Discipleship for Dissidents Today

Samuel Prime · Tidal Church Moncton · April 13, 2025 · Apocalypse: The Book of Revelation series

Samuel Prime teaches from Revelation 14 that there is no neutral ground in the human heart, and every life shows allegiance to either the Lamb or the dragon. He invites listeners to move past bandwagon faith and surrender fully to Jesus as King.

More from Samuel Prime · The Apocalypse: The Book of Revelation series

Topics: Identity, Discipleship, Worship

Transcript

[0:00] A few weeks ago, me and my wife were driving along and I turned the music down and I say, "Honey, we have to have a, have a serious conversation here for just a moment." And I turn to her and I breathe, and I say, "We, you know, we've lived in Moncton now for probably about eight months, and we're on our way to a Halifax Mooseheads versus Moncton Wildcats hockey game. And, like, I really don't know who to cheer for here." I was like, we've lived in the city for years pastoring, and we pull up to the Avenir Centre and we walk in and we see students that we know. And as we see some students, I ask the question, who do I cheer for?

[0:45] Do I cheer for the Wildcats or do I cheer for the Mooseheads? And they're like, "Well, obviously you cheer for the Monk and Wildcat, you live here now." And I came to the conclusion that I needed to cheer for the Halifax Mooseheads. So I know, I know. So I grab my seat and I look around and there's just a sea of people wearing Moncton Wildcats jerseys, and I'm sure many of you aren't too unaware that when you're at a hockey game, there's always one guy that's super large and he's probably had one too many beers to drink. And there's Wildcats fans around you, and the puck drops, and on the Jumbotron you hear, "Go Cats. Go, Cats, go." And it was in that moment, I realized it would be a really good day to become a Moncton Wildcats fan.

[1:35] And it made me wonder, yeah. And it made me wonder how easily my loyalty or my allegiance was shifted. That's genuinely the first thing I thought of it. Like, how easy was my loyalty to the Mooseheads no longer present? And what does allegiance even mean? Well, to be allegiant means to be steadfast in devotion, as another definition puts it, a wholehearted, unwavering commitment of loyalty, of obedience and devotion to a person, cause, or authority. And here's the kicker for us, even when that loyalty is tested by opposition, discomfort, or by personal cost. And it made me think, in what other ways in our lives are we allegiant to things?

[2:24] I'll tell you what, I am incredibly allegiant to McDonald's coffee and a muffin combo. Like, it's not too often that I walk into work with a large McDonald's coffee and a muffin. It costs, I believe it's $3 and 83 cents. Now, Jordan, on the other hand, he's our young adults admissions director. He comes in with this, like, little coffee from a local coffee shop, and he always scoffs at me a little bit. He's like, "That's disgusting." I'm like, "Hey, Jordan, let's go. Let's go get a McDonald's coffee." And he's like, "Nah, dude. Like, that's muddy water." I'm like, I'm incredibly allegiant to McDonald's coffee. He's allegiant to small coffee shop coffee, and he'll intentionally go out of his way to make sure he can get that coffee. Maybe you found a newfound allegiance to Canada in this, in the light of everything that's going on in the world.

[3:13] Maybe you're just trying to find ways to show your allegiance to the country. Maybe as we wade into election season, you're seeing people put picket fences or like put the signs on their front lawns. And when you drive through intersections, you see all these different parties and people are showing allegiance for different political parties. And the theme of allegiance is really all throughout the Book of Revelation. We're continuing, or going on in our final series in the Book of Revelation. And the critical question that really all these weeks have been leading up to is, which team are you on? Which team are you on? Which team are you on in life?

[3:59] Are you Team Lamb or are you Team Dragon? And as we turn to the Scriptures in Revelation 14, we're gonna be in verse, starting in verse 1 today. But before we do that, just want to take a second and pray. Dear heavenly Father, I just pray that You would come and, that You would give me, God, Your, not just Your peace but Your grace as I share from Your Word. God, I pray that just any distractions, any weight, anything that we walked in with, God, we could just leave at the door and just take a few minutes and just focus on You and Your Word. God, I just pray that Your Holy Spirit would come and meet us here as we open up Your Word. And as we wrestle with this text together, we pray this in the powerful, the holy, the mighty name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

[4:44] Amen. Amen. As we turn to the Book of Revelation in chapter 14, that I saw a Lamb standing there on Mount Zion and with Him were the 144,000 who had His name and His Father's name written on their foreheads. Before we go any further, I understand that the 144,000 is a little bit controversial. Who is the Lamb? What is Mount Zion? Where is that? Well, the Lamb in Scriptures, whenever you see a capital L, it's referring to the person of Jesus. Mount Zion in the Scriptures represents God's place. So you have Jesus in God's place with the 144,000. And the question becomes, who are the 144,000? It's a great question. I'm really, really glad you asked. The 144,000 is really symbolic.

[5:33] It represents the 12 tribes of Israel in the Old Covenant. It represents the 12 apostles and the New Covenant. So 12 times 12, which equals 144, times the number of a thousand, which in the Scriptures represents a great multitude as we see consistently throughout the New Testament. So what we have in the first part of this Scripture is we have God in God's place with God's people. And that's important as we continue on. And I heard a sound from heaven like the roar of mighty ocean waves or the rolling of loud thunder. It was like the sound of many harps playing together. This great choir sang a wonderful new song in front of the throne of God. And before the four living beings and the 24 elders, no one could learn this song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth.

[6:26] As we look to, and as we turn to the first few verses, what we see here is we see a group of people, a group of followers of Jesus who had their Father's name written on their forehead. And what this screams out is this screams out allegiance. But before we kind of talk about what allegiance looks like in the Scriptures, if you aren't sold out on this Jesus thing, if you aren't convinced that God is real and that church has a purpose, I just wanna preface this whole message with something, you are gonna catch a vision for what Christians are supposed to look like. But I'm gonna speak on behalf of the Christians in the room for a moment. Many of us Christians struggle with living into this full allegiance that we're discovering.

[7:14] Many of us struggle with the full allegiance that we're about to uncover this morning, but that doesn't change the invitation that we are all called to respond to. Having their Father's name written on their forehead goes back all the way to Deuteronomy chapter 6, as Jeremy talked about. And for an Israelite to bind the commandments to their wrist and have their Father's name written on their forehead, what that meant for them is that meant everything they thought about and everything they did was allegiant to something. They knew that there was no mistaking who it is they belong to. There was no mistaking who they belong to. And so everything that they did in their life reflected, reflected having their Father's name on their forehead and what the framework we're gonna be working with for this morning.

[8:02] When we talk about allegiance is what we think and what we do, what we think, and what we do at times, especially here on the East Coast in Atlantic Canada, I think we like to think as people that are good people that are maybe bad, and then people that are somewhat neutral, they're not good, they're not bad, they're kind of just in the middle. And what we're gonna uncover this morning, the whole underlying point that screams out in these Scriptures is that there is no neutral when it comes to the condition of the human heart, that there is no neutral in my heart, that there is no neutral in your heart.

[8:49] I remember in university when the Patriots were dominating, like everybody's like Tom Brady's the GOAT, they went, went out, they bought Patriots jerseys, they were all sold out, they were all excited. And then Tom Brady left. The Patriots started to lose, and all of a sudden Facebook Marketplace had a ton of Patriots jerseys, eBay had a ton of Patriots jerseys, and they were cheering for a completely different team. And I thought, I was like, why? Why is that? Why were they all sold out on the Patriots and then when they started to lose, they just dipped like they were just gone? Well, the truth is, this is something that I like to call a bandwagon. And sports fans would know what we mean when we talk about a bandwagon, right? Well, the truth is, a lot of us carry that over into our faith and a bandwagon.

[9:38] Faith isn't allegiance, it's convenience. A bandwagon faith isn't allegiance. It is convenience. When God blesses us, when we feel close to Him, when the songs are good, when the vibe is right, when the worship is how we like it, when the preaching speaks directly to us, it is really easy to say, I am with Jesus. It's easy to say that things are good and I am with Christ. But bandwagon faith isn't allegiance, it is convenience. Allegiance to Jesus means entrusting every part of your life to His rule, declaring Him as King, not only in what you say, but in what you do, choosing His way over your own, His truth over cultural comfort or His mission over personal ease, going the distance to bring people closer to God no matter what it costs.

[10:36] And the question then becomes for us, who is it that you really worship? Who is it that you really worship? If you follow secularism, that is shaping you, informing you in your worship. If you follow the teachings of Buddha and you worship him, that will shape how and the way that you live your life. If you follow the teachings of Muhammad, that will shape, inform how you live your life. If you worship your money, that will shape and inform how you live your life. If we were to unpack and look at your bank statements, would we see that you worship a McDonald's coffee and a muffin? Or would we see that you worship King Jesus? If we were to follow you and have a look and into your thought life, would it be King Jesus or would it be something else?

[11:27] If we were to follow you and and look at your relationships, if you were to look at your relationships, would you see that, you know, maybe I'm worshiping my kids or my significant other or my parents or somebody other than King Jesus? And the question as we look at the Scriptures is, who is it that you really worship and follow? Because you'll be constantly challenged. And the truth is, for those Israelites in Deuteronomy chapter 6, who had the commandments bound to the wrist and their Father's name written on their foreheads, is that there was no neutral in their hearts. That was their identity. Your identity determines your loyalty every time, every time your identity determines your loyalty, the kind of lives they live, the names they wore, there was no neutral in their hearts.

[12:18] There is no neutral in my heart. There is no neutral in your hearts. As we turn to Revelation chapter 4, verses 4 and 5, we see they kept themselves as pure as virgins following the Lamb. Wherever He goes, they had been purchased from among the people of the earth as a special offering to God and to the Lamb. They told no lies and they were without blame. So what this meant is that followers of the Lamb look nothing like the culture around them. Followers of the Lamb look nothing like the culture around them. Why? Because if I'm living in corruption, not just surrounded by it, if I'm living in sin, not just surrounded by it, I lose the credibility to speak against that corruption because I'm just as caught up in it.

[13:12] If I speak truth while my life is filled with lies, the gospel that I then share with other people loses some of its credibility because we look no different from the people that we are sharing that gospel to. If our mouths are filled with lies, if we are known as individuals with no character and no integrity, what happens is the ministry, the witness that we have towards the world diminishes in its impact. These were people that were sold out, no doubt, for Christ. So let me ask you this question. Where does your allegiance lie? I say this to our students all the time. From the moment that you accepted Christ, even over the past year, does your life look more like Christ today than it did a year ago?

[14:04] Do you look like Christ more today than you did last year or six months ago or eight months ago? Or does your life look the same? Is it Christ's name or is it something else? Are you following Him wherever He leads and wherever He speaks, or just when it's comfortable and convenient? And what this does is this paints a beautiful picture of what allegiance is. So you're probably wondering, okay, then how do I then be allegiant to King Jesus? Well, as we continue in the Scriptures, it says, and then I saw another angel flying through the sky, carrying the eternal good news to proclaim to the people who belong to the world, every nation, every tribe, and every language. Who's this gospel for? Every language, every people, every tribe and every nation.

[14:50] For the people here in this room, in Moncton, for the people in all of New Brunswick, for the people in all of the Maritime provinces, for the people in Canada, for the people in the United States, for the whole world, every language, every tribe, every nation, and every people. Fear God. He shouted, "Give Him glory, for the time has come when He will sit as judge. Worship Him who made the heavens, the earth, and the sea, and the springs of water." Then another angel followed him through the sky, shouting, "Babylon is fallen. The great city is fallen because she made the wine of all the nations drink the wine of her passionate immorality in the world." In the Babylon system, it was designed to pull everybody away from the Lamb and towards Babylon, to an enticing world.

[15:40] But the call of the gospel is to give Him glory, to fear Him, and to worship Him. And I want us to notice this. It's not just about believing certain facts or feeling certain emotions. It's about worship. It's about giving Christ the throne of our hearts and allowing Him through the power of His Holy Spirit to flow through our thoughts and our actions. Worship to King Jesus rather than anything else. And I don't want us to make any mistake for what we think worship is. Worship is not just sitting here in this room. It is a part of it. It's a piece of it, but it's not the whole puzzle. What does our lives look like when we leave the building of the church? What does our quiet time look like with Him?

[16:26] As we sit and we read the Scriptures and as we talk with Him, what do our lives look like as an act of worship to God, to Christ the King? Allegiance means to worship Him, to fear God, to give Him glory. What does your life look like in pursuit of Him? Are you actively chasing after Jesus? Are we stuck in apathy, in complacency and cynicism? Are we just going through the motions and caught up in this mundane rhythm of indifference and not actively engaging with Christ Jesus in relationship? One of the hardest things for us to grasp and to wrestle with, and make no mistake, I myself have wrestled hard with this: following Jesus.

[17:17] This isn't just about inviting Him into our lives. It's about surrendering our lives to become His following. Jesus isn't just about inviting Him into our lives. It's about allowing our lives to become His. It's not about penciling Him into our schedules, it's about handing over the calendar. It's not about fitting Him into our priorities, it's about Him becoming our priority. It's not Jesus as an addition, but rather Jesus as the foundation. I love how the psalmist in Psalm 139 put it, "Search me, O God, and know my heart.

[18:06] Test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends You, and lead me along the path of everlasting life." Point out anything in me that offends You. And I think for us to be, if we're being honest, that is one of the hardest things for us to wrestle with. It's one of the hardest things to wrestle with. If you prayed that prayer, "Point out anything in me, Lord, that offends You," would you then get offended by what God says? "Hey, this offends You." What would you then say? "Actually, I don't think You're right." Or is it a complete submission to Christ Jesus to say, "Hey, you know what?

[18:52] That thing in your life, yeah, that's gotta go, man, like that thing in your life. Like, that's gotta change. Like, hey, that hidden area of your life where you're worshiping King Jesus in public, but then you go home and you're in the quiet place and you're in the shadows, in the dark, and you do that thing, like, that's gotta stop." Oh, oh, anything in me that offends You. And it's hard for us to wrestle with because allegiance to Jesus means giving Him full access to our lives and to our hearts. Even the rooms that you've kept locked. What does it mean for our lives to give Him glory, to fear God and to worship Him? Well, fearing God means listening to Him and doing what's right, even when you know nobody else is watching, because He knows, He sees, and He cares.

[19:40] Giving Him glory means thanking Him for everything and making choices that show that He is the most important thing in your life. Worshiping Him means loving Him with all of your heart, not just in your song, not just in your singing, but by obeying and trusting in Him and talking to Him every day. And I want us to notice that the angel doesn't say, "Fear God when it's convenient." Like, "Worship Him when the vibes are right, when it feels good, when we like the worship, when we like the preaching, when we feel like we're getting something out of it, when we feel like we're on a mountaintop, when life is going great," instead of in the valley where we feel like He isn't listening. It says, "Worship Him." Period. Full stop. "Fear God." Period.

[20:29] Full stop. "Give glory to Him." Period. Full stop. Our souls come alive when we align our allegiance, our thoughts, and our actions, and submit and surrender to Christ Jesus through our worship, through fearing Him and through giving Him glory every single day. When we do it every day, instead of just on a Sunday, when our inputs in our lives are, you know, everything but Christ or Christ on a Sunday, what happens is our outputs, what we end up doing, the life that we end up living falls short of the walk in life that God calls and invites us into.

[21:22] In Revelation 14:9-11, then a third angel followed them, shouting, "Anyone who worships the beast and his statue, or who accepts the mark on his forehead or on the hand must drink the wine of God's anger. It has been poured full strength into God's cup of wrath. And they'll be tormented with fire and burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. The smoke of their torment will rise forever and ever, and they'll have no relief day or night, for they have worshiped the beast and his statue and have accepted the mark of his name."

[22:07] And I'll be honest with you, I wrestled with this passage. I have wrestled with this passage, and I said, God, give me a way to soften it. God, give me a way to just make it easier to hear God. Can I just choose a different passage of Scripture from the book of Revelation? But there's some truth that we need to hear as followers of Jesus, as Tidal Church. When confronted with what the Bible says is true, we have two choices. We can either hear the words and try and justify them away or hide from them or downplay their importance. Or we can recognize that there's no neutral when it comes to the condition of the human heart.

[23:00] That there is no neutral in my heart, that there is no neutral in your heart when it comes to the condition of the human heart. The reality of God's truth is inescapable. And these are hard words. These are hard words. As Jesus said to His disciples in the New Testament, "This is a hard saying, who can understand it?" But the truth of the matter is, these words aren't just about future judgment. They reveal the true nature of the choices and decisions that we make here today. When we choose allegiance to anything other than Christ Jesus, we choose a path that leads away from life, away from peace, away from patience, away from joy, away from true fulfillment.

[23:55] And we like to think that, you know, that God is so loving. How could such a loving God have and say something like this? But the truth of the matter is, God's love and His justice are not opposites. His love offers us salvation. But His justice, it honors our choice. An eternity apart from Him isn't out of God's character. It's the tragic result of rejecting His relentless love. And what we like to do is we like to think that the enemy comes up and just, like, takes a chain and wraps it around our neck and says, "Hey, you know what? Here's a decision that this decision and choice is gonna lead you to a lifelong addiction that is gonna ruin your friends.

[24:42] It's gonna ruin your family. It's gonna ruin your relationships. It's gonna ruin everything. Take it, put it on, throw it around your neck." We like to think that that's how the enemy works. We like to think, and the Scriptures where it says the thief has come to steal, kill, and destroy. We like to think that he's gonna knock on our door and answer the door in a red spandex suit with some horns and a pitchfork and say, "Hey, can I kill you?" It's not how he does it. He doesn't bound the chains around our neck like that. Instead, what happens is he comes out, he comes out with a choice. He comes out with a choice, a single link, a single decision, a single choice.

[25:33] 'Cause nobody wakes up one day and says, "I think I'll accept. I think I'll take the mark of the beast today." I think I'll accept the mark of the beast today. It comes from a small compromise, a slight bending of the truth, a seemingly harmless indulgence, a moment of agreement with accusation in our lives. Each of these choices is a single link in the chain, and we make them. And when we make them, we forge our own captivity. Because here's the problem with a choice. Here's the problem with a choice. One choice always leads to another, one choice always leads to another. The beast doesn't come out with a chain. He comes out with a link and he whispers, "You know what?

[26:19] Like, that sin isn't that big of a deal." He comes out and he whispers and says, "Hey, you know what? Like, just do it anyways. Like, He'll forgive you. It's no big deal." He comes out and he offers a counter counterfeit satisfaction. He comes out and says, "You deserve this." He sows doubt. "Did God really say?" He plants accusations. "You're not really saved. You're a failure. God could never love you." And each time somebody agrees with a lie, they forge another link in their chain. And over time, the weight of that chain in our lives becomes unbearable.

[27:08] Yet we don't realize that we've built the chain ourselves. And those who belong to the Lamb, they don't build chains, they break them. But the truth of the matter is, it demands a complete reorientation in our lives. It demands a complete reorientation in our lives. There's this idea that Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls this idea of a cheap grace. It's this grace that essentially says, "Hey, you know what? Like, God has given you grace. Now you don't have to change anything about your life. You don't have to follow the Lamb. You can just continue on the way that you're living and the way that you're doing life and and the truth of the gospel." The truth of King Jesus, and Him being King.

[27:56] Jesus in our lives means that every decision, every moment, every thought has to belong to Him. And I just wanna remind us that the book of Revelation was written to the churches. It was written to the churches. So we need to take heed and be careful for those of us that have declared Christ as King, what are the gaps of faith and of our love for Him? What are the gaps in our life? Search me. Oh God, come Holy Spirit, come. The question that I want us to wrestle with is, as we spend some time in prayer and in worship, is what empire is forming me?

[28:48] And how do I resist the way of the Lamb? What empire is forming me? And how do I resist it with the way of the Lamb? And we're gonna pray just here in a second, and I'm just gonna pray Psalm 139 over us. And as we do that, I would encourage you, I would invite you to pray along with me and say, "Come Holy Spirit, come search me. Oh God," let's pray together. As the psalmist wrote, "Search me, oh God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts.

[29:35] And God, this is the hard one for us. Point out anything in me that offends You, God, if there's something hidden in my life, point it out, if there's a way that I treat other people, God, point it out, if there's something in my life that I need to go and forgive somebody, God, point it out, if there's somebody in my life that I need to go and ask for forgiveness, God, go and point it out. God, search anything in me that offends You, God, lead me along the path of everlasting life." Holy Spirit, come show us where the beast is still active in our lives. Show us where the areas where we have chains that have been built. God, the areas of bondage in our life, that You offer a life that we can come and those chains can be broken, and we can walk in what the New Testament calls a new life.

[30:25] God, a life sold out for You, a life where we know and listen to Your voice when it speaks into our lives. Father God, I just pray that Your Holy Spirit would come and minister to us, Lord Jesus, come and point out things in our lives. God, come and bring healing and restoration and peace. God, search my heart, God. Point out anything in me that offends You. Father, we pray all this in the powerful, holy, the mighty name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.