Revelation 14, gospel judgment. I've been thinking a lot about
this issue of judgment, and Leonard and I were talking about it last
week, and you know, it's something that we have to be taught from
the word of God, don't we? I mean, it's nothing we know
by nature, because the natural man receiveth not the things
of the spirit of God, And we know that Christ is the supreme
judge of all things. The Father has committed all
judgment under the Son. And that's what we see here in
this particular facet of gospel judgment. Look at verse 9 of
Revelation 14. There followed another angel
saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city. And
of course, you know what Babylon is. We've talked about that.
and how all of that, that which, in verse 8 there, that which
is metaphorically describing false religion, false philosophies,
false gospels, and I'm going to show you at the end of this
lesson the different facets of that, how it comes about, you
know, in religion, in man's religion, in man's thinking, in man's philosophies
and worldviews, as they say. Babylon is fallen. And the reason
Babylon is fallen, it says, because she made all nations drink of
the wine of the wrath of her fornication. Now that's talking
about spiritual fornication. That's talking about spiritual
adultery. Now what is spiritual fornication?
Spiritual fornication is worshiping, believing, following a false
god, a false way of salvation. Christ said, I am the way, the
truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father
but by me. And it's all founded upon This,
the understanding, whatever a person's understanding is of this, is
I'm a sinner. You know, people will admit we're
all sinners, but what does that mean to me? Does it mean to me
what the Bible says to me? You know, most people, when they
quote Romans 3.23, all have sinned and come short of the glory of
God. How do they think about that? I'll tell you how they
think about it, because I was there. I used to preach that false gospel. In fact, I went to seminary to
learn how to preach a false gospel better than I did. That was what
I was doing. But when they quote Romans 3.23,
they quote it in the vein, well, I'm a sinner, but God feels sorry
for me and he's trying to do his best to save me if I'll just
cooperate and make the right decision. Now that is anti-biblical. It is anti-Christ. Now listen
to me. And I'll tell you what I'm doing
right now. I am making a judgment that that is a false gospel.
But that judgment doesn't come from my mind and my heart. In other words, let's put it
this way. It does come from my mind and heart, but it doesn't
originate with my mind or my heart. It originates with the
word of God. Babylon is fallen, say. You know Babylon? You go back
to the Tower of Babel. Man's efforts to get to God and
be accepted, be saved, be blessed, be justified by his self-efforts,
his self-will. That's what Babylon represents.
And anyone who is doing that is drinking of the wine of her
fornication. Because that's spiritual adultery,
spiritual fornication. Now that may sound hard to people,
but it's just what God's Word teaches. It's what God's Word
says. How is a sinner made righteous
before a holy God? How has that happened? And the
only way is by the blood of Jesus Christ. His righteousness imputed. Every other way is Babylon. Every other way is spiritual
fornication. There's no such thing as a partial
truth gospel. Did you know that? Somebody say,
well, they don't believe like we do, but they believe enough.
Well, okay, if that's what you believe, here's what I would
challenge you to do. Prove it with the scripture.
Go to the word of God and find out where that is. You know what
a partial truth is? You know what a half-truth is?
It's a lie. It's a lie. So when we talk about,
say, well, they believe enough, enough of what? And where do you get off saying
that? I mean, what foundation do you have? What authority do
you have to make a statement? You know, when you say that,
you're making a judgment. Well, I believe they believe enough.
Well, you're judging that they believe enough. All right, now,
how are you going to back that up? Well, there's enough of us
who believe that. Is that the way it is? More of
us believe what you believe. You know, somebody said one time,
said, well, you believe you're all right and everybody else
is wrong. That's not the issue. And that's the wrong way to approach
it. Here's the way to approach it. What is right? What is wrong? according to this book. Now,
here's what is right. If one or one billion people
believe it, it's still right. Here's wrong. If one or one billion
people believe it, it's still wrong. You understand where we're
coming from here? The gospel is the gospel. The
gospel reveals how God justifies the ungodly through his grace,
total grace, not partial grace. There's no such thing in the
Bible. Through the blood and the righteousness of Christ alone
with nothing added. It's not your works, it's not
even your will, it's Christ and him alone. So with that in mind,
go to verse 9. The third angel followed them
saying with a loud voice, if any man worship the beast and
his image, and receive his mark in his forehead or in his hand. This describes all, I believe,
all who are found in unbelief at the time of judgment when
Christ comes again. And what standard is going to
be used for judgment? Well, I quote all the time. One
of my favorite verses, Acts 1731. God has appointed a day in which
he will judge the world in righteousness. There's your standard. What is
the measure of righteousness? He will judge the world in righteousness
by that man whom he has ordained, a man that God has appointed,
the God-man, Jesus Christ, in that he hath given assurance
unto all men and hath raised him from the dead. The standard
of... First of all, the judge himself
is the crucified, risen Christ. And the standard of judgment
is the crucified risen Christ. So that if I'm going to plead
anything at judgment as recommending me unto God, making me righteous
before God, giving me a right and title to have fellowship
with God and to be blessed by God. If I'm going to plead anything,
it better measure up to the righteousness that can only be found in the
crucified, risen Christ. Now that's what this book is
all about. Because if what I plead is less than that, what do I
have to say? All have sinned and come short
of the glory. That's what that means. And that means I'm worshiping
the beast and his image. The beast and his image there
has to do with the false ideas, the false hopes, the false refuges
concocted by men under the evil inspiration of Satan. And that
mark, remember we talked about the mark there. The mark in the
forehead. The forehead is a metaphor, a
symbol of the mind. You know, in 1 Corinthians chapter
2 when it says, the natural man receiveth not the things of the
Spirit of God, neither can he know them. They're spiritually
discerned. You know what that word discerned means? Spiritually
assessed, spiritually judged. The natural man cannot make a
right judgment. He's dead in trespasses and sin.
He's in darkness. He's deceived. I know. I've been
there. You have too. And he can't make a right judgment
in God according to God's standard of right and wrong. Now, he can
be religious. He can be sincere. He can even be a moral person.
He can live his life in religion trying to do the best he can
do to keep the law. And that sounds right to him.
But in God's sight, if that's what you believe will justify
you, make you righteous before God, it's evil and wicked. It's
the mark of the beast. Then it goes on, it says, but
he that is spiritual judgeth all things. In other words, that doesn't
mean we're the supreme judges, but it does mean that we can
make an assessment, we can make right judgments according to
God's word of what's right and what's wrong. I know this, when
I stand before God, I have one thing to plead that will recommend
me to God. And what is that? That's the
imputed righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing else. You say, well, what about all
your preaching for 30 years? Well, that's a gift from God.
Listen, all my preaching of the true gospel for over 30 years
does not contribute one degree to my righteousness before God.
It's all Christ. Well, have you been a charitable
person? Should you be? Yes. But that's
not our righteousness before God. That's what this gospel
judgment is all about, and anybody who thinks otherwise has sealed
in their mind and in their hearts the mark of the beast, the 666. It falls short. It's not a seven,
which is the perfection of a finished work. You see, our salvation
is built upon what Christ has finished, accomplished, completed
successfully. And so he says in verse 9 there,
he says, or in his hand, the hand represents the works of
man. What he reaches for. What are
you reaching for? Well, I'm reaching for heaven.
Okay. Or I'm reaching for eternal life. Okay. The only way to get
there is to reach for Christ, receive him, look unto him. Look
at verse 10 now. Oh, well, let me say, I'll go
ahead and just give you this because here he is talking about
Babylon. He's talking about the beast
and his image. The false philosophies and religions
of today are founded upon and filled with basically three false
ideas. I've got this in your lesson.
I'm not just trying to use words, big words or anything like that
or isms, but that's what they are. The first one, the most
popular one, is humanism. And I've got in your lesson there
in parenthesis, that's self-worship, freewillism. That's humanism.
It's all about man. It's all about you. Meeting your
felt needs. You see, that's not what this
is about. That's not what a gospel ministry is about. First of all,
The needs that man by nature feels is not really what he needs. What do I need? Well, I need
this, I need that, I need better health, I need more money, I
need this, that, or the... What you need is salvation from
sin. I mentioned last week about the
guy on one of the national magazines that said, had this picture of
a guy, I don't even know who he is, never saw him before.
But he's a doctor, apparently, and it says, can this man, basically,
can this man conquer death? Well, the answer is no. Now,
he may have some ideas that will help, as far as our view of things,
help people be a little healthier and live longer. But he can't
conquer, Christ conquered death. Read 1 Corinthians 15, as well
as a multitude of other passages. What does it take to conquer
death? Righteousness. Romans 521. As sin hath reigned
unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness.
It's not just grace alone, it's grace that reigns through righteousness
unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. You see that? And so, you might as well put
on that magazine, can this man conquer sin? And the answer is
no, he's a sinner. I'm a sinner, you're a sinner.
If God gives us what we deserve and what we earn, it'll be eternal
damnation. Now that's it. Even the preachers,
even the moralists, even the philosophers. That's the mark
of the beast. So humanism. The second one is
relativism. You know what relativism is?
Everything is relative. There's really no absolute truth. And if you think you've found
absolute truth, you're a fool. That's what relativism says.
You know who stated that in the Bible? A man named Pontius Pilate. What is truth, he asked the Lord. There was truth standing right
before him, and he said, what is truth? We don't really know
what truth is. It's what he's saying. That's relativism. No absolute truth. And then the
third philosophy in religion is pluralism. You know what that
says? Everything's true. Even opposing
ideas. Oh, you go to this church, we
go to that church, but it's all the same. It's all true. No, it's not. It can't all be
true. You know, Paul fought, he fought
that. Not thought it, fought it. He
stood against it. Where? Romans 11. If it's by
grace, it's all of grace. If it's by works, it's all of
works. It can't be both. It can't be the will of God and
the will of man. You see what I'm saying? It can't
be the goodness of God and the goodness of man. One cancels
out the other. So that's the idea. Now look
at verse 10. It says in verse 10, these who
worship the beast in his image who have that mark on their foreheads
and on their hands, that's that false religion, the same shall
drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without
mixture into the cup of his indignation. There's God's hatred right there.
You know that word indignation? That's the same as God's hatred
of all workers of iniquity. God hates all workers of iniquity,
Psalm 5.5. God must punish sin. How in the
world can we, who are workers of iniquity, be justified before
God? How can we have God's love? How
can we be justified? Well, there's got to be a way
found wherein God can look at this sinner up here, this worker
of iniquity, and say he's not a worker of iniquity. That's
right. How can God do that and not be
fake? You know me, I know you. We're
all sinners. I told you about the guy who
told me he said he didn't sin anymore and I asked him, I said,
well, if we could take a video of your thoughts for one day,
would you go to church and let us flash that up there on the
screen? Well, he knew better than that. but he had the fair
say go ideas not what i think it's what i did well that's wrong
gospel judgment shows us that sin is not only what we do what
we don't do it's what we think it has to do with evil motives
evil desires evil goals evil thoughts and i'll tell you what
if you're honest you can't keep what you can't keep them out
of your head game you can't keep them out of your head right now
while i'm preaching Neither can I. Aren't you glad we don't have
to express them? We'd embarrass everybody. But
you see here, this is the issue. How can God look at me and say,
Bill Parker is not a worker of iniquity. There's only one way.
By his grace, through the righteousness of another. Not charging me with
my sin. Blessed is the man to whom the
Lord imputeth not iniquity. Psalm 32. Well, who does he impute it to?
He imputed it to Christ. God made him sin. Christ who
knew no sin for us. That we might be what? Made the
righteousness of God in him. He imputes righteousness to his
people. But here these who stand before
God without Christ, without being washed in his blood, without
being clothed in his righteousness, they will drink the wine of the
wrath of God. Now the Bible says man drinks
Iniquity like water. Well now they're gonna drink
the cup of God's wrath. I love this analogy. Poured out
without mixture into the cup of his indignation. I think about
Christ in the garden. Beginning his suffering, his
actual physical suffering, on his way to the cross. And you
remember he prayed in that garden. Lord, if it be possible, let
this cup pass from me. I don't believe he was trying
to avoid the cross. I believe he was crying out in
his human suffering the infirmities of the flesh because of the soul
suffering and the pain that he was going through. But he said,
nevertheless, father, thy will be done. This is God's will. Was it God's will for Christ
to go to the cross? And of course it was. It was
his purpose from the very beginning. And what Christ did on that cross
is he drank this same cup of the wine of the wrath of God
poured out without mixture as the surety and substitute of
his people. He took the cup of the wine of
the wrath of God that we deserved and we earned Christ drank it
all. That's why I say sometimes when
I'm preaching, he drank damnation dry. That's what he was doing
when he cried out on the cross, my God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me? That's what he was doing when
he said it's finished. That means he drank the last
drop of the wrath of God for the sins of his sheep, God's
elect, imputed, charged, accounted to him. That's what the Bible
means when the Lord describing the work of the Holy Spirit is
he will convince the world of sin because they believe not
on me, of righteousness because I go to the Father, and of judgment
because the prince of this world is judged. What it is is we were
judged for our sins, we who are in Christ now, believers, we
were judged for our sins on the cross of Calvary in the person
of our surety and our substitute, the Lord Jesus Christ. And without mixture. Now without
mixture here means the unmixed wrath of God in full without
any mixture of his forbearance or his long-suffering. You remember
in Romans chapter 9 it talks about the vessels of wrath fitted
for destruction that God is long-suffering. In other words, they are not
immediately damned into eternity. They're not, why didn't God just
sink them into hell? Well, there's a long suffering
period there. And during that long suffering
period, it rains on the just and the unjust, doesn't it? I
mean, there are people who are unbelievers, who stay unbelievers
throughout this life and who die as unbelievers, who prospered
well on this earth. But here is the unmixed wrath
of God. There's no mixture of God's forbearance. There's no mixture of God's long-suffering. Look at it. It says in verse
10, and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone. Fire
and brimstone, you know what that is. Those are metaphors
for the unmixed wrath of God against sin. Somebody said, well,
he's a fire and brimstone preacher. Well, we do preach the wrath
of God against sinners. But we also preach the mercy
of God, whose wrath fell upon Christ for his people. And it
says, in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence
of the Lamb. Christ, think about that. You
know, the religious world presents Christ as some kind of a beggar. My former pastor used to say,
when he was going to Bible school in Tennessee Temple in Chattanooga,
Tennessee, and when he preached the false gospel, he said they
would represent Christ as standing over the banister of heaven,
looking down, just pleading and begging with you to receive him. And that's not the way it is.
Here's the command of God. Here's the revelation of God
Almighty. And this judgment of wrath will
be in the presence of the Lamb. And it's not a... He's the judge. The crucified, risen Christ is
the judge. That's who the Lamb is. This
Lamb, who is our Savior, will be the judge of all who are not
found washed in His blood and clothed in His righteousness.
And that's an amazing thing. And they won't be a testimony
to His failure. There'll be a testimony to His
justice, His holiness. Look at verse 11, it says, the
smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever. It's this,
there'll be an eternal reminder that God justifies sinners through
Christ and damns sinners without Christ, and they have no rest
day or night. Somebody said there's no rest
for the wicked. Well, while on this earth there's,
there's, there's a, can be times of rest, but it won't last. Isaiah
28 talks about it, how they're in a refuge now, but the judgment
of God is going to come through and sweep away the refuge of
lies. Remember those in Matthew 7,
Lord, haven't we prophesied in your name? They rested in their
prophecy, their preaching. They rested in their exorcisms,
cast out demons. They rested in their wonderful
works, and then Christ removed all their rest. And that's why
we have an eternal rest. When people ask you, do you rest
on the Sabbath? You know what I tell them? I
say, I sure do, every day. They say, every day? You mean
every day's a Sabbath? No, our Sabbath's not a day. Our Sabbath is Christ. Read Hebrews
chapter four. Christ at Sunday's not our Sabbath.
I'll never forget, I had a Seventh-day Adventist ask me one time, he
said, well, you believe that Sunday's the Christian Sabbath,
and he said that was established by the Catholic Church. And I
told him, I said, well, first of all, I agree with you, it
was established by the Catholic Church, and secondly, I disagree
with you, Sunday is not the Christian Sabbath, and he didn't know how
to answer that. Sunday's the Lord's day, it's the first day
of the week, it's the day on which our Lord was resurrected,
it's the day we're commanded as a body of believers to meet
together and worship him. But it's not our Sabbath, Christ
is our Sabbath. But now these have no rest. They
have no rest day or night. Who is he talking about? Those
who worship the beast, look at verse 11, in his image, and whosoever
receiveth the mark of his name. All who believe salvation. in some other way than by the
grace of God through Christ, the Lord our righteousness. All
who believe that salvation is conditioned on the sinner. Now
in verse 12, listen to this. He says, here is the patience,
that word patience means endurance, of the saints, who are the saints,
sinners saved by grace, believers, Chosen before the foundation
of the world, redeemed by the blood of Christ, regenerated
by the Holy Spirit, set apart, you see. Here are they that keep
the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus Christ. Now what
is it to keep the commandments of God? Is he talking about the
ten commandments there? No. And when it says they keep the
commandments of God, is he talking about some kind of a perfection
of obedience there? Well, if he is, I'm not included
in that. How about you? That's right. What are the commandments of
God? Well, it's what Christ taught us, beginning with the gospel
that involves faith in Christ, repentance of dead works. It
involves following him in obedience, not in order to be saved, but
because we already are. Following Him, obeying Him, not
in order to make ourselves righteous before God and to be accepted,
but because we already are. It's the obedience of grace and
love and gratitude involving the warfare of the flesh and
the spirit, which proves we're not perfect. Paul dealt with
that. O wretched man that I am, who
shall deliver me from the body of this death? What's he talking
about? Those who keep the commandments of God in the faith of Jesus
Christ, the faith of Jesus. He's talking about those who
persevere by the grace of God in the faith, believing the gospel,
believing that my whole salvation is already accomplished and sure
because of what Christ finished on that cross and made me righteous
in him. That's what it's talking about.
believing in him, serving him, not out of some selfish, self-righteous
motive or principle, but because he loved me and gave himself
for me and brought me to himself and made me his own. All right.