Let's go to Revelation chapter
11. The book of Revelation chapter
11. Here's my subject today. It's actually in the form of
a question. And here's what I'm asking you.
Do you measure up? That's the title and the subject
today. Do you measure up? Look at Revelation chapter 11
and we'll just this morning just get to the first couple of verses.
We'll go further than the Lord willing this evening. Revelation
11 verse 1, And there was given me a reed like unto a rod. And this angel stood, this is
what he said, rise and measure, rise and measure, measure these
three things. Measure, number one, the temple
of God, number two, the altar, and then measure them that worship
therein. But, he says, there's a court, there's
a court called the court of the Gentiles, for Solomon's temple,
but he says, but the court, which is without the temple, leave
it out. In other words, as it says in
the center column, cast it out of your measurement. Don't measure
it. Measure it not. And the reason you're not to
measure it is because it's given to the Gentiles. And then he
says, in the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and
two months. Do you measure up? We've already studied that chapter
number 10 of Revelation is like an interlude. It's an interruption. A scripture that falls between
the sounding of the sixth trumpet judgment and then the next one,
the last one, which is indeed the seventh trumpet judgment. We saw in the last chapter, Revelation
chapter 10, we saw the Lord Jesus that He appeared as a mighty
angel who has come down, come down from heaven. It's not unusual
for the Son of God to be set forth in the Bible as an angel,
as the angel, or even mentioned as being an angel of the Lord. In Isaiah chapter 63 and verse
number 9, He's called the angel of His presence. It says, in all their affliction
He was afflicted. Speaking about the children of
Israel as they wandered through the wilderness, it says, in all
their affliction He was afflicted. The Lord was afflicted and the
angel of His presence delivered them. The angel of God's presence
delivered them in His love and in His pity He redeemed them. And He bared them and He carried
them from days of old. Remember that when the Lord delivered the Israelites from
Egyptian bondage by means of the blood of the Passover lamb,
And then he took them through the Red Sea, opening up a pathway
through the sea that was dry ground, and they all went forth,
and then the enemy all perished behind them. The Lord then led
them out into the wilderness. They stayed in the wilderness.
The scripture says they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. But the angel of God was with
them all the way. In fact, the Lord said the angel
of the Lord would be with them as a pillar of cloud to lead
them. To lead them. That is the angel
of God's presence. That is the Son of God. He went
before Israel and then He was also in the back of Israel. He
was the one who led them and He was the one who protected
them from the rear. And I would say to the people
of God today, the Lord still does that. He still leads His
people. He is the angel of God who is
with us by His Spirit. And He leads us. He directs our
pathway. And then He also follows us. He is the one who always protects
us. He is the angel of God. And I
know this is the angel of God because as we get deeper into
chapter 11, we'll find that this angel of the Lord says, in fact,
if you want to look, just peep a little bit into the next message,
which will be this evening in Revelation chapter 11 and verse
3. He says, and I will give power
unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy or preach. Who gives Him power? The angel
does. The angel does. Only the Lord
Jesus can give any kind of authority to His preachers. He said to
His disciples before He ascended back to heaven, He said, I send
you forth into all the world to preach the Gospel. And He
gave them all the gifts that were necessary in order to do
the work that God would have them to do. He is the angel of
God's presence. And look over in Revelation chapter
20. Revelation chapter 20. Here is
this angel once again. And I know He's not a mere winged
creature. He is indeed the very Son of
God. What does the word angel mean? Messenger. Messenger. One who is commissioned by another. And our Lord Jesus is the angel
of God. He's the angel of God who came
down from heaven to save His people from our sins by His substitutionary
death upon the cross of Calvary. He's the angel who ministers
to us by His Holy Spirit. He's the angel who leads us,
as I've already said, and He's the angel who always follows
us and directs our pathway and then protects us from the rear. Look at Revelation chapter 20
and verse 1, and I saw an angel come down from heaven and this
once again is our Lord Jesus Christ. And that which is specifically
in view here is the birth of our Savior, the incarnation of
Christ Jesus. Here He comes down from heaven
and He's got the key to the bottomless pit and He has a great chain
in His hand. This is the Son of God. And He
laid hold on the dragon. This is not a mere angel. This
is not a created being. This is the Creator. This is
the one who made all of the other angels. He laid hold on the dragon. This dragon is ferocious. This
dragon breathes out fires of persecution upon God's people. But this angel from God, this
angel from heaven, even our Lord Jesus, the messenger of the covenant
of God, He laid hold on the dragon. Nobody can do that but Christ
Jesus. The dragon, that old serpent,
he's subtle. He has deadly poison. He's a
deceiver of men using false doctrine. But this angel, he takes hold
of him. He takes hold of the dragon.
He takes hold of the old serpent. This is the one who beguiled
Eve back in Genesis chapter 3, which is the devil, the devil,
the liar, the liar, the one who twists God's Word. This is Satan,
Satan who is the accuser of God's people, who is the one who opposes
us. And our Lord Jesus, He's the
angel come down from heaven. He lays hold of this one, the
dragon, the old serpent, the devil and Satan, and He binds
him. Now here's the question, when
did He lay hold of him? At the cross, when our Lord Jesus
died. That's when He took hold of the
serpent. Go back to John 12. John 12. Here's the angel of
God again. And it's our Lord Jesus. We know
that because all we've got to do is read the context. And here
He is and He says this in John 12 and verse 31, John chapter 12 and verse 31,
now is the judgment of this world, now shall the prince of this
world be cast out. This is when he takes hold of
him. This is when he grabs the dragon by the throat. as it were,
and he throws him out. He casts him out. He defeats
him. And that's in fulfillment of
Genesis chapter 3 and verse 15 where the Lord said to the serpent
that He would send His Son, the seed of the woman who had bruised
the serpent's head. This all happened when our Lord
Jesus died upon the cross of Calvary. And so this angel who
has come down is none other than the Lord Jesus. The Lord Jesus. And when John sees this angel,
as you go back to Revelation chapter 10, as John sees this
angel, he says there's a special glory about Him. A special beauty
about Him. A special righteousness about
Him. He's different from all the created
angels. Because this is the angel of
God. This is the mighty angel. None of the other angels are
almighty. This is the one who is almighty.
He said, all power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. No
mere angel has all power. power, whatever power the angels
of God have that have been created are powers given to them by the
Son of God. But he says to his disciples,
all power is given unto me. He earned the right to have all
power by his death upon the cross of Calvary. He's the mighty angel. And once again, John says right
here in chapter 10, as he said, we just read in chapter 20, this
mighty angel, he's come down from heaven. Thank God he's come
down from heaven. And he says he's robed or clothed
with a cloud. There's a mystery about him.
There's a mystery about him. I remember reading, a preacher
went somewhere to preach, before he got up to preach the pastor,
kind of leaned over to him and said, whatever you do today,
don't preach anything controversial. He said, beg your pardon? He
said, whatever you preach today, don't preach anything controversial.
He said, okay, I give you my word. I want. And he got up and
he announced his text, 1 Timothy chapter 3, and he began to quote
the Scripture, verse 16, and without controversy, great is
the mystery of godliness. There's no controversy there.
Great is the mystery of godliness. God has joined Himself to human
flesh. And it says here in Revelation
10, And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven.
He comes down and He's robed with a cloud. That's the mystery
of godliness. The mystery of godliness. God manifest in the flesh. There He lays. in a manger, in
a manger. And those who looked upon his
birth, which isn't set forth by the way, it isn't described,
it's just a fact. Those who looked on were apparently
just the animals in the stall, and of course, Mary was there
and Joseph was there. Those two. The angels of God. But there he came down. And a little infant. A little
infant. You know, little babies are born. It's mysterious, isn't it? The
mystery of life. I remember when David was born,
our firstborn. You know, dads, we couldn't even
go in. In fact, I didn't even touch
him or hold him till Nancy came home from the hospital with him.
And when Susanna was born, I did finally hold her in the room.
But you look at those little infants, you look at them and
you say, this is a mystery. It's a mystery. The mystery of
life. But what about the mystery of
mysteries God manifests in the flesh? There, listen to a mystery. Laying in that manger about this
big, who had to be washed and wrapped
snuggled to his mother and he feeds from his mother's milk.
Here's a mystery. That's God. That's God manifest
in the flesh. This is God come down. No wonder
it says He's robed with a cloud. He's clothed with a cloud. There's a mystery about Him.
A mystery of all mysteries. This is God in the flesh. He
came to this world to save His people. He didn't just come down
here when He was 33 years of age. He's born into this world. He's
bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh. He's going to face everything
that we will face during His lifetime of some 33 years. You say, nobody knows what I'm
going through. I beg your pardon. He was tempted
in all points as we are yet without sin. He was indeed put to the
test. This is a mystery! Our Lord Jesus. He has a rainbow on His head.
John says He has a glory about Him. Now John saw Him in His earthly
ministry. John was there with the other
two favored apostles, Peter, James, and John. They saw His
glory when He revealed Himself on the Mount of Transfiguration.
And He just, as it were, kind of showed them a little bit of
His glory. And His face, it was as bright
as the sunshine. But now John sees Him in the
fullness of His glory. Here's this mighty angel who
has come down. He's come down in a cloud. And John says, He has a rainbow
on His head. That's the covenant of grace.
That's the evidence, the token of the covenant. He's always
interested in the covenant. He's the angel of the covenant.
Read Malachi chapter 3 and verse 1. He's a messenger of the covenant. He's the representative of the
covenant. That's another word for angel
is representative. He's a representative from God
and he's the representative of the covenant. He was there when
that covenant was made. He did the choosing. He did the elect. full ordaining and He stood there
as our representative, as one who spoke for us, as one who
stood for us, as one who even then was our
substitute and our surety, who willingly took upon Himself the
responsibility to save all of His people. And John says His
face is like the sun. It's like the sun. Oh, the beauties
and the glories of Christ Jesus. I'll tell you when you'll believe
on the Savior. And I'm perhaps speaking to some
people this morning who don't believe and love Christ Jesus. I'll tell you when you'll believe
Him and I'll tell you when you'll love Him. I'll tell you when
you'll reach out for Him. Take hold of Him with the arms
of faith. When you see His glory, when
you see His beauty, when you see the glory of God in the face
of Christ Jesus, John says His face was as the sun. As the sun. John saw Him. This angel of God. This angel of God who had come
down. Come down from heaven. And so
he goes on speaking in chapter 10 about this mighty angel, and
he says this mighty angel had in his hands, and we've already
talked about this, I won't elaborate much on it, but John says he
has in his hands a little book. And I know that's a book of God's
predestination, it's a book of God's eternal purpose. Thank
God that all the things that He has purposed to do are in
the hands of and are being fulfilled by our Lord Jesus Christ, the
Angel of the Covenant, the Messenger of Grace, our own Savior, people
of God. Don't be fearful. Don't be anxious. No wonder the Savior said to
His disciples in Matthew chapter 6, be anxious for nothing. Be anxious for nothing. But I
don't know what's going to happen. No, you don't. But He does. Because
He ordained it. And He's going to make certain
that everything comes to pass just exactly the way He purposed
for it to happen. That's why we should rest. You
know, there's a verse of Scripture in Hebrews chapter 4. Let us therefore labor to enter
into His rest. Remember reading that? Labor
to enter into rest. Do you know why we have to work
at resting? It's because we're so anxious.
And we're so worried. And I'll tell you, that's something
you should work on. It almost sounds crazy to labor
to enter into that rest. To labor to rest. Work at resting. Work at resting. You know, when we were, we took
a trip, of course, recently over to Hawaii. Hawaii, I should say. And there were a few mornings
where we had And I told Nancy, I said, I just cannot do nothing. I'm a very structured person. I need to be doing something.
I have a schedule that I follow. And it's hard for me to rest.
It's hard for me, because they said I preached five or six times
in a row. And I even said, I need a night
off. I need to rest. And you know
what? Day came and I wasn't speaking
that night. I hardly knew what to do. And
Nancy said, you need to learn how to rest. Well, that's what
the Apostle is saying there in Hebrews chapter 4. Labor to enter
into rest. Labor at this matter of resting. You need to work on it, in other
words. And we need to work on that. We need to work on resting
in the Lord Jesus Christ, this mighty angel who's come down
from heaven, who has the glory of God about him, who has the
rainbow around his brow. He's the angel of the covenant,
the messenger of the covenant. He has a glory about him and
a mystery about him. Now labor to enter into resting
in him. Can you just rest? Can you just
rest? I remember when we moved to Almonte,
a dear lady, and she's had some physical issues. She may be watching
this morning. I don't know. I won't call her
by name, but she knows who she is. But she would come out of
the service after I preached, and she'd say, pray for me. And
I just, I'm struggling so much. Tears had run down her cheeks.
And I said, I'd hug her. I said, I'm praying for you.
And then several weeks went by. This happened repeatedly. And
one morning I preached to her and preached to everybody, of
course, and she came out and she hugged me and she said, I've
learned how to rest in Christ. That's it. I've learned how to
just rest in Christ. And you know what? We all need
to learn that. That's something we need to work
at, isn't it? We need to work at resting. Worked at rest. Well, John, he sees the glory
of Christ Jesus. He sees in the hands of this
angel this little book, the book of God's eternal decrees. And
the book is open. He's executing God's will. And then the Lord says, now,
take and eat this. Eat it. What does the Bible mean
by words of that nature? Eat this. Remember in John 6,
where our Lord Jesus, He sets Himself forth as the bread of
life. And He said, I'm the living bread that came down from heaven.
If a man eat of this bread, he'll live forever. What does that
mean? Well, you know, when you eat
a piece of bread, literally, you take that bread and you receive
it. You receive the bread. You chew
it up. You swallow it. It becomes part
of you. You've received it. You see,
faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is likened unto eating. And the
reception of the things of God is also likened to eating. And the Lord says, you take this
little book and eat it. Chew it up. And John said, I
did. What the Lord is saying, receive
into your very being this glorious fact. that I rule over all things
and nothing moves or exists except by my sovereign will. Now receive
that. Will you receive that? And John
says, I received it and he says it was to my lips, so sweet. Because the doctrine you see
of God's predestination, of God's fordonation, of divine providence,
that God is directing all things to its appointed end. That's
a sweet, sweet doctrine. But then he said it was in my
belly as better. Because you see, there's much
in divine providence, much that God has ordained for you. When
you experience it, It's not going to be very sweet. It will be bitter. Kind of give
you a tummy ache. And that's the troubles of life,
the trials of life. And all of us who believe the
Word of God, who rest in Christ Jesus, we love the truth of God's
divine providence. That He who ordained all things
is leading everything to that end, to that goal that He has
ordained. And that is a sweet, sweet truth. But there are some times in life
when we're experiencing these things that God has ordained
for us. And when we're going through
them, even though we know overall it's a sweet subject, but when
we go through some of these difficulties and some of these trials, it's
not so sweet, is it? It can be bitter. Because God's
people have bitter experiences. And that's what he's saying at
the end of the chapter. And then that leads us into chapter
11. Chapter 11. And now he picks
up again, he picks up again that having finished his interlude
or this interruption of talking about the sixth trumpet judgment,
and the Lord gave him a reed. Now reeds over there were kind
of long, straight, They were hollow, like bamboo. Think of bamboo rods. And they
would cut them a certain length, and that's what they used to
measure. Because they were straight, if you have driven along, if
we were over in Hawaii, we would be going along, and all of a
sudden we'd see, growing along the side of the road, all of
these bamboo grew straight, straight and tall. Straight and tall. And they also grew over in Israel. And they'd cut them down and
use them to measure. It was a measuring rod. It's
what they measured things by. And so this angel of the Lord
gave him a reed. Here, here's a measuring reed.
I want you to measure. They didn't have tape measures
back then like we have now. But they did have methods of
measuring. They'd measure using a man's
hand. They had a measurement from the
end of your index finger to your elbow. They had all kind of measurements. And one of the things that they
used was a reed. It was a very common method of
measuring. In fact, in Revelation chapter
Verse 21, the Lord is showing John the New Jerusalem. It's
measured with a golden reed. A golden reed. And now this angel
gives him this reed and says, rise! Stand up! Evidently, it must have been
on his face before this angel. Because when you see the glory
of Christ Jesus, it puts you on your face before Him. And
now the Lord says, get up, rise, and measure. Number one, measure
the temple of God. Number two, measure the altar
of God. And number three, measure them
that worship therein. Measure the people of God. Three
things to measure, the temple of God, the altar of God, and
the people of God. Measure them. But he said, there's
another area outside the temple. It's called the court of the
Gentiles. Don't measure that. You see,
the Gentiles, that's a figurative name for all of the enemies of
the Gospel. You remember, to a Jew, Gentiles
were dogs, right? They're dogs. And when the Lord
built the temple, Solomon's temple, when it was built, the Gentiles
could go into what was called the court of the Gentiles, but
they couldn't go any further. That's as far as you can go.
They couldn't actually go inside the temple. So the Lord says, I want you
to measure. Take this read, and go measure. Measure the temple
of God, the altar of God, and the people of God, but don't
measure the Gentiles. They're outside. Because they're
the ones who've been persecuting the Lord's people. for a set
number of days, as he says, a set number of months, 42 months,
which is half of seven years. We'll get into that this evening.
But here's the standard. A reed. Take the same reed. Measure. Measure the temple of
God, the altar of God, and the people of God. The same measurement. Now what is the measurement?
Well, I think it's maybe four things. I'll give you four units
of measurement. The reed is the Word of God.
Measure everything by the Word of God. Right? You know that. Measure every teaching, every
doctrine, every religion, every preacher. Measure it. There is
already a set reed. to measure every message that
you'll ever hear. It's the Word of God. Be like
the Bereans. The Bereans. They searched the
Scriptures daily. They were more noble than the
people from Thessalonica in that they searched the Scriptures
daily to see if these things were so. And they took the reed
of the Word of God You see, this is the rule. This is the measuring
rod. Just because I say something,
that don't mean it's right. And we have to be, you know,
we want to trust our preachers, and I certainly want to be a
trustworthy preacher. But you must always, always,
always, always take the doctrine that I preach and lay it alongside
the reed of the Word of God. If it measures up, it's the truth. And if it doesn't measure up,
that's time to look for a new preacher. That's right. We've got to measure up. The
Word of God. The Word of God. That's what
we use to tell whether something's true or whether something's false. If a Mormon comes to see you,
two Mormons come to see you, or Jehovah's Witnesses come to
see you, or somebody from a local Baptist church comes to see you,
or whoever it is, and they're going to talk to you about the
things of God, say, wait a minute, let's pull out the reed. And if they say, well, I've got this
other book over here. No, that's not a reed. That's
a sycamore limb or something. That's not a reed. This is the
reed. And if they said, no, I'm going
to use this over here, say, well, all I use is the reed, because
that's all the Lord has instructed us to use is the Word of God.
And if they won't listen to the Word of God, then don't even
bid them Godspeed. Just say, you're out of here.
We've got nothing more to say. We've got to have some common
ground. The common ground's got to be the Word of God. It's the
reed of the Word. This is the measurement. And
I'll tell you something else this reed is. It's the Law of
God. This reed is not only the Word
of God, but the Law of God. What does the Law of God demand?
Perfection. There's no leniency in the Law. Well, preacher, I don't think
my life measures up to the law of God, but I'm doing the best
I can. Wait a minute! If you don't measure up, you're
not going to make it. You see, the Word of God says
in the book of Galatians chapter 3, He that continueth not in
all things that are written in the law to do them. That's the
man who's a goner. You've got to measure up to all
things in the law. The reed. The rod of the law
of God. There's got to be perfect conformity.
Thirdly, what is the reed? It's the gospel of God. It's
the gospel of God. The standard for the good news
is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, the message of finished
redemption. Don't tell me it isn't finished.
Don't tell me He didn't save His people from their sins. Don't
tell me there wasn't a full reconciliation of the Lord's elect to God by
the death of Christ Jesus on the cross. The reed, the rule
of God, the rod of God says He finished it. That's what Christ
Himself said. It is finished. Put every doctrine
laid down beside the Word of God, the Law of God, the Gospel
of God. And I'll give you one more, the
Righteousness of God. The Righteousness of God. That's
the standard, that's the measurement, that's the rule by which all
men will be measured in the Day of Judgment. The Righteousness
of God. Acts 17.31 says, God's appointed
a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness by
that man whom He hath ordained whereof He's given assurance
to all men and that He raised Him from the dead. The rod by
which you're going to be measured and I'm going to be measured
and everybody else is going to be measured, the rod by which
we're measured right now is the righteousness of God. And like it says in Proverbs
11, verse 3, a false balance is an abomination to the Lord,
but a just weight is His delight, so a just measurement is His
delight. Righteousness. The righteousness
of God. Well, and He says, now you take
the standard, now take the reed, take the rod, You take the Word
of God, take the Law of God, take the Gospel of God, take
the Righteousness of God. Measure everything and everybody
by that. Now, here's what you're to measure.
Number one, measure the temple of God. Not an actual temple. That is not a literal temple,
but it's real. It is a real temple. The meaning
is, measure the sanctuary. Measure the sanctuary. And remember,
it's got to measure up to the Word of God, the Law of God,
the Gospel of God, and the Righteousness of God. The thing of it is, in
the Word of God, you know who the temple of God are? All believers. We're the temple
of God. You're the temple of God. Read.
We don't have the time to look at it. 2 Corinthians 6 says this.
Ephesians chapter 2, 10-22, chapter 3, verse 18. The elect of God
are the temple of God. The sanctuary of God. God abides
with His people. Just like Solomon's temple. We're the abode of God. Living
stones. and fit into the temple. And
then, measure the altar of God. Measure the altar of God. What
does the altar of God stand for? The blood of the sacrifice. The
blood of substitution. When we read here about the altar
of God, that's the place of death. It's the place of redemption.
Now there are lots of preachers who talk about the death of Jesus
Christ, who talk about the blood of Christ. But you've always
got to measure what men say about the altar, about the sacrifice. You've always got to measure
what they say by the law of God, the gospel of God, the Word of God, the righteousness
of God. And I'll tell you, there's only
one altar that measures up. That's the altar of Jesus Christ.
The altar where He died. In fact, He is our altar. Hebrews
chapter 13 says that. And then, measure the people
of God. It says measure, watch it, them
that worship therein. Measure each individual person. All who worship there. Do they
measure up? Do you measure up? That's the
question. Do you measure up? How good's a man got to be before
he measures up before God? He's got to be as good as Christ
Jesus. He's got to be made the righteousness
of God in the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you measure up? That's the
standard. I can't answer for you as to
whether you measure up or not. But I'll say this, by the grace
of God, not in myself, but because of who my Savior is, And because
of His bloody sacrifice, because of His righteousness freely imputed
to me, bless the name of God, I can say I measure up. I measure
up. Do you measure up? And the Lord says concerning
the Gentiles, leave them out. I'll leave them
out. I'll leave them full of it. Oh, isn't it wonderful that we
measure up? For you see, God has made Christ
Jesus to be our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. And we measure up. Even me! I measure up! by the free and sovereign grace
of God I measure up. Let's sing a song.