Join me in the book of Revelation
tonight. Revelation. I'd like to read
a couple of verses in the first chapter before we go to our lesson
tonight. Revelation chapter one. I need
to keep this as a touchstone, a guiding point, a direction
point, what the book of Revelation is all about. It's not intended
to be scary, it's intended to be a comfort to God's people. That was the purpose in the beginning.
It was a compass for the church at a time of great tribulation. And it opens this way as a book
of comfort, the revelation of Jesus Christ. which God gave
unto him to show unto his servants things which must shortly come
to pass, and he signified it by his angel unto his servant
John. John had been disposed on the
Isle of Patmos. He had been during persecution,
had been set there. And in his greatest time of greatest
distress, he's given one of his greatest blessings. Now this
same John is the one that was permitted to rest his head on
the chest of the Lord Jesus. He is called the disciple whom
Jesus loved. And he has given this book, this
writing for us. It was particularly sent to seven
churches of Asia. We can go through and find their
names and where they were located. And yet we find that it was a
general letter to all the churches. in all ages to be a comfort. This is the revelation of Jesus
Christ. And we found out that that word
revelation is the same word that's found over in the book of Luke
chapter 2. He's a light to lighten the Gentiles. This is an opening
up. This is a taking off the lid.
This is pulling back the curtains. This is allowing the church to
see Jesus as he might not have been seen before. This is a book
of comfort. And when we get to some of these
passages about where we are now, I just want to keep in mind this
is a book of comfort and the outcome will be a comfort for
the church. Now, it is only right that God
punish wrong. He did that on the cross. That's
the purpose of grace. God punished wrong. Jesus Christ
became sin for us. God punished wrong. He didn't
have sin sitting on Him. He became sin for us. He bore
our sins in His own body on the tree. He became sin for us. He was a marked man on the cross. And God Almighty poured out His
wrath and indignation on the darling of heaven, the Lord Jesus.
And as a result of that, we find His people go free. Now, we're
going to see in the book of Revelation that God has a right to punish
wrong. And He will do that very thing.
He will punish all sin. And He will punish every sinner.
Now, the church was punished in Christ. We have the marks
of the death, the burial, and the resurrection of the Lord
Jesus Christ spiritually speaking upon us. We were sheep going
astray. Well, we've been brought to the
shepherd of our souls. Now, here in the ninth chapter,
jumping ahead a number of chapters there, in the ninth chapter,
we find that there is a bottomless pit mentioned. Verse one of the
ninth chapter, it says, and the fifth angel sounded, and I saw
a star fall from heaven unto the earth, and to him was given
the key of the bottomless pit. Now there's only one that has
this key. He has the keys of death and hell. He is the key
of life. This angel has the power over
the bottomless pit. Now this bottomless pit, as we
mentioned Sunday, this bottomless pit, is far from hell. It's not hell. It's here on this
earth. And natural man and sin has a
place of total instability. You ever been on a marble? Been
on a lot of marbles. Been on ground that's just slick. You just can't hardly keep your
footing. The place that Nancy and I live now, I don't know
how far that sand goes down, but it goes down a long way.
You just can't keep enough water on it. And the ground I grew
up in down there at Goose Lake Valley, you'd get it wet, you'd
walk across it, and you'd grow an inch every time you stepped.
Pretty soon you're trying to shake it off because you've got
40 pounds on your feet. It's just sticky and slimy. And
if it was really wet, you just couldn't keep your footing if
you had slick bottom shoes. Well, a bottomless pit is a symbol
of a place that you have no footing. It's a symbol of religion. It has no footing. It has no
stability. We find that the, turn with me
if you would to Isaiah 57. Isaiah 57, just to try to get
a little picture of this bottomless pit. And the scriptures share
a lot about this place. It's a place of no stability,
natural man, natural man's religion. And the world is in this slippery
place. It's slick. David spoke about
it when he wrote in the Psalms. It's a horrible pit. And it's
a bottomless pit in the sense that you just can't get traction. And it's not a physical place,
it's a spiritual place, and by nature, all men are there. Now
here in the book of Isaiah, chapter 57, verse 20, it tells us this. But the wicked are like a troubled
sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God,
to the wicked. Now this is just another way
of saying something about this bottomless pit. It's a place
there's no stability, troubled all the time. And in the respect
of the church, it's good that there is no peace there. It's
God's providence that there's no peace there. It's God's grace
that there's no peace there. And he sends us to search for
him. We look at this bottomless pit,
going back to the book of Revelation chapter 9, and it says that he
opened the bottomless pit and there arose a smoke out of the
pit as the smoke of a great furnace that just filled with pollution.
And it's not physical pollution, it's spiritual pollution. It's
harmful pollution. It's the religion of the world. It's lies about God. It's lies about his salvation.
It's lies about his very person. It's filled with lies about this
great God, making him smaller than he is and humanizing God. This is that smoke coming out
of the great furnace. The sun and the air were darkened
by reason of the smoke of the pit. There came out of the smoke
locusts upon the earth. Duane and I were talking today
about the chart, and the chart has these pictures of these locusts,
and they've got bodies of horses, and head like men, and long hair,
and all that stuff. I can still see the chart. Well,
that's not what it's talking about. It's not talking about
animals. It's talking about people. It's sharing with us what people
are like that come out of this bottomless pit out of religion,
and they're abomination and abominable. And if it wasn't for the grace
of God, we'd be stuck there in that bottomless pit, in that
great stench of this smoke coming out, this pollution. And we'd
be there and we'd be listening to these people today, listening
to their lies, lying about God, lying about his salvation. It
goes on every week. I'll never forget what Brother
Rupert Reibenbach had to say, there's more sinning going on
Sunday morning than there ever is Saturday night. The sinning
going on, the stench from the pulpits is terrible. And that
goes on on Sunday morning under the guise of worshiping God.
These locusts are upon the earth. They have been given power as
scorpions of the earth have power. And it was commanded them that
they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green
thing, neither any tree, but only those men which have not
the seal of God in their foreheads. Now, those who were under persecution
at this time says, thank you, God. Just earlier, we've had
four angels holding back the wind of the four winds of the
earth. Don't hurt God's people. They're
protected. We find a reference over in the
book of Ezekiel where there's people have been marked out in
that city and God said you can slay them all but those with
the marks on their heads. And that's God's people says,
thank you, Lord. We're in this place, and it's
heavy. It's all the persecution that's
going on, and nobody loves the truth. And we're just here all
alone. But we hear God's word say, you're
protected. I've got a hedge about you. I'm
protecting you. I'll let nothing touch you. Now,
he may touch our lives. He may touch our bodies. He may touch our feelings. He may touch us like he did Job.
I enjoyed the reading of the book of Job this time more than
I ever have, but not because of what happened to Job, but
just to see God speak to Job out of grace and mercy. He'd
come down and visit with him and say, here's the problem.
But how God touched his body, but didn't touch him. Jesus said,
fear him not who can touch your body, but fear him who can touch
your body and soul. And his people have this hedge
about their soul. They are marked out to be presented
spotless before the throne of grace. And the church has ever
been thankful for that. Paul felt God touching his body,
but Paul never felt God touching his soul. That's what he does,
protecting them. You can have all his power. You
have all this, but you can't touch mine. And now we find that
the Lord Jesus spoke during his personal ministry and said this,
that in the last days, there'll be those Jesus's come and Christ's
come and say, here I'm Jesus, here I'm Lord, here I'm Christ.
Believe them not. And if it were possible, they'd
deceive the very elect, but it's not possible. And the church
says, thank you, God. Left to myself, I'd be carried
off that way. But knowing you're watching out
over me, I won't be and I can't be taken off in that direction.
I'll be ever mindful and pointed in your direction. So the church
has been thankful for the promises of God. He's held back the wind
against us. He's held back the smoke against
us. He's held back all this evil doctrine against us and held
it back and said, you'll not be touched by it. We'll hear
it, but it won't touch us. My sheep hear my voice and they
follow me. How comforting that was to the church to know that
God is protecting His people from even this onslaught. Oh,
we may hear it, and it may sound, tickle our ears, but God will
not leave His people there. He will bring them out. And then
it says in here, in verse 5, to them, it was given that they
should not kill them. but that they should torment
five months, for the torment was of the torment of the scorpion,
when it striketh a man. And in those days shall men seek
death, and shall not find it, and shall desire to die, and
death shall flee from them. The shapes of the locusts were
like horses, oh, prepared for battle." And then it says, their
heads were crowns, they liked themselves, they were very given
to themselves, adorned themselves. And then it tells us here that
their faces were like the faces of men. They appear to have a
caring for people, and yet in the very next verse it says,
inwardly, inwardly, they're ravening wolves. inwardly, there's a bite
about them. They have hair as the hair of
women and their teeth were as the teeth of lions. And they
had breastplates as it were breastplates of iron. God's people had breastplates. But these have breastplates of
defense. And oh my, if you ever met them when they're angry,
they have teeth and they bite. And then it says here, and they
have the sound of their wings was the sound of chariots of
many horses running to battle. And we looked at, oh, they have
these sweet sounding words and it's just, me, me, me, I, I,
I, what I've done, and where I've been, and so forth. And
then it tells us here in verse 10, and we'd like to look at
verses 10 and 11 tonight, and they had tails like unto scorpions,
and there were stings in their tails, and their power was to
hurt men five months. And they had a king over them,
which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew
tongue is Abaddon, and in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon. And both of those mean destroyer.
Both of them mean destroyer. Now, let's look at this verse
10. They had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings
in their tails, and they had power to hurt men five months.
They had this false doctrine that is so full of poison. There's
one thing, God will not give peace to his sheep in religion. God will not let his people settle
in religion. He will not give them peace.
False doctrine has a real poison about it. Now, look it with me
over here. Quite a while ago now, we were
in the book of 2 Kings, 2 Kings chapter 4. And there's an incident
here that just shares with us this point. about what happens
when you mix error with the truth. You cannot add a little poison
to the truth and still have the truth. And error is truth with
a sting of poison. And these, these are, they have
a sting about them. There's a poison about them.
And God will not let his people be happy with error. He will
not let them settle where there is falseness. It's just a promise
of God. And God's people have always
been thankful for this, that He will not let me settle in
error. The Spirit will bear witness
of this. And the greatest error that we
find, and John was writing about this earlier in the book of 1
John, is if we have Christ, Our spirit and the spirit of God
bear witness that Christ has come in the flesh. That means
God has come to this earth as a Messiah and all that was promised,
he has been fulfilled. We're not looking for another.
We're not looking for someone else. We are satisfied with the
person of the Lord Jesus Christ and all his work and merit on
our behalf. God's people know that. It's
been witnessed to them. Now over here in the book of
2 Kings chapter 4, we find a time when the prophet of the Lord
was walking along and came to the sons of the prophets and
they're going to have a feast. preparing food. Now notice this
in 2nd Kings chapter 4 and verse 38. And Elisha came again to
Gilgal and there was a dearth in the land and the sons of the
prophets were sitting before him and he said unto his servants
set on the great pot and seeth pottage for the sons of the prophets.
And one went out into the field to gather herbs, and found a
wild vine, and gathered thereof wild gourds, his slap full, and
came and shred them into the pot of pottage, for they knew
them not. So they poured out for the men
to eat, and it came to pass, as they were eating of the pottage,
that they cried out and says, O thou man of God, there is death
in the pot. Just a few of these wild herbs,
wild gourds, wild vegetables ruin the pot. And just a little
bit of air will ruin the pot of the grace of God. And it's
always an attack on grace, the grace of God. Always an attack
on Christ and his sufficiency. Always an attack on God's everlasting
and eternal purposes. It's not the small things that
they go after. It's the big things they go after.
And they throw a little poison. A person tells me he's a four-pointer. You know what that is? That's
just a liar. Don't, there's no such thing
as a four-pointer. A four-pointer is a liar. He
just doesn't have any grasp on the truth whatsoever. A person
that says, I don't believe in the, that the Lord Jesus Christ
just died for his elect, that guy has no concept of what the
gospel is. And they're counted as, oh, look
there, there are four-fifths us. Well, one-fifth poison will
kill the pot. and you eat it, it'll kill you.
God's people will not settle for partial truths. The Holy Spirit doesn't reveal
partial truths. Now, He may not reveal all the
truth, but it's not half-truths. We may not see everything about
the Lord Jesus Christ, but what He reveals is the truth about
it. He's not sharing partial truths about God's eternality. He's not sharing partial truths
about his death on the cross. He will show us those things.
We have a lot to learn about God. He'll spend this time in
eternity teaching us about God, but everything that he shares
with us is the truth. The Holy Spirit does not share
partial truths about God. There's not half-truths, quarter-truths,
fifth-truths. we're going to find out that
the points that he revealed are all the truth on that particular
point. Now, here's a pot, a bunch of
stuff has been thrown in it, and the only hope, it goes on
to say here, bring meal and cast it into the pot and said pour
out for the people that they may eat, and there was no harm
in the pot. There has to be somebody that takes care of the untruth,
and that's the way, the truth, and the life. There has to be
a substitute for the heir. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
way, the truth, and the life, and he's the only one that allows
us to venture into the pot and to have complete satisfaction
in eating what's prepared. This vine, these gourds, poisonous,
And people knew it. They didn't eat it and die. They
knew what the problem was. There's poison in the pot. And
there's poison in the message, poison in what's being said,
spewed out. These people, these preachers,
these pastors, these, well, they got tails like scorpions, and
they've got poison in those tails, and false doctrine has a real
poison about it. It's not, well, this is mostly
the truth. I'll never forget Brother, oh, Ball, Louisiana. Milton Howard. Someone was talking to him about
going to a church, and oh man, it was just spotted with wild
gourds. He says, everybody needs water,
but you don't have to drink it out of a toilet. Wild gourds will just make us sick.
We want pure food, manna, from God Almighty. Now it tells us
in In verse 11 of that ninth chapter, verse 11 says, they
had a king over them. Now that's one reason we know
that these are not animals. They cannot be depicted as a
picture of an animal. Locusts, Bible even tells us
locusts have no king. Proverbs tells us locusts have
no king. Now these people have a king. And it tells us here
that in verse 11, they had a king over them, which is the angel
of the bottomless pit. Now, if you look this up, you'll
find that almost every commentator says, that's the devil. Well,
I chewed on that, and I don't agree. I think it's much closer
to man than the devil is. And we'd like to look at this.
These two names, they mean a destroyer. The messenger of the bottomless
pit, the angel of the bottomless pit, he's named this. And this
means destroyer. Well, I think this is a whole
lot closer. to natural man than Satan is.
Satan can't do anything without permission, and even if he's
given permission, he cannot cause anybody to sin. Never has, never
will. He's not given that power. Satan
is under the control of God, and he's never made, and we find
in religion that there's always a need for someone to be the
scapegoat. And Satan gets a lot of benefit
that he never has the right to. The real problem is natural man
and natural man's heart. Satan cannot rule in natural
man's heart. Natural man rules well. It's
right related to Adam. Adam, he was so angry with God,
he went over the edge. He sinned against God. We just
can't put into words what was going through Adam when he sinned
against God. How he put himself first. How
he put God second. How he chose against God. All those things. But anyway,
this gave natural man a ruler. And the ruler of natural man
is his heart. Now turn with me, if you would,
to the book of Acts. The book of Acts. This hadn't been long
ago in our reading. We're here in the book of Acts
chapter 8. Acts chapter 8, verse 18. It shares a whole lot about
an actual man here. This one man. And Peter shares
with us what he sees and what he hears. And he didn't say,
oh brother, you must be mistaken. Oh brother, you don't know what
you're asking for. He just said, you have a problem. Now notice this, Acts chapter
8 verse 18, it says, and when Simon saw that through laying
on of the apostles' hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered
them money, saying, give me also this power that on whomsoever
I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost. But Peter said unto
him, thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that
the gift of God may be purchased with money. Thou hast neither
part nor a lot in this matter, for thy heart is not right in
the sight of God. Repent, therefore, of this, thy
wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine
heart may be forgiven thee. For I perceive that thou art
in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity." Now,
as we look at this, we find this man was in the state of nature
and unregeneracy. He had not the spirit of God. He wouldn't have been asking
for that if he had. And he's under the power and dominion
of his own covetousness, and his own ambition, and his own
hypocrisy. Peter never said, well, the devil's
ruling you. He says, you're ruling you, and
that's the problem. Worst thing that could ever happen
is us ruling ourselves. We're thankful and the church
has always been thankful that Christ rules the church. He's
the head of the church. We're the body, he's the head.
We're thankful that he has that control because when we're ruling
ourselves, what does it say? Thou art in the gall of bitterness
and the bond of iniquity. Now that's a bad place to be.
That's a place we don't want to be. That's a place we've been
brought out of. That's a place we've been redeemed
from. That's a place that we inherited with Adam. We had a
bad attitude towards God. Now we can say, oh, I love Jesus,
and look what was in the heart. He says, oh, I'd like to buy
this power. Now he had the honesty to say
it out loud so that we can read it in the scriptures. I'd like
to have power to, I'd like to have, I could buy this. I've
got money and I'll buy this. And the Apostle Peter never said,
you got the devil running you. He says, no, you got a sick heart,
dead and trespasses in sin. It's unregenerate. It's filled
with hypocrisy and ambition and covetousness. You have the heart
of Adam. And then it says here, pray that
the repent therefore of the wickedness and pray God if perhaps the thought
of that heart may be forgiven thee for I perceive that thou
art in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity.
And answered Simon said, pray ye to the Lord for me that none
of these things which you have spoken come upon me. He didn't
have the grace to pray for himself, but he sure wanted Peter to pray
for him. Oh my goodness, this man is, there's a bitterness
in him. He's got the bitter root of sin
in him. This is what's ruling him. This
is his destroyer. Who is his destroyer? Not Satan.
His destroyer is his own heart. That's the Apollyon that we face. Our own wicked heart. Our heart that's, well, Jeremiah
said, it's incurable. If God doesn't take care of it,
we've got an incurable situation. If God doesn't relieve it, we
have an incurable situation. It will never be cured by man. It will never be cured by religion. It will never be cured by false
preaching. The only thing that can cure
this is the Lord Jesus Christ. He has to take out that stony
heart and give us a heart of flesh. We have to be born again
or we'll go to our end with that sadness. This man, Simon, is
entirely under the government of his sin. I never thought of
that before, but sin. We're under the government of
sin. We have a destroyer over us. We have a wickedness in our
heart by nature that is destroying us. It's killing us. and it comes just along. It rules,
this very nature rules over all of these locusts, all of these
false preachers, and over the smoke that comes out of that
furnace, the impurities, it rules. What is it? It's a heart that's
against God, a heart that enmity with God. Won't settle on God,
won't settle on God's way. Boy, I want some of that power
though. Turn with me if you would to the book of Proverbs. Proverbs
chapter 5. Proverbs chapter 5. I'm so thankful
that in God's purpose, he will never let his people stay here. He will not let his people stay
with this destroyer. He will not let his people end
up in the end with this destroyer ruling over them. He will break
that spell. I like the word gospel. Under God's spell, he breaks
the spell of sin. He breaks the bondage of sin. He breaks the ruling of sin. It's a ruler that we can't throw
off, a government that we can't eradicate. It's a situation that
we can't put aside. It just proves more how necessary
it is to have the new birth. We can't shake this king. We can't shake his doctrine. We can't shake his smoke. We can't shake the impurities
of it. We just can't come out from the
influence of it unless the Lord lift us out of that pit, out
of the bottomless pit. All right, over here in the book
of Proverbs chapter 5. Proverbs chapter 5 and verse
22. We look here and look at the
heart. Oh, the heart, it's, as the prophet Jeremiah said, the
heart is deceitful above all things. Desperately, it's ruled. The heart is the ruling matter. That's why there's no free will.
Heart takes care of that. A lot of people just jump up
and down on this free will stuff. Well, the heart is, the government
of the heart is sin. You just can't make a good decision. We've all had family and friends. We just say, they just can't
make a good decision. Well, that's right. They can't. They make foolish decisions.
They make sinful decisions. They just can't. They've got
a government over them, a ruler over them that started in the
Garden of Eden. It's the human nature, and it
rules all facets. There's nothing left for anybody
to do. It just rules everything. It
covers everything. It's tainted everything about
man. And we have to get air from out of this sphere. We have to
be given life from above. We have to be pulled out of this
bottomless pit. We have to be pulled out of this
pollution. We have to be lifted above it.
And that's what Christ does when he saves his people from their
sins. It is a true, and what's it say
about him? The government shall be upon his shoulders. He's going
to rule. And then he tells us that I have
all power. I'll rule. I'll rule and overrule.
I'll take care. I'll lead you. I'll present you
spotless. So he's taking care of the government
of sin that rules over people with such tenacity, grips, holds. Talk about being under, being
a puppet. We are a puppet to sin. And it
takes God's grace to pull us out of that. All right, I'm going
to read Proverbs here. Proverbs 5, verse 22. His own
iniquities shall take the wicked himself. His own iniquities shall
take the wicked himself. And he shall be holding with
the cords of his sins. We got a government. Got a king. A king that rules. And it's the
heart of natural man. Satan can't even, his power pales
compared to this. His power is limited compared
to this. We have a power over us in a
natural descent from Adam, a government that's over us that only Christ
can break. All the power of prayer of a
church for a thousand years can't break this power. All the preaching
of preachers for a thousand years can't break this power. All of
the desire of a thousand years of family and friends can't break
this. But the Lord Jesus Christ, when
His power to come out of that tomb is demonstrated by that
power, He can break this government of sin and release us and set
us free and set us on the solid rock. Our natural inclination
will never be towards God. In fact, in Psalm 14 it says
that. I looked down from heaven to
see if there were any that weren't under this influence. I looked
down from heaven to see if there were any that were not ruled
by this government. I looked down and found none. To Job, he said, I found a ransom
from those going down into the pit. The rule of Christ is far
superior. Well, Paul was used to sum it
this way. were sin abounded, grace did
much more abound. All right, turn with me if you
would to Isaiah 58. Isaiah 58. We wonder why the government's
so bad. Government of sin, it's over
everyone. The rule, the king of of man
and the king of men's preachers is sin, the natural heart. That's why they can't say anything
different. That's why the pollution just won't be changed. And why
the bottomless pit never gets any better. The government of
natural man, the heart, just can't get any better. In fact,
It just goes from generation worse to worse to worse. All right, Isaiah chapter 58.
Isaiah 58 verse 6. Scripture shares this. Is not
this the fast that I have chosen to loose the bands of wickedness? Now that's what Christ does.
To loose the bands of wickedness. To undo the heavy burdens. To let the oppressed go free
and to yet break every yoke. That's the ministry of Christ. I'll get rid of that government. I'll get rid of that oppression.
I'll get rid of that totalitarianism. I'll get rid of all that. That's
my mission in earth, in this life, is to get rid of all this
for all my people. They're bored down, bent over. Man was made upright, but he
stooped, bent over. And the Lord said, I come to
straighten them up. I come to lift them up. I come
to lift them out of the bottomless pit, out of all the pollution
of the bottomless pit, and out of all the noise of the bottomless
pit, religion, all the things that are said on how to get out.
Well, most of the time, they just share with us, it is not
as bad as it seems. It's not quite as bad as it seems.
And they paint with rose-colored glasses, paint a picture, the
fall isn't quite as bad as we thought. That's what religion
does. And here we find the Lord Jesus
saves his people out of this kind of oppression, Isaiah 58
verse 6. Is it not this fast that I have
chosen to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy
burdens and to let the oppressed go free and to break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to
the hungry and to bring the poor? that are cast out to thy house,
when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him, and that thou
hide not thyself from thine own flesh. Now, just one book more. We've mentioned this a couple
times tonight. We've mentioned it a lot in the
past. Jeremiah 17, verse nine. Jeremiah
17, verse nine. Sums it up. Here's the ruler. Here's the government. Here's
the king. Here's the king of all those
locusts. Here's the king of all natural
men. Chapter 17, verse 9, the heart
is deceitful above all things. It's weighted down. There at the first courthouse
here in the Dalles, they got several of the Oregon boots,
those big heavy weights that they used to strap to men so
they couldn't run off. Spiritually speaking, we've got
Oregon boots, and we've got the great big ball on chain, and
we've got hand weights, and we've got neck weights, and we've got
head weights, and we've got body weights. We're just drug down
by sin. It rules, our heart rules. That's
why there's no such thing as free will. It's just free will
is dependent upon a heart that's clean, and we just don't have
it. We're ruled by seeing. It says here, Jeremiah 17 verse
nine, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately
wicked, incurably wicked. Incurably wicked. We got a real
incurable disease. And then it says, who can know it? We don't even
know how bad the king is. We don't know how bad our position
is. After regeneration, then I'll show you, he said. Then
I'll show you. Then you'll recognize your pollutions.
Then you'll recognize the king that ruled over you. He is the
king that will rule over his people. He is the head over the
church. That's what's promised. So these
people there and these seven churches and all churches of
the Lord Jesus, all his people down through the ages, has said,
thank you, Lord, for not leaving me there. Thank you, Lord, for
taking away the oppression. Thank you, Lord, for the government's
on your shoulders. You've got the government now.
And his government's good. He's the ruler. He's taken us
out of a horrible pit, out of the pollution of that, and out
of the preaching of that, and out of the king of that. And
now, he says, you'll hear a clear sound. What happens when an army
is prepared to go back to battle and the trumpeter gives an uncertain
sound? Now, he doesn't do that. He gives
a certain sound. Ping. You know, my messengers, my messengers,
this is one thing they'll do. You may not like it, but this
is one thing they'll do. They'll be honest with the word
of God. That's one thing they'll do. We may not like it. We may
not like the word, but at least they'll be honest with it. Oh,
that king says, isn't there someone else to prophesy about whether
we should go into battle? Yeah, there's that guy. He's
over there, and all he ever does is prophesy against us. Well,
bring him out here. Yep, he did. I told you so. They slapped his mouth. But they
said, I told you. That's what he'd say. What was
he doing? He had a burden from God. I'll
just speak the truth. I'll just speak the truth. And
that truth doesn't have any pollution in it. Oh, that's so polluted. You just can't breathe in it.
You just can't sit still. It's an itch all over you. You
ever itched under such pollution? Oh, it just sends an itch all
over you. Well, I've got to go to the doctor,
the great physician. Go to the great physician. All
right. And then that last verse, verse
12, I'm just going to read it and not make any comments. Revelation
9, verse 12. It says, one woe is past, and behold,
there come two woes more hereafter. And it just, in this next one,
it just looks like that, well, maybe I shouldn't say anything,
but I'm gonna say this. It just looks like God is coming out
against the physical part. Here's the spiritual part, coming
out against the physical part of those that are without Christ. And punishment against them.
He has every right to punish sin. He has every right to punish
sinners. And he punished all his sinners
in Christ. He did. Everyone, every sin was
punished in Christ. Now those without Christ, he
has the right to punish sin and he has the right to punish sinners.
But the church says he's got the wind held back on me. And
he's marked me off as a green tree and these locusts can't
get to me. And the church is comforted.