The Trumpets

Revelation 8–9

Story to read: The Trumpets
Bible: Revelation 8–9

1. What would you do?

Put it to the group as a straight question: You now have an army. There are people in the world doing real harm. What do you do?

Take the answers seriously. Most will involve stopping the bad people somehow.

2. What God’s army actually does

They pray.

That is it. Chapter 8 opens with silence in heaven — half an hour of it — and then an angel takes the prayers of God’s people and throws them, mixed with fire, onto the earth.

And because those prayers arrive, the trumpets sound.

Prayer is not the thing you do when there is nothing else left. In Revelation, it is the thing that starts everything.

3. What the trumpets do

Now, the trumpets are strange, and it helps to notice what they have in common. Look at the first four:

• less to eat on the land
• less to drink
• nothing to eat from the sea either
• no way to find your direction by the sky

Every one of them takes away something people were relying on instead of God. Not their lives — their safety nets.

4. Then it gets harder

The fifth and sixth trumpets go further, and this is where Satan’s own powers get involved. People are tormented so badly they would rather not be alive.

But God’s people are protected here, because they were sealed back in chapter 7. That mark was not decoration.

And God’s wish, all the way through, is that everyone would come and be sealed too.

5. The sad part

Here is the ending nobody expects. After all of that — after everything they trusted has been shown to be no use — people still do not turn to God.

They keep trusting the thing that is destroying them, because turning would mean changing, and they would rather stay exactly as they are.

That is the honest, uncomfortable heart of these two chapters, and it is worth saying plainly to children of this age: God does not force anybody. He can take away the false safety nets. He will not take away the choice.

6. So did it fail?

It looks like the church has failed. Everything has been tried, and people dug in.

But that is not quite right — something essential has not happened yet. This is the end of the first mystery, the mystery of the church. Next time we start the second: the mystery of God.

Memory verse: “The prayers of God’s people went up before God.” (from Revelation 8:4)

Look for yourself

Two quiet minutes. Nobody has to say anything out loud.

Before a single trumpet sounds, an angel takes a golden bowl full of the prayers of God’s people and tips it into the fire, and the smoke goes up.

Think of one thing you actually prayed about this week. A real one.

Now watch it go into that bowl. Watch the smoke carry it up. What does it smell like?

That is where the trumpets come from. Your prayer was in there.

7. Prayer

God, thank you that our prayers actually reach you and actually do something. Show us the things we lean on instead of you. And please give us soft hearts, so that when you show us something, we change. Amen.

Appendix: Ideas for leaders

Opening activity: The “what would you do with an army” question. Let them answer properly before you reveal that the answer is prayer — the gap is the lesson.

Craft idea: A bowl of incense, or a paper bowl the children write prayers into. Collect them and pray them together. It makes chapter 8:4 concrete.

Questions:

1. Why do you think God takes away the things people rely on, instead of just fixing them?
2. What do you lean on when you’re worried?
3. Why is it so hard to change your mind once you have dug in?

Song suggestions: A song about prayer; something quiet, given the content.

Prep note: Do not soften section 5. Children of this age already suspect that people sometimes refuse to change, and they respect a book that says so.