Sermon and Worship Resources

Showing 1 to 25 of 38 results

Revelation 7:1-8

Understanding Series

Robert W. Wall

In concluding the horrific judgment brought about by the opening of the sixth seal, John interposes an eschatological interlude that responds to the two questions evoked by the experience of human suffering. Whether they concern the suffering of Christian martyrs, lamented at the opening of the scroll’s fifth seal, or of their persecutors, initiated by the sixth, the cries for vindication and of l...

2. Greetings and Doxology

Revelation 1:4-8

Understanding Series

Robert W. Wall

An author’s salutation is more than formal greetings; it usually contains a self-introduction and a description of the audience, which together define the relationship between the two. The author thereby deliberately creates the proper context for reading his composition as the word of God. In this light, then, John’s greeting, which actually extends through chapter 3, is of considerable theologic...

3. Hallelujah!

Revelation 19:1-10

Understanding Series

Robert W. Wall

19:1–3 Now that the third woe is completed, the reader is ready to hear God’s concluding word that speaks of salvation rather than of judgment. These doxologies describe the logical response of worship to the angel’s earlier demand for the heavenly community to “Rejoice … O heaven/Rejoice, saints and apostles and prophets!” (18:20). They also form part of the heavenly liturgy of joy that is marked...

4. Jesus Is Coming

Revelation 22:7-21

Understanding Series

Robert W. Wall

The concluding section of early Christian letters often contains the author’s benediction, typically expressed as a prayer or doxology, but often accompanied by many other pastoral conventions as well. In his letters, for example, Paul sometimes closes his correspondence by greeting various acquaintances in a particular congregation (cf. Rom. 16), perhaps to encourage them in their faith (cf. 1 Co...

5. One Like a Son of Man

Revelation 1:9-20

Understanding Series

Robert W. Wall

1:9 In the second half of his greetings (vv. 9–20), John expands his earlier prescript (v. 4a) by relating the remarkable christophany by which the Risen Christ commissions him to write Revelation. Such a commissioning vision is not unique to John; it is the normal vehicle by which God commissioned the OT prophets, and then Paul, who received his call through a christophany while traveling on the ...

6. Prologue

Revelation 1:1-3

Understanding Series

Robert W. Wall

The author’s prologue to Revelation intends to establish its content as a revelation (apokalypsis) of Jesus Christ. The book’s opening phrase has a twofold function. First, it situates the composition within a particular literary and theological tradition: apocalypticism. Within this tradition, the idea of revelation refers to a process whereby God makes known through visions the final days of sal...

7. Satan's Doom

Revelation 20:8-10

Understanding Series

Robert W. Wall

20:8–10 John now returns his vision to Satan, who has been released from his exile “for a short time.” Why does John insist on the necessity of Satan’s short-term freedom? Why must the nations be deceived once again, since the reader already knows they will be destroyed? The essential clue to these questions lies within the passage itself, and more specifically in John’s clever substitution of Gog...

8. Seven Angels With Seven Plagues

Revelation 15:1-8

Understanding Series

Robert W. Wall

According to the apocalyptic view of history, the spiritual and societal conditions of human existence will continue to deteriorate, and there is nothing any sociopolitical institution can do to reverse them. Salvation comes from outside of history, from God’s heavenly abode. In returning to the theme of divine judgment, already so vividly drawn in his visions of seven seals and trumpets, John is ...

9. The Angel and the Little Scroll

Revelation 10:1-11

Understanding Series

Robert W. Wall

The role played by the interlude in each of the three visions of divine wrath is the same: to cause the readers to assess their present crisis in terms of the future realization of God’s past triumph in Christ. In this sense, the crisis confronting unbelieving humanity is a theological one. Their vision is blinded by the “official” propaganda of the surrounding world order; thus, their life is anc...

10. The Beast out of the Earth

Revelation 13:11-18

Understanding Series

Robert W. Wall

13:11 John then saw another beast, coming out of the earth, completing the trinity which rules over the evil kingdom. While John perhaps recognizes this second beast as Behemoth, the evil monster who occupies the primeval desert regions according to Jewish myth (Job 40:15–24; 1 Enoch 60:7–10; 4 Ezra 6:49–53), it is not clear how or if he then intends to use particulars of that myth to interpret th...

11. The Beast out of the Sea

Revelation 13:1b-10

Understanding Series

Robert W. Wall

John’s vision of the two beasts provides a fuller commentary on the meaning of the preceding hymn in terms of both the dragon’s earthly activities and the situation of the messianic community. Having been foiled in his efforts to deny Jesus his messianic vocation, and having been exiled from heaven to earth where he can no longer influence the decisions of the Cosmocrater, the dragon turns his mal...

12. The Dead Are Judged

Revelation 20:11-15

Understanding Series

Robert W. Wall

20:11–15 Next the seer sees a great white throne and him who is seated on it; he witnesses there the last judgment as yet a final episode in the concluding chapter of God’s triumph at Christ’s parousia. What is so striking about this vision is not John’s recapitulation of the universal judgment theme—that the dead, great and small, stood before the throne to be judged by God according to the books...

13. The Fall of Babylon

Revelation 18:1-24

Understanding Series

Robert W. Wall

In chapter 18, John describes a variety of responses, from heaven (18:1–8, 20) and on earth (18:9–19), to the shocking news of Babylon’s destruction. These responses constitute the climactic scene of the seventh trumpet-plague and the “third woe” that precede the inbreaking of God’s reign on earth. Drawing upon biblical “doom-songs” and laments that were written of other city-states (cf. Beasley-M...

14. The Great Multitude in White Robes

Revelation 7:9-17

Understanding Series

Robert W. Wall

7:9–12 The second group of believers, who also receive the salvation of God, should be distinguished from the first in two critical ways. In the interlude’s first scene of the 144,000, John addresses a particular concern of his readers about the status of martyred believers (cf. 1 Thess. 4:13–18). In his subsequent vision of a great multitude, John shifts his pastoral concern to the situation of t...

15. The Harvest of the Earth

Revelation 14:14-20

Understanding Series

Robert W. Wall

14:14 Caird argues that this section of John’s vision functions ironically, so that traditional, apocalyptic images of divine retribution are imaginatively transformed into a portrait of God’s salvation of the church’s martyrs (cf. Revelation, pp. 189–95). While one may disagree with aspects of Caird’s treatment, he has correctly called our attention to the language of salvation embedded in John’s...

16. The Lamb and the 144,000

Revelation 14:1-5

Understanding Series

Robert W. Wall

The trinity of evil ones has now been introduced as the enemy of the saints on earth (12:13–13:18). They are given the authority to overcome them (13:7) and to seduce the rest of the world into worshiping the Evil One rather than God (13:16–17). Chapter 13 concludes with a resounding note of secularism’s triumph: the worldwide kingdom of the Evil One is firmly established within human history. Thi...

17. The New Jerusalem

Revelation 21:1-27

Understanding Series

Robert W. Wall

John’s final, most detailed and most important vision of Christ’s parousia is of a new heaven and a new earth, the Holy City, and the new Jerusalem where the dwelling of God is with men and the old order of things has passed away. Following the return of the Lamb, after his last battle and millennial reign, after the destruction of Satan, of his evil kingdom, and finally of death itself, the visio...

18. The Rider on the White Horse

Revelation 19:11-21

Understanding Series

Robert W. Wall

Viewed in a macroscopic way, the main body of John’s book of visions narrates the three decisive moments of salvation’s history. Sharply put, John’s message to the seven churches is this: what has already transpired (5:1–11:19) together with what has not yet taken place (14:1–19:10; 19:11–22:6a) must inform the believing community’s response both to God and to its present tribulation (12:1–13:18)....

19. The River of Life

Revelation 22:1-6

Understanding Series

Robert W. Wall

22:1–5 The phrase, Then the angel showed me, seems to indicate John’s decision to add a separate “paradise tradition” into his vision of the new Jerusalem. The reasons for this are clearly theological: he thereby indicates that God’s redemption returns the new creation—the community of overcomers—to the Garden of Eden and to the creator’s intentions for humanity (Caird, Revelation, p. 280; Boring,...

20. The Scroll and the Lamb

Revelation 5:1-14

Understanding Series

Robert W. Wall

Chapter 5 marks the beginning of the third section in John’s apocalyptic letter (see outline), shifting the reader’s attention from epistolary thanksgiving to the main body of his composition. The study of the main body of religious letters has received little attention from scholars. They agree, however, that the importance of the body segment is substantive and rhetorical (see introduction). In ...

21. The Seals

Revelation 6:1-17

Understanding Series

Robert W. Wall

The judgment of God against a fallen world is one yield of the death and exaltation of Christ. The breaking of the seals, which opens the scroll and declares God’s decree of salvation, occurs as an essential part of Christ’s entrance into the heavenly throneroom. The seal judgments, and the trumpet judgments that follow, do not depict a sequence of future historical events; rather, they symbolize ...

22. The Seven Bowls of God's Wrath

Revelation 16:1-21

Understanding Series

Robert W. Wall

16:1 Scholars have long pointed out the similarities between the first six trumpet judgments (Rev. 8:6–9:21) and the first six bowl judgments (16:1–14; cf. Beasley-Murray, Revelation, pp. 238–39); and we have called attention to the “hailstorm” that links the seventh trumpet to the seventh bowl. In one sense, John’s vision of bowl-plagues repeats and emphasizes the previous point: divine judgment ...

23. The Seventh Seal and the Golden Censer

Revelation 8:1-5

Understanding Series

Robert W. Wall

The immediate result of the breaking of the seventh and final seal is silence in heaven for about half an hour. Since John does not provide the reader with a cipher for this heavenly calm, various explanations have been offered: it is a rhetorical device for “dramatic silence,” or the seventh seal symbolizes a sense of finality (Caird), or a pause in the vision itself (Swete), or the aftermath of ...

24. The Seventh Trumpet

Revelation 11:15-19

Understanding Series

Robert W. Wall

The seventh trumpet blows a note of rejoicing in heaven. The heavenly chorus resumes its praise of God’s reign and God’s Christ, continuing the doxology sung at the Lamb’s coronation (cf. Rev. 5:13). Together with the great hymns of chapter 5, John brackets his vision of divine wrath and global devastation (6:1–11:14) with dissonant images of praise (5:13; 11:15–18) for rhetorical effect—to make i...

25. The Thousand Years

Revelation 20:1-7

Understanding Series

Robert W. Wall

20:1–3 The next two consequences of Christ’s parousia envision the destiny of the final and most powerful member of the evil trinity, Satan. Because Christ’s first advent resulted in Satan’s banishment from heaven (cf. 12:9), the reader assumes that Christ’s second advent will have a similar effect on earth—and so it does, as we will soon find out. At first, John sees not the dragon, but rather an...

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