Sermon Transcript

0:00:14.0

My wife Cathryn and her father shared a passion for jigsaw puzzles.  I figured this out shortly after we got married, because for a number of years we would take a family vacation together with Cathryn’s parents and her two brothers, their wives and all the aunts and uncles and cousins and grandkids…we’d all get together.  Usually her mom and dad would get the place at the beach, and we just had to get ourselves there because we lived in different parts of the country.  And we took care of the food and all the cooking.  It was a pretty good deal, you know, grandma and grandpa getting the place.  And we just arrived with the kids.  And shortly after we would arrive at whatever beach location, it wasn’t long before Cathryn or her dad would pull out the box, that jigsaw puzzle.  And they’d dump it onto the kitchen table and spread out, I don’t know, 500 pieces, maybe 1000 pieces if they felt really ambitious.  And then they’d set up the box cover over here with the picture on it, and they’d get after it.  And throughout the week, you know, they’d come back to the table.  And they’d come in and out of the beach and back and forth from the pool and all the activities of the week, and they’d do a piece here and a piece there.  Her dad could sit there for hours at the table and just ponder this piece or that piece.  I was never much help.  I’m not much for all the tiny little details over here.  I wanted to see the big picture. What is this thing gonna look like?  In fact, I can’t even do a 10-piece jigsaw puzzle if I don’t see the big picture.  It’s important for me to see the big picture.

0:01:54.3

Well, Bible prophecy is a lot like putting together a jigsaw puzzle.  And sometimes it feels like a thousand pieces stretched out over the pages of scripture.  And it’s enough to try to tackle the book of Revelation.  I mean, this is an intimidating book, isn’t it?  There’s 22 chapters, a lot of symbolism, apocalyptic literature and all of that.  And then you’ve got to tie it in, as we have, with the book of Daniel and other prophecies.  I mean, as I said in the beginning of the series, one fourth of the Bible, scholars say, when it was written—and remember, the Bible was written over 1600 years—but one fourth of it when it was written was prophetic in nature.  It talked about the future.  And so God has the big picture, but it’s like a jigsaw puzzle to us.  And He gives us a piece here and a piece there and a glimpse here and a glimpse there.  And every once in a while it’s important for us to take a few steps back, take a deep breath, and just say, “What’s the big picture of all of this?”  And we’ve come to kind of a midpoint in our study of the book of Revelation.  We’re in chapter 14 in a 22-chapter book.  And it occurred to me that as I dove in to chapter 14, John is not advancing the chronology of events that are taking place during this time in Bible prophecy known at the Tribulation.  It’s important to kind of get your chronology down, and some of that is debated.  But there’s nothing in chapter 14 that advances the chronology.  What is he does is he takes a few steps back and he gives us the big picture of what’s happening.  There are four puzzle pieces that I want to talk about this morning that John helps us with in chapter 14.

0:03:33.5

And if you’re ready to get after this puzzle, here’s the first one.  This is a big one.  Jesus wins and we win with Him.  Say that with me.  Jesus wins and we win with Him.  Here is how John says it and gives us a picture.  Chapter 14 beginning in verse 1.  “Then I looked, and behold, on Mount Zion stood the Lamb, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads.  And I heard a voice from heaven like the roar of many waters and like the sound of loud thunder.  The voice I heard was like the sound of harpists playing on their harps, and they were singing a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and before the elders.  No one could learn that song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth.  It is these who have not defiled themselves with women, for they are virgins.”  A way of saying they didn’t marry during the Tribulation time.  “It is these who follow the Lamb wherever he goes.  These have been redeemed from mankind as firstfruits for God and the Lamb, and in their mouth no lie was found, for they are blameless.”  You know, Christians are famous for saying, “I read the last book.  And I read the last chapter of the last book.  And Jesus wins.”  You ever said something like that?  Oh, come one.  Have you ever said something like that?  Sure you have.  All right.  And it’s true.  He does win.  But it’s a little bit interesting to me that John would give us a picture of the Lamb of God in victory when we’re only halfway through the book.  It’s a little bit like a basketball team celebrating the victory of the game, and it’s only halftime.  That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, does it?  But here John gives us a picture of Jesus, the Lamb of God, standing on Mount Zion with the 144,000 Jewish evangelists who come to faith in Jesus Christ shortly after the Tribulation begins.  They are standing in victory with Jesus.  And I believe that this is a picture of Jesus standing on Mount Zion at the beginning of what’s known as the millennial reign or the thousand-year reign of Jesus Christ.  What John does is he fast-forwards to the end of the Tribulation and to the beginning of the millennial reign.  And he gives us a picture of Jesus.  There’s some debate among the scholars as to whether Mount Zion is talking about a heavenly Mount Zion or an earthly Mount Zion.  I believe this is a picture of Jesus as He comes standing on Mount Zion in Jerusalem with the 144,000.  They are standing in victory, and they’re singing a song.  They're singing a victory song.  It sounds a little bit like “We Are The Champions”.  Well, not exactly, but it’s a song like that.  They're standing in victory.  They’re singing a victory song.  And the 144,000, you know, are in some way representative of all believers in Jesus Christ.  But they are specifically those who came it faith in Christ and led this spiritual awakening and this gospel witness on planet earth during the Tribulation period.  I just find it a little bit interesting that John does this, and we’re only halfway through the book.

0:06:58.2

I did hear about a basketball team.  I tried to confirm this with my son.  We couldn’t find the story, but I know I heard the story somewhere.  It was about a team that was in the midst of a seven-game series or a five-game series.  They were up like three to one.  They were in game 5.  And they were winning at halftime, and they were ahead in the third quarter.  And the tournament officials just decided to move the championship trophy into their locker room and put the champagne on ice.  And the problem was, as the third quarter went on and the fourth quarter went on, the game changed, and they eventually ended up losing that game.  And so they had to go into game 6 and eventually game 7.  Well, the tournament officials had to grab the trophy and pull it out and, you know, put the champagne on ice someplace else.  It’s a little premature to celebrate the victory at halftime or in the middle of the third quarter.  So why is John doing this?  Well, again, he’s giving us a glimpse of the end of the game.  And I was trying to get my mind wrapped around the implication of all this happening in John 14.  We know Jesus wins.  And we win with Him.  We share in His victory.  But what does that mean for us today as we walk out of this place and we go to work tomorrow?  And what does that mean for us?

0:08:16.2

I jotted down these words.  One of the great challenges in the Christian life is living in the present victory that is ours in Jesus Christ.  Would you agree with me on that?  We are overcomers in Jesus Christ.  We are the champions in Him.  Frankly, it doesn't always look like Christians are winning though in this world, especially when sincere believers in Jesus Christ get their heads cut off by Islamic Jihadists.  It doesn’t feel like we are the champions when anti-Christian sentiment is increasing as it is in the United States today.  And in times like this, it’s too easy for Christians to walk in defeat, not victory.  And without faith, it will be challenging for believers during the Tribulation to walk in victory.  It will be a challenge for believers to do that, to walk in faith.  And yet didn’t Jesus say in Luke 18:8, “When the son of man comes, will he find faith on this earth?”  The kind of faith that is able to sing “We Are The Champions” right in the middle of the Tribulation.  Right in the middle of a time when the game seems to be changing a little bit in the favor of the opponent.  Well, here is why we can walk by faith and as the overcomers we are in Christ.  Because the trophy is already in Jesus’s locker room, and it’s not going anywhere just because the devil appears to win a small battle here and a small battle there.  Jesus has already won the victory on the cross.  And by His resurrection him standing on Mount Zion with the 144,000 Jewish evangelists at the end of the Tribulation and before the millennial is proof of this reality.  And John wants us to get that big picture right in the midst of difficult times.

0:10:14.7

And some of you are right there.  You're having a hard time living in the present victory that is yours in Jesus Christ, ‘cause it seems like the devil is whipping you all over the court.  And some of you are saying, “Pastor, I just don’t feel very victorious today.  I don’t feel like an overcomer today.”  All right.  I understand that.  But since when is the Christian life based on your feelings?  It’s never been based on our feelings.  In fact, if you live according to your feelings, you’ll be up and down all the time.  You’ll feel saved one day and not saved the next day.  You’ll feel like a victorious person one day and loser the next day.  You’ll feel like “Jesus is winning in my life,” and the next day “the devil is just beating the snot out of me.”  Because feelings will always fail you.  Feelings are terribly unreliable.  No, we live our lives by faith.  That’s why Jesus says, “When the son of man, will he find any spiritual feelings on earth?”  No, He says, “Will the son of man find any faith on this earth?”  And, by the way, fear and faith cannot coexist any more than our feelings can drive the bus here.  Faith eclipses fear, but the other side of that is true as well.  Any fear that we have always replaces our faith.  So we have to take a step of faith, let our feelings catch up, and let that faith chase away the fears.  And that step of faith is based upon the facts of the gospel.  The reason John could take the championship trophy and move it into Jesus’s locker room at halftime in our study of the book of Revelation is because the facts are Jesus wins and we win with Him.  We share in that victory.  And somebody better shout hallelujah today, because tomorrow is gonna be a rough day for somebody here.  And you need to live in that present victory that is yours and mine in Jesus Christ.  That’s jigsaw puzzle number one on our way to seeing the big picture of Bible prophecy.

0:12:33.5

Here’s the second one.  The gospel is the world’s only hope.  Now, I know that’s a simple statement.  But here is how John shows it to us in verses 6 and 7.  Listen to this.  “Then I saw another angel flying directly overhead, with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people.  And he said with a loud voice, ‘Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come, and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water.’”  Now, if you read chapter 14 carefully, you’ll find no less than six angels that are a part of what’s happening in chapter 14.  And here is the first one that comes along.  And he’s flying overhead, John says.  And he’s carrying what John calls an eternal gospel.  An eternal gospel.  Now, angelic messengers in the Bible, there’s nothing new with that.  In fact, you read the Bible from Genesis all the way through the book of Revelation, you’re gonna find angels delivering messages from God.  That happened time and time again.  We think of Christmas and other times in the Bible where the angel of the Lord appeared.  This is probably the first and only time in the Bible where an angel is said to bring a gospel message, and especially in the New Testament.  Because the gospel messengers in the New Testament are Jesus’s disciples, not angels.  Oh, they bring messages, but not gospel messages, especially during the last days, which are marked by Jesus’s birth in Bethlehem all the way to the end of the age.  Jesus said to His disciples in Act 1:8, “You are my witnesses.  You are my emissaries.  You’re my ambassadors.  You are my gospel voices on this earth.”  But if you’ve been following our study in the book of Revelation, one of the events yet to be happening, a future event in Bible prophecy is known as the rapture of the Church.  This is the event that starts the whole thing where the Church is snatched out of this world.  The rapture takes place, and God’s gospel witness disappears.  But as we talked about in weeks past, God doesn’t leave His earth without a gospel witness.  Immediately we learn about the 144,000 Jewish evangelists, these Jews who see Jesus as their Messiah.  They come to faith in Jesus Christ and they’re used of God to bring about the great spiritual awakening in human history.  Tens of thousands, if not hundreds, if not millions of people come to faith in Christ during the Tribulation period led by the witness of these 144,000 Jews.  And then there are two mysterious witnesses that appear, that the description of them sounds a lot like the prophet Elijah and Moses.  We talked about that.  And then we have this angel who flies overhead with a message about an eternal gospel.  Another reminder that God doesn’t leave His earth ever without a gospel witness and that the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ always has and always will be the world’s only hope, during the Tribulation period.

0:16:01.4

Now, it’s interesting.  You know, a lot of people today wonder if the simple gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ still works.  Or do we need to update it some?  And I would say without question, it still works.  Why?  Because this angel carries an eternal gospel.  Mark that down.  Circle that in your Bible.  It’s not an evolving gospel.  It’s an eternal gospel.  And there are a lot of people today in politics and other places who talk about how, “Well, my thoughts have evolved on this.”  Yeah, we humans, our thoughts evolve because we don’t have perfect thinking on things.  And we were wrong in the past, and we evolved and got right.  Or maybe we were right in the past, and we evolved.  And now we’re on the wrong side of things.  But the gospel never evolves.  It’s an eternal gospel, which means we adapt to it, not the other way around.  Culture is always evolving.  Culture is always changing from one generation to the next.  But the one thing you can count on in every generation is the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.  It is eternal.  As eternal as God is.  But, of course, the prevailing philosophy in the world today is evolutionary.  Evolutionary thoughts, evolutionary origins, evolutionary everything.  We’re evolving as a culture.  And it just, you know, puts you in this mishmash of…you don’t know what’s right.  You don’t know what’s wrong.  You don’t know what to stand on from one generation to the next, let alone from one minute to the next.  Because your truth is your truth, and my truth is my truth.  “Truth is relative to the individual,” the evolutionary thinker says.  And relativism and evolutionary thought dominate the world today.

0:18:00.0

But I want you to notice very carefully how John describes this eternal gospel and the message that this angel brings.  Look at it again in verse 7.  “And he said with a loud voice, ‘Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come.”  Now, listen to this.  “‘And worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of the water.’”  Hey, that’s creation language.  Worship the creator.  Worship your maker.  You’re not an accident that evolved, you know, as a result of chance plus time.  You’re not an accident to the cosmos.  There’s no meaning and purpose in that.  No wonder people pick up a gun and just mow down people.  Because life is cheap in an evolutionary world where you’re just an accident of the cosmos.  (0:19:00.1) But when you're a created being, when you’re here as a result of your maker who, with love and intelligence, designed you and fashioned you, there’s purpose and meaning to that.  Every life, yeah, every life matters.  But the evolutionary thinking of our day says that life doesn’t matter at birth or even the unborn.  Those lives don’t matter.  Fast-forward to the end.  The elderly life doesn't matter.  You say that for generation after generation.  You say that long enough, and eventually the entire society is saying, “Does my life matter?  Does my life matter?”  It doesn’t surprise me where we are today.  It’s just the result of decades of saying that an unborn life doesn’t even matter, and not enough people standing up for them.  But when you have a gospel that is (0:20:00.1) rooted in creation, in the idea that your maker fashioned you in your mother’s womb and you are fearfully and wonderfully made from the moment of conception, that life matters.  It matters immensely.  And it matters until God takes the last breath out of that life.  It matters no matter your color of skin, no matter your economic status.  But we can’t get there as a society today because we’ve been drinking from this fountain of evolutionary thought and relativism, which is nowhere found in the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.  The gospel is rooted in a creator who created you for purpose and for meaning.

0:20:54.3

Now, some of you may be asking, “Pastor, how can this be an eternal gospel and there’s no mention of Jesus in it?  I thought the gospel was all about Jesus.”  Well, if you’re an astute student of the Bible, it doesn’t take long to get from the moment of creation to Jesus.  In fact, John, who penned the Revelation of Jesus Christ, also penned the Gospel of John.  And do you remember these words to begin John’s Gospel?  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.”  And then a few verses later he says “And the word became flesh and dwelt among us.”  Who is he talking about?  This is John’s way of introducing us to Jesus.  And he starts in creation.  In the beginning was the Word.  He echoes the first ten words of the Bible.  “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”  John is not the only one who does this.  Paul does it in his letter to the Colossians.  He says of Jesus, “For by him, all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities.  All things were created through him and for him.”  So you don’t have to travel very far from the moment of creation to Jesus Christ.  There’s a connection between the two and this eternal gospel echoed by this angel.

0:22:48.2

We’re just putting together some big picture puzzle pieces.  Jesus wins, and we win with him.  The gospel is the world’s only hope.  And then number three, the devil’s defeat is a foregone conclusion.  Notice what John says in Revelation 14:8.  “Another angel, a second, followed, saying, ‘Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, she who made all nations drink the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality.’”  Now, I said last week that the Bible is really a tale of two cities, the city of Jerusalem and the city of Babylon.  It starts with Babel, which became Babylon, and then Salem, which became Jerusalem.  You can read about those in the early chapters of Genesis.  And then trace those two cities, the city of man, which is Babylon, and the holy city of God, which is Jerusalem.  And the end of the age and when the new heaven and the new earth are pictured in Revelation 20 and 21 and 22, John sees the New Jerusalem, the holy city of God, coming down.  It’s a beautiful picture.  I can’t wait to get there and show it to you.  But the tale of these two cities.  Babel has always been the city of man, symbolically and otherwise.  Let me take you through a little bit of historical journey and reveal some of the mysteries of Babylon.  It started with the tower of Babel in Genesis 11.  A guy named Nimrod…don’t ever name your kid Nimrod.  It doesn't sound very good, and it doesn’t have very good historical meaning either.  Nimrod was the leader of this group of people who came from the east with one language.  And they settled in the plains of Shinar, and they built a tower in defiance against almighty God.  We know it as the tower of Babel.  And it was the roots of the pagan civilization following the flood and shortly after Noah and his family repopulated the earth.  And God looked down upon that tower, and He saw the potential for evil.  And He confused their language and scattered the people.  Well, some time later, those people re-gathered.  The Babylonian Empire, the great Babylonian civilization was one of the mighty world empires that has been on planet earth over time.  It’s one of the seven heads.  Remember the beast of Revelation had seven heads?  There were seven mighty world empires pictured in Bible prophecy, starting with Egypt, then Assyria, then Babylon, Persia, Greece.  Those were the five, John says, that have fallen.  And then there is one that is.  Well, during John’s time that was the mighty Roman Empire.  And then one that is to come.  That is the revived Roman Empire led by the Antichrist or the beast.  You follow me on that?  Seven heads?  Well, one of those the mighty Babylonian Empire and the Neo-Babylonian Empire, which existed around 586 B.C. when, led by King Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonians besieged the city of Jerusalem and took the Israelites captive for 70 years.  Factor this into your theology.  A holy, righteous God uses the ISIS of His day to discipline His people and take them into captivity for 70 years.  You can read about that in the Old Testament.

0:26:18.6

Among them was a teenager named Daniel.  Daniel was an incredible young man.  And rather than bowing to the image of the king, roots of Babylonian pagan idolatry, he chose to serve the one true God of Israel, to stay true to Jehovah.  But Daniel was an incredible leader and administrator.  He rose to power and to a place of prominence in the Babylonian culture.  He was God’s man in a pagan world.  And he also had the gift of prophecy, and God gave him visions of the future.  That’s why you lay the book of Daniel, chapters 8 and through the end, alongside but book of Revelation.  And there’s an amazing correspondence between the two, separated by centuries.  It’s because God miraculously authored this book and revealed the mysteries of the apocalypse.

0:27:15.4

Now, you fast-forward to the book of Revelation.  Again, we’re talking about some mysteries of Babylon.  You fast-forward to Revelation, and Babylon reappears at the end of the age.  The question is, is it symbolic or is it literal? We’ll talk about that.  But certainly symbolically there is a religious Babylon that arises, a one-world religion that is led by the false prophet.  We talked about him last week.  He’s mentioned in the latter part of Revelation 13.  And the fall and destruction of religious Babylon is detailed in chapter 17.  John calls this Babylon a mystery, an indication that he’s probably speaking symbolically here.  But he says this Babylon, this one-world religion, this amalgamation of spirituality is the mother of prostitutes, he says.  Because every false religion finds its roots in the ancient civilization of Babylon, which was a pagan civilization.  And the way God views idolatry, He says it’s like spiritual prostitution.  He feels that strongly about it when we worship something other than the one true God.  So Babylon, the religious Babylon in Revelation is called the “mother of prostitutes”.  Political and economic Babylon are also pictured first part of Revelation 13 and Revelation 18.  This economic Babylon, where the Antichrist takes control politically and economically through the mark of the beast and all of that that we discussed last time, that too comes crashing down in a single hour, the scripture says.  Suddenly just the economy of the world that is run by the Antichrist collapses.  There is a coming economic collapse, and we’ll talk about that in a couple of weeks.  Revelation 18 describes this political and economic Babylon as the dwelling place for demons.

0:29:14.6

The last bit of this mysterious Babylon begs the question, is Babylon—as a city mentioned in Revelation—is it a literal city that rises up from the dust of the Mesopotamian Valley?  And one of my former professors at Dallas Seminary, Dr. Charles Dyer, wrote a book back in 1991 called The Rise of Babylon: Signs of the End Times.  And he had a picture of the president of Iraq at that time, Saddam Hussein, right on the cover of it.  And at that time Saddam Hussein was rebuilding Babylon.  One of his presidential palaces was in Babylon.  And other excavation and building was going on. And a lot of Bible scholars were wondering, wow.  I mean, is Babylon not only symbolic of a political and religious and economic thing that arises during the end of the age, but is it also the central place where the Antichrist, you know, seats his power?  And will Babylon be a literal city?  Of course, all of that changed when the United States military took Saddam Hussein out and, you know, the construction and all that isn’t going as well as maybe it did under Hussein’s reign.  And a lot of people had questions about it too because of a prophecy in the Old Testament book of Isaiah.  You don’t need to turn there, but listen to this.  Isaiah 13.  Isaiah talks about the future of Babylon.  And all the way back during Isaiah’s time he says, “And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the splendor and pomp of the Chaldeans, will be like Sodom and Gomorrah when God overthrew them.  It will never be inhabited or lived in for all generations; no Arab will pitch his tent there; no shepherds will make their flocks lie down there.”  And so back in the early 90s when Hussein was in power, a lot of Bible scholars were trying to balance, well, what’s happening in here in Babylon.  Is it a literal city?  But you've got this prophecy from Isaiah that says Babylon will be like Sodom and Gomorrah.  Nobody will ever live there again.  Well, you know what’s happened in our most recent history since then.  But the reality is even back in during Hussein’s time they say that it was more like a tourist attraction than a place where people were coming to live.  Oh, he built a presidential palace there and some other things.  But nobody actually left Bagdad or some city and took up residency in Babylon.  I’m of the opinion Babylon is more symbolic of the pagan political, economic, and religious system at the end of the age than it is a literal city.  But time will tell.  We’ll see what happens.  That’s why it’s important not to take every news headline and immediately run to scripture and say, “This is that.”  Because it’s the big picture that we need to see.  So that’s some of the mystery of Babylon.  I just simply say the devil’s defeat is a foregone conclusion. “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great,” the prophecy says.  And Revelation 17, Revelation 18 describes the destruction of religious political and economic Babylon.  And we’ll get into more of that in the weeks ahead.

0:32:40.9

Here’s the fourth and final puzzle piece I want to talk about this morning.  And that is this: the wrath of God is a solemn, solemn reality.  Let’s read on now in verse 9.  “And another angel, a third, followed them, saying with a loud voice, ‘If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.  And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name.’”  This is another time when in the book of Revelation we come across the phrase “the wrath of God”.  Earlier in the book of Revelation “the wrath of the Lamb”, and we had a picture of Jesus who is a lamb that looks like a lion and a lion who looks like a lamb.  But you can’t escape any language about the wrath of God in the book of Revelation, as uncomfortable as it might be.  And I would much rather talk about the love of God and His grace and His mercy than I would ever have to mention the wrath of God.  But if we’re gonna be true to scripture and if we’re gonna have a complete understanding of the book of Revelation, we need to talk about the wrath of God.  I went to one of my favorite books in my library, one that I recommend to any serious student of the Bible, any serious follower of Jesus Christ.  And its J. I. Packer’s book called Knowing God.  It’s a classic.  And he takes you through the various attributes of God’s character, how He reveals himself in scripture, and gives a very complete picture of who God is and how He operates in this world.  Oh yes, he talks about the love of God and God’s mercy and His grace.  But in a chapter about the wrath of God, Packer says this.  “One of the most striking things about the Bible is the vigor with which both Testaments emphasize the reality and terror of God’s wrath.”  He asks, “Would a God who took as much pleasure in evil as He did in good be a good God?  Would a God who did not react adversely to evil in this world be morally perfect?”  Those are important questions to wrestle with.  He says, “Surely not.  But it is precisely this adverse reaction to evil which is a necessary part of moral perfect that the Bible has in view when it speaks of God’s wrath.”  Now, God’s wrath is not Him throwing a temper tantrum.  It’s not Him, you know, losing His temper.  It’s what God has built into the order of the universe, that if you choose to reflect Him these are the necessary consequences.  That’s the wrath of God.  And this time on earth in future Bible prophecy known as the Tribulation period is a time when God pours out His wrath.

0:35:57.5

Now, a lot of us as Christians, we struggle with this.  We struggle, you know, how could a loving God do this?  And if a loving God is moral and just, how can He let such evil and suffering take place on this earth?  How can He allow the shootings to take place that have taken place?  Why doesn’t He do something about it?  Well, He has.  And He is. And He’s got a big plan and a big picture.  And we need to understand a little bit about that.  First of all, He’s an eternal God.  And a 24-hour day is not the same to Him as it is to you and me.  Now, Peter said a day is like a thousand year to the Lord and a thousand years is a like a day.  He’s kind of on a different time table.  It’s kind of like the difference between children and adults at Christmas time.  You know, the kids.  It’s December 1^st.  “Oh, we’ve got 25 more days until Christmas.  I can’t believe it.  I can’t wait that long.”  And the adults are saying, “I’ve got 25 more days.  I’ve got to get going on my Christmas shopping.”  All right.  It’s just a difference of perspective.  We are time-bound creatures.  We live in 24-hour cycles and seven-day weeks and months and years.  And we’re wondering, when is God gonna do something?  Why doesn't He do something now?  And He’s operating on eternity.  And every day that He delays pouring out His wrath on the enemies of Christ is a day that somebody on this earth can come to faith in Christ and respond to His love and His mercy.  Because one of the things we learn about God as we get to know Him is He is patient and He is long-suffering.  But there comes a day when that ends.  And as difficult as it is to grasp, as unpopular as it is, He pours out His wrath on those that have rejected His love.

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Packer goes on to say, “If we would know God, it is vital that we face the truth concerning His wrath, however unfashionable it may be and however strong our initial prejudices against it.  Otherwise we shall not understand the gospel of salvation from wrath, now the achievement of the cross, nor the wonder of the redeeming love of God, nor shall we understand the hand of God in history and God’s present dealings with our own people.”  And then he adds this.  “Nor shall we be able to make head or tail of the book of Revelation.”  And he’s right.  We have to understand the wrath of God.  John goes on to say, in light of this, verse 12, “Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus.”  Oh, that’s so true of those in the Tribulation period who come to faith in Christ.  And, boy, it costs them so much more than it costs people like you and me.  But in every generation we have to endure, do we not?  We have to wait in faith for the completion of God’s program and His plan.  And, yes, your feelings may be up and down from day to day,   maybe even responding to the news stories.  Push that aside.  Walk by faith.  Let your feelings catch up.  Understand the facts of the gospel and the facts of what God has revealed to us.  And don’t let fear eclipse your faith.  It’s a time for the saints to endure, John says, until God brings about the completion of His plan.

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I don’t have time to read on in chapter 14.  But in verse 14 and following, John now pictures one who looks like a son of man holding a sickle.  And a harvest is about to take place.  There are two kinds of harvest in the Bible.  There’s a harvest of souls, and then there’s a harvest of wrath.  This is a picture of the harvest of wrath.  And later and angel comes along.  And verse 19 says, “So the angel swung his sickle across the earth and gathered the grape harvest of the earth and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God.  And the winepress was trodden outside the city, and blood flowed from the winepress, as high as a horse’s bridle, for 1,600 stadia.”  There is some debate as to whether or not that is literal, but either way, that’s a lot of bloodshed following the harvesting of God’s wrath.  The winepress, the squeezing out of God’s wrath upon the earth.  I know that’s not a comfortable thing to even consider or ponder today.  But it brings me to this, and I want to leave you with this.  There are two ways primarily that God brings us to the cross of Jesus Christ.  One is by wooing us with His love.  I would that every person in this room would hear, “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son,” and come running to the cross.  Come running to the altar, where you’ll find a heavenly Father with arms open wide to receive the humble and repentant sinner that you are.  He will woo us by His love, or He will warn us of His wrath to come.  And it’s not for me to say how God is going to bring us.  But if you're here today and you’ve never trusted Jesus Christ as your savior…you’ve been a cynic when it comes to the gospel.  You’ve been skeptical of it.  You’ve been indifferent to this person called Jesus, who is revealed in the book of Revelation.  I want to encourage you to come running to the cross and embrace the One who loves you.  But if that doesn’t inspire you to come, hear the warning of scripture.  That there will come a day when God pours out His wrath.  The necessary consequences of rejecting His love.  I would to God that everybody would respond one way or the other to come running to the altar and to the cross today by faith.  You say, “Well, I don’t have all the answers.”  I don’t either.  I don’t understand everything.  And I didn’t when I came to faith in Christ.  But Christianity is an intelligent faith based upon reasonable evidence.  There enough evidence that God has given to you, even in the order of creation, that you can say, “I’m not an accident.  Something or somebody made me.  And maybe that’s your first response.  And then God gives you more revelation to come to a cross where that Savior died for you because He loves you so much and He wants you to come to faith in Him.  He wants you to come home.  Come home to the place for which you were created, the paradise for which you were created that’s only available through a relationship with Jesus Christ.  Let’s pray together.

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Father, thank You so much for Your Word.  I thank You for an opportunity to open it up and, as hard and as challenging as it can be, to get the big picture of what You’re doing here.  We thank You for Your love.  We thank You that there is an altar right here with the heavenly Father’s arms open wide.  And I pray that every one of us in this room would run toward it today.  But, Father, we also are mindful of the warnings of scripture.  Help us to cast aside the arrogance and pride that might slough it all off and say, “Eh, doesn’t apply.  Isn’t true.  Just a bunch of nonsense.”  Father, it’s time for a solemn reality check in all of our hearts today, and we ask You to make that happen.  In Jesus’ name, amen.

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