The Book of Revelation - Part 23

27 Sep 2026 · this lesson on the church site

Taught by Dr. Keith Palmer, Grace Bible Church, Granbury, Texas — from the church’s Sunday School series on Revelation. These are lightly edited transcripts of the audio, posted for personal study; the teaching and its content belong to Dr. Palmer and Grace Bible Church. Listen to the originals and find his notes on the church website. Transcribed from the audio by AI. Edited only where the audio was unclear (all edits marked with *). Errors are possible — the recording is the authority.

Introduction (00:00)

Well, you can grab your Bible if you haven't already done so and turn back to the book of Revelation. If you are new or visiting, welcome. We're in a verse-by-verse study of Revelation, and we find ourselves today in Revelation 9.

This is one of those books that a lot of people are drawn to and a lot of people are scared by. I hope one of the things you're seeing is that you don't have to be afraid. This is a book that is surprisingly clear in what it presents. We still have to work out what things mean in terms of the symbolism and whatnot, but the book is actually pretty straightforward. It's very logically laid out. John is giving us a series of visions of what he's seeing and describing those things. Often those things are interpreted for us by angelic beings, or John himself helps us understand the significance of what he sees.

Navigating the Book (01:03)

Here is our famous little diagram to help us navigate through the book. It shows the chapters, the visions, and the contents of each, so we can get oriented again. If you haven't seen it in a while, or you've been on vacation, put it back in your mind. If you're new, this is our navigational aid, our spiritual GPS for getting through Revelation.

While it's quite interesting, you never would have guessed this structure. It's one of those things where you say, this is definitely from the Lord, because I don't think anybody would have come up with something quite like it. Diverse as it is, it is very logical. The bulk of Revelation, the visions Jesus unfolds and shows John through these angelic beings, comes in a scroll that is opened seal by seal, allowing us to see different instances of God's judgment on the earth. We've talked about the timing of that and the symbolism of that. These are events of God's judgment unfolding.

We find ourselves in the seventh seal. The seventh seal is interesting because, unlike the previous six, it does not unfold just one event. It unfolds a succession of smaller events: the sounding of seven trumpets. Once we hit Revelation 10, we'll get the seven bowl judgments.

Review of the Seals (02:08)

Let's do a review, because I know you've got all this imagery in your head. Have you been using ChatGPT to make images? Do we need another art contest? Okay, you don't think so, you've seen enough? Yeah, it's kind of creepy, isn't it? Let's move on. If you want to do the locusts, you can do the locusts.

I thought it was interesting that in God's kind providence, we talked about these demonic locust creatures, and then God, who I think does have a sense of humor, decided to bring millions and millions of crickets to Hood County this last week. If you were on the Tolar side, did you see the plague? It was pretty bad, wasn't it? I went to our gym out in Tolar, and you literally couldn't walk in the parking lot without stepping on these things. If you have a thing about stepping on crickets, or the sound they make, don't think about this. Where the cars had gone, there were plenty of dead crickets. Going up to the little strip mall, if you're heading to Tolar where the big flag used to be, across from the Stonewater campus, the gym is right there, and the wall of that strip mall was literally covered with crickets. I almost took a picture to show you, but I know some of you don't like that, and you'll have nightmares. Anyway, I don't have anything to do with it. I talk about locusts last week, and then we have crickets. The Lord is in the heavens and does whatever He pleases, the Bible says.

Now let's review where we've been. We've seen the letters to the seven churches, then the throne room in Revelation 4, where the Lamb takes the scroll and begins to break each successive seal. Let's see how you do.

The first four seals are easy because they unleash the four horsemen. This wasn't that long ago, so:

Seal one: The white horse. The rider comes to do what? Conquer, right? Remember that?

(Aside: "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Can you fix that for me, Titus? I know that was me, not you. There you go, thank you, sir. Okay, I'm going to push this gentler this time.")

Seal two: The red horse. It's been a minute, hasn't it? The removal of peace from the earth, so men kill each other. Yes, war.
Seal three: The black horse. This is famine and poverty. John sees an economic situation where things are highly inflated and there are poverty-like conditions.
Seal four: The pale horse. Death and Hades arrive, and a fourth of the earth is killed. Remember, you'll recall it's earthquakes, famines, sword, and beasts.

We stop right there and see that there is a lot of death and peril happening, a lot of killing through multiple means.

Seals Five and Six (06:20)

Seal five changes the scene a little. These are the martyrs, the souls of those slain under the throne, requesting justice. How long will we wait to see justice for what has happened?

Seal six, not Seal Team Six, just seal six. This is where things get really crazy. The moon turns to blood, the sun is darkened, and the stars fall from the heavens. Remember the scene where people flee to the hills and the mountains and say, "Fall on us." John reminds us they are fleeing from the wrath of the Lamb.

What is interesting here, whatever is happening and whatever your view is on when these events happen, is that John is explicit that mankind is conscious that this is God's judgment on humanity. They are aware that this is divine judgment, not just World War III, a really bad economic time, some crazy natural disaster, or a cosmic phenomenon. They have an awareness that this is God's judgment. It isn't just "God" in the generic sense that the world sometimes believes in. It is the wrath of the Lamb, which indicates some semblance of recognition of the Messiah, of Jesus Himself, as the agent behind this judgment. We can talk about when this happens, but what is unique here is the awareness of humanity, understanding why these things are happening and who is behind them.

The Seventh Seal and the Trumpets (07:26)

Now we get to seal seven, and seal seven slows things down. Good literature does this. I'm not saying this is some great piece of literature, although I think Revelation is a beautiful description of apocalyptic, divinely inspired literature. But notice that as we approach the end, as we approach the culmination of this judgment, the pace slows down.

It slows down because Jesus, through the angels, gives John more particular elements. We're not just getting one seal and then another and another. At the seventh seal we break it down into a series of trumpets, and that slows things down. You notice this in action movies. As things escalate and you approach the final battle scene, you get more detail, or slow-motion pieces. The idea is that slowing down and giving more detail heightens the emotion of what's about to happen, and that is what's happening here as a function of divine revelation.

The First Four Trumpets (08:33)

John sees seven angelic trumpeters readied. As each blasts a trumpet:

Trumpet one: Hail and fire mixed with blood, and a third of the earth is burned.
Trumpet two: A burning mountain is thrown into the sea. The water turns to blood, and a third of the creatures and ships there die.
Trumpet three: A star falls from heaven, the waters are made bitter, and men die from it.
Trumpet four: A third of the heavenly bodies are darkened. The sun, moon, and stars are partially darkened.

Then, as we saw last time, locusts are released from the abyss to torment men for five months. That's where we're at. I wanted to do this because it builds up in your mind, and you're like, things are just really not good.

Why the Fractions (09:38)

One reason I think fractions are given, a fourth and a third, is that it recognizes we don't know the population of the earth when this happens. I know there are different views on this: some see it fulfilled in AD 70, others see it in the future, and others see it happening throughout history. Whenever it happens, the Bible doesn't explicitly tell us how many people are on the earth. What it does give us are fractions of people who die. It's one quarter, now one third, so things are being reduced. The numbers are quite significant. Even if we take a modest figure for the earth's population, millions and millions of people have already died in these events.

Trumpet Six and the Woes (10:40)

Deep breath, and let's move on to trumpet six today. Before we do, as promised: seal seven is made up of the seven trumpets and the seven bowls, and there are three woes embedded in trumpets five, six, and seven.

So, as promised, our locusts. Are you going to throw this into chat, or are you doing this yourself? I find that ChatGPT doesn't like Revelation. I gave it something, Bernard as we call him in our family, and he produced something, and the AI totally punted. I don't know if he was on a coffee break, but he gave me some little generic thing. I told him to go back, read the text, and give me better details, because Bernard wasn't reading the book. The text talks about teeth like lions and hair like women's hair, and he just gave me generic medieval battle imagery, like the old Dungeons and Dragons art. I'm dating myself here, but that era. I said, no, no Bernard, you can do better than this, man.

So, is it sin if you get angry at your chatbot?

Locusts and Interpretive Extremes (12:43)

Is it? I think so, right? Because it's about my heart and not. Okay, all right, that's too personal. Anyway, locusts, right? Remember, they've got teeth like lions. They've got these scorpion tails that torment people on the earth.

It's interesting, we talk about this. If you think about extremes, if you're a preterist, you have to interpret this as the armies of Rome, or maybe a supernatural demonic piece that happened during the Roman invasion. Then you have our extreme dispensational friends who talk about these being like Apache helicopters and things like that. So you've got a wide range of how you might take this.

If we take John at face value, these appear to be demonic creatures with animal-like features, but they also have supernatural capabilities. So I think we avoid both extremes and take things at face value. Maybe it does symbolize one of those two things, or something different, but that's what we're thinking about. Would you agree with me? Whatever we land on here, this is not good.

The Sixth Trumpet (13:45)

Okay, trumpet number six. Turn with me in your Bible to Revelation 9. Look with me at verse 13:

Then the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar, which is before God.

Stop right there. Remember, John is still in his vision. John is still seeing the throne room. When we talk about the altar, remember that's been there all along. John hasn't mentioned the throne room in a while, but he's still there. He's still in the presence of the 24 elders, the four living creatures, the Lamb, the One who sits on the throne, the martyrs, the souls of the martyrs under the altar. All of that is still there.

John says that from the horns of the altar, perhaps giving us a sense that this is still authoritative information since it's coming from the throne. In verse 14, he heard one saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet:

Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.

The Four Angels at the Euphrates (14:47)

...and the four angels who had been prepared for the hour, for the hour and the day and the month and the year, were released.

Why? What was the effect of them releasing these four angels? It says so that they would kill a third of mankind. How do those four angels do that? Verse 16 gives the number of the armies of the horsemen: 200 million.

The ESV says something like "double myriad, myriads," or something like that. We'll get to why there's some discrepancy in your English versions. I'll explain that in just a minute. If you add up the numbers that are represented in Greek, you get something like 200 million horsemen. John heard the number of them. Then he says, this is how I saw in the vision the horses and those who sat on them.

The Horsemen (15:53)

John, in his fashion, tells us how many, and now he gives us some detail:

The riders had breastplates the color of fire and hyacinth and brimstone, and the heads of the horses are like the heads of lions. And out of their mouths proceed fire and smoke and brimstone.

Where's our master gardener? Hyacinth? Okay. What does this remind you of?

Sodom and Gomorrah, right? We've seen allusions to that multiple times.

The Judgment of a Third of Mankind (16:55)

Verse 18:

And a third of mankind was killed by these three plagues, by the fire and the smoke and the brimstone, which proceeded out of their mouths.

Verse 19:

For the power of the horses is in their mouths and in their tails. For their tails are like serpents, stay with me guys, and have heads. And with them they do harm.

Verses 20 and 21:

The rest of mankind who were not killed by these plagues did not repent of the works of their hands so as not to worship demons and the idols of gold and of silver and brass and stone and wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk. And they did not repent of their murders nor of their sorceries nor of their immorality nor of their thefts.

Alright, let's take apart some of these details.

Chronology and the Euphrates (17:57)

We see armies who killed. The first woe is past. Verse 12 says, "Behold, two woes are still coming after these things." Again we see this language of chronology. Letting the book speak for itself as best we're able to understand, these judgments are unfolding chronologically, successively. John is being fairly consistent using phraseology like this to say, okay, what comes after the fifth trumpet, which represented the first of the three woes? Here come the two more. So trumpet number six now sounds.

We talked about hearing that voice from the horns of the altar. John is still picturing the throne room in heaven that he sees, and the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates are released. What's the significance of the geography of the Euphrates?

If you go back and study your Old Testament, because of Israel's position in the land, when they were being attacked, where did the attackers usually come from?

From the east, right? And what was the eastern border of the promised land? The river. So the attackers are coming from the east, because that's where Babylon came from, that's where Assyria came from, and other armies that were agents of God's judgment against the nation of Israel came from there too. It is perhaps significant why these angels are parked at the Euphrates awaiting the day they're released for judgment. The thought is perhaps that this is where God's judgment has typically come in the past, and that trend will continue with these judgments.

Identity of the Four Angels (20:03)

So release the four angels. Who are these four angels? What do you think? It's kind of hard to figure out.

If we delve a little deeper, John tells us these angels had been prepared for the day, and he notes the language of day, month, and year. That emphasizes God's sovereignty: this was a very particular, unique, planned event, and at the right time God releases them. Those angels are released to kill a third of mankind through these 200 million horsemen.

Who are these angels? There's different speculation. Are they demonic angels that are bound? That's one interpretation. They're released, as it were, to bring havoc on the earth. They could also be angels of judgment, and we've seen those in the book as well. But more than their identity, what John seems more interested in is the effect of their release. As they're released, we hear and see more death unfolded. These four angels are released, and that causes them to bring these armies of horsemen.

The Size of the Army (21:07)

The Greek text says something like "double myriad, myriads." It's two Greek words. The first is double myriad. The second is myriad. A myriad is either 10,000 if we take it in its normal literal sense, or the same word can be used metaphorically for a lot of people we can't count. By doubling it back to back, if we take it in its normal sense, it's literally 200 million. If we take it in its symbolic sense, it's more armies than you can count. However you take it, John's point is that this is a massive army coming against humanity here.

Here they come. John describes the riders as having breastplates in what are really three colors: fire, which would be what colors? Orange, red, yellow, with a little bit of blue depending on the heat and material. Then there's the reference to hyacinth. I got you a picture here. This is the plant. That's blue. So the reference is to orange or red, blue, and then brimstone, or sulfur, which is another way to translate that. You get multiple colors represented in the breastplates. As we see here, they also spew fire, brimstone, and smoke from their mouths. The heads of the horses are like the heads of lions, and out of their mouths proceed fire and smoke and brimstone.

When you put the elements together, what comes to mind as John describes these creatures? They look sort of like horses, but they have heads like lions, and they breathe fire. It sounds like a mythical fire-breathing dragon or something like that. If we take it in that sense, it could be representative of something else. But remember, all John is doing is writing down what he sees. He's saying it looks like this and it looks like this. Obviously he's seeing creatures that apparently no human being has seen before. They might represent certain things, but he's trying to describe what he sees. What he sees are millions and millions and millions of horsemen, but not a typical rider on a horse. The horse looks like a lion and spews fire, so these are unique creatures.

Fire, Smoke, Brimstone, and Sodom and Gomorrah (24:26)

If we move on, John writes that a third of mankind was killed by "these three plagues." By three plagues John is just distinguishing the fire, the smoke, and the brimstone. As these elements go out from the mouths of these creatures and from the horsemen, they are killing a third of humanity.

Interestingly, where do we see fire and brimstone bringing destruction on humanity? Genesis 19:24–28, Sodom and Gomorrah. I think part of what Jesus is doing in giving us these visions, and what John is writing down, is that Jesus knows this is the culmination of Revelation. That's what the book of Revelation is. It's the final revelation of Jesus Christ, the final piece of prophetic information before the end. Jesus is assuming that we know our Old Testaments, and some of the imagery represented here is supposed to bring to mind cataclysmic judgments from the past. Sodom and Gomorrah is a particular one.

That's helpful. Many times when God brings judgment in history there are particular reasons. With Sodom and Gomorrah, the text tells us God brought judgment against the city because of their wickedness. But remember, those historic judgments are also designed to help us understand that we all stand before a holy God, that our sin makes us liable to his judgment, and that those regional judgments, even the global flood, which was worldwide, are pictures of what? The final judgment. The imagery here is designed to help us think backward to Sodom and Gomorrah, while recognizing there's a coming judgment similar to that but much worse. That should evoke our caution, hopefully our soberness, and, as we're going to see, our repentance.

Power in the Tails (26:43)

Then John sees something we might not have expected. We're thinking there are these creatures, these horsemen, with heads like lions, and fire and sulfur and brimstone coming out. Then John says there was also power in their tails. Remember with the locusts, the tails were like scorpions, and they were allowed to sting and harm mankind. Not kill them, but harm them. We could maybe even use the word afflict, or even torture, for five months.

Here, look at this: the power of the horses is in their mouths, which is where the fire and brimstone come from, but also in their tails.

Now, are you having nightmares about Revelation?

Stay with me, for their tails are like serpents and have heads. In our family we have a saying: the only good snake is a dead snake. If we see them, we take them out quickly. Some of you might have pet snakes and coddle those rat snakes in your yard, and that's great, Lord bless you, but that's not our family.

What appears to be emerging from the tails of these creatures are snakes with heads, and those snakes bite and are part of the fatal action of these creatures. So maybe that's symbolic of something, but we're trying to size up what John is seeing, and what he's seeing is this: just when you thought this imagery could get any worse.

The Scale of the Judgment (28:52)

Can you think of anything worse than, on the front end, what looks like a fire-breathing dragon, and on the back end, what looks like a series of venomous snakes that can kill you? That's what we have. John says their tails and their mouths afflict harm. So maybe it's something like that, but imagine 200 million. Again, this is just an attempt to come up with something. These might be symbolizing tanks and guns or an army, but clearly we see that this is something extreme. It's pushing the limits of John's ability to describe these things to us, and they come and they afflict and they kill a third of mankind.

All right, any questions on that? You guys okay? Yes, correct. John makes a distinction between the four angels that are released and the armies associated with those angels. If you take the view that the angels are demonic angels who have been bound and are now allowed to be released, then these armies probably represent some sort of demonic creatures. If you take it in a more non-demonic sense, these might be wicked rulers who are allowed to bring foreign armies into the land, that kind of thing. But just do the math: 200 million.

We've not seen numbers like that in any battle. The other thing is interesting. If you take this in a future sense, the fact that John says these are coming from the east points us to Asia, to countries that have huge percentages of population. I'm just throwing this out for illustrative purposes. I'm not making an interpretation here, but 200 million is only about 14% of the population of China today. So this is conceivable, at least with today's numbers for that part of the world. But regardless, whether it's 200 million if you take it in a normal literal sense, or even if you symbolize it, what he's saying is that this is too many to count. A vast amount of people, which again puts us back to the place where I don't think we've seen this in history yet.

If we have, we have to explain the language here, which seems to be saying this is more people than we've ever seen in any type of army. Yeah, that's right. So half the people in the world are now dead at this point, if you're taking it that way. Absolutely. I think that's why the fractions are used there. We don't know what the population is, but whatever it is, I think that's why the fractions are used.

And then, just when you thought, okay, Revelation 9:20: "The rest of mankind who were not killed by these plagues..." One of the saddest and, I would say, most shocking statements in all of our Bibles: "They did not repent." Whether you take this as something that happened back then, something happening now, or something in the future, everybody agrees this was really, really horrible.

The Stubbornness of the Human Heart (33:16)

There is something stronger than these creatures, their power, their afflicting ability, their horrific actions. There's something stronger than that, and it is the stubbornness of the fallen sinful human heart. Isn't it interesting that as Jesus gives us this revelation to John, the emphasis is still on repentance? In the midst of half the population being killed, these horrible plagues, these horrible creatures, the emphasis is still on what? Repentance. God could, if he chose, just wipe everybody out and say, "You know what? I've given you plenty of millennia to repent."

But even this final judgment comes in succession. It comes in stages. Why? What does Paul say in Romans? That God is giving people time to repent. His compassion and mercy restrain the full expression of his final wrath and judgment, giving people time. So here is God continuing to show mercy, continuing to show grace, and continuing to give people time as these unprecedented acts of judgment come. Yet the focus of the heart of our God is still: will you repent? There's grace for this. There's mercy for this. It is true that "our God is a consuming fire, and there is no creature hidden from his heat," and you do not want to end up in the hands of the living God. All of that is true.

See and hear once again the heart of our God. What does Scripture say? He is not afflicting willingly. God gets no pleasure from this. There is a desire for repentance even in the midst of these stages of his judgment. But I also want you to see, while we contrast the mercy of God, the grace, the patience, the slowness to anger that the Bible tells us is a feature of God's character, the contrast with the shocking stubbornness of the human heart when it comes to repentance.

Now, you and I know that. We can all put our hands up and say, when I do something wrong, what rises up in my heart is a defense lawyer. I don't want to admit it. I want to blame you. I want to blame my circumstances. I want to minimize what I did and maximize what you did, and we all know that as normal fallen humanity. But imagine that for those of us who are redeemed, that still is in play. Remove the Holy Spirit, remove a new heart, remove regeneration, and you go back to just a fallen human being, resistant to repentance.

What is Paul saying in Romans 1? Everybody sees God in creation, but they suppress the truth so that they can worship and serve the creature instead of the Creator. And what is Paul saying in Romans 2? Because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will judge every man according to his deeds. But we are stubborn.

We get pictures of this in Scripture. I mentioned the rich man and Lazarus last time when we were talking about Hades and Abraham's side and all that. Remember that story. Go back to the account in Luke 16:19-31. I think we'll see it in Luke with Pastor Terry's series. The rich man, who is in torment in Hades, says, "Father Abraham, if you send Lazarus back from the dead to warn my family, because I don't want them to come to this place of torment..." And Abraham says something rather shocking. The narrative tells us something rather shocking: those unbelievers have the law and the prophets. They have the Scriptures, and if they do not believe the Scriptures, remember what the text says: they will not believe even if a man rises from the dead.

This is so important. People don't repent. People resist repentance, not because they lack evidence of the truth, but because our hearts by nature are simply that wicked. In the midst of these horrible, supernatural, demonic acts of judgment, when God is still resisting and he's not just annihilating humanity, what does it say? "And those who were not killed by the plagues did not repent." Notice the language here: "so as not to worship demons and the idols of gold and silver and brass and stone and wood." Do you hear what Paul says in Romans? They're exchanging the truth of God for a lie. They're worshiping and serving something other than the Creator.

That's what this is talking about. They are so committed to the worship of whatever self-made god is in their life that even when all of these horrible acts of judgment happen, they refuse to let go of their idolatry. It's interesting that the language here seems to indicate that they know it's the Lamb. They know it's God doing this. They are consciously choosing demonic worship instead of the worship of the living God.

So when we come to communion in a few minutes and we hold these elements in our hands, can we recognize that nothing short of a miracle, the gospel, Christ's death and resurrection, was sufficient to change that heart in you and me? If this happens and people say, "Nope, I'd rather have demons," even as they watch their families and friends annihilated by these creatures, then that makes the gospel that much more amazing, doesn't it? That makes the mercy he showed you and me even more amazing, because the hearts of these people are no different from yours and mine. They did not repent of:

their murders
their sorceries
their immorality
their thefts

They wouldn't do it.

Idolatry and Hope (41:49)

There are illusions here. Remember Jeremiah 10, which talks about the living God and their idols? Their idols have eyes but can't see, they have ears but can't hear. Remember what Jeremiah says? You've got to take your idol and nail it to the fence so the wind doesn't blow it over, and then you bow down and worship it. It's a scarecrow in a melon patch, I think, is the phrase he uses there. It's going to blow over, so you've got to nail it to the fence. Such is the foolishness of our hearts, yet they did not repent of their murders. We've seen this before. We've seen it in Revelation 2, we've seen it in Revelation 6, and we'll see it again in Revelation 16. At each stage God's focus is repentance, repentance, and they resist.

You say, well, if this happens, what hope is there? "The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving." Paul tells the Corinthians, right? They can't see the light of the gospel, which is the glory of Christ (2 Corinthians 4:4). You say, what hope is there? We're given the gospel and they resist. We're given the gospel and they resist. This happens and they resist. What hope is there for humanity? Why do we evangelize if this is the stubbornness of the heart?

Next verse. "Because the God who said light can shine out of darkness is the one who has shone in our hearts, giving us the knowledge of his glory" (2 Corinthians 4:6). That regenerative work gives us eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart that responds. That is a miraculous work of God's effectual grace alone. Unless that happens, this is where we stay. Apart from the gospel, we all go down cursing God, though we know his judgment is just.

So can we thank him one more time for the gospel? Can we take communion with that in mind today? And can we let this fuel a gospel seriousness about what our friends and neighbors and families really need? It ain't going to be in our great presentation. It's not going to be we get the exact words. Isn't that great? It's the grace of God that does this. We're just the instruments. It's the meal of the gospel that changes hearts. We're just the waiters that bring it. But what does Paul say to the Romans? That the gospel is the power of God for salvation. So let's keep it real in our own hearts and let's keep it real with our mission. That's what this book is designed to help us to do today. Father, thanks for these sobering reminders, and we thank you for the gospel.

We thank you for your work in our stubborn hearts. And I pray that this would make us so thankful that we would kindle afresh our praise for your regenerative work in our hearts, for that new disposition. The fact that we can have a broken and contrite spirit instead of a resistant, stubborn, defensive one is only explained by your miraculous work of grace. And so we thank you for that. Father, make this motivating for us as we share the gospel with people we love that need to hear it. In Jesus' name, amen.

* = the audio was unclear here and the words were reconstructed from context. Scripture read aloud is in red.

← All lessons