Revelation. This morning we'll
be looking at chapter 10. Chapter 10, verses 1 and 2. Simply because I don't think
I'm going to get past it. There's just too much here. Too
much here. And the Scripture says, And I
saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with
a cloud, and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as
it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire. And he had in his hand a little
book open, And He sat His foot upon the sea, His right foot
upon the sea, and His left foot upon the earth. I've titled this message this
morning, Seven Comforting Characteristics of Christ. We're going to see
this angel is no angelic being. He is the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Lord Jesus Christ.
And there are seven things mentioned. Seven things here mentioned concerning our Savior that is meant to comfort
God's people in the midst of the judgments against the lost. That's what it's there for. The
whole purpose of this, remember, this revelation is the revelation
of Jesus Christ for the comfort of God's church in the midst
of suffering, in the midst of persecution. Now, as we've seen thus far in
our study of this book, the purpose, as I've just explained, is a
revelation of Christ for the comfort of His church in every
age. In every age we are surrounded
by calamities, by troubles, by difficulties. Not one believer
escapes these things. Not one of us in this life is
going to escape trouble. There are many disasters and
persecutions and distresses that we meet with in every age. Troubles without and within. Therefore, we see by the vision
given to John that Jesus is presently, the first thing we saw in the
vision, is He is presently walking among His churches, the candlesticks
which picture His churches, the stars of His messengers, His
preachers, upheld by His right hand. This is what He is doing
now, today, this morning. walking among us. He is upholding
His minister to deliver the gospel to you for your comfort and your
benefit. And He does this through many
commendations. We love those. I've known your
work and it's good. That's good. We love to hear
the commendations because all our righteousness is in Christ.
And so when we hear of Christ's righteousness, you know what
I hear of? My righteousness. He is all my righteousness. We
hear His rebukes. We hear His chastisements. This
is what He does every time the gospel is preached. He chastens
us. He rebukes us. He corrects us.
He instructs us in righteousness. Those things that He does. And He does this to local assemblies
in general as well as to individuals. And in chapter 4 and 5, we saw
the eternal purpose of God in election. We saw the accomplished
redemption of Jesus Christ, who is the Lion of the tribe of Judah,
hath prevailed to open the book. And that book is the salvation
of God, that book that God had in His right hand. The Lord Jesus
took that book and He opened the seals because He was worthy
to do so. That little book that John sees
is the book of God's salvation and all the providence leading
up to it. And as he loosed the seals in chapter 5 and 6, we
see that this is what he's doing now. He is revealing salvation. That's what opening the seals
is. The book is revealing himself, the white horse, the man on the
white horse, conquering. His people. When the gospel comes,
it conquers. And you read of the red horse
of warfare. That's the believer's experience.
We are in warfare with ourselves, the world, and Satan. We read
of our poverty because of our faith in Christ. We're going
to lose things in this world because of Christ. We're going
to lose our very life. He said, if you're my disciple,
he that will save his life shall lose it, but whosoever shall
lose his life for my sake shall find it. And we read of death
coming and every believer's peril that we are going to die. But
be of good comfort, the fifth seal says, because in the fifth
seal we see that all of those that died are under the altar.
They're safe. They're secure. They're fine. They're good. And one day when
we die, we will be under the altar. We'll be safe, resting
in Christ. And then we get to chapter 7,
and we see that he is going to hand out these seven trumpets,
which is the seventh seal. He opens that seventh seal, and
then he gives these trumpets. And what are these trumpets?
We saw that these trumpets are judgments of God against the
lost. And these trumpets, as He is
opening seals every day, He is also sounding trumpets every
day. He is warning the lost, warning
those that are outside of Christ. Judgment's coming. He does it
through calamities. The first four trumpets have
to deal with earthly calamities and troubles and earthquakes
and destructions in the sea, and anything that has to do with
earthly time is a judgment, is a sound of a trumpet. And in the fifth trumpet of judgment,
we see false religion is a judgment, and it comes It comes as in the air as a thick
darkness and it sends out locusts which are the preachers of false
religion. And then the sixth trumpet sounds
in chapter 9. And we see another set of judgments
which really reveal the end of all the other judgments. Look
at verse 18 of chapter 9. And he releases these angels
out. He saw horses in this vision,
and them that sat on the breastplates of fire, and Jenneth, and Brimstone,
and the heads of the horses were heads of lions, and their mouths
issued fire and smoke. And Brimstone, by these three,
was the third part of men killed by fire and by smoke, and by
Brimstone which issued out of their mouth. What is the end
of false religion and sin? Death. Death. Now those horsemen
in the previous trumpet, they were given to torment men, not
to kill them, to torment them. And you see, what does religion
do? It does nothing but torment.
It cannot make a man whole. It cannot give a man rest. It
torments them, and I tell you, then it kills them. It kills
them. But remember, does that sound
dark? That sounds pretty dark. And that's exactly the vision
that John is seeing. It is dark. It is foreboding. It's difficult to understand. But believer, though these trumpets
sound all around you, Though we suffer in the flesh the effects
of these judgments, we must by faith cling to Christ,
for in Him we must understand. Our judgment is past. These judgments are not judgments
for you. These judgments are to warn the
lost. They are not for you. Your judgment
has already taken place 2,000 years ago when the Son of God
bore your sins in His own body and hell was poured out on Christ
in payment for your sins. Therefore, God, being just and
holy, cannot demand twice payment for sin. That's good news. That's good news. I'm not going
to be judged for my sin. Why? I've already been judged
for my sin. So this is not judgment to me. What is judgment to them
is nothing more than God using these calamities to draw me closer
to Christ. That's what He's doing. The trumpet
to you will only draw you closer to Christ. The trumpet to them
will cause them to flee further from Christ. You get to the end
of that and you see the result of all these trumpets. Look at
verse 19. Now verse 20, "...and the rest
of men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented
not." You see what calamities do as far as the soul is concerned? Nothing. Nothing. You take a corpse and put him
in your house, and the house is on fire. And you yell as loud
as you want to. There's a fire. Get up! Get up! He can't. He is oblivious to
the fire burning his very flesh. So is man to the sin of his soul. Believer, all thy sin, remember,
was imputed to Christ, and in the sight of God's holy justice was extinguished." God is not
willing then to impute our sins to us. God said to you, I'm not willing,
you should be charged with your sins. Matter of fact, I'm going to
make my son charged with your sins. He imputed our sins to Christ
and made Christ to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we should
be made the righteousness of God in Him. Therefore, we are
to speak comfortably to you. That is our purpose as ministers
of this gospel, to speak comfortably to you. Why? Your warfare is
accomplished. Your warfare is accomplished.
for the Lord hath received of His hand double for all your
sins." Now, even though you must, through much tribulation, enter
the kingdom of heaven, don't be ignorant of this. You must
go through this. You must. I must go through tribulation. We, through much tribulation,
Paul said, must enter the kingdom of God. In this world, our Lord
said, you shall suffer tribulation. But be of good cheer. I have overcome the world. Be
content with such things as you have. Is that not a good word? Can anybody say that they've
ever attained to that? I'm just perfectly content right
now. No, you're not. No, you're not. If you are, just wait a minute.
You won't be. It's a good word for us. Be content with such
things. You know what you have? You have all things. Should you
not be content with all things? It's all yours. Scripture says
all things are yours. You are Christ and Christ is
God's. What else do you have need of? So as these trumpets
sound around us, as darkness closes in, as it seems to creep
in daily against us, don't be afraid of it. It's necessary. These things must take place.
Yet it appears, even though our sins have been removed from us,
it appears they're very close. Isn't that so? They're very close,
even within my own bosom. My sin, I feel it daily, constantly,
struggling within my own breast. My evil nature remains with us,
it is ever-present, and we loathe it every single day. We loathe
this flesh. Yet according to God, because
that's the only thing that really matters, doesn't it, how God
views things? In the eyes of God, you get this,
your sin is so far from you that it cannot be found by God. You get that? Jeremiah chapter
15 verse 20 says, "...the iniquity of Judah shall be sought for
and shall not be found." Who's seeking? God's seeking it and
He can't find it. That's how far your sin is removed
from you. Now, you can't see it that way. That's how God sees
it. And this is why these judgments
aren't for you. Because your sin is non-existent in His eyes. And your eyes is ever-present.
In His eyes, it's non-existent. According to God has been removed
as far as the east is from the west. so they should never be
seen again of God's judgment. This is why the Lord, even in
the midst of these trumpets, brings such sweet intermissions. Now, I want you to see this.
These visions. In these visions, you see the Lord, and even before
these trumpets are sounded, God gives an intermission. An intermission. You see the seventh seal opening,
you see the angels ready to pounce on the world, the four angels
at the four corners of the earth, ready to withhold the wind from
the earth, judgment ready to fall, and all of a sudden, whoa,
wait a second. Intermission. Intermission. Like a commercial time. And this
is the intermission. Believer, all your prayers have
been heard and answered before the trumpet ever sounds. Read
that in chapter 9, you see the intercessory work of the Spirit
interceding before Christ, interceding with our prayers. God knowing
these trumpets will cause us such trouble and cries, He says,
before you even cry, I've heard. Don't think these trumpets are
a surprise to me. I know them. I know your Christ,
and I've already promised before you cry to hear you. That's a
good intermission, isn't it? That's good. And if you're not
in the midst of trouble, wait, you will be. But when you are,
remember He's already heard your cries before you even cried. Your Father knows what you have
need of before you ask, Jesus said. And so here, this is another
intermission. We see the trumpets. They're
all sounding. The seventh trumpet is ready
to blow. It's all ready to end. Everything,
judgment is at its pinnacle. And all of a sudden, God says,
intermission. Wait a second. This is getting too dark for
you. This is getting too troublesome for you. Now then, I'm going
to show you something that's going to comfort you. And what
does He show us? He shows us Christ. That's what
He's going to do. He said, this is just too dark.
Just a minute, I'm going to show you something. And so in this
chapter 10, now we've come here, and now we see the trumpets are
dark, everything's blowing, and it's hard. And what does He do?
He gives us a fresh vision, a comforting vision of Christ. a comforting vision of our Lord
Jesus. And so now I want to show us
this. And this is my purpose. The purpose
of this text is by this intermission to give you comfort in the middle
of your calamities by revealing Christ freshly to you. Now, let's read this together.
And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven. This is
the first comforting characteristic is that Jesus, our Savior, is
called an angel. Now why is that comforting? An
angel. Now some men will contend that
this is not Christ but some angelic being saying that it's just too
low to call Christ an angel. That's what I've read. Men would
not say this is Christ for that Simple reason alone. This is
just too low a name to give Christ. But there is nothing wrong with
this name because he's been given this name many times in scripture. Many times in Scripture, I don't
have the time in the Old Testament to show you every one of them,
I'll just give you illustrations of it. When Hagar was cast out
by Sarah, you remember it says the angel of the Lord came to
her. Which is nothing more than, you
read the context, it is nothing more than the pre-incarnate Christ. When Abraham was about to strike
his son and kill him on Moriah, it said, the angel of the Lord
stayed his hand and said, lay not thy hand on the lad. That
was the Lord Jesus Christ. It was the Lord Jesus Christ.
And you remember the burning bush. It said the angel of the
Lord appeared to him in the burning bush. Who is this? But Christ. It is the Lord Jesus
Christ. And there are myriads of other
examples by which I can show you that He appeared in this
form of an angelic being. But there's more to this. Jesus
appeared to these as an angel. And you say, preacher,
that's just the Old Testament, it's pre-incarnate. Acts chapter
27 verse 23, the Apostle Paul calls Him an angel. Remember
when He was in the ship and it was tossed and it was about to
be destroyed and He said, the angel of the Lord appeared beside
me and is with me, who I am, whose I am and whom I serve. Now He did not serve an angelic
being. He was talking about Christ.
So this is not demeaning for us to see Christ in this vision
as it is an angel. Why? Because He is frequently seen
in this in the Old Testament, but I want you to understand,
do you know what the word angel means? Messenger. And I saw a mighty messenger."
Messenger. What is Christ the messenger
of? The Scripture says He is the messenger of the new covenant. Do you see not Christ? Christ
is coming down as a messenger with a message. And every time
the gospel is preached, you guess what? You hear His message. The
message is substitution, redemption, atonement by His blood, sanctification
by the calling and election, sanctification by Jesus' blood,
sanctification by the Holy Spirit, eternal life. That's His message.
It's the message of the New Covenant. And so we see that this is Christ,
the messenger of the New Covenant. That should comfort you. Doesn't
that comfort you every time you hear His message? Second of all,
John ascribed this character to the Lord Jesus Christ. He said He is a mighty angel. Mighty. Mighty. Behold, believer, our Lord Jesus
Christ is no weak effeminate Savior, but is mighty to save. That's good news. You see, I
don't need a weak, effeminate Savior. I need a mighty Savior.
I don't need one that helps me. I need someone to do it. I need
someone to finish it. This is it. My Savior is mighty
to save to the uttermost all that come to God by Him. How many times do we feel like
Asaph? I know God is good to Israel. But, as for me... I know God's going to take you
and you. I know that. What about me? But as for me,
I don't know. My sin is so great, the world
is so hard, so cold, my heart is indifferent. As for me, No. He's mighty to save all who come
to God by Him. That's how mighty He is. He said,
is my arm shortened that it cannot save? I tell you, His arm is
not short. Matter of fact, it is exactly
the right length and strength to save all He purposes to save. He will. He's mighty. And so
when the trumpets blast, when we are sick and suffer the afflictions of this lost
world for the gospel's sake, when we are prone to doubt Christ's
power towards us, we say, oh, how we've fallen. How we've greatly
sinned, I'm certain that I'm gone too far, and the darkness
floods our souls. Our minds are filled with despair,
and doubt fills our hearts. But behold, the characteristic
of Christ is mighty to save." Mighty to save. He has all power given to Him
in heaven and earth, all flesh is under His dominion, and so
then, all He has purposed to save, He will save. If He has
given His own blood for you, if He has revealed Himself to
you and given you faith, how then will He fail to bring you
safely to Himself? Remember, when you doubt your
salvation, you are doubting His power to bring you. It is nothing
more than sin of unbelief. The worst of all sins. The root
of all sins. So we should see this in the
midst of our trouble. He is mighty to save. The Scripture
says of His servant, God's servant, he shall not fail. nor be discouraged. I shall call his name Jesus,
for he shall save his people from their sins. So as the blast
of judgment is loud in our ears, as this world and darkness seem
to pursue our soul, be of good cheer, for Christ says, let not
your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also
in me. In my Father's house are many mansions. If it were not
so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place, I will come again and receive
you unto myself. That where I am, you may be also. Any of that sound doubtful? What in there belongs to you?
I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place
for you, I will come. It's all about Him. He's doing
it all for you. And you do what? Rest. Trust. Believe. Wait. Wait. The third characteristic
is this, he came down. This is not speaking of his first
condescension which was to be made flesh. He did come down
in his humility. He came down to be born in a
manger and to die upon a cursed tree, but this vision gives no
resemblance to His lowest state. So this is not speaking of Him
coming down in His first advent. Nor is this speaking about Him
coming down in His second advent, which is the end of all things. Because there are things that
transpire after this. Judgment has not yet come upon
the world after this vision here. So what is this saying? This
is telling us He comes down daily among His people. This is His
visitation among us. This is the same as Him walking
through the golden candlesticks. This is His coming down in this
present time. This is Jesus Christ coming down
in providence to protect His people, to defend His people,
to comfort His people. It is this view of the exalted
Savior that comforts the hearts of His people. Believer, rejoice, for though
the Lord now sits in heaven, He also is in our midst. Can you explain that? Jesus said while He was on earth,
He said, the Son of Man which is in heaven. Now He was standing
right there. Some things I just can't explain. But I tell you this, I know He's
here. Let God be true and every man
a liar. Somebody come and tell me He's not here? You're a liar.
How do you know? Christ said, you were. He said,
where My people gather, I'll be there. And He comes down and
He brings such sweet revelations of Himself. You see, I serve
a risen Savior. He's in the world today. I know
that He is living whatever men may say. I see His hand of mercy.
I hear His voice of cheer. And just the time I need Him,
He's always near. He lives. Yeah, I know. He lives. You remember Shadrach, Meshach,
and Abednego, those three Hebrew children that were cast in the
midst of that fire? Nebuchadnezzar was so angry,
he said, I'm going to kill you if you don't bow down. He said,
look, whatever you want to do. You know, our God is capable
of delivering us from this fire. Whether He will or He won't,
I don't know. But I know this today will be
delivered from you either way." And they threw him in there.
And what did Nebuchadnezzar do? He looked over and said, did
we not sit down three in there? And yet I see four. And one has
the appearance of the Son of Man. This is the coming down in this
text. Christ's present help comes down. visits I Love when I can feel his presence But I don't have to feel it to
have it I I have it. It's always coming. He's always
coming to His people. Fourthly, He is clothed with
clouds. What does this mean? Remember,
the vision of the trumpets is very dark and the apostasy of
religion and suffering and dying is all around. So now Christ
appears. He appears gloriously coming
down to His church. But listen, He is clothed with
clouds. What do clouds do? They cover. They cover. He doesn't appear to all men. Matter of fact, this shows His
sovereignty in hiding Himself. Listen, you who do not understand
or know Christ today, listen, He is hiding Himself from you. Whether Christ reveals Himself
to you or not, that is an act of sovereign mercy. He will have
mercy on whom He will have mercy. He will have compassion on whom
He will have compassion, and whom He will, He hardeneth. So if you walk out of here hardened,
you'll die in your sins for it, but know this, it's all because
God refused to reveal Himself to you. And He has that sovereign
right. Jesus said, I thank Thee, Father,
that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and
revealed them unto babes. So, He doesn't reveal Himself
to all men, but only to those who are chosen, redeemed, and
those who believe on Him. But to the lost and unbelieving,
such times of darkness and misery, Jesus hides Himself. Isn't that
true, believer? In the most darkest times you
have, Isn't it always the way that Christ comes and shines
brightest? In the midst of the darkness,
He shines the brightest. And we rejoice. But you take
the same lost person in the same difficulty, in the same trouble,
in the same trial, and what does it do? Does he see Christ? No. He runs further from Christ. He despises Christ. He would
rather have his sin than Christ. So, same judgment, two results.
Christ reveals Himself to His people and hides Himself from
the lost. The lost religious world know
the facts about Christ, that He lived, He died, He rose again,
but they have no personal knowledge of Christ, no personal knowledge
of His saving work. They acknowledge He is in heaven
but reject the thought of His sovereign dominion over all things,
especially the truth of sovereign salvation. Lost men may be religious,
use religious gospel terms such as Jesus, grace, redemption,
love, They're exposed to be liars by
the gospel that they desire and cleave to, which is false religious,
free will works religion. The word of God is clear why
men are in such spiritual confusion and such open rebellion against
the glorious gospel of God's grace. Because they're spiritually dead. They cannot and will not receive
the things of God. Has the gospel light shined in
your heart? If you claim it has, what is
it revealed? The light of the glorious gospel
reveals only one person. Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Did God command the light to
shine out of darkness and shine in your heart? When He does, all confusion flees. Religion then becomes very simple.
One thing, Christ. One person, Christ. It's all
about Him. It's all about Him. Fourthly,
this thing, Christ is crowned with a rainbow. Look at that,
he says, and the rainbow was upon His head. And the first
time we see the rainbow in Revelation, it is around the throne of God. What is the significance then
of this rainbow? Remember, the rainbow was a covenant. It was a covenant given to Noah
by God declaring that he would never destroy the earth by water. Okay? God said, I put this up
here as a token for you to remind you that I will never destroy
the world again by water. But I tell you, that was more
than just a token that it's not going to flood the earth again.
It was a picture of a covenant of grace that after God had sent
His wrath upon Christ, God says the rainbow then is a token that
I will never send my wrath on you. Remember when that rain came
down? It destroyed the whole earth. But Noah was safe in that
ark. You remember because the flood
hit the ark. And because, believer, you are
in Christ, the flood of God's justice pounded the Son of God,
but you were safe. And when God was finished with
that, Noah was let out of the ark. He was released free. And so you, after Christ said,
it is finished, you know what? You're free. And think about
this. That rainbow is always in front
of his face. So no matter where he turns,
he always sees what? His covenant. I will never destroy
you again. Oh, by the way, I'll never destroy
you again. Look at that. Look at that. I'm not going to
destroy you again, I promise. And His promise is ever before
His face. It may be hidden from you. Isn't
that right? Sometimes the rainbow is hidden
from us, but it's always there. It's always before His face.
That should comfort you no matter what trumpet sound. I always
remember my covenant. See, our Lord will never leave
us nor forsake us. And fifthly, His face did shine
as the sun. This is what John saw at the
Mount of Transfiguration. What does this comfort us with?
Your Savior is God. That's what should comfort you. The one who's undertaken to save
you is God Himself. His deity should comfort you. Find any trouble and tell me,
is it outside of His decree? Any trouble you have, is it outside
of His decree? Did He miss it? Was it a mistake? No, our God is too wise to err. Too good. to do wrong, too powerful to
make any mistakes. Our God does exactly what is
in His power. And the next thing we see is
that His feet were as pillars of fire. I like this. Pillars. What are pillars? They're strong. Pillars hold up big buildings.
They're like the weight of the structure depends upon the pillars. And you understand that your
weight of your soul rests on the pillar of Christ, that it
would have to destroy Him to get to you. And His feet are
as pillars of fire. Imagine that. And this angelic
vision is huge, that He puts His one foot on the sea and one
foot on the land. Huge feet, right? And they're
on fire. What will stand in His way when
He decides to move? He is an all-consuming fire,
and everything that would hinder His will is burned up, and He
does whatsoever He pleases. That's your Savior. That's my
Savior. And notice this last thing, he
had in his hand a little book open. And he set his feet on
the right, right foot on the sea and his left foot on the
earth. This shows us his dominion. How far is his dominion? Now we've got a country and we've
got borders and we're talking about putting fences up. Why?
Because that's a limit of our border. That's a limit of our
dominion. Okay? His dominion has no limit. He's in charge of it all. Every
bit of it. In His hands. Does whatsoever
He pleases. And what is He going to do? What
is this great, powerful, beautiful, angelic being who's always got
the covenant of His grace before His eyes, what is He doing? I
don't understand! Summed up in this. A little book in his hand. At first this book was sealed. Now then that he has taken the
book and opened the seals, what is the book? It's open. That's
what the Scripture said. An open book. This book to you,
right here believer, it's open to you. You understand
everything in here. Don't question me. You know it all. John says you
know it all. You're a bunch of know-it-alls.
You know that? You know everything there is
to know. Yes, you do. You know Christ. You know everything
there is to know about this book. I may not be able to see Christ
in every page, but I know He's there. See, I know it all. I may not
be able to explain it, but I do know it all. It's open. You know what he's doing with
all this dominion and power condescending from heaven with that little
open book? You know what he does to John? He comes to John and
says, here, take and eat the book. What are you doing this
morning? What are you doing? You're eating the book. I'm going to give you something
because it's not... I didn't get this far yet. This morning, this book is sweet
to you, isn't it? As you go through this world,
you're going to find it's also bitter. John said, it was sweet to my
taste. but bitter to my belly." That's because to serve Christ,
you will suffer in this life. You won't be able to reconcile
these things. When you leave here, the sweetness
will last just a little while, and then it'll turn bitter when
the trials come in. That's alright. He'll come down
again and He'll give it to you again. You'll eat it again and
you have to go bitter again. But then you'll eat it again.
And this continues through our existence in this life. Praise
God for divine intermissions. I pray that God will bless this
to your hearts.