Who Can Stand? | Revelation 6 | Judgment, Justice, and the Lamb’s Mercy
Watch This Sermon on Revelation 6
When Revelation 6 unfolds the breaking of the six seals, the imagery is stark—conquest, bloodshed, famine, death, the cry of martyrs, and the unshakable judgment of God. In this sermon, Pastor Mark Groen walks us through the escalating intensity of God's wrath and the deep comfort that only the Lamb can provide.
As we explore the four horsemen, the souls under the altar, and the cosmic signs of divine judgment, we come face-to-face with the question: “Who can stand?” Mark helps us trace the answer back through chapter 5: only those who take refuge in Christ can stand in the day of wrath. This message is both sobering and full of hope—a vital reminder to fix our eyes on the throne and the Lamb in the midst of turmoil.
💬 Who can stand?
Walk through that question with Scripture-based guidance in these 5 devotions on judgment and refuge in Christ.
📖 Click to Show the Transcript of this Sermon
Thank you for joining us for this week's sermon from First Reformed Church in Edgerton, Minnesota. Each week, we dig into God's word, trusting that the Holy Spirit will continue the good work of sanctification in us.
Have you ever felt the earth shake beneath your feet? I've never been around in a place to experience an earthquake, but I have felt the earth shake beneath my feet. It's a very unsettling feeling. Like I said, I've never experienced an earthquake, but not long after we had moved to Sandusky, Ohio, I had gone to OfficeMax to purchase some supplies for my office. And I'm walking through the store. I don't know if I had pens, paper, what I had in my hands, but suddenly, the earth moved under my feet. I was completely shaken by this. I'd never felt anything like it, and I was honestly kinda terrified. But then I started to think there was something wrong with me because I was looking around the store and nobody else had even batted an eye. Like, what was going on? So not too long after this, I shared this with a friend. And after he got done mocking me, he let me know that OfficeMax was across the road from a quarry, and they blasted several times a day. Regardless of what I felt that day, that was a very unsettling feeling to feel the earth move beneath your feet. It caused me to feel helpless. I felt out of control. It was less than two seconds, mind.
And chances are, maybe you've had something like this where the earth has shaken, or maybe you've had that feeling of being weak in the knees like that, without having the earth actually shake beneath you. Bad news and feelings of hopelessness can cause us to be weak and feel shaken like that as well. When we feel helpless like this, what's important is for us to know and to remember that we need a strong foundation, some place that we can stand where we can't be moved. We need a strong refuge when we experience times of trouble because we're not promised that the storms of difficulty will not come. But what we are promised is that we have a refuge in Christ that can't be moved, where we can stand when everything else is falling apart.
And as we arrive in Revelation six today, we're beginning to start seeing some powerful images of judgment in the book of Revelation. As I mentioned previously, I think most of us have feelings of apprehension and maybe even anxiety when we come to the book of Revelation. And it's been my goal to take those struggles that we have with this book and help us to understand the goal of the book. The purpose of it is to give the readers, then and now, encouragement and hope despite what is being faced. Remind you once again that the best way that we can do this, that we can remember this focus, is to think on that original audience of the Book of Revelation. Those seven churches in Asia, they were facing persecution for their faith in Christ. And that persecution was coming not only from the Roman state, but from Jewish officials as well. It was not just the government that was oppressing them and persecuting them. It was the religious people as well. And in light of the prophecy that Jesus made about the destruction of the temple happening within a generation, the book of Revelation comes to these people and is giving them comfort. It's offering them comfort because the world as they know it is going to be falling apart. It's gonna be completely turned on its head.
So as we come to the book of Revelation, as we continue through it, the language is becoming more and more cryptic. The imagery is becoming more and more intense. And as that happens, I don't want us to lose sight of what we've seen so far. Because as I said, it's really easy for us to lose focus as we continue through the book of Revelation. Because speculation becomes so easy to do there. Chapter four, we had that imagery that we were to avert our gaze to the throne. And the one who is seated there, how he is sovereign and has power over all things. And then last week in chapter five, our emphasis was on the one who is worthy to open the scroll because he was slain. And I said we need to continually avert our eyes to the throne and to the lamb. And we can't forget to do that as we continue through this book. Because the events that transpire from this point, they actually flow from the throne. They come from the lamb. They are in control. It is because the lamb has overcome that this is taking place. So we need to continually bring our focus back to chapters four and five, the throne and the lamb, as we continue through.
So let's line out our three points of emphasis through this chapter today, and then we'll get into it. So we will look at verses nine through 11 and we're going to see that there's a cry for justice. The martyrs who have endured persecution cry out for God's judgment to come upon those who are oppressing his people. And then finally, we'll go to verses 12 through 17, and we will see the unavoidable reality of the judgment of God. As that sixth seal is opened, everyone is confronted with the idea of the divine wrath of God and the certainty of that coming judgment.
So as we start out in chapter six, we see the first appearance of some well-known figures from the book of Revelation, the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Now, this is actually rather pervasive in culture. Right? In 1924, I believe it was, the backfield of the Notre Dame fighting Irish was known as the four horsemen. I think in the nineteen eighties, there were some professional wrestlers who went as the four horsemen, I think. And the idea was that these groups of people were powerful and they wreaked havoc upon those that oppose them. They could impose their will upon them. Well, this idea of the four horsemen isn't just something from the book of Revelation. Now, there weren't four horsemen in the book of Zechariah. But in Zechariah, there are horsemen who go out and oversee the earth for God. When the lamb opens the first of the seals, one of the living creatures calls out and a rider on a white horse arrives with a bow and we read that he is given a crown and he has come conquering and to conquer.
So as we look at this first rider and horse, we see that they're on a white horse. Now it's often assumed in reading this part of Revelation that the rider being on a white horse is Christ, but that's not the case here. Jesus is already present. He has opened the seal, and we will see Jesus on another white horse later on in Revelation identified clearly as the word of God. So these horsemen are coming and wreaking havoc on the earth and it is better to understand this rider here to be symbolic of the human quest for power. It's they're conquering and to conquer. It's something they are doing now, and it's something they will do in the future. This horseman is symbolizing humanity desiring to constantly be oppressing and conquer.
Well, then we move on to verses three and four. And we see another seal. The second seal is opened. And this living creature calls out. And this time, the rider on the horse is sitting upon a bright red horse. And the rider has a sword. And we read the rider is given a very interesting permission. They're allowed to take peace from the earth. So the chaos here is increasing. We saw the human desire for conquest with the first rider and now people are turning on one another in violence. What we're seeing as we read this is not only the escalation of violence, but also the increase in the extent of the violence that people will turn to as they are set on conquest and overcoming. This is the idea here is increasing violence.
And so we get to the third seal with verse five. And it is broken and the third living creature comes on a black horse. This rider is on this black horse, and instead of a weapon that causes destruction, we have an increase in the cost of food. Now we feel that. Right? We understand this idea of the increase of the cost in food. We have experienced that to great extent. Well, what we see here in verse five is far worse than anything that you and I have experienced. It says that it's a denarius that is being charged for this food. Well, a denarius is an entire day's wages. So this little bit of grain would have cost what they worked for an entire day. Imagine that, a tiny little bit of grain being what you're working for a day. This is inflation on the cost of food at an extremely high rate. And so what it's telling us is that there's going to be a scarcity of things are going to be tight. So don't waste the things that are a luxury, like oil and wine, when you have an absence of food. You need to conserve them. But we would understand that these items are not affected by the inflation, that the scarcity of food is not affecting oil and wine.
Now, why would that be? Why would there be inflation in the cost of food but not oil and wine? Well, let's think about the region of The Middle East during this time. Almost everywhere could produce oil and had grapes to produce wine. There was no reason they couldn't do this. Grain, on the other hand, wouldn't grow in many places in this rocky terrain. It wasn't beautiful farmland like Minnesota. They had limited places so it had to come in. So if we think back to the destruction of the temple, if we think to what is gonna happen there, which was prophesied by Jesus, there's this siege on Jerusalem by Titus. They would have been able to produce oil and wine. There wouldn't have been a shortage of things. They can produce those in Jerusalem. But grain would have had to come from outside and so there would have been this inflation on the cost of these items because they couldn't produce it inside of this blockade that was being put on by the Roman armies. So this escalation is meant to show us the desperation of the situation.
Yes. The first two seals had terrible things conquering and people who want to conquer all the time and then the peace is taken away. There is war everywhere, but now there's a scarcity of food. There's an increasing cost. Before, it was perhaps the armies and a few innocent bystanders that were damaged by this the conquerors and the lack of peace. But with famine, with scarcity, who's affected? Everybody. Before maybe it was just women or it was just men who were affected by this fighting. But now women and children as well are starving. Things are getting bad. It's escalating. While a famine doesn't seem as bad as violence, it's ultimately violence on everybody because the most innocent of the culture are unable to have anything.
And so, we get to verse seven, and it repeats the scenario of opening the previous seals. But this time, the horse is pale, escalation, right? Death followed by Hades. That's probably the top. Right? And so Hades was popularly known as the abode of the dead. And so the idea here is that very bad things are coming your way. Destruction and death have come. Now this is hard to read because we see who is in charge of this. All of this is known in advance. It's being prophesied, and it's being set forth by God. It's coming from the throne by his command to come. These tragedies, these calamities are allowed to happen as a judgment against those who are in rebellion against God. And notice in this text that they were given authority over a fourth of the earth to kill with the sword. A quarter of the population of earth is wiped out, but that they have the authority to kill with sword, famine, pestilence, and wild beast in this portion, this quarter of the earth. Escalation, and it's an awful thing.
But there should also be a sense of comfort in this. God is in control. He's in charge. He is ordaining this to come to pass for a purpose. All this chaos that we see unfolding in this chapter is not meaningless. And while our minds are tempted to look at the destruction being wrought here upon the earth, we need to keep looking back to the throne and to the lamb. The one on the throne is sovereign. He is in control. The lamb is worthy and he has saved his people. In our time as well. When there is turmoil that we can see in our world, we are prone to have our eyes fixed on the chaos. It's so easy to see nothing but the despair that the chaos in the world creates. But what we've seen in Revelation reminds us to continually avert our eyes to heaven, to that place where the one who works all things together for good is on the throne. And the lamb who was slain has won victory for his people. So important that we keep that in front of our eyes.
And so it's with this in mind that we move on to our second point where there's a cry for justice and we see the fifth seal opened. So this imagery of the fifth seal, it really resonates with me when I consider the persecution that the early church had experienced. There may be those in those seven churches that the book is written to who had lost someone because their loved one confessed Christ as Lord. They testified to that truth and they were martyred. And so here we have all these souls under the altar. They were victims of persecution. And they're crying out asking how long before their blood is avenged. Notice what they said, Sovereign Lord, holy and true. So they're acknowledging that God has allowed this to come to pass by calling him sovereign. They're saying, Hey, God, you're in control. You've let this happen. But they're also acknowledging they don't get it. They acknowledge that he's the one who can put a stop to it, but they don't understand why has this continued.
And the response to this legitimate concern, these cries from these martyrs, is interesting. It almost comes off as a bit callous. They are given robes of white and they're told to rest a little longer until the number of their fellow servants should be complete. And I find that tough to read. These saints who have endured persecution that I cannot even fathom. They paid the ultimate price for their confession of Christ as Lord. And I actually sat for a little while and stewed on this as I was studying it this week. I even went for a short walk and thought about this. And as I processed through this, I realized that here are the martyrs in heaven. Even they ultimately struggle with what they see in the oppression of God's people. They're in heaven. And they don't understand why the people of God are suffering. I don't understand why the people of God are suffering. And I'm here on Earth. They are crying out for justice even from beneath the altar.
And the answer of God here is not callous. Instead, it's hopeful. The death of the saints has a purpose. Their deaths are not in vain. And while we don't understand fully, in our time, whether we are looking at the plight of those who are being persecuted or whether we have our eyes looking at the oppression of the innocent, we naturally ask the same questions as these saints in heaven. We ask how long. We wonder why this is taking place. And this part of Revelation six should give us comfort. God has a plan. He is not blind to this suffering. And while we can't fathom that, he is in control. And he is going to be glorified in the salvation of his people. So we can trust in his salvation. We can trust in his sovereign hand of deliverance. Trust that regardless of what is happening in the world, God is glorified in it. And we can also trust that justice is coming. It is not that God is not in control. He is waiting. It will happen. And when we see injustice going unpunished in the world, we can know that justice does come in God's timing.
So thus far, we've seen the escalating judgments and a cry for justice. And as the passage closes up, we will see the absolute nature of God's judgment. When justice does come, that is unavoidable. And so the sixth seal is opened there, and there's a great earthquake. The earth moves under their feet. And like I mentioned when I opened up, when I felt the ground move under my feet, you feel that it's inescapable. There is no escape from the ground moving. And then the sun is blackened. The moon becomes like blood. The stars fall to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit. And this is some more Old Testament language of judgment. This kind of language was used all the time in the Old Testament. This is figurative language of this judgment because darkness is falling, doom is coming, the moon looks ominous, and the stars of the sky fall to the earth.
Like I said, this calls back to many passages in the Old Testament. These signs in the heavens are telling us that those in positions of power are coming under judgment. And we know this not just because it is how the Old Testament spoke of judgment, but because stars can't fall to the Earth. If a star fell to the Earth, it would consume the Earth. Right? And so this is imagery being used, apocalyptic imagery from John helping us to understand that the sun, the moon, the stars, these are nations and people in positions of power. They are falling from their positions because they are under the judgment of God. Absolutely consuming. There's darkness. The earth is shaking. The sky is being rolled up. This is imagery from the book of Isaiah. The sky vanishes like a scroll. God's judgment is so complete. It is so absolute that even mountains and islands are moved. There is no escape from the wrath of the lamb.
And for just a moment, get this vision in your head. I was scared because an OfficeMax shook for half a second. This, what's being described in Revelation six, this is absolute. It is complete. It is total judgment from almighty God. It is unavoidable. There is nowhere to go to escape this judgment, to escape this wrath. There is nowhere to flee. And it's not just encompassing because it has the sun, moon, and the stars, and the mountains, and the islands involved. We see that those in positions of power are unable to escape judgment. The language here, generals, kings, the rich, the powerful, the slaves, the free—it's not just that creation is experiencing this judgment as far as like the physical earth. But all people, no matter how much power they have or no matter how weak they are, they are experiencing this judgment. It says that they can try to hide in caves, but that is in vain. The judgment is still going to find them. It is terrible.
So terrible, in fact, that they cry out to be hidden from the face of the one who is seated on the throne. They would rather that mountains and rocks fall on them than they be forced to endure the terrible wrath of the lamb. Stop and think about this picture that John is painting for us as he relays this vision that he is seeing to us. It's absolutely terrifying. And then, this chapter ends with a question. Who can stand? Who can endure the wrath of the Lamb and the one who sits on the throne?
The question ends the chapter, but the answer to that question, who can stand, is found if we work ourselves backward and we go back to chapter five. As we look at the escalation, we see that no one can escape. And it's a terrifying way to end, but John has done you and I a favor. Like I said, if we work backward through the chapter and get back to chapter five, we have our minds drawn back to the throne and to the lamb. No one can stand, but the lamb is worthy. The lamb has overcome. No one can stand in the face of the wrath of God, but we do not leave here today in that despair. Instead, we remember the hope that the book of Revelation is meant to give us. This is not a book of fear, but of triumph. Revelation is a book of victory. A book that tells us about the victory of the lamb.
No one can stand in the judgment by their own power. The only way to endure is to take refuge in the lamb, the one who took on the wrath of God for our sin, to rescue us from sin, death, and hell. That is our hope and that is our peace as the worlḍ crumbles around us. As we take this passage and apply it to our lives, it's essential that we look to the throne and to the lamb. When the earth shakes around us, we avert our eyes to heaven. When the time comes that we will breathe our last, we do not stand on our own. We stand righteous because of the one who is with us in the valley of the shadow of death. Because the lamb has overcome, we stand confidently.
And if you are here today, and you have never taken refuge in the Lord Jesus Christ, if you've relied on your own good works and think that is how you will stand before holy God on the day of judgment, I plead with you today, flee the wrath to come. Flee to the lamb. Flee to Christ as your refuge. Without him, you will not stand in the judgment. You will not endure by your own power. The only hope you have is the lamb. He has overcome. So put your hope and your trust in him today. We do not know when judgment will come, whether it is us breathing our last or it is the return of Christ on the last day when he delivers his kingdom to his father, resting in the righteousness of the lamb is our only hope.
So the question, who can stand at the end of Revelation chapter six? It's not just a rhetorical question. It's the most pressing question of our lives. When the earthquakes and the heavens tremble, the only firm foundation is Christ. The lamb who took the wrath of God in our place, he invites us to stand with him, not by our strength, but by his grace. And so we flee to him today, for in the shelter of his mercy is the only place where judgment becomes salvation. Who can stand? The lamb stands, and he stands there for his people. Amen.
Let us pray. Almighty and everlasting god, we thank you for the imagery of the book of Revelation, for the truth that it gives us, that there is no way that we can stand in the judgment on our own. But we also thank you for that beautiful imagery from chapter five that the lamb is worthy, that the lamb has overcome. And so we stand with him knowing that we have salvation. While we have failed to keep your law, Christ kept it on our behalf. And so we rest in his righteousness and not our own. May we flee to him each and every day, trusting in him alone. It's in the name of Jesus, the lamb slain, that we pray. Amen.
Thank you for joining us for this week's sermon. For more information about First Reformed Church, head to our Facebook page or website edgertonfrc.org.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the four horsemen of Revelation 6 and what do they represent?
They represent the escalation of human suffering as judgment unfolds: conquest, war, scarcity, and death. Rather than being supernatural beings, they symbolize real forces at work in the world under God's sovereign direction.
Is the rider on the white horse in Revelation 6 Jesus?
No. This rider is best understood as symbolic of human conquest. Jesus is clearly identified later in Revelation as riding a white horse, but in chapter 6 He is the one opening the seals, not riding out as judgment.
Why is there a cry for justice in verses 9–11?
The souls under the altar are Christian martyrs who suffered for their faith. They call out for God to bring justice and vindication for their deaths. Their cry reminds us that God is not blind to suffering and will bring justice in His time.
What does it mean that the martyrs were told to “rest a little longer”?
It means God has a sovereign timetable for His justice. The full number of martyrs is not yet complete, but their deaths are not in vain. They are clothed in white—declared righteous—and promised rest and ultimate vindication.
How should we understand the apocalyptic imagery in the sixth seal?
This is symbolic, not literal. The earthquake, darkened sun, blood-red moon, and falling stars represent the collapse of worldly powers under God’s judgment. It's a vision of cosmic disruption that signals the certainty and totality of divine justice.
What does the question “Who can stand?” mean in Revelation 6:17?
It’s a rhetorical question highlighting the terror of judgment. No one can stand before God’s wrath apart from Christ. The answer comes from earlier in the book: only those who belong to the Lamb—those who trust in Christ—will stand.
How does this passage offer hope to Christians today?
Though judgment is real and terrifying, Revelation 6 reminds us that God is in control and justice is certain. For those in Christ, the wrath of God has already been poured out on the Lamb. He stands, and in Him, we stand too.
