reward violence and terrorism. It's what happens when religion gets bent and misconstrued, it actually can empower an agenda that is far from the heart of God. Now, I wanna be really clear, Revelation 13 is not about American politics, but we're also not immune to it, right? We're not immune to these kinds of things, and you can actually see it on both sides of the aisle in our country. Now, I wanna be as honest as I can be here. I never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever want to be partisan in any way. My job is not to point you toward either party in our country. I don't care how you vote. My job is point you to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. That's all I ever wanna do. It's all I ever wanna do. And so I'm only talking about this because I feel like the text demands me to talk about it. Now, I wanna be really clear, Revelation 13 doesn't tell you which side is correct. It causes you to. examine your allegiance. And the reality is people on both sides of the aisle misappropriate their allegiance

to one of their political parties. So the question becomes, how do I know if my allegiance is drifting? How do I know if my allegiance is getting misapplied? That's a great question, thanks for asking. Let me give you a few signs, some things that I thought of this week that I think could be helpful for you to take a deep look within and go, does my heart sometimes go here? Here's the first sign that I think is real for some of us, that you expect politics to save what only Jesus can redeem. That there are people, maybe people here, that if we're really honest, we put our faith, our hope in whichever political party we lean toward and whomever those political leaders are, if we get the right people in office, you know, then, then we've got hope for tomorrow. As if like our hope and our trust is somehow connected to whatever that reality might look like, right? I hear people sometimes talk about it in terms of this. They'll say that, you know, whichever political party they line up with, they'll say, it is the way. Sometimes you'll hear people talk about it in terms of, you know, truth. That is, it's true, the other side is full of lies.

Sometimes you'll hear people talk about it in terms of life. If we do this, it's what will lead to life. And they don't mean to, but their perspective is that going this way, that it's the way, the truth, and the life. There's only one who said that it's the way, the truth, and the life, and that was Jesus and Jesus only. And we don't mean to, but sometimes if we're not careful, our hearts can bend toward the very thing that only Jesus deserves, we can misappropriate it to something else. And so I think we sometimes just have to pause and just ask ourselves an honest question. Do we expect politics to save what only Jesus can redeem? Government is a good thing, it's from God, but government can create policies, but government can never change a human heart. Only Jesus can. That's why our hope is not in our political realities. Our hope is the person of Jesus Christ. He's the only one that can save. There's three people that are excited about that. All right. Let me give you another potential sign of drift. You feel closer to people who share your politics than people who share your Savior. Did I step on any toes yet? Because sometimes we can feel more alignment

with those who share our politics than those who share the most important thing in our world, which is our deep relationship with Jesus himself. Let me just tell you a radical truth that I know you know. That you, as a believer in Christ, you have more in common with a Christ follower who lives in China, a Christ follower who lives in Kenya, a Christ follower who lives in Iran, or a Christ follower who lives in the Gaza Strip. You have more in common with your brothers and sisters all over the world than whichever party you typically line up with. But what's interesting is the enemy wants to counterfeit it. He wants to make sure that that relationship is the most important relationship. And if we're not careful, we'll allow whatever the political affiliation we line up to actually cost us biological and eternal relationships. Did you know, right now, one in five Americans is no longer on speaking terms with a member of their biological family because of a political-related issue? One in five. It's a tactic of our enemy to get us to over-prioritize something that actually could have been good. And to prioritize a non-eternal relationship over an eternal relationship. Here's the last sign I'll share with you. That Jesus no longer challenges your politics. Can I be really candid with you?

Neither party in our American political system fully embodies the values of the kingdom of God. Neither does. And so, as you think about whatever political piece that you line up with, if you think about whatever that is, can you clearly articulate the parts of your party that don't align with kingdom values? Because Jesus will challenge both parties. It would challenge belief systems of both parties. And if you can't find any misalignment or places where there's not tension around that, it's possible. that we're no longer being made into the image of Jesus, we're remaking Jesus into our own image. If we just misappropriated our allegiance. Again, Revelation 13 is not about who's right and who's wrong. Revelation 13 is all about who do you trust? Trust the King of kings. Trust the Lord of lords. He's the one who's worth it. So here's the key question to close out this section. Is your faith a lens through which you see everything or is it quietly become a flag for something else? We good? Like, I don't know. Can I tell you, I haven't even got to the most difficult part of Revelation chapter 13. So here we go. Here's the kind of toughest part,

but I actually think you're gonna be all right with it. All right, here's the last thing. I would say what owns your mind, owns your life. You've heard this kind of stuff. This is why people actually read the book of Revelation is for this kind of stuff. It says, the second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast so that the image could speak and cause all who refuse to worship the image be killed. It forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave to receive a mark on their right hands and on their foreheads. They could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast and the number of its name. This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast. For it's a number of a man, that number is 666. So you've heard about the mark of the beast before, right? Maybe you heard about the 666 before. And if you're following along and you've seen what people have done with this, people have all kinds of speculation about what this is and what it's about, who it's applied to. And I think in my lifetime, every single American president at one point has been called the beast and like has the mark, right? And so there's so much speculation about it. But what if it wasn't just again

about speculating who it might be? What if it's just understanding that the spirit of what's behind it? Now, again, you kind of get the sense that if you have wisdom, somebody can calculate this. Now, I would say it would have to be understood by the original recipients. Go back to the first century church and how would they have understood this? Now in the first century church, they actually had a practice. It was a form of a practice that numbers and letters had a correlation with one another. So in other words, like A is one, B is two, C is three, so on and so forth. And so somebody potentially could calculate it based on their ancient language, who this might be referring to. So one idea around who the 666 might be is if you take the words Nero Caesar spelled out in Hebrew and use kind of the ancient form of Gematria, it will lead to 666. And I don't know that it's specifically about Nero in particular as much as the spirit that he represented that's played out again all throughout human history. Maybe another way to understand 666 is the number of God is seven. Satan tends to counterfeit.

He's always one short of it. And so the 777 would be God's number. 666 is far short of it. It's the spirit of the enemy. Now, what's up with this mark being on people's foreheads and being on people's hands? Maybe you've heard all kinds of speculation about what's a computer chip that gets put in your hand and you buy and sell with it and stuff. Maybe. Some people are looking for a physical mark of some kind. I think there's good reason to see this as a spiritual mark. Like, why would that be a spiritual mark? Well, just think about it. If you were willing to bow your knee to Caesar in the first century, your life gets marked by the beast that we've been talking about here, which would have prevented you from having a job and buying and selling and do all that kind of things. I think there's good reason to think about it not being a physical mark, but actually a spiritual mark on somebody's life. Well, what's up with the Bible talking about it being on your forehead and your hands? Well, I think there's, again, good reason to see this as a spiritual type of mark. Let me take you back to Deuteronomy chapter six. It's called the Shema, probably the most important passage in the Old Testament

if you're an Old Testament Jewish person. It's the place where it talks about love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Familiar with that? Shortly after that, you see these words, that these commands that I give you today should be on your heart to press them on your children, talk about them when you sit down at home, when you walk along the road, when you lie down, when you get up. And he says, tie them as symbols on what? Your hands. And bind them on your? Now, some traditional Jews will actually take that very literally. And sometimes you'll walk around Israel today, you'll see people with like boxes that are tied on their hands and boxes that are tied, and they put scripture on those to keep it on their forehead and their hands. was intended to be physical. I think more likely, that was intended to be spiritual. God's saying, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength. When it comes to God's laws, allow them to permeate your thoughts and allow them to drive your action. And the reality of it is, every single person on planet Earth will have their thoughts and their actions

marked by something. The question is, what is it marked by? I think the other reason to think about this being more of a symbolic thing rather than a literal thing is we've already seen a mark in Revelation chapter seven. You remember, it's the sealing of God's people. That mark was on their foreheads. We know that's not a physical mark. That's the Holy Spirit of God that marks your life. So here's the reality. I think the better understanding of Revelation 13 is eyes wide open, that every single human being on planet Earth, your life will be marked by the Lamb of God or by the beast. Everybody's life will be marked with something. And so I would say it this way. Everyone is marked. Nobody is neutral. Either God owns you or something else does. So Revelation 13 is all about your allegiance, all about who owns you, who have you given your life to. You will give your thoughts and your actions to something or somebody. And John calls us to make sure that we put those to God and to God alone. Now today we've talked a lot about dragons and beasts and all kinds of crazy weird stuff.

Can I end by just talking about the one true king? Because really, Revelation is not about the beasts. It's about the one true king. And so let me close by just doing this. Maybe I'd just even ask you to close your eyes and think about the terms of where our allegiance ultimately lies. It lies in Jesus. I say this, Jesus is a different kind of king entirely. Every beast promises life, but Jesus actually gives life. Every beast demands sacrifice from his people, but Jesus became the sacrifice for his people. Every beast rules by fear, Jesus rules by love. Every beast says, serve me, but Jesus says, I came to serve you. Every earthly king seeks to elevate himself, but Jesus is the one true king actually humbled himself. Every earthly king takes from his people, Jesus is the only one that gave himself for his people. Earthly kings build earthly thrones, but Jesus carried a cross. And here's what makes him unlike every other king who's ever lived or will ever live. Jesus is the only king who gave everything before asking for anything. He did not demand our loyalty and then prove himself worthy of it. He proved himself worthy on a cross, in a tomb on that third day. And he extended that invitation to you and to me both.

That's why he's alone worthy of your worship. Not because he's the most powerful though he is. Not because he's the most impressive though he is, but because he's the most true. He's the one king who will not disappoint. He's the one king whose kingdom will never fail. He's the one king who does not need you to make him look good, because he gave himself to make you whole. And that's why John's final word to the people, that verse from Revelation 13, says this calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on a part of God's people. So my friends, stay faithful. Keep bearing his witness. Refuse to hand your loyalty over. Even when holding onto it actually costs you something. Because the one you're holding onto is the one who's already on the throne. His reign is not borrowed. His authority is not a derivative. He is not panicking. We belong to a different kind of kingdom. And that kingdom, unlike no other kingdom, that kingdom will never let you down. Father, we come before you. God, Revelation 13, that's a tough text. It's a challenging text. It's a one that causes us to consider where our allegiance lies.

And so Father, I just ask we take a deep look within our own heart. And wherever there's been drift, may this be a call back to put our faith, our trust, our hope, into the only one who's big enough to carry it. God, we love you. We thank you for Jesus. In his name we pray. Amen. You