In the scripture, the final end
of all things, the second coming of Christ, the whole culmination
of God's redemptive plan is often symbolized with a harvest. And this harvest involves both
an in-gathering, which would refer to Christ coming the second
time to gather His church together. That is, those who have already
gone to be with the Lord in spirit, and those who are left on earth
at the time of His second coming. That's the gathering together.
A lot of times you'll hear people refer to that as the rapture.
The word rapture is a Latin word. That means to be caught up. And
2 Thessalonians 2 does speak of those, when Christ comes again,
that there will be an ingathering of people. And that's those we're
going to see here in verse 13 where we're going to begin, who
die in the Lord. And we'll talk about that in
just a moment. But that's one harvest. That's the harvest of
salvation. That's the harvest of in-gathering. That's the good harvest of sinners
saved by the grace of God, by the Lord Jesus Christ. And they
will be gathered in, gathered up, together to be glorified
together. And that glorification is described
in 1 Corinthians 15, where it says, in the twinkling of an
eye, we'll all be changed. And we don't know a whole lot
about that. In fact, most of what we know about that in its
details is given right there in that long passage in 1 Corinthians
15. And I've got several things I
wrote about that in the book What Is Salvation on the glorified
realm. And usually you can just forget
it as far as trying to answer everybody's curiosities because
it's just, you know, those are times where we need to speak
when the scriptures speak and we need to hush when the scriptures
hush. So we just think of it that way. But it is a glorious
thing. The second harvest, there's actually two harvests. The second
one is the harvest of God's wrath. John the Baptist spoke of it
in Matthew chapter 3 where he will come with a winnowing fan.
He's going to, this is where Christ separates the wheat from
the tares and the tares which are to be destroyed, eternal
damnation. And so we're going to look at
this first, just in the first few verses here. Look at verse
13. He says, and I heard a voice
from heaven saying unto me, write, blessed are the dead which die
in the Lord. Blessed. Now you're all familiar
with what we call the Beatitudes. Normally when we think of the
Beatitudes, we think of Matthew chapter 5, the beginning of the
Sermon on the Mount, where Christ began, blessed are the poor in
spirit, blessed are the meek, you know, he goes down through
there, pronouncing blessings. And that's what a Beatitude is.
It's the pronouncement of a blessing from God upon sinners by his
grace. But there are more Beatitudes
than that which is found, those that are found in Matthew chapter
5, and this is one of them. There's several Beatitudes in
the book of Revelation. There's Old Testament Beatitudes. Psalm 32, blessed is the man
to whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, whose sins are covered. That's a Beatitude in the Old
Testament, Psalm 32. So here's one in the book of
Revelation. And this word blessed, a lot of times in modern translations,
you'll see the word happy used instead of blessed. Well, there
is a happiness, there is a joy that goes along with this blessedness,
but I don't like that translation because it sort of indicates
that if you're not happy in your feelings, then you're not blessed,
and that's not true. You can go back to so many examples,
both in the Old Testament and the New Testament, and we who
are true believers, we can go through things in our own life
that we're just not particularly happy about, and we may lose
sight of the blessedness that God has given us in Christ through
His blood and righteousness, but we're still blessed. Job
was blessed throughout his life, but he wasn't always happy. So
that's why I don't like to translate that word happy. Blessed means
blessed of God, graced of God. So what he's talking about, he
says, blessed are the dead which die in the Lord. Now who's blessed
here? Those who die in the Lord. Now
you'll see this verse used at a lot of funerals. And that's
okay when it comes to a true believer, a sinner saved by grace. But the context is the final
harvest. That's what he's talking about.
When Christ comes the second time to engather his people in
that harvest and to destroy the wicked, who's going to be blessed? Who's going to be cursed? Well,
blessed are those which die in the Lord. The key is in the Lord.
What is it to be in the Lord? Well, if you study the scriptures,
There are several applications of that all coming down to the
final salvation and glorification of a sinner saved by grace. To
be in Christ, you could say it that way. To be in Christ is
to be chosen of God before the foundation of the world. And
people will deny that today, but that is exactly what the
Bible teaches. God chose a people before the
foundation of the world. And somebody says, well, I don't
agree with that. Well, that's okay if that's the way you want
to feel, but don't go around here claiming you believe the
Bible. Because the Bible teaches that. The Bible teaches that
if God hadn't chosen a people before the foundation of the
world, then none of us would be saved. Isn't that right? None of us. God's electing grace. Well, what does that mean to
be in the Lord? Well, He chose us in Christ. You can read about
that in Ephesians chapter one. how He chose us, predestinated
us to the salvation that He has provided in Christ. It's all
in Christ. God's whole purpose from eternity,
God's whole view of things from eternity was always settled in
His mind and purpose because of the determinate counsel and
foreknowledge of God to save His people in Christ. It was
all with the cross in view. God has never blessed his people
outside of Christ. God's love is in Christ. God's
mercy is in Christ. God's grace is in Christ. Outside
of Christ, there is no love, mercy, and grace. There's only
wrath. And we've talked about that, the hatred of God. People
don't want to hear about the hatred of God, but the Bible
teaches it. But see, the reason, when people think about God hating
anybody, they think, well, that's unfair, that's unjust. Oh, no.
Now, if I hated you, that would be unfair and unjust. That would
be sinful. Because I'm a sinful human being,
and any hatred I express is selfish, self-centered, sinful, Self-righteous,
proud, but when it comes to God, his hatred is his justice. It's his indignation. You've
heard the term righteous indignation. Well, that's God. That's not
me or you. You see, we may have some semblance
of righteous indignation when we think about the false gospels
of this world. David expressed that by the power
of the Holy Spirit. He said, do not I hate them that
hate thee? But that's a different thing,
see. We're told to love our enemies.
Because we're no better than our enemies. And if it weren't
for the grace of God, we'd be just like our enemies. And we're
not always right in areas of relationships. But see, when God does it, it's
righteous, it's holy, it's just. So God's not unfair, God's not
unjust. But here, when he talks about
those who die in the Lord, he's talking about those whom God
chose and gave to Christ from the foundation of the world.
Secondly, to die in the Lord is to die as a justified sinner. That means that he died for you.
That means he washed you in his blood at the cross of Calvary. from all your sins." Now what
does that mean? That's metaphorical language,
isn't it? And what that means is that Christ
paid the full debt of all my sins on the cross. He satisfied
the justice of God. And as a result of that, I stand
before God clothed in His righteousness. There's another metaphor. What
is that? That's His righteousness imputed. That's what it means
to be in the Lord. To die in the Lord means to die
as justified, not guilty. Not because of what you did or
decided, but not guilty because of what Christ did on the cross. And it means to stand before
God justified, righteous in Christ. I stand before God, not in righteousness
of my own, but in his righteousness, accounted, charged, reckoned
to me. My debt is fully paid. That's
what it is to die in the Lord. That's what it is to live in
the Lord. But it's what it is to die in the Lord. And then
to be in the Lord is to be in Him by God-given faith. When
the Holy Spirit brings a sinner under the preaching of the gospel
and gives them ears to hear and eyes to see. Now you know as
well as I do that we can hear the gospel with the physical
ear and it does not mean anything to us. Isn't that right? In fact, when I first began to
hear the gospel, the only thing it meant to me was something
that was distasteful. Remember, I've told you the story
how I set out on a mission to prove it wrong from the Bible,
and that was my first mistake. I say that tongue-in-cheek. That was the best thing I ever
did. That was by the providence of God. But to try to prove the
gospel, the true gospel now, not what I already believed as
a seminary student, but as the true gospel, I set out to prove
it wrong, and I found out, wait a minute, this is what the Bible's
really teaching. I just didn't believe it. And then at some
point in time, God gave me eyes to see and ears to hear, and
I said, I finally see it now. I know what it says. Now do I
believe it? Do I trust Him? Do I rest in
Him? You see, that's what it is to
be in Christ. So when he says in verse 13,
right blessed are the dead which dine the Lord. He's talking about
those who are found in the end As Paul described it in Philippians
chapter three, to be found in him, not having mine own righteousness,
which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of
Christ, even the righteousness, which is of God by faith. And
he says from henceforth. And that means from here on.
Okay. This is, this is eternal truth.
Now this is not just temporary. And he says, verse 13, Yea, saith
the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors. Now what he's
talking about is the persecutions, the opposition, the derision,
the accusations that come from the world. You remember we've
been talking about how this particular vision has shown how Satan An
anti-Christ, the beast that comes up out of the sea that represents
anti-Christian governments and empires and kings and world leaders
and nations. And the beast that comes up,
came up out of the land which represents anti-Christian religion,
even that which comes in the name of Christianity, but that
denies the doctrine of Christ. How they are set on opposing
the church in this world, persecuting, accusing, And the labors that
he's talking about there is that when this happens, when Christ
comes back, that's gone. There's no more opposition. Paul
described that in Philippians chapter 2. At that time, every
knee will bow, every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is
Lord. His enemies will be conquered.
His family God's elect, the redeemed of the Lord, the regenerate,
sinners saved by grace, will be gathered into the fold and
glorified and all the enemies will be conquered and there'll
be no more of that kind of labor of opposition, persecution. That's gone. And look what it
says in verse 13, it says in the last line, and their works
do follow them. Now isn't that interesting? It doesn't say their works precede
them or go before them, but they follow them. Why do they follow
us? Because they're the fruit of
God's grace. That's right. In other words,
the works of believers, we've talked about this before, but
I've got several passages of scripture in your lesson on this. The good works, the obedience,
the godly character of a believer, first of all, is not by our power
or our goodness. We're not the source of it, in
other words, is what I'm saying. It's not the product, as false
religion says today, of some spark of goodness down deep in
you that if you get under the right preacher in the right church,
he can draw it out of you, he can really light that flame.
And he'll do it with emotions, psychology, moral pep talks,
positive thinking, all that kind of stuff. That's not biblical.
Now, this issue of the works of a child of God, number one,
we're not the source of it, Christ is. Read John 15, what does he
say? Remember what he says in John
15? I am the vine You are the branches. We don't produce fruit. I hear preachers all the time
talking about saying, hey, well, we've got to produce fruit. No,
we don't produce fruit. The only kind of fruit we can
produce is dead fruit, fruit unto death. Christ is the vine. He produces the fruit. We bear
it. We're fruit bearers. So the works,
the obedience, the godly character of a believer, we're not the
source of it. We're not the power of it. The
power of this is the Holy Spirit within us. Remember in Galatians
5 when he talks about the works of the spirit and the works of
the flesh, and he talks about the warfare of the spirit and
the flesh? That's the Holy Spirit who indwells us. And the reason
we have such a struggle of warfare is because we have the Holy Spirit
who's given us our spirit, a new life, a new heart, whereby we
desire to serve God. not in order to earn our salvation,
but because we've been blessed by His grace and we want to thank
Him. I've often used the analogy of
if somebody came, you know, when we talk about when I teach the
doctrine of imputation, which is a lost doctrine today, isn't
it? People just really don't even consider it, basically.
But it's kind of, I use this, especially when I teach it to
children, I say it's kind of like if you went out and you
had a credit card from a bank, and you ran that credit card
to the point to where you owe a million dollars, And somebody
said, well, it'll take a lot to run up a million dollars.
Not today, probably. But anyway, you ran that up,
and you owed a million dollars, and you found that you didn't
have one solid penny to pay that debt. Now, that'd be a hard place
to be, wouldn't it? Talk about a burden on your back.
So you decide you're going to go into the banker, and you're
going to throw yourself at his mercy. Now, first of all, you
know how much good that would do you, don't you? I mean, nothing
against bankers. We've got some good brethren
who are bankers. Jerry Wages is a banker. But
his hands are tied, didn't he? He couldn't look at a person
like that and say, well, I can just show you mercy and forgive your debt.
Jerry couldn't do that. He don't have that kind of authority.
He's dealing with other people's money. But you're going to go
in, and you're going to beg, and you're going to plead, and
you're going to beg for mercy. So you go into the banker, and
you beg and plead for mercy. And the banker says, well, let's
look at the books here. And he opens the book. He said,
let's find your account. And he finds your name there,
and he goes down. He said, wait a minute. He said,
it says here that your debt's been paid in full. You don't owe a dime. Could you imagine if hearing
that, how much of a burden would be lifted off of you? Now, the
first thing you're going to want to know is who did that? I want
to go thank him. You see what I'm saying? And
you might find out it might have been your worst enemy or something
like that. In other words, you didn't earn it or didn't deserve
it. But then as you get up to leave, the banker says, well,
hold on, there's more. He says, not only has your debt been paid,
you don't owe a dime, you've got a million dollars to the
good in your account. Now that's what salvation is
like by the grace of God. Christ paid my debt. I was by
nature his enemy. I didn't deserve it, didn't earn
it. And listen, for the better part of my life in my natural
born state, I didn't even want it. That's the truth. Certainly didn't
know about it. He paid my debt, but not only
did he pay my debt, he gave me a million dollars to the good.
I have his righteousness. See? Now, knowing that's true,
do I want to thank him? Do I want to serve him? Do I
love him? You see what I'm saying? That's
what the works of believers... The works of believers do not
earn salvation, do not earn blessings, and do not earn rewards. That's
all the gift of God. And then thirdly on this thing
of works, the issue of works at the judgment, and we could
go to several scriptures here but I won't turn to them, they're
in your lesson. The issue of works at the judgment is not
what our works earn for us or do for us, it's what do our works
say about us. Do they evidence the grace and
power of God in our lives? Do they evidence our love for
Christ? Or do they evidence a legalistic unbeliever? That's why unbelievers
at the judgment will be judged by their works, and they'll come
out how? Lacking, found wanting, because
their works are legal efforts of self-righteous religion. And
the Lord will say to them, depart from me you that work iniquity,
I never knew you. Our works do not equal righteousness. The
only thing that's going to get us through at judgment is righteousness. Our works do not equal righteousness.
Where are we going to find righteousness? We plead Christ. His righteousness. You see what I'm saying? Well,
look at verse 14. He says, I looked and behold
a white cloud And upon the cloud one sat like unto the Son of
Man." Now, in the King James Version, when you read passages
like this in certain constructions, when it says, like unto the Son
of Man, it's not play-like. That's not what it means. It's
not just an appearance. This is a way of saying that
this person here who's on this white cloud in this vision is
the son of man and that is a messianic title he's talking about the
Lord Jesus Christ and it says having on his head a golden crown
he's the king of kings the Lord of Lords he is God in human flesh
here's the son of man with a golden crown that's God and man in one
person that's what this vision means You see, the gospel is
wrapped up basically in two things. The good news to sinners is the
person of Christ and the finished work of Christ. Who is he and
what did he accomplish when he died? Who is he? He's God in
human flesh. He's Emmanuel, God with us. God
manifest in the flesh. What did he do? He saved his
people from their sins. He didn't try to save them. He
didn't make salvation possible if they cooperate because by
nature we don't cooperate. He brought in righteousness and
life for his people. And it says, in his hand is a
sharp sickle. Now this sickle is the judgment
of God that will separate the wheat from the tares, the wheat
from the chaff. That's the separation. You remember
in Matthew 25, he said he would separate the sheep from the goats.
So here's the separation. Here's the harvest. Now the people
of God, the blessed, have been gathered in, and he says in verse
15, and another angel came out of the temple, that's the temple
of God, that's the church, crying, the temple there is a symbol
of the church, crying with a loud voice to him that sat on the
cloud, thrust in thy sickle and reap, for the time has come for
thee to reap, for the harvest of the earth is ripe. You might have in your concordance
there the word dried. It really means, what it means
is it's ready. It's ready. Now, this second angel, this
other angel coming out of the temple, he is not giving a command
to the Lord there. We don't have any right or reason
or way to command God to do anything. And I say that because, you know,
I've heard, I'll never forget this, years ago I heard a preacher
on TV And he was trying to heal somebody. And he said, God, I
command you to heal that person. And I thought, who do you think
you are, friend? We don't command. What this is,
this second angel coming out of the temple, coming out of
the church, is not commanding anything. What he's doing, he's
pronouncing that the time has come. Because it's been revealed
to him. Here's Christ, the God-man, the
King of Kings, the Redeemer of His people riding on this white
cloud. He's come. And so what do we
say? We pronounce that. We issue that
message. It's kind of like the trumpet
sounding. And everything is ready, he says,
and he says, the harvest of the earth is ripe. Now what I believe
he's talking about there is the people of God being gathered
in. This is the sickle of in gathering. Gathering his people,
those who died in the Lord, he says in verse 16, and he that
sat on the cloud thrust in his sickle on the earth and the earth
was reaped. There's a reaping. So that's
referring to the reaping of the people of God, the gathering
in of the wheat. This is the reaping of the harvest.
So this is the good harvest of the Lord. Sinners saved by grace
and then gathered to Him. Now the rest of this chapter
talks about the sickle of God's wrath upon the wicked and we'll
deal with that next week.