Are any of you wondering how on earth I am going to get from an army of invading locusts to Mother’s Day? I asked a colleague that question while I was up in NY last week at a conference on domestic violence, and she said, “That’s easy. It’s when your teenage boys bring their friends home for dinner.” I must admit I hadn’t thought of that. But there is a link, believe it or not.
This passage includes both the fifth and sixth trumpets, which as you may recall are part of what happens when Jesus opens the seventh and last seal on the scroll which reveals the whole plan of God to the waiting saints and angels. It features two armies, one of locusts which looked sort of like horses and one of horses with riders. Commentators can’t agree on whether these are human or demonic invaders. As usual, I think both interpretations are partially true.
The falling star that begins the passage may represent an angel’s moral fall - perhaps even Lucifer’s fall at the beginning of it all. In Isaiah he’s referred to as a fallen star, and remember, God’s time is not at all like ours. Then again, maybe not. Maybe it’s just a dramatic sign of descent from the heights of heaven to the opening of the dark world where evil lives. The people of John’s day would have believed that there was an actual place where the souls of evil beings were
imprisoned, and the fact that the locusts seem to appear out of the smoke that rises from the Abyss seems to give weight to the view that this is a demonic army.
And their description is hardly natural: Almost all of the mythologies of the day combined creatures to create even more terrifying supernatural images, mixing horses and humans and scorpions and so on. Besides, real locusts eat plants. These locusts are explicitly told not to hurt the growing things, but to sting people like scorpions. Another puzzling thing is that this army of locust/ scorpion/
horses only stings the people who don’t belong to God. Usually when one thinks of spiritual warfare one expects it to between good and evil, but here it’s between evil and not-quite-so-evil. But if you stop to think about it. It actually makes a certain amount of sense. God often uses great evil to turn a stampede, just as he used the Assyrians to get the Israelites’ attention.
On the other hand, some people think that this army refers to one of Rome’s enemies on their eastern frontier, the Parthians, with God using one set of bad guys to wipe out another set of bad guys to leave the stage clear for the good guys to mop up. But does it matter? The whole point is that God is control even over the extent to which evil is given room to operate, that the saints will be protected, and that the time they have to run loose is limited to a relatively short period. Of course, relatively short in God’s eyes can seem pretty long in ours.
Some modern scholars think these locusts sound an awful lot like Cobra helicopters with nerve gas in the tails. Well, that might be a bit of a stretch if we try to take that literally. But think about it - it is a modern equivalent of the terrifying reality of war’s destruction, so the image is valid - even if it’s not precise.
But then another army shows up, when the sixth trumpet is blown. This time it is more likely to make John’s readers think of the Parthians, because he mentions the river Euphrates - remember the Euphrates? That’s in Iraq, south of Baghdad. The Parthians came from the same area as the Babylonians and the Assyrians... Isn’t it amazing how often the same places pop up in Biblical history?
Anyway, as powerful as Rome was, they were never able to defeat the Parthian Empire. They held it back at the frontiers, but they could never keep it down.
Now, are the invaders from the east which John sees in his vision Rome’s first century enemy the Parthians? Are they Muslim armies that nibbled away at the borders of the Byzantine Empire from the seventh to the fifteenth centuries? Or the Mongol horde that conquered Russia in the thirteenth? Could they be the Islamic terrorists we face today? Or are they something else altogether? Yes. I believe that they are "all of the above."
Now, as Paul says in his second letter to Timothy, “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” [2 Tim 3:16] So we know that this has something to say to us. And no, it doesn’t mean that the ancient empire of Parthia is going to be revived and sent against a new Roman empire, although that’s argued in some circles. No, what it means is no enemy, no matter how frightening, can operate outside
of God’s design. On the contrary, he uses them as instruments of warning and judgment, just as we saw last week that he uses “natural disasters.”
You see, God’s character never changes, and so it makes sense that God acts in history in identifiable patterns. The army of invading locusts in Joel may or may not be the same army of invading locusts in Revelation - but they have the same mission and the same meaning. As I forget who once said, “history may not repeat itself, but it certainly does rhyme.”
Anyway, what I want to suggest is that these two armies that John sees in his vision - the first one of locusts, and the second one more probably humans - represent two different kinds of enemies, both natural and supernatural. Both are under God’s sovereign control, both are limited in terms of what and how much they are allowed to destroy, and both have spiritual significance. Both are described in the most terrifying terms imaginable in order to scare peoples’ socks off and get them to repent and turn to God.
The catch is that, as most of us know, threats may turn people back to God in the short term, but in the long run it doesn’t work very well. Remember after September 11 there was that brief upsurge in church attendance and an upsurge in the purchase of religious and spiritual books? Well, it only lasted for a couple of months. Since then, numbers of worshipers have dropped to about the same or even a little lower than before.
It shouldn’t surprise us. Throughout the Bible, not just in the book of Revelation, when God decides to lift his protecting hand for a bit and let the forces of evil run around doing their thing, people straighten up for a short time but sooner or later they go back to their old ways. In the book of Judges the same dreary cycle keeps repeating itself: The phrase ”The Israelites did what was evil in the
sight of the LORD” appears 7 times [Jud 2:11, 3:7, 3:12, 4:1, 6:1, 10:6, 13:1] and so the Lord delivers them into the hand of - pick one - the Moabites, the Amorites, the Midianites, the Philistines - there’s never any shortage of enemies to pick from - after which the people would all cry out for help and God would rescue them again. But each time they fall a little farther. And finally he stops and just lets them go under. That’s when God finally gives Israel a king, which may not look like going down for the third time to you, but it was the beginning of the end of their special relationship with God. You see, they wanted the same
kind of government “all the other nations have” rather than to have God for their king. They were perfectly happy to let David and his few godly descendants worship that dangerous, demanding desert God who had brought them out of Egypt, but they didn’t want to be bothered with obedience themselves. It was just too hard.
And so it goes, from one century to the next, and we see the same pattern compressed and condensed into a few attention- grabbing scenes in Revelation. God lifts his protecting hand, some kind of terrible devastation occurs, millions of people are slaughtered, and what happens? “The rest of humankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands or give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk. And they did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their fornication or their thefts.” [v. 9:20-21]
After September 11, some people considered their ways, and made changes in their lives, and started thinking about the long term - maybe even about eternity. But far more people, from what I have read, lost what faith they had because they didn’t know enough about God to understand what was going on, to put it into context and see God’s hand at work. How often have you heard someone ask how God could allow such things to happen? Instead of letting God call them to account, they are calling God to account - to them - for his actions. It’s like they’re saying to God, “If you don’t do what I want, I’m not going to believe in you any more.” It’s the spiritual equivalent of a 2-year-old’s tantrum or a teenager’s rebellion: “You’re mean and unfair and I hate you.” But those who knew their Scriptures, who took God’s word seriously and lived as though it mattered, their faith sustained them.
And so I suggest to you that these disasters are not intended to get unbelievers to convert. They are intended to give believers time to take what they say they believe seriously, and strengthen their relationship with God so that they can keep their feet when the world is coming apart around them.
And that is where we get the link to Mother’s Day. How many of you mothers pray with your children? How many of you remember your mother praying with you, or taking you to Sunday School, or reading to you from the Bible?
If you can say yes, consider yourselves - and your children - blessed. Because you are arming your children against all of the enemies they will face in life, both the spiritual and the physical ones.
Just as you teach your children how to button their clothes and lace their shoes, just as you remind them to put on their sweaters or their boots when it’s cold, just as you make sure they have their sunscreen on when you go to the beach and their seatbelt fastened when they get in the car, you are protecting them from danger. You are protecting them from danger when you bring them to Sunday
School. You are protecting them from danger when you pray with them and for them. You are protecting them from danger when you get them into the habit of reading the Bible, and living by its guidance.
Because “our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against ... spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
"Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication.” [Eph 6:12-17]
What enemies might your children face in their lives? It might be anything from the biology teacher who belittles Christian faith to internet pornography to embarrassment at saying grace in front of a non-believing friend. Your child might have to face a mugger in the big city or an enemy soldier on the field of battle, deal with a chronic disease or a broken dream. These are all enemies and they all have spiritual consequences. And the same shield of faith that the saints carry against the army of locusts will protect you and your children from whatever arrows the evil one throws at you.
You have all heard the phrase, “the best defense is a good offense.” But it doesn’t apply in this case. Because, you see, Jesus has won the final victory. Jesus has faced down Satan himself in his own kingdom, the kingdom of death, and won free into life. We don’t have to fight that battle. The cross is all the offense we need.
No, our job is defense. Our job is not only to keep our armor polished and in good repair, but to practice living with it on. Do football players practice without their helmets and protective gear? Do soldiers go on training hikes without their backpacks? Can you learn to sink a basket if you never pick up a ball? If you don’t live with righteousness, truth, faith and prayer on a day-to-day basis, you won’t know what to do with them when danger comes. And the time to start is now. You are not too old, your child is not too young. The world is a dangerous place; God has not left us unprotected, but he does expect us to dress ourselves.
