opened to Revelation chapter
6. Every message that we get from
God, that I receive from the Lord to deliver to you is vital. I know that. This is serious
business. I've been preparing messages
for many years, ever since I went into the pastorate in 1975. And I think I can honestly say
that I don't take it lightly. I still study. seek a message from God. And I think I've got a message
from God for all of us today. I've been very burdened this
week. Kind of feel a weight on me about
this particular message. And I hope God will enable me
to deliver it to you, and that God would enable you to receive
it. And may God do His work according
to His will. Without any real introduction,
I want to go directly to my scripture, to my text. which is Revelation
chapter 6 verses 5 and 6. Revelation 6 verse 5, when he
had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast. You remember back in chapter
4, the third beast has the face of a man. And the third beast
said, to John, he said, come and see. And John said, and I
beheld in low a black horse. That's our subject today, the
rider on the black horse. It says, he that sat on him had
a pair of balances in his hand. He had scales, in other words. And John said, I heard a voice
in the midst of the four beasts say, a measure of wheat for a
penny and three measures of barley for a penny. And he says, this
voice says, see that thou art hurt not the oil and the wine. The mention of these unusually
inflated prices of grain indicates a shortage of food. Back in those
days, because it says you get a measure of wheat for a penny,
that is about a quart of wheat for a penny, or three quarts
of barley for a penny. Back in those days, a penny was
an average day's wage. That's according to Matthew chapter
20 and verse number 2. Man worked all day just to get
enough money to make enough money to buy sufficient meal to fix
bread for himself. wheat being the best grain. But
of course, he had other expenses, and he's got no money left over
for other expenses. So maybe he wants to buy less
expensive grain, so he buys barley. And for a day's wage, he can
now get not one, not two, three quarts of barley for a day's
wage. This would be if you had a family. But as I say, man had other expenses
on top of that. The mention of these scales indicates
a very careful weighing out, weighing out that which was very
scarce. We're talking about scarcity.
It isn't that there isn't any grain, but it's just not much
of it. That's the case of supply and
demand. Price goes up. One writer said
the price was a dozen times more than average. This is indicating
a time of dearth a time of scarcity, a time of
lack of rain, indicating a time of famine. Not that there's an absence of
bread, but it's in very limited supply. It's a rider on the black horse.
Here again, I don't believe this is speaking about a literal famine. I don't think it's talking about
an actual shortage of bread. I think that is actually mentioned
in the next one, the opening of the fourth seal. Because if
you look down in verse 8, and I looked, here comes the fourth
rider on a horse. These are the four horsemen of
the apocalypse. John says, I looked, and behold,
a pale horse. The name of him that sat on it
was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power, or authority,
was given unto him over the fourth part of the earth to kill with
sword and with, what's the next word, with hunger. There's the
hungry part. and then with death, that is
with pestilence and disease, and with the beasts of the earth.
So, whatever is indicated by this rider on the black horse,
I don't think it's literal. I think there's something else
to this. What then is this opening of the third seal? What is it
all about? What do we understand from the
rider on the black horse? Well, for one thing, it's the
opposite of the rider on the white horse. Does that make sense?
This is a black horse. We did start off with a white
horse. White horse. What do we see in
the rider of the white horse? Well, we see the Lord Jesus going
forth with the Word of Life. We see Him going forth conquering
hearts. Going forth, the Scripture says,
He goes forth conquering and to conquer. And what does He
give to men? He gives to men the Bread of
Life. That's who He is. He's the Bread
of Life. He said, I am the Bread of Life. In John chapter 6, He said, I
am the bread of life. This is the bread that came down
from heaven that a man may eat thereof and not die. He said,
if a man eat of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread
that I will give, what is the bread that I will give? It's
my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. In other
words, the Lord Jesus and the laying down of His life Our blessed
Redeemer and the death that He died upon the cross of Calvary.
There's the bread of life. And we eat that bread. What does
that mean? We receive this bread. We feast
on this bread. Like we're feasting this morning.
We feast on the bread of life. We believe Him. We receive Him
into our innermost being. This bread. The Lord Jesus is riding upon
the white horse of His Gospel. He pulls out His bow. He shoots
arrows of conviction, arrows that show us our neediness and
arrows that create within us a hunger. A hunger. Not a hunger for the things of
the world. We already got that hunger, but
He gives us a hunger that we didn't have before. A hunger
and a thirst for righteousness that only God can give. It's
a different kind of bread. It's the bread of life. But now wait. This is our Lord who is opening
these seals. And this very same one, the Son
of God, who in opening the very first seal, which is throughout
this gospel age, He's riding on this great white horse of
the gospel. He's given to people an appetite,
a desire for the bread of life. He also goes forth on a black
horse, and He makes this bread to be
scarce. He makes it to be scarce. In fact, sometimes he just holds
back the bread. And when there is no spiritual
bread, or when this spiritual bread is just very scarce, when
this bread is in very limited, very limited supply, we call
that a famine, a spiritual famine. And I tell you, it seems to me
that this spiritual famine mainly, not all the time, but mainly
this spiritual famine, this removal of bread, It arises as a result of men
not availing themselves of the bread that is at hand. Bread that is available. I believe
the very best commentary on the rider of the black horse is to
be found in the book of Amos, chapter 8. If you'd go to the
Old Testament with me, to the book of Amos, chapter 8. You'll find Daniel, then Hosea,
Joel, and then Amos. Amos, he's the third of the minor
prophets. Amos chapter 8. I think it's
the very best commentary on this rider on the black horse, the
opening of the third seal. Amos Chapter 8. And I want you
to listen to this next statement that I'm going to make. I wrote
it down. It's virtually the same as what
I said just a couple of minutes ago, but I want to make sure
I get your attention. I do believe that men do not
make use of, do not eat of, that bread that is set before us day
in and day out, or at least every Lord's Day, when men and women
and young people do not avail themselves of the bread that
is at hand, oft times, oft times, God in judgment just takes that
bread away. He just takes it away. He said
it before you so many times. The bread of life. Salvation.
Forgiveness. Righteousness. Paradise. God. Christ Jesus. All the full and free forgiveness
of sins. The bread is set before you over
and over and over again. And you're not hungry. I tell
you what God just might do. He might just take the bread
away from you altogether. That's what this is about. That's
what it's about. I know a literal famine. A literal
famine, a famine of physical bread. Very physical bread being
scarce. Real food. being scarce, that'd
be awful. That'd be a horrible thing. I
see on television, you've seen on television in some of the,
especially the third world countries, scenes of people who are genuinely
hungry. You know, we don't We don't really
know what hunger is about. I say, Nancy, I'm hungry. Fix
me something to eat. Well, I'm not really. I'm not
going hungry. Does it look like I'm in need?
I'm not too much in need, but I do want something else to eat.
But you know, you see people who are genuinely hungry. You
see pictures of a land that's in a famine where God doesn't
send the rain. I tell you, we live on the daily
mercies of God, don't we? God's got to send His sunshine. God's got to send His rain. He's
got to send His rain. God's not making any more water.
He's made all the water He's ever going to make, but He has
a process through evaporation and so forth that He makes it
to rain. But He doesn't have to cause
it to rain on our gardens. And when He holds back the rain,
Boy, the ground gets dried up. It goes to cracking open. What
does that mean? No wheat, no barley, or very
little, very little grain, very little corn grown. People get
hungry in the midst of a famine. And that's awful. That moves
our hearts. We give to feed the hungry. We share with what God's given
us. But I'll tell you about a famine that's even worse. That's a spiritual
famine. When God holds back the rain
of His grace, when He holds back the refreshing showers of His
mercy, When the Spirit of God, He isn't pleased to take the
Word of God and refresh the souls of men and women and young people
and people die from lack of bread. And they're already dying and
they don't even know it. That's what sin's done to us.
We're dying and we don't even know it. See, the worst sort
of famine that there is is a spiritual famine, a scarcity, a scarcity
of the bread of life. It doesn't mean that there isn't
any gospel. God does send a gospel. He sends
a gospel over here, sends a refreshing shower of rain. Showers of blessings! Oh, showers
of blessings we plead! Mercy drops round us are falling,
but for the showers we plead! Oh God, rain on us in Your grace! Rain on us by Your Spirit! He
does that, but while He's blessing this area over here, well, a
lot of other areas just dried up and parched. What's the reason? God's not sending any rain. Not
sending any rain. Spirit of God is not working
over there. Here in Amos chapter 8, you know
the nation of Israel, they often rebelled against God. I mean
this goes all the way back to the days when they came out of
Egypt. Going toward the land of promise. The land that God promised Abraham
that he'd give to his descendants? We're going toward a land of
milk and honey! Boy, and the first little obstacle
they met, the first little speed bump in the road of life, and
they began to murmur, I wish we was back in Egypt. Rebellious
against God! God said, I'll give you bread,
I'll give you manna. Fussed again. We don't have any
water. Did you bring this out here to
die of thirst? God gave them water from a rock.
Things went along pretty good. Then they'd fuss about something
else. God provided for their needs and they'd fuss about something
else. They'd rebel against something
else. He gave them Moses as a great prophet. He gave them Aaron as
their high priest. Time and time again, they revolted
against their leadership. But God kept sending them prophets. These men tell them the truth.
Men who would rebuke them. Men who would compel them to
come back to the Lord. They'd fall into a state of spiritual
lethargy. God would send some heathen nation
to come in and they'd whip up on them and punish them. And
they'd say, oh God help us! And He would. He would. And for a little while they'd
do right and then they'd pick up the idols of the heathen and
start worshipping them. And this happened over and over
and over again. And still God kept sending them
prophets to tell them the truth. And Moses, in his last days,
he saw this happening. You can look this up later. Deuteronomy
31.27, Moses said to the children of Israel, it's just right before
God took him up on the mountain and showed him the promised land
that he couldn't go into and then God took him to glory. Deuteronomy
31.27, Moses said to the children of Israel, I know thy rebellion. You're a stiff-necked people.
Behold, while I am yet alive with you this day, you've been
rebellious against the Lord, and much more after my death."
That's what he said. Much more after my death. This
is not going to be the end of it. You've been rebellious these
40 years, but this rebellion is not going to stop. And it
didn't. It went on and on and on. And then came Names chapter
8. Amos chapter 8. It's as though God's patience
has just wore out. And I know God's emotions are
not like ours, but He uses words like that. It's as though God
says, I've had enough. I've been merciful to you time
and time and time again, Now it's coming to an end. Look
at Amos chapter 8 verse 1. Thus saith the Lord God, or thus
hath the Lord God showed unto me, manifested unto me, and behold
a basket of summer fruit. The Lord says Israel is like
the last fruit of the season that is ripe. You pick the last
fruit, it's the last picking, Them the farmers, He's finished
with them for the season. And the Lord is saying in effect,
I'm finished with you. I'm finished with you. You see the basket of summer
fruit is the nation of Israel. God had done so much for them.
Now there's nothing left to be done to them but to judge them. All that God had done for them
by way of His providence, by way of His daily mercies to them,
by way of the chastening of them, by rebuking them, His visitations
to them, all of His kindness to them, His humiliating them
through captivity, through hardships, it did them no good. He sent
them prophets who warned them, People continued to rebel against
Him. They just rebelled more and more.
And God's patience with them has come to an end. He's finished
with them. He had given them His Word. He had given to them
His Law. He had given to them His Ordinances.
He gave to them His Tabernacle. With all of the furniture that
pictured Christ Jesus, some aspect of Christ Jesus, His person or
His work, He gave Him the tabernacle, He gave Him the temple. He gave to Israel, now listen,
He gave to Israel advantages and privileges that He did not
give to any other nation on this earth. And most of them wasted
them. His servants preached to them
the gospel of grace. They taught them about substitution. That the guilty will only go
free if a suitable, innocent victim dies in their stead. And
all of the prophets, they pointed to the Son of God, the Messiah
who's going to come. And they said, all of these sacrifices
point to the Son of God. We've got to have His blood.
We've got to have His sin offering in order for God to put away
our sins. Look to Christ Jesus. He's the one God's going to lift
up on a tree. God gave them teachers and preachers
and prophets who told them that Messiah was coming, told them
about salvation being His work. He sent them all these prophets.
You know what they did to the prophets? They killed them! They
killed them! The Lord Jesus said to the Pharisees
of His day, He said, ìWoe unto you, for you build the sepulchers
of the prophets, and your fathers killed them. You build these
great monumental sepulchers, and as your mom and your daddy
and your granddaddy and your grandmama, going way on back,
they butchered the prophets.î And they said, ìIf we lived back
then, we wouldnít have killed them.î And the Lord Jesus said,
ìYes, you would. You would have done the same
thing.î You brag on dead prophets and you kill living prophets.
And they killed Him who is the prophet of prophets. The Son
of God. Go back to that passage. Hold
your place in Amos. Don't lose that. I don't want
you to have to hunt for it again. But go back to Isaiah. Go back
to Isaiah 5. Let me just read you. A verse
that our brother read to us. Isaiah chapter 5, verse 4. All of these things God did for us. Look at Isaiah 5 and verse
4. Here is what God said. What could have been done more
to my vineyard that I have not done to you? What more could
I have done for you? Go back to chapter 1. Look at
Isaiah chapter 1. God calls on all of creation
as witnesses. He says in the 2nd verse, Isaiah
1 verse 2, He says, He says, Hear, O heavens, give ear, O
earth. For the Lord hath spoken, I have
nourished and brought up children, they have rebelled against Me
time and time and time again. The ox knoweth his owner, the
ass his master at crib, but Israel doth not know, my people doth
not consider." Ah, sinful nation. A people laden, laden with iniquity. A seed of evildoers. They're
children that are corruptors. They have forsaken the Lord.
They have provoked the Holy One of Israel. They are gone away
backward. They provoked Him to anger. Look
at verse 5. Why should you be stricken anymore?
Why should I fool you anymore? You'll just revolt more and more. He says the whole head is sick,
it's diseased. The whole heart is faint. The
inner man, the chief part, has no wholeness. Why should I fool you anymore?
Why should I send you another mercy? Go back to Amos. Back to Amos. That's why God
said in that passage that Ron read to us, God said, I'll just
lay it waste. That's what you read. God said,
I'll just lay it waste. I'm going to knock down the fences
and just let all the nations come in and overwhelm you. The
Lord was simply saying, I'm done with you. Look here in Amos chapter 8 verse
2. He said, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, a basket of summer
fruit. And then the Lord said unto me,
the end is come upon my people Israel. And you read this last
statement. You underline this. I will not
again pass by them anymore. Boy, there's a finality to that. I will not pass by them anymore." Oh, they'll go on with their
religion. They'll go on with their singing. Verse 3, the songs
of the temple, they'll just be howlings. Just a bunch of dead
people meeting together. They'll continue to hold their
services, they'll have their feast days, they'll have their
holy days, but there'll just be so many spiritually dead bodies
going through the ceremonial motions of religion. That's all
it'll be, because I'm not going to be there, God says. Look at
verse 7. I tell you, I read this. I studied this this week. Look
at this. Verse 7. The Lord hath sworn
by the excellency of Jacob saying, He says, Surely I will never
forget any of their works. I'll never forget. I'll never
forget. I won't forget what you've done.
That's what God says. Everything you've done has offended
me. You've rebelled against me. You've
provoked me to justice. You've multiplied iniquities. You've transgressed my law. I'll
never forget what you've done." Oh my goodness! God says, I'll
never forget. That scares me to death. God says, I'll never forget. I rejoice to say to the people
of God, the Lord says, your sins and your iniquities will I remember
no more. That's what He says. I won't
remember them anymore. They're covered by the blood
of the Lord Jesus. Jesus paid it all. All the debt
I owe, God's not going to remember it anymore. But to these people
to whom God has showed mercies for years and years, and they're
no better. They're no better. Every single
kindness that God has shown you, that you've received from His
hand, you've received thousands of daily mercies from Him, and
yet you're no better, but you're worse and worse. God says, I'm
going to never forget what you've done. That just makes me shudder. I'll
never forget. I'll never forget your rebellion. I'll never forget your unbelief.
I'll never forget your refusal to believe. My servants, I sent
preachers to you who preach Christ Jesus, His blood and His righteousness,
salvation for the sinful. There's forgiveness with the
Lord. I sent my preachers to you and you sat there and dozed
off and you wasn't interested and you kept kind of sneaking
a peek at your watch saying, when will it be over? God says,
I'll never forget what you've done. I'll never forget. I'll never forget your rejection
of my glorious gospel. I said before you, my darling
son, I had preachers tell you about my grace, that I received
sinners through the doing and the dying of my own darling son,
but you wouldn't have the message. I'll never forget what you did. I'll never forget that you refused
to bow to my way of saving sinners by my sovereign grace. And you
put your fist up in my face and said, I believe in free will. I'll never forget what you did,
God said. I'll never forget. If that don't sober you up, nothing
will. I'll never forget. Look at verse
9. It shall come to pass in that
day, saith the Lord, I'll cause the sun to go down at noon, I'll
darken the earth in a clear day. In other words, God says, I'm
going to take the light away. I'm going to take the truth away.
After all, men love darkness rather than light because their
deeds are evil. Christ is the light of the world.
He came. The light shined in darkness,
but the darkness comprehended it not. They didn't perceive
Him to be the light. He says in verse number 10, I'll
turn your feasts into mourning, your songs into lamentation.
I'll bring up sackcloth upon all loins and baldness upon every
head. I'll make it as the mourning
of an only son and the end thereof will be bitter. It will be a
bitter day. It's a bitter day. He says, you
go on with your feasts. You go on with your happiness.
You go on every day thinking, boy, everything's fine. But one of these days, your feasting
is going to come to an end. And it's going to be a bitter
end because you're going to wind up in hell. That's what's going
to happen. And forevermore, you're going
to think back all those sermons I heard. If I could just hear
one more. I sure wish I could hear one
more. Oh, I wish I could hear one more
of Brother Mahan's sermons. I wish I could hear one more
of Brother Parker's sermons. I wish I could hear one more
of Brother Byrd's sermons. I wish I could hear the gospel
one more time. No good news for you, my friend.
Because when God sent you the good news, you said, hmm, not
interested. Not interested. Like those folks
in Antioch. The Apostle Paul preached to
the memories on Mars Hill. And you wanted somebody that
said some believed and some believed and some believed not. And then
some of them said, we'll hear you again on these things. Guess
what? He didn't go back to Athens.
He said, there will always be another
Sunday. Will there? There will always
be another service. I can hear the gospel. You sure
about that? You sure about that? The bread is set before you. It said before you, God give me an appetite to eat.
God help me to believe what I'm hearing. I tell you, He might take it
right away from you. In fact, He might do this. You've heard
the gospel of God's sovereign grace so many times. And you
just, in your heart, you're kind of like this. You're obstinate. Tell you what God might do. He
does this to people. You can read 2 Thessalonians
chapter 2. He'll send you a false prophet. And He'll preach something to
you that's a lie, and you'll embrace it. And God's saying
that I'm going to damn you for it. I'm going to send you error
in judgment. And you'll swallow it as we say
hook, line, and sinker. And God says, I'm going to damn
you for it because you believed not. You had no love for the
truth. I set the truth before you. You
had no interest in it. No interest. God didn't do those kind of things.
God sends famines. He sends literal famines. What
about that famine throughout the land in the days of Joseph?
God sent that. Psalm 105 verse 16 says, moreover
God called for a famine upon the land. He break the whole
staff of bread. God did that. And God didn't
take away spiritual bread too. Or he can make it very scarce. There's another passage of Scripture
where the Lord's talking about Israel and He says, Israel has
turned to idols. Israel has turned, they've turned
to idols. Well, they've turned to idols
many times before and God came, He chastened them and they'd
come back. And they'd go to their idols
again. God'd visit them and He'd visit
them through persecution of heathen countries. And then they'd come
back. This went on over and over again. And then Ephraim is turned
to idols. You know what God finally said?
Leave him alone. Just leave him alone. I'm done
with him. Our Lord Jesus, there He was
among the Pharisees. They could ask Him questions
sometimes in order to trip Him up. But He was willing to talk
to them. He is the truth. He was the walking
truth. They wouldn't listen to Him.
They wouldn't believe Him. They had the traditions of the elders.
They had their own beliefs. Over and over again, He said
before them the truth. They wouldn't believe. Disciples
came to Him one day and said, Lord, you've offended the Pharisees. Well, He had offended them many
times before and He kept saying before them the truth. But this
time, when they said, you've offended the Pharisees, He said,
leave them alone. Leave them alone. Don't preach
to them. Don't testify to them. Don't
cast your pearls before swine. They're just swine. How widespread can this famine
be? Could affect a whole nation.
God doesn't have to send His gospel to other nations or to
this nation. You read over in the book of
Acts chapter 16 where Paul and Silas and Timothy, they wanted
to go into Asia. It says they assayed to go into
Asia and preach the Word. They wanted to go. They desired
to go. And you know what the Spirit of God said? Not going
over there. The Lord, if somebody doesn't
go over there and preach to them, they won't have any gospel. God
said, don't go over there. Just leave that land in a famine.
And you know what? For most of Asia, they're still
in a famine. Yeah. Well, they got all kinds
of religions over there. It could happen in a nation.
It can happen in a city. It could happen in a church.
It could be a famine in a church. Or it could be a famine that
just an individual is in. Somebody said something to me.
It's been several months ago. Not here. Somewhere else. Said
to me about a certain preacher. You know, I listen to him and
I don't get anything out of it. Do others get something out of
it? Well, they seem to. And I've talked to some of the
others and they were blessed. Maybe you and the famine. That scared me to death. The
Word of God that used to burn in your heart and it doesn't
burn anymore? Remember those disciples on the
road to Emmaus and the Lord opened their understanding to show that
all of the Scriptures were about Himself? The Scriptures said,
Ought not Christ have suffered these things and enter into His
glory? And the Lord said, I'm leaving.
They said, Well, abide with us. And He did. And then He went
to be with His disciples. And you know what those two disciples
that was on the road to Mass, they said, didn't our hearts
burn when He opened to us the Word of God? Does your heart
burn with the Word? Does it still affect you? Does
it still make you to rejoice like it used to? No, not like it used to. Oh,
you may be getting into a famine. It ought to scare you and say,
Lord, send the refreshing showers my way. I don't want to be in
a famine here. Let me show you one more thing
and I'll close up shop here. Go back to Revelation 6. I've
just got to show you this. And as you go back to Revelation
6, before I make this final point, I need to say this. I don't know
too much about deadlines. But it seems to me like in the
Word of God, there are deadlines. You just go so far and God says, just go on. I know
God fulfilled His purpose. There's no question about that.
But I also know you and I, we better believe this gospel. If
you just keep on spurning the gospel, lay hold of it, don't
have any hard interest, God may one of these days just
say, that's it for you. And if He says, I won't forget,
I'm not going to forget your unbelief. I'm not going to forget
your rebellion. I'm not going to forget all those
times I sent you the gospel and you had no interest. I'll never
forget, not throughout eternity will I forget, God says. That's judicial blindness that
God's going to give you. Take away the bread. But let
me give you this. Verse 6 again. I heard a voice
in the midst of the four beasts say, a measure of wheat for a
penny, three measures of barley for a penny. In other words,
bread is going to be scarce. It isn't that it isn't out there.
It's out there, but it's going to be scarce. But it said, remember this, don't
you hurt the oil and the wine. Don't hurt the oil and the wine.
Don't hold back the oil and the wine. What's the oil? That's
the work of the Spirit of God. God's Spirit is going to do His
work. That's for sure. I rejoice in
that. Whatever our rebellion and our
revolting against God's truth is, God's Spirit is always going
to be successful. Don't hold back the oil and don't
hold back the wine. You know what the wine is? That's
the gospel. That's the gospel. The gospel
is still going to go forth triumphant. I think about that fellow. He's
on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. He fell among thieves. They robbed
him, stripped him of his clothing, beat him up, left him half dead. The Levite and the priest, they
came by and looked at him. Went to the other side of the
road. See, the law can't help you. We've been beat up. We've
been robbed in the fall. We're half dead. We're dead spiritually
and we're going to die physically. But a certain Samaritan passed
his way. That's Christ Jesus. And he saw
Him. He came to Him where He was.
And you know what He did? He poured in the oil and the
wine. And the voice says to the rider
on the black horse, make bread scarce. However, you can't stop
the work of the Spirit of God and you can't stop the progress
of the gospel. And I'm so thankful for that.
And you may go on in your unbelief until you go to hell. You may
go on in your rebellion till you finally wind up with a bitter,
bitter end and God says, I'll never forget all you've done. But I'll tell you this, the Spirit
of God and the Gospel of God will continue to do its work.
God will be successful. Because the rider on the white
horse went forth conquering and to conquer. Maybe he'll conquer
somebody today. Oh, I pray that he will. I pray
that he will.