Let's now come before the Lord in prayer. Almighty God, Heavenly Father, we come before you, we gather together here for the second time today to thank you and to praise you, to worship you in the splendor of your holiness, to lift up our voices in song to you, to sing in unison praises to our great and awesome God. Father, we thank you with all our heart that you have called us once again to be here together. We thank you for the fellowship that we have in Jesus Christ. We thank you for the unity that we share, the union that we share because of the union that we have with Christ through faith. We thank and praise you for your goodness in him, in taking us in, in adopting us as children, in welcoming us into your kingdom. And Father, we pray that as we worship together, that our worship may be glorifying to your name, that you will forgive everything that's wrong with it, and that you will accept what is done to your praise and to your glory, crowning your own works which you are doing in us. And Father, we know that worship is what glorifies and pleases you. and that we were created to worship. But we know that in a special way we gather together, but that worship is all of our life. And so, Father, we pray that you will help us to dedicate ourselves, our complete selves, in service to you. That we may offer ourselves as a living sacrifice of thankfulness to you for all that you have done, all that you do, and all that you will do in our lives. Help us to trust in you, Help us to look to you to fill our empty hands of faith and help us to rejoice when we receive as we know we will. Father, bless us as we open up your word and as your word is proclaimed and as we do all of the other activities associated with our worship. May what we do here be to the praise of your glorious name and for the upbuilding of us as your people. All this we pray in Jesus' name, amen. When I'll open up God's word together to the gospel according to Matthew chapter 23, as we continue this afternoon, a series of sermons on the book of Revelation, and in connection with our sermon text, which is from Revelation 6, our scripture reading is from the gospel according to Matthew chapter 23. Matthew 23, beginning at verse 29, and reading through to the end of the chapter. Matthew 23, beginning at verse 29, and this is the word of the Lord. And the Lord Jesus is speaking, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, saying, if we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets. Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up then the measure of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? Therefore, I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it. How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing. See, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. So far, the reading from the gospel. Let's now respond by singing Psalm 94, the stanzas 1, 2, 3, and 11. Psalm 94, stanzas 1, 2, 3, and 11 in response to the reading of God's Word. We're now turning God's Word to the last book of the Bible, to Revelation chapter 6. As we continue where we left off last Sunday afternoon, Revelation chapter 6, beginning at verse 9 and reading through to verse 11. Revelation 6, the verses 9 through 11. Once again, this is the word of the Lord. When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. They cried out with a loud voice, O sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth? And they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been. So far, the reading of the sermon text. May God bless the reading of his word as well as the proclamation of his word based on this passage of scripture. Beloved brothers and sisters in our Lord Jesus Christ, our text this afternoon contains a very familiar two-word refrain. And it's a question that's asked of God repeatedly in scripture, and specifically in the Psalms. And that question is, how long? It's a common sentiment. The psalmists cry out to God. They ask, how long will it take for justice to be done? Psalm 13, verses one and two. How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? Psalm 35, verse 17. How long, O Lord, will you look on, rescue me from their destruction, my precious life from the lions? Psalm 74, verse 10. How long, O God, is the foe to scoff Is the enemy to revile your name forever? And it goes on, we sang from Psalm 94, Psalm 94 verse 3, Psalm 119 verse 84. So God's people seek justice. What happens is they see justice being delayed. and they cry out to God and they seek vindication from God with the expectation that He is going to set things right. So with that expectation, they also see that things now aren't the way that they should be. God is the God of justice. God is the sovereign Lord. He's holy and true. When will He fully reveal those attributes? When will He act as the God of vengeance? When would the days of vengeance to fulfill all that is written that the Lord Jesus spoke about in Luke 21 verse 22, when would those days of vengeance finally happen? As the Lamb opened the first four seals of the scroll, the four horsemen were sent out. The stage was being set for the complete final opening of the scroll. But it's not open yet. The gospel had begun to go out. The gospel has begun to overturn the old order. A complete division is being made. And those who reject the message are being pitted against those who believe in the Lamb. Now the blood of the righteous is being shed by the wicked. Those wicked who had refused to follow Christ, who had hardened their hearts completely against the good news, who hated the people who believed it and proclaimed it, The appearance of the fourth horseman brought about the beginning of God's covenantal judgments. But it was just the beginning because only a quarter of the land was affected. Meanwhile, the persecution of the righteous was continuing. And that brings us to the cry of the martyrs as the fifth seal is being opened. Now John sees then under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. When we think of the altar, we need to consider it in the light of what John had already experienced. He had been welcomed already into the heavenly throne room, the original of which the temple was the earthly copy. And now he's seeing the altar. And that means that he's outside of the throne room. So he's in the court of the heavenly temple. And here in the court of the heavenly temple, he sees this altar. And under that altar, he sees souls. And we have a tendency to think of souls as being non-physical things. They're aspects of ourselves that we can't see. The spiritual, not the body. We are body and soul. But John, he sees these souls. The lives of the people who had been killed for the sake of the word of God. The ones who had been killed because they bore witness to the Lamb. And that area under the altar is an important area because That's where the blood was collected from the sacrifices. Leviticus 17 verse 11, we're told why the shedding of blood was necessary under the old covenant sacrificial system. For the life of the flesh is in the blood and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life. So the life of the flesh, is the same word here that's used here for soul. And the lives of these people had been sacrificed for the sake of the gospel. When we see that they had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne, then we should be reminded of what John had said about the reason for his own exile in Patmos in Revelation 1 verse 9. Why was he there? Why was he in exile? Well, he was there on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. So John hadn't been slain for the sake of the gospel, but he, just like the other apostles sent by Jesus, he was sharing in those tribulations. The Apostle Paul, he spoke about his life and ministry in exactly the same way. In his second letter to Timothy, that letter was being written shortly before his death, as he drew nearer to death He said in 2 Timothy 4 verse 6, So John sees the souls, the lives of these martyrs. And it was the lives of these martyrs that was their sacrifice. Throughout their lives, they had presented their bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. That was their spiritual worship. We read that, Paul says it in Romans 12 verse 1. That's what we must do. And that lifelong dedication to the Lord and dedication to His cause led to them making the ultimate sacrifice. And it led to them losing their lives. Now that sacrifice wasn't an atoning sacrifice. It wasn't a sacrifice that earned them entrance into heaven or paid for their sins. Because it was only the blood of the Lamb that made that ultimate glorification possible. Those who persecuted and those who killed the faithful, they were the ones who were doing the sacrificing. But they were sacrificing to a false God. because they had rejected the true God and they had rejected his faithful witness. Now after Cain killed Abel, the Lord came to Cain and said that the voice of his brother's blood was crying out to him from the ground. Genesis chapter four, verse 10. Now the blood of all the martyrs from Abel to Zechariah was crying out for God's vengeance. The Lord Jesus had told the Pharisees and the scribes that he would send them prophets and wise men. They would kill and crucify some of them, Jesus prophesied. Others would be flogged in their synagogues, and still others would be persecuted from town to town, all with this one single divine purpose. The Lord Jesus says, So that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. So the Lord Jesus says, He makes this solemn proclamation, He says, God's vengeance is going to come. And this oath He made, saying, Truly I say to you, It is true and certain. All these things will come upon this generation. And so the martyrs, everyone who had been killed for the sake of the gospel up until that point in time, they had been waiting. They had been waiting for God's wrath to be poured out upon those who had killed them. And now the time was drawing near. The scroll was being opened. And it was the knowledge that the fulfillment of all of this was at hand that led them to cry out with an even greater urgency. Because that last bit of time, we all know when we're waiting for something, it's that last bit of time that's always the hardest to deal with. That was the case here. The last bit of time is the hardest to deal with. And so they echo those words of Psalm 94. O Lord, God of vengeance, O God of vengeance, shine forth. Rise up, O judge of the earth. Repay to the proud what they deserve. O Lord, how long shall the wicked exalt? They pour out their arrogant words. All the evildoers boast. They crush your people. They kill the widow and the sojourners. And they murder the fatherless. And they say, the Lord does not see. The God of Jacob does not perceive. That's the first seven verses of Psalm 94. but they had to wait. They had to wait for that vengeance to be poured out. So the situation at that time was kind of like the situation for Israel and its return to the promised land after the centuries in Egypt. The Lord had told Abraham that his descendants would be sojourners in a land that did not belong to them. They would be made slaves there in that foreign land and they would be afflicted for 400 years. But he promised Abraham, the Lord made this promise to Abraham that he would bring judgment on the nation that they would serve and that they would leave that place with great possessions, but they wouldn't come back until the fourth generation. And why is that? It's because, he said, the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. Genesis 15, the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. Therefore, you can't go back to the promised land yet. So the same thing had to happen now for those who had rejected the Messiah. And this is where we can see the real horror of what had happened when the Jews rejected the Son of God. Because they had become like the Canaanites. and what would happen to them would be what had happened to the Canaanites when God's people returned to the promised land the nations that populated the land of Canaan they were to be driven out the Lord had made that command because they had become unclean and so Leviticus 18 verse 25 says and the land became unclean so that I punished its iniquity and the land vomited out its inhabitants But for these sons of those who had murdered the prophets, these people who thought of themselves as being so unlike their ancestors, who said, we would never have done such a thing. But for them, the measure had to be filled up, just like the measure of the Amorites had had to be filled up. The number of the martyrs' fellow servants and brothers who were also to be killed, that number had to be filled. They had to bear witness just as the Lord Jesus had borne witness. So this was essential to God's judgment. And it was reflected in His law. A single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime or any wrong in connection with any offense that he has committed. Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established. Deuteronomy 19 verse 15. And then in Deuteronomy 17 verse 6, "...on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses, the one who is to die shall be put to death. A person shall not be put to death on the evidence of one witness." So the Son, the Lord Jesus Himself, He had been the faithful witness. Now empowered by the Holy Spirit, His people would serve as faithful witnesses as well. and that on the basis of their faithful witness, their faithful witness on behalf of the Lord Jesus Christ and together with the Lord Jesus Christ, on the basis of those two witnesses, then that justice, the judgment, would finally be meted out. And in their cry for justice, these martyrs, they use a rather unique expression to address the Lord. and they address him as sovereign Lord. And the word in Greek is the word despotis, which is interesting because it's the basis for the word that we have in the English language of despot. And it means a ruler who has absolute power. And it's interesting that this way of addressing the Lord is only used in one other place in all of the New Testament. And that makes it very significant. And so when you look at Acts chapter four, and we see the other use of this word, this name of address for the Lord, what do we see there? We see the disciples, they had just been released from prison, and in their prayer, they address God as the sovereign Lord who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, Acts chapter four, verse 24. So in that prayer, they make a reference to the 2nd Psalm. The 2nd Psalm speaks about the kings of the earth setting themselves and the rulers gathering together, conspiring against the Lord and against His anointed one. And this is the conclusion of that prayer in Acts 4, that prayer addressed to the sovereign Lord. And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness. So he is the sovereign Lord. He is the all-powerful ruler who lays claim on absolutely everything without exception. And the martyrs, like the disciples in Acts 4, they know themselves to be his humble and completely dependent slaves. So he's the sovereign Lord, but he is also holy and true. And that description of his attributes is also very important because it contains in it an implicit question. You are the sovereign Lord, these martyrs say, these people who have given up their lives for the sake of the gospel. You are the sovereign Lord. You have said that you are holy and true. So why hasn't justice been done? Why the delay? If you don't punish the wicked, if you don't take vengeance on your enemies, you are not showing yourself to be who you say you are. One commentator put it this way. He said, the martyrs cry out for their own vindication, but their plea is ultimately for the vindication of God. And so in this prayer, what the martyrs are doing is they're doing exactly the same thing that Moses did so long before when he interceded on behalf of the people of Israel in Exodus 32. When Israel committed that sin with the golden calf, that horrible sin when Moses was up on Mount Sinai, the Lord declared in His wrath that He would consume His people, He would destroy them, and He would start over again, and He'd start over again with Moses. But Moses bases his own intercession on behalf of the people in the Lord's own reputation. In Exodus 32 verse 12, he says, So he's concerned for the reputation of the Lord, vindicating the Lord and his attributes, who he says that he is. And the psalmists, they do exactly the same thing. They make their pleas to the Lord, and they make pleas that He act on their behalf, not for them so much, but for the sake of His name. So when justice would be done, it would be the Lord himself who would be justified, who would be vindicated. He would be proven to be just. He would be proven to be righteous. He would be proven to be the sovereign Lord, proven to be holy, proven to be true. But the martyrs still had to wait. They had to wait just a little while longer to rest, verse 11 says. We need to make special note of that, that message, what it means, that they were to rest a little longer. Because it shows that the kind of rest that they had been experiencing wasn't going to last forever. As they waited for the number of the martyrs, the full number of the martyrs to be made complete, for the persecutors to fill up the measure of their fathers, as they waited, they were resting. but that kind of rest would turn into action when they were welcomed to follow the forerunner, the one who entered behind the veil into the most holy place, when they would be welcomed to follow the lamb who had been slain into the most holy place, that rest, that waiting would be over. Now, brothers and sisters, this is a very important point. because it shows that entering the eternal Sabbath, the eternal rest, it doesn't mean inactivity. We speak about the church militant, the church triumphant, the church at rest. Well, the church at rest, as we call it, is an active church. People also talk about the church militant, the church in this world, which is actively fighting the good fight. And then the church triumphant, That part of the church that has fought the good fight and has now received the crown of glory. But the church triumphant is the church militant. And it's the church at rest is an active church. These martyrs who are crying out how long, these martyrs were resting now, but they were going to get active. They were going to get active in worship. They were going to get active in the heavenly liturgy. So the waiting martyrs are given a kind of a foretaste of what they are about to fully receive. When they're given a white robe, they're given a priestly robe, symbolizing holiness and purity. You could say that they're almost there. They've almost reached the finish line. Just a little while longer, the day of vengeance is coming. My brothers and sisters, for the Christians who were already sharing with John in the tribulations for the sake of the word, for the sake of the gospel, for the sake of their testimony, the message of the fifth seal was a message of hope, of encouragement, a message that would lead them to rejoice. They were facing the worst kinds of injustice, and they would face more injustice in the future. Many of them would not be spared from suffering for the sake of the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Many of them would die, but they would go to their death knowing, being absolutely certain that even when this world is filled with apparent injustice, even when it may appear as though injustice were actually winning, justice will certainly be done. The Lord is the sovereign Lord. He is holy and true. The nations may rage. The kings of the earth may set themselves against the Lord and against his anointed one. But in the end, those who had suffered and died for the sake of the gospel, they would be vindicated. And more importantly, God would vindicate himself. As for us today, well, the message is the same. We see injustice in this world. And for the sake of Christ, we must fight against the injustice that we see, because we follow in our master's footsteps. But when we see injustice, when we see the wicked in high places installed in high office, as vileness is exalted among the children of men, Psalm 12, verse 8, When we see that, even when we see that, we can still rejoice because we know that our confession is true. Our Lord and Savior will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom shall have no end. The martyrs, they were waiting for the wrathful lamb to act in judgment on those who had rejected him, on those who were persecuting his people. And we live in a different situation, but we await the final judgment. We await that final judgment when everything is going to be put right once and for all. And we can pray, and we must pray for that judgment to happen. We can sing the Psalms that bring our righteous desire for justice to the Lord's attention. He has given us those words to sing, and those words are just as applicable They're just as singable for us today as they were for God's people who lived under the old covenant. How do we know that? We know that because words such as the words of those Psalms, which are called the imprecatory Psalms, which call down God's judgment, those words are sung by the saints in Revelation. Our responsibility as God's people today is not to seek vengeance ourselves. We don't have that authority, but God does, and that's a good thing. So we leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. Romans 12, verse 19. And that means, brothers and sisters, that we can and we must pray. that vengeance be meted out, that justice be done. And we do that, don't we? Implicitly, we do this every time that we pray the Lord's Prayer. We pray for vengeance. We pray that God's justice be done. Well, how do we do that? Well, we say, your kingdom come. We say, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And so when we pray those words, we are praying for God's justice, for God's judgment, for the outpouring of God's wrath upon the evildoers who reject him, who hate him, and who hate his people. We can and we must pray that those who hate the Lord be judged, that those who oppress and kill his people and those who refuse to submit to his lordship will face his wrath. What's more, we can and must also rejoice when that happens, because the Lord is proving Himself. He's proving Himself to be the sovereign Lord, holy and true. We must never be afraid to pray for justice, and we should never be ashamed or embarrassed to pray that justice be done. We live in 21st century Canada, we live in a culture that has an unofficial 11th commandment. And that unofficial 11th commandment seems to be a lot stronger than the other 10 in our society, and that's the commandment that says thou shalt be nice. Praying for justice, praying for God to avenge the blood of the saints isn't nice as our culture defines niceness. It's intolerant. It's not a fitting thing for a good Canadian to do. But it is good, and it is right. We're not praying for personal revenge. We're not, let alone, seeking that revenge ourselves. We're not praying on the basis of our own inherent righteousness, because we have none. We only have the best righteousness of all, which is the righteousness of Christ credited to our account, credited to us in God's grace. And so as God's people redeemed by grace who belong to Christ, bearing witness to him and to his kingdom and to his gospel, we bring our pleas to the Lord. And we can be sure, we can be absolutely sure that the Lord will hear and He will respond, He will answer our prayers just as He heard the cry of the souls of the martyrs under the altar. And when justice is done, and when the wicked are trapped in their own schemes, when they're disgraced, when they fall from glory, as they will, we will rejoice. because it is the sovereign Lord who is at work and He is holy and true. Amen.