I invite you tonight to take your Bibles and turn to Revelation 6. We're going to look very briefly tonight at verses 9-11. If you recall, some three weeks ago, I began some reflections on Revelation 6. The souls of the martyrs who are under the altar who cry out to the Lord. how long until you avenge our blood. And tonight I'd like to wrap up some reflections and thoughts on it. And the specific intention tonight, as has been our custom for a little over nine months now, will be to mine out some application for prayer. So that's going to be the focus tonight. So, Revelation 6, verses 9-11. Let's listen carefully, for this is the Word of God. 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. Then 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." That's further reading of God's Word. In other Christian traditions, namely the Roman Catholic tradition, the Greek Orthodox tradition, and really any blank Orthodox tradition, whether that's Roman Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, they have a more, you might say, robust view of the saints. Not saying that I agree with their view of the saints, but as many of you know, in these traditions, they will pray to the saints. They will say that we are not worshiping the saints. They will say that we are venerating the saints. And of course, we as Protestants have a problem with that because we don't have any examples in the Old or New Testaments of any command or example of saints praying to dead saints. But I think sometimes, and this is the case with the veneration of Mary as well, sometimes we are tempted to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Sometimes we think, well, what they're doing is so bad, we shouldn't have any place in our worship, any place in our liturgy, any place in our day-to-day prayer, if you will, that has anything to do with the saints. But when you come to Revelation 6, There is a reason that John the Revelator is including this account of martyrs, deceased saints, who have died for bearing the witness of Jesus Christ. There's a reason why he included them in this account in the book of Revelation. And one of the reasons, not for us to worship them, but for us to consider the prayers of not glorified saints, that's very important that you make that distinction, and we made that distinction last time, but saints who are in the intermediate state. That state between the now time, the time when we are still racked with this body of sin and have not been glorified, and the glorified state. It's that time when they have disembodied spirits. They are, I should say, disembodied spirits. They don't have a body. They're waiting for God to resurrect them. But it is in this state, in this, I would say, sinless state, that they make these requests. And, you know, we saw last time that they were under the altar. What does that mean? It means very simply, by way of review, when a sacrifice was made on the altar, the shed blood would run down to the bottom and even under the altar. The sacrifice was unto the Lord. And so John, the author of Revelation, is using rich Old Testament themes to paint a picture of the martyrs who have given their lives up to God, and their sacrifice is precious in the sight of the Lord. Well, last time we saw this lesson. We saw that the martyrs show us that even in the intermediate state, there is incompleteness which we must petition the Lord to make complete. They are incomplete in two ways. Number one, as I already said, they're disembodied spirits. But number two, they desire justice. And what we saw last time, just by way of review, is that it is okay and appropriate to cry out to God for justice in this life. I'm not talking about the vengeful, bitter cry for justice, if you will. It is a justice that glorifies God, and any unjust killing is something that we can petition the Lord to make right. And it is not we who are doing it. Vengeance is the Lord's. We're asking the Lord to do it, so it is appropriate. But now I'd like to consider three more lessons, if you will, that these martyrs teach us. And what I'd like to do is consider the essence of their question and what we can learn from the answer that the Lord gives them. So what is the essence of their question? You'll find it in verse 10. The essence of their question is, how long? How long? How long? How long? What do they want? They want justice. What do they want? They want their blood to be vindicated. Perhaps their head was taken. Perhaps they were hung. Perhaps they were burned at the stake. I mean, just what was it, four or five years ago, some Islamic extremists took the heads of, I think, 11 or 12 Christians. I mean, that kind of thing still goes on today. In the court of the earth, if you will, or at least in this case, the court of Sharia law, they were found guilty. And they want the Lord to vindicate before the whole earth that they are indeed innocent, that they are righteous. And so they're asking, how long? How long until that happens? How long until you avenge our blood? We see this question time and time again. We see it in Job. We see it in the Psalms. We see it in the prophets. And it's a common question in the lament genre. And it's a fair question, a very understandable question. You see, what human nature instinctively craves in moments when injustice is keenly felt, is some timeline of how much longer they will have to wait until it's over. We want to know so that we can weigh out whether or not we have what it takes to make it through the long slog. We want to know whether we can make it. We want to know whether or not we are able to count the cost. And in many ways, I think it's actually a good question. Because it does separate the sheep from the goat, right? I mean, I think of the parable of the different soils. Only one of those seeds, or I should say only one of those soils upon which the seed fell, was a true Christian. The rest of them that either took root for a while and then died, or the withered away, or the birds came and took them away, none of them were true Christians. And I think that there are many goats in the church, and I don't think, I know, I'm not saying this church specifically, although there may be, I'm saying in the church in general, there are goats, and it is a good question that everybody should ask. Do I have within me the stamp of God's electing love that will make me go through the fires of tribulation in such a way that I will persevere till the end? But notice God's answer. As is God's custom, it's not what you would think. They ask for a timeline, and what does he do? He does two things. Here's a white robe, and wait a little longer until the full number of your brothers and servants, who are to be martyred for the same reason, are complete. So this points up, I think, at least three lessons for us tonight as we think about prayer. Three lessons to this answer of God, which is counterintuitive. Number one. An unanswered prayer is sometimes the answer to the prayer that you should have prayed. An unanswered prayer is sometimes the answer to the prayer that you should have prayed. What were they looking for? Once again, they were looking for a timeline. God gives them a white robe and tells them to wait. Sometimes God intends us to be persistent and keep asking for something until he answers it. Remember, this is the lesson of the persistent widow. The widow keeps telling the judge, give me justice, give me justice, give me justice. And Jesus tells that parable and says, the lesson that we learn from this widow is that you are to keep knocking until God gives you what you want. And sometimes in some things for which we pray, that's what God intends for us. But I don't think that that is the intention of God in everything that we pray for. There are other times and other things in which persistence is not the point. Rather, through continual unanswered prayer, the Lord intends us to see something that we're not seeing. But we're really good at not seeing that, aren't we? The myopic Christian, or the Christian who is wiser than God, prays, waits, doesn't get the answer he wants or expects, and then says, okay, God didn't answer my prayers. Why does he think that he's wiser than God? because he's already settled in his mind what the right answer is, okay? He already knows, he's determined what the right answer is, and here's the other reason why he's wiser than God, and hopefully you know by now I'm being facetious when I say that, because he doesn't make a distinction between what I want and what I need, right? Do you ever pray this prayer? Lord, give me more love. Give me more love. I've been praying that prayer recently. And you may find that that prayer goes unanswered. Instead, what God does is he sends unlovable people in your life. And you may think, God isn't answering my prayer, when in reality, that's the very thing that he's doing. What is he doing? He's giving you opportunities to love the unlovable. Same thing with patience. You ask for patience and he sends hard things your way so that you can cultivate patience. And so I say, An unanswered prayer is sometimes the answer to the prayer that you should have prayed for. But what's the second thing we see? Well, what's up with these white robes? What's up with these white robes? Well, the second lesson we learn is, though the opinion of worldly courts renders us guilty as Christians, there is a higher court which has rendered us innocent. And it is these white robes which assure us that there will be vindication. What are these white robes? The metaphor of white robes connotes the idea of purity resulting from persevering faith Tested by the refining fires of tribulation and we actually see this if you turn back just a few pages to Revelation chapter 3 verses 4 through 6 John says this He says, "...Yet you have still a few names in Sardis, people who have not soiled their garments, and they will walk with Me in white, for they are worthy." The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the book of life. I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches." So these white robes, in this context, coming back to Revelation 6, are not given as a reward for purity of faith, but as a heavenly declaration, and that's the distinction. They're given as a heavenly declaration of the saint's purity or righteousness and as an annulment of the guilty verdict rendered against them by the world. I come back to that example of those 12 Christians some four or five years ago who were beheaded. I mean, that's how they left this world. It wasn't their choice. But the way they left this world, the final word, if you will, in this life, in the now time was, they lost. It wasn't worth it. What did Christianity give them? It gave them a body without a head. That's what the world's assessment was and is to this day. It's not worth being a Christian if you're gonna lose your head over it. And what these white robes signify symbolically in the intermediate state is that verdict is overturned by the verdict of a higher throne where God himself says, it was worth it. It was worth it to suffer. It was worth it to persevere. It was worth it to confess my name, not only before the brethren, but before the whole world. So why wait? Finally, why wait until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete? This is interesting. He says, here's a white robe, and then he says, rest. Wait. Until what? Until the final number of your brothers and servants who are to be martyred in a similar fashion is complete. This leads us to the last lesson. God's answer to the petitions of the martyrs reminds us that His sovereignty His sovereignty extends far beyond our own lives as he answers prayer. It also reigns over the lives of our brothers and sisters in the church. Now, let me unpack this a little bit more. I know that that may sound convoluted, but let me unpack it a little bit, okay? Notice, it's like God's saying, oh, martyrs, you want justice? Okay, I do too. I want you to have justice too. I want you to have vindication too. But, I'm going to give a justice that's worth waiting for. It's the kind of justice that God wants all the saints to see. Okay? So he's not going to give justice in the now time, he may in little puddles here and there, but he's waiting until all the number of the saints come in. Notice it's not the last saint to believe, we see that in other places in Scripture, it's the last saint to be martyred. And when that happens, then God is going, that's going to trigger the second coming of Jesus Christ, and that is gonna trigger the resurrection of the living and the dead, and that is gonna trigger the great judgment on the last day, and then the answer to their prayer will be God. fulfilled they will see justice accomplished on a large scale and What's the lesson that we take away from this? Sometimes when God wants to answer a prayer of yours or not answer it in a specific season It's because he's doing something in the broader church or maybe even in your local church maybe he's doing something in somebody else's life through your unanswered prayer and The circumstances that I pray God would change are sometimes the very circumstances that powerfully minister to another servant or brother or sister in the Lord. And I think this is one of the things that Pastor Brennan was getting at this morning in 2 Corinthians 4, but I just want to make the same point in another place in 2 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 1, 3-6. You don't need to turn there, but listen to what Paul says. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort. who comforts us in all of our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, in the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ's suffering, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. If we are comforted, it is for your comfort which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. What's he saying here? Well, if I could give an analogy, let's say a brother has cancer, and it's terminal cancer. What do you think his prayer is? His prayer is that the Lord would take it away. But let's say that the Lord doesn't take it away. And let's say at the same time there's another brother who sees that brother going through that trial and sees that the Lord hasn't answered his prayer. And that brother thinks to himself, if I were in that situation, would I maintain my faith? I mean, if God struck me with cancer, like He struck Job with the boils and the sickness and took away all his family, would I still confess faith or would I walk away? Would I prove to be a reprobate? Would I prove to be not a recipient of the electing love of God? I don't know. I wish God would show me, give me some sign. And in the unanswered prayer of this man who is asking that the Lord take away his cancer, we also see that he goes to his deathbed clinging more and more tightly to the promises of God because he loved God. And so this other brother says, look, look at this man. He prayed that the Lord would deliver him from cancer. The Lord didn't, and even so, despite that quote unquote unanswered prayer, he clung faithfully to the Lord. I can do it too. If the Lord through his grace upheld that man, he by the same grace can uphold me. And so we see that sometimes the unanswered prayer of one saint is the answered prayer of another saint. And I think that that's something that we need to keep in mind. Why? Well, I think that we've been conditioned as Americans to think of prayer primarily, listen, primarily in individual terms. We think about me and my prayer closet, all those types of things, and there's a place for all that. There's certainly a place. But we need to think more and more prayer primarily in corporate terms. It is as we pray for X and report to our brethren that God hasn't answered X yet, that we have opportunity to tell that brother or sister that the Lord is teaching us something through their unanswered prayer. How are you going to know that unless you come, for example, here at Grace Covenant. When we do it, we do it on Sunday night. We have this time where it's a little more informal and we're able to share with one another. how God has answered prayer, or maybe how the Lord hasn't answered a prayer and we're still working through something. And it is in that crucible that the Lord teaches other saints things, the crucible of unanswered prayer. I think these are some of the lessons that the Lord teaches us tonight through this passage. And I just want to end by coming back to Revelation 6 and showing how God answers this prayer. If you pick back up in verse 12, Revelation chapter 6 verse 12. This is what he says When he opened the sixth seal I looked and behold there was a great earthquake And the Sun became black as sackcloth the full moon became like blood And the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale the sky vanished like a scroll that is being rolled up and every mountain and island was removed from its place then the kings of the earth and and the great ones, and the generals, and the rich, and the powerful, and everyone, every slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who is seated on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb. For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?" This is, as I said three weeks ago, one of the angles through which John is describing the period between the ascension of Christ and the return of Christ. This is the end of that period from one angle, and he's describing how it culminates in the Day of Wrath, the Day of Judgment, when Jesus will answer the prayer of the martyrs. So tonight, as we come to prayer, let's keep these martyrs in mind, let's keep these lessons in mind that we learned from their praying, both answered prayers and unanswered prayers, into our prayer time.