We are thrilled of the news of
a new grandbaby and great grandbaby. And Mike shared that everybody's
doing well. So we're thankful for that. And
just remember them in prayer. Revelation chapter 15. I'd like to read this chapter and
then make a few comments. on verses 4, 5, and 6. And I
saw another sign in heaven, great and marvelous, seven angels having
the seven last plagues, wherein them is filled up the wrath of
God. And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire, and
them that had gotten the victory over the beast and over his image
and over his mark, And when we went through that, we just saw
that those are the saints. Those are God's people, redeemed
ones. The victory has been over the
666, the fall. And they have over the number
of his name, they stand on a sea of glass having the harps of
God. And this having the harps of God sets the tone for the
next few verses in the sense that God's people rejoice in
God whatever he does. And he's going to do some judgment,
and he has. And he will continue to do some
judgment. And he'll save his people. And he judged his son
to do that. And the church rejoices in God
in all that he does. We may never understand his ways,
but we will not fuss about his ways. We will not complain about
his sovereignty. Now, we may complain, but it
won't be about his sovereignty. We find great solace. I don't
know what we would do without the knowledge of God's sovereignty
and kingship in our world today. And I think the saints have trusted
that, trusted God in that, since Abel. The things that went on,
the way people act and treat each other and the great judgments
of God upon people, God's people have trusted God in that. And
we had a lesson in the Bible class almost reminiscent of this
lesson through the book of Revelation. God is king. He rules in the
armies of heaven, among the armies of heaven, among the inhabitants
of the earth. And none can stay his hand or say, what doest thou?
And that is a comment that's recorded by a pagan king. But after his paganism was washed
out of him, He could see God, saw God, and confess God. And
we rejoice. I, I just believe I'm going to
call him brother. Oh, nephew, knee-back kind of
razor. Maybe you can answer. And they sing the song of Moses,
and the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, great
and marvelous are thy works, Lord God Almighty, just and true
are thy ways, thou King of saints. He rules. What was it to be king
of the Jews? It is to be the king of the church.
He is the king of the saints, king of saints. He is king over
Israel and he is king over the Jews. What is it to be a Jew? Not one outward, one inward. That's what our true Jews, those
who have been regenerated by God Almighty, made from dust,
and then made spiritual. Who shall not fear thee, O Lord,
and glorify thy name? For thou only art holy. For all
nations shall come and worship before thee, for thy judgments
are made manifest. And after that I looked, and
behold, the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven was
opened. And the seven angels came out of the temple having
the seven plagues, clothed in pure and white linen, and having
their breasts girded with the golden girdles. And one of the
four beasts gave unto the seven angels seven golden vials full
of the wrath of God, who liveth forever and ever. And the temple
was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power. And no man was able to enter
into the temple till the seven plagues of the seven angels were
fulfilled. Now, I'm reminded as I go through
this chapter, as we've gone through all the chapters up to this point,
and when we continue going through these chapters, this book is
the revelation of Jesus Christ. It reveals to us his lordship,
his kingship, his sovereignty, his redeemership, his saviorship. These things are revealed to
us out of this book. And in verse four, it shares
with us, who shall not fear thee? Now, this is words to the church. The church, who shall not fear
thee? Everyone in the church has a
reverence and respect for God. I'm talking about the church
of the living God. I'm not talking about a physical
entity. I'm talking about a spiritual
entity, and that's God's people out of every kindred, nation,
people, and tongue. Those on earth that have been
redeemed and regenerated, and those in heaven that sit at his
feet from Abel on. Those are the redeemed ones. They are the ones that say, who
shall not fear thee? O Lord, and glorify thy name. Now the world doesn't glorify
God. It says, the fool has said in
his heart, there is no God. And then we find the Lord in
that same psalm saying, as he looked down from heaven, is there
one that seeks after God? And God says, I found none. So
the world does not seek after God. The world does not fear
God. They do not glorify God, they do not recognize his holiness,
they do not worship him, they do not come unless they're given
the impetus from God to come, and his judgments are made manifest,
and most of the world thinks of judgments by God as, that's
the reason I don't believe in God. His judgments. I had an uncle who lost a son,
a cousin of mine, and he was quite religious up to then, and
when that happened, he had no room for God whatsoever. So the
world has no room for God's judgments, but the church rests in God. Now turn with me back to the
Psalms, a couple of verses in the Psalms, Psalm 89. Turn with me to Psalm 89, and
this passage, as well as the next passage here in the Psalms,
show us what great blessings we have, and what great blessings
the saints of God have in Christ, in recognizing His sovereignty,
in recognizing His kingship, that He is King of saints. that
he is the king of the world, that things happen and fall out
because God has purposed it to fall out as it is. He will start
a war to get the gospel to one of his lost children. He will move people around the
world to do what he has intended to do. The testimonies of God's
people in all ages have manifested the fact that God has moved them
to go somewhere to hear the gospel or has moved on someone to take
the gospel to them. That's just the way he does his
business and the church delights and relishes in that fact. Psalm
89 and verse 7, we read this, God is greatly to be feared in
the assembly of the saints. Now there's not much reverence
for God outside of that, and there's not much respect for
God outside of that. And by the way, we shouldn't
expect much from the world outside of that. They have no reason to. Now they'll
be judged because they don't. But when people don't act like
Christians that are not Christians, we shouldn't be surprised. We
should say that's as normal as I was when I was without Christ. That's as normal as anybody is. They're not going to believe.
They're not going to have this. And the scriptures tell us here
in Psalm 89 verse 7, God is greatly to be feared in
the assembly of the saints and be made in reverence of all them
that are about him. So the fear and the reverence
is done by the church, the respect and reverence is done by the
church, noted or unnoted by the world. The church cares not. We don't need to be noted by
the world as having a respect or a reverence for God. But God's
people will do that whether it's paid attention to or not. We're
not in it for reward. We're in it because God has moved
in our heart to love him and to respect him and to reverence
him. Backing up just three Psalms, Psalm 86 and verses 9 and 10,
Psalm 86 verse 9 and 10, All nations whom thou hast made
shall come and worship before thee, O Lord. When God moves
in a people to reverence God, to submit to him, to love him,
to have respect for him, when he moves on them, when he makes
them his nation, they'll come and worship before thee, O Lord,
and shall glorify thy name. Now in that day, every knee shall
bow. God is pleased in this day, in
the day of salvation, in the day of the gospel, in the day
of gospel preaching, he is pleased to impose his will upon people
and cause them to bow and to worship him and to call upon
him and those are the ones that will make up his body. Now in
that day, in that great judgment day, every knee shall bow and
every tongue shall confess. We're going to see that as we
move through the book of Revelation in the judgments of God. Every
knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess the Lord Jesus
to the glory of God the Father. But in this day, in the gospel
day, in the day of our salvation, in the day God moves upon us,
the day that God quickens us, the day that God brings us the
gospel, he is going to call out a nation. and a nation of people
and that will be the church as we read here in psalm 86 verse
9 all nations whom thou hast made shall come and worship before
thee oh lord and shall glorify thy name for thou art great and
doest wondrous things thou art god alone what does the church
recognize as god doing great is it because he created saturn
Is it because he created the Milky Way? Is it because he created
apple trees and peach trees? No, his greatest work is our
redemption. His greatest work is lifting
us out of a great pit. That's his work of grace. That's
the work we praise him for. Everything else falls into its
proper place. But that is the apex of our glory
and praise to God is for him saving sinners. a great savior
rescuing great sinners from great peril. That's what we thank him
for. As it tells us, for thou art
great and doest wondrous things. Thou art God alone. You're the
only one that can do what was necessary to do to bring us to
salvation, to bring us to repentance and faith. So this great ministry
of God, the church praises God for it. We bow before him, we
thank him. Now, turn with me, if you would,
one other place here in the Old Testament, in Jeremiah chapter
10. Jeremiah chapter 10, as we think about what it said over
there in Revelation, who shall fear thee, O Lord, and glorify
thy name? The church? That's who will glorify
you. And we find that the church praises
the Lord by ascribing to him alone all reverence. and glory
and holiness and righteousness and worship. Now when the church
ascribes to God all glory, there is no room for ascribing any
other glory to any other thing. just as He has all glory in Himself
when we ascribe all glory to Him. Now the Holy Spirit is the
only one that is able to allow us, to get us, to make us, to
cause us to ascribe all glory to God for all things. Glory
to God for our salvation, all glory. We have no glory left
over to glorify our works, to glorify a church, to glorify
a commandment, to glorify an ordinance, to glorify a day. When people glorify a day, they're
ascribing glory to something that should not be ascribed. If you've given all glory to
the Father and all glory to the Son and all glory to the Holy
Spirit, There's none left over. You have an empty bucket. There's
no way that we could give glory to anything else if God has granted
us the ability of giving all glory to him. And when it comes
to reverence, If we've given by the power of the Holy Spirit,
given all our reverence and respect to God, then we have no reverence
to give anything else. We'll not reverence a day. We'll
not reverence a system. We'll not reverence a church.
We'll not reverence a doctrine. We'll reverence, because all
reverence is given to the Lord. Nothing left over. And the Holy
Spirit is the only one that can enable the church to give all
reverence to God. We do it because He prescribes
it. We do it because He calls on
it to be done. And He enables His people to
do that very thing. When the Spirit gives the church
the ability to ascribe all holiness to God, then we don't have any
holiness to give to the church. We don't have any holiness to
give to a day. We don't have any holiness to
give to a law. We don't have any holiness to give to an ordinance. We're not going to gain any holiness
out of that. When God grants the church the
ability to ascribe all holiness to God, all our holiness is of
Him, and we have no place else to put it. We can ascribe it
to anything else. We can ascribe it to our works
if we've given Him and ascribed to Him all holiness. Now, he
is all holy, and the church recognizes that. We may have difficulty
in our flesh, but in our spirit, the Holy Spirit gives us and
causes us to ascribe all holiness to God. I have none of my own. I gain nothing from any work
or activity, any day or movement, any church or covenant. I have
nothing, man-made covenant. There is no holiness that I can
ascribe to that. And the same is true of our righteousness. When we have been granted the
ability to ascribe to Christ all our righteousness, There's
nothing left over and so we'll not be pointing out the things
that we do as ability of righteousness. We'll not point out that because
we worship on a certain day or we use a certain book or we do
this or that because we've ascribed to God. We've ascribed to the
Lord Jesus all our righteousness. He is the one that is all our
righteousness and there is no room left over. The bucket is
empty. The church has poured out all
ascribing of holiness and righteousness and worship to the Lord Jesus
Christ. That's why we cannot worship
and ascribe to anyone else or anything else holiness or righteousness. And the same is true about our
worship. We worship no one else. We don't
worship a day. We don't worship a law. We don't worship a church. We
don't worship a thing. We don't worship a person. All
worship is ascribed to the Lord Jesus Christ. So once again,
it's all poured out to him. And our container is empty because
we've given it all to him. So we're not going to give it
to anybody else, anything else, any day else, anything else. So when our friends tell us,
well, I got right, no, I give it all mine to Christ. I've ascribed
it all to him. The Holy Spirit has permitted
me to ascribe all righteousness, holiness, worship, and glory
to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And
I'm empty to worship anything else or ascribe anything else.
Now, as we look here in the book of Jeremiah chapter 10, we find
by the spirit, by God's spirit, oh, he's powerful. He's able to keep us on track.
I like the use of a compass. You can turn any direction and
it still is going to be in the direction of north. You just,
it's God's gonna do that. I really appreciated the illustration
the pastor gave me with regard to the Mississippi River. Now
if you look at it, it's a meandering river. It's meandered over time. There's state, parts of states
that are disconnected now because the Mississippi River has meandered. Part of the state's on the other
side of the river. But it's still part of that state. But the water
that flows into it way up north eventually is going to come out
in the Gulf of Mexico. And that's the way with God.
We may appear to be wandering. Look at Israel in the Old Testament.
They appeared to be wandering. They didn't have very many acres
to wander over. And they did it for 40 years.
And I'm convinced if the wind had not blown, they'd have find
that they had been circling and circling and circling. They could
find their artifacts all along the way, but they ended up, God's
people, as an illustration, ended up in what God promised they
would have. And God's people, though appear
to be wandering, are under God's direction and control and will
appear before his throne of grace. and they will worship him, and
ascribe all glory to him, and all honor, and all holiness,
and all, all, and in all. All right, I'm gonna get this
verse read. Jeremiah 10, seven. Who would not fear thee, O Lord,
O King of nations? For to thee doth it appertaineth,
for as much as among all the wise men of the nations, and
in all the kingdoms, there is none like unto thee. That's an
interesting verse. Wherever the church gathers,
there's none like you. We ascribe all glory to you,
all righteousness, all holiness, all praise. We don't have time
for anything else because we want to and Lord helps us to
give all to him. He has given all for us, we give
all to him. And we don't count it as earning
things because we do, because we realize we do because he enables
us to do. He's the one that lifts our hand. We don't lift it and we don't
close our eyes and count. It's the Lord that lifts our
hand. It's the Lord that moves us. So He is King. That section
in Revelation, He's ascribed as the Lord God Almighty, King
of saints. His power and glory is described.
And yet the saints find great solace in it. Rest. We desire to follow as close
as we can to that. All right, turn with me back
to the book of Revelation chapter 15. Revelation chapter 15. Verse
four, who shall not fear thee, O Lord? and glorify thy name,
for thou art holy. And for all nations shall come
and worship before thee, for thy judgments are made manifest. Just God's reminding us where
we have allegiance and where we give glory to and how we're
enabled to do that. And then John says and shares
with us as he's led by the Holy Spirit in verse five, and after
that I looked. And behold, the temple of the
tabernacle of the testimony in heaven was opened. As I looked
at that, I wondered, and then let's just go on to verse six,
and I think we'll get some help with that verse of scripture.
It will help us to know what this informs us of when we read
what comes out of the temple. Now, we were introduced very
early in this book introduced to seven angels. It's not new
to us. Maybe new to me today, but it
wasn't new to us. All right, here in verse six,
it says, and the seven angels came out of the temple, having
the seven plagues, clothed in pure and white linen, and having
their breasts girded with the golden girdles. Now, these seven
angels have been described for us earlier in this book. So if
you turn back with me to Revelation chapter one, Revelation chapter
one, Now it's been some time since we've been here, and we
want to go back here and look at these seven angels. They are
messengers. Messengers. And here in Revelation
chapter 1, we find them described as the pastors of these seven
churches. They are the messengers of the
seven churches. Now, the pastors of these seven
churches, as well as pastors that have been over God's churches
throughout the ages, they have a ministry to perform, and it's
much like these seven pouring out their vials. And we're going
to look at a verse over in the book of 2 Corinthians in just
a moment that share with us that this preaching that goes on,
it has two effects. This preaching that goes on has
two effects. One is to lift, God uses it to
lift his people out of a horrible pit. And there is great rejoicing. And the other is, there is judgment
that falls on the people. The gospel is preached and judgment
falls. It is great vials. But let's
look here in Revelation 1, verse 17. Revelation 1, verse 17. And when I saw him, this one,
the description there, his head and his hairs were like wool,
verse 14, white as snow, and his eyes were flame of fire.
This is the same one we read about in the Song of Solomon.
Beautiful description of the Lord. Oh, his wisdom, his honor,
his glory, his ministry, and his work. All these things are
put together in this wonderful picture. His feet are likened
to fine brass. And that's what we're going to
see in the book of Revelation chapter 16 and 17 and 18. This
aspect of the Lord, when the gospel goes out, judgment will
fall. Those without Christ, judgment
will fall. The preaching of the gospel is
a dividing line. It's a line of demarcation. It
separates. God's people are saved out of
the world, and God's word goes out, and it touches people, and
it will touch them in one of two ways. Ultimately, finally,
it will be used to save them or be used to judge them. All
right, goes on to tell us, he had in his right hand seven stars,
and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword. He has the word
of God. And his countenance was as the
sun shineth in his strength. We could go over there to the
Mount of Transfiguration and see this again. This is what
John saw there. Peter, James, and John went up
onto the Mount of Transfiguration and saw this great countenance
of the Lord. And then he says, And when I
saw him, I fell at his feet as dead, and he laid his right hand
upon me, saying unto me, fear not, I am the first and the last.
I am he that liveth and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore,
amen, and have the keys of hell and of death. Well, that straightens
out a lot of theology. I have the keys of hell and of
death. Write the things which thou hast
seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be
hereafter. The mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest
in my right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks. The seven
stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven candlesticks
which thou sawest are the seven churches. The stars, they're
the angels of the seven churches. They're the pastors of these
churches. Now, not all the churches of Asia are mentioned here. They
are representative of all the churches, local bodies of Christ,
which comprises spiritual body. Now, not everyone that has their
place in a local body has their place in the Bride of Christ,
because there's people in the churches that don't know Christ.
But everyone in the body of Christ are in the bride of Christ. Everyone
that is in his spiritual body. So these represent all the churches
of the Lord Jesus. We're not talking about oddball
stuff. We're talking about churches that had at one time and hopefully
continue to declare the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. The
Lord be in free and in sovereign in his grace. Now these are the
pastors. Now we step over here to chapter
15. We have them back with us and
they are used by God to do this work. These are not angels, wing
flutters that come out and have a bowl or a basin or a vase or
a saucer in their hands and pour out these things. I was reading
some things. When you get on this subject,
you find out there's a whole bunch of books that just need
to be put in the trash. This is a spiritual book. And when we read about these
plagues, these are spiritual plagues. I have no way in this world am
I going to see these things happen physically. But we can see, we will see,
and we may have already seen some of these things as these
judgments fall out upon people, the spiritual context. As we
look here, it says the seven angels came out of the temple.
Now they have the seven plagues, but they are clothed in pure
and white linen. They have the righteousness of
Christ. They bear the mark of Christ. What greater mark of
Christ is, can there be, than his righteousness? To have Christ's
righteousness is to bear the mark of the Savior. And these
bear the mark of their Redeemer. They bear the mark of their Savior.
These seven pastors, these preachers of righteousness that God used,
they're symbolic of every pastor in every age. You know what?
Jeremiah poured out some vials. Isaiah poured out some vials.
Hosea, Jonah, Micah. When Jonah went through Nineveh,
how many days yet? Four days? Forty days and this
city's going to be destroyed? Talk about taking a saucer and
dipping it upside down. God used him as a preacher of
righteousness, and his preaching of righteousness was, God has
the right to do with you as he sees fit. And that's what he
did. Now, in that day, there appeared
that God came down and did a work, but it wasn't very long, and
that city was back where it was, and he destroyed it completely,
that city of Nineveh. You just look at the minor and
major prophets. We call them minor because they
just wrote a little bit, but they were vile dumpers. They
took these vials of the wrath of God and dumped them on Israel
and dumped them on Judah and dumped them on Egypt and dumped
them, he dumped them. And judgment fell and they were
carried away physically. But my goodness, most of them
were carried away spiritually in Adam. The vials of God's judgment
just declared that. Preachers of righteousness, they're
not all just going to make things peace and quiet. They're going
to have some vials to dump. And they did in the Old Testament.
Paul dumped some vials at Galatia. He came there and he wrote back
to them and says, how in the world could you leave Christ? He dumped some vials of God's
wrath upon them. And the church at Corinth and
the churches of Ephesus and there in the seven churches of Asia,
God decreed that John would pour out some vials on those places. And if they didn't get straightened
up, they'd lose their candlestick quality. They'd be a pagan church. They'd be works-oriented. They
were headed in that direction. And unless the preacher got busy
and got to preaching the gospel, they'd continue to be works-oriented. And that's judgment. Judgment
is going to fall. All right? These that have the
plagues, they have the righteousness of Christ, and they're speaking
for God. They don't have a bunch of wrath
petted up in them that they're going to pour out on their own.
They're speaking for God. God gave them these vials. God gave them this judgment to
preach. God gave it to them. And it says
they're clothed with pure and white linen and having their
breasts girded with the golden girdles. You go back to the book
of Exodus and you'll find that this has some similarities to
what the garments of the priests had. And the Bible tells us that
everybody that is God's child is a king priest. We have the
privilege by grace to go to God directly. We don't go through
an emissary anymore. We don't go through the high
priest. It was typical. Nobody actually went through
them. It was just typical of what we would go through. We
go to Christ directly. How in the world religion could
develop the necessity of going through a person? We find fault
with people asking Mary to take care of it. But it's just as
bad when churches ask a man to go for them, to intercede for
them. My goodness, there's only one
intercessor, and that's the Lord Jesus Christ. We don't share
prayer requests with the idea that we're going to change God.
We share prayer requests with the idea that God's going to
change us. Lord, work in us after your way. Now, it tells us here, verse
seven. The seven golden vials full of
the wrath of God. Seven golden vials full of the
wrath of God. One of the four beasts, one of
the four living creatures. And I just have this impression
that those four living creatures represent the gospel. When we
went through there and saw their manner, saw their vision, saw
their appearance, they just have some things to say about the
gospel, about the Lord and his great work of redemption. And
part of the gospel is ruined by the fall. Seven angels, seven
golden vials full of the wrath of God who liveth forever and
ever. Now drop down to verse two. We're
not going to take a lot more time here drop down to verse
chapter 16 verse 2 The first went first angel went and poured
out his vial upon the earth and there fell a noisome and grievous
sore Upon the men which had the mark of the beast and upon them
which worshipped his image I'm convinced that this beast is
religion It's not going to be a great big monster is religion. That's worse than anything you
could meet at night. Religion is worse than any monster
you could meet. It takes away from the glory
of God in the hearts of people and creates a welfare system. It creates a reward system. It creates a righteousness system. It creates a work system. It
creates a legal system. All these things are created
by the beast with the idea that the people who practice this
are going to make marks with God and he will eventually welcome
them into the kingdom. And yet we have the vial poured
out, depart from me ye workers of iniquity for I never knew
you. Now this is not sores in the
body, this is sores in the soul. This preaching of the word leaves
those without Christ with a noisome and grievous sore. It's an incurable. They can never get over this
on their own. That's one of the things that
the gospel so clearly declares, you'll not get over it on your
own. You'll not get clear of it on
your own. You'll not be healed on your
own. No one ever has been, no one ever will be. Naaman proved
it. Isn't there rivers in Syria that
are cleaner than the Jordan? He had it all figured out how
it was supposed to happen. And the same is true by everyone
that God spoke to and they didn't do it. They had their own idea. We looked there at Uzziah Sunday
night. He went into the temple and offered
incense. And what was he saying? I don't
need what God prescribed. I don't need these priests. I
can take care of it on my own. And that's a sore. A noisome
and grievous sore. That means it's great. It's incurable. It's not going to change on our
own. And this vial has been poured
out and the gospel declares that the fall was so great that no
one will get out of it on their own. vials have been poured out. That's what the judgment was
made in the Old Testament. You're not going to get out of
this. on your own. And this just moves through this
chapter, chapter 16. Various aspects, various pictures,
word pictures about God's spiritual judgment upon those that have
worshiped the beast and have followed after him. They're steeped
in religion. Thank God for his grace that
he will lift some out of it. The influence is so traumatic
and so great, it's a grievous sore. And the only way that will
ever be healed of that sore is the Holy Spirit. I like what
it says in the Old Testament, is not there a balm in Gilead? There's a remedy. It's the Lord
Jesus. Well, we're going to stop there
and we'll pick this last couple of verses up of chapter 15 and
go on to chapter 16 and look at these seven plagues and hopefully
we'll be able to see some ways that they demonstrate a spiritual
judgment instead of, well, the water's going to be burnt up
and the Going to be turned to blood and the moon's not going
to shine. I like what we heard on Sunday.
You just need to be repeated until the end. There will be
seed time and harvest. Keep that in mind when we go
through the book of Revelation. Now there may be Sahara deserts
develop, but there's going to be seasons until the end. So these things are spiritual.
These things are spiritual, and they're far more grievous that
way. A whole lot of people would just like to go through a little
fire and have it over with. This is more grievous than that.