Now, as I said, if you look back
in verse 13 of chapter 8, you saw the angel, the messenger,
flying through the midst of heaven. This is Revelation 8, 13. And
saying with a loud voice, woe, woe, woe, three woes. Now, you know, woe is an expression
of trouble. It's an expression of sorrow.
and consternation, even sometimes despair. And anytime I see that,
whoa, whoa, whoa, I think about Isaiah the prophet over in Isaiah
chapter six, where he, when he saw the glory and holiness of
God, holy, holy, holy, you know, this train filled the temple,
and Isaiah immediately said, woe is me, for I'm undone. Literally, I'm cut off. In other
words, I have no right, I have no qualification, I have nothing
to recommend me unto God, I'm a goner. That's what he's basically
saying. And then that's when the angel
took the coal from off the altar and brought it and put it on
Isaiah's lips. And that altar represents the
perfect satisfaction of Jesus Christ as our surety and substitute
in his death for the sins of his people. The righteousness,
that's what that altar represents. Christ is our altar. Christ is
our sacrifice. Christ is our substitute. He's
our high priest. And so that's the only thing,
the only one who can remove these woes, this trouble. This alienation
from God is Christ. But here the angel introduces
three woes, woe, woe, woe to the inhabitors of the earth.
And remember the inhabitors of the earth are those, that's the
non-elect, that's the unsaved, that's the unbeliever, those
who will never come to faith. They're so connected to this
world. that they're not even interested
or they deny the glory of God in Christ, the spiritual issues
of salvation and how God can be just and justify the ungodly. This earth is their hope and
their home. We saw in the first trumpets,
the first four trumpets, how men and women begin, as the last
days approach up to the second coming of Christ, that men and
women begin to become aware of problems in this earth. You know, there's problems And
it's almost like they become aware that if these problems
aren't taken care of, then this whole thing's going to go kaput.
We're just going to be destroyed. And they attribute it to all
kinds of things, global warming, the ice age, or whatever, you
know, terrorism. And all those things are bad,
don't get me wrong. And we are to be responsible
citizens and caretakers of this earth. But at the same time,
we have to recognize from the Christian point of view that
this is the problem, the consequence of sin. That's the problem. This
world would be a perfect world if not for what? If not for sin.
And the only remedy for sin is Christ and his blood and righteousness. There's no other remedy. I mean,
whatever you do environmentally or economically or politically
or philosophically or even religiously, there's no hope for this world.
but Christ. And this world is going to be
destroyed. This is the judgment of God upon this earth. And I'm
not saying, well, let's be fatalists. Let's just throw up our hands
and go live in a cave. No, no, no. We do what the Lord
said. We preach the gospel. We get
the gospel out. That's what we're to do. But
those inhabiters of the earth, by reason of other voices of
the trumpet of the three angels which are yet to sound. Now here's
the first woe. Look at verse one of chapter
nine. Now these two lessons on this
first woe, the fifth trumpet, I've entitled Satan and his preachers. Or you could say Satan and his
ministers or his agents. But it says the fifth angel,
the fifth messenger of God sounded. And I saw a star fall from heaven
unto the earth, and to him this fallen star was given the key
of the bottomless pit. Now one of the things that we
need to understand, first of all, who is this star fallen
from heaven? There are some commentators,
interpreters, who say this is Christ and talks about his incarnation. Now I don't agree with that.
And I'll tell you why I don't agree with that. First of all,
And the reason they say that is they're talking about Christ
coming to earth, Christ incarnation. It says, to him was given the
keys of the bottomless pit. Well, we know that only Christ
has the keys. We learned this back in the early
part of Revelation. Only Christ has the key to death
and hell. Only Christ has the key to heaven.
He holds them. He's in control. He's the King
of kings. He's the Lord of lords. But I
don't believe this fallen star is Christ. First of all, if you
go back up to the third angel, the third trumpet, back up in
Revelation 8 and verse 10, look at this. Remember it says, the
third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven,
burning it. Now we know that's Satan, that's
Lucifer, whose name was light, but now is darkness. He's a fallen
star. And verse 11 proves that. His
name is Wormwood. Wormwood meaning bitterness.
Wormwood meaning all associated with poison and with death and
darkness. So we know that that fallen star,
why would it change here? The second reason that I believe
this is Satan and not the Lord is because the incarnation of
Christ, Christ coming from heaven to the earth, is never in the
Bible represented or described as a fall. Christ didn't fall
to the earth. He willingly, under His power,
came to this earth. He was made flesh and dwelt among
us. So this fall here represents
someone who started out high and fell low. Now Christ's incarnation
is certainly a condescension. I mean, He came from high to
low. There's no doubt about that. But it's never described as a
fall. This is Satan, all right? Another thing you see here is
it says in verse one, to him was given the key of the bottomless
pit. Whatever this fallen star has,
he didn't have it to begin with. It was given to him. And one
of the things you're going to see as you study these last three
woes, and you actually see this throughout Revelation, is never
lose sight of the fact that whatever's happening here Whether men and
women see it as bad and terrible and destructive or whether they
see it as good and glorious, it's God's business. God's in
control. Who gave this key to the bottomless
pit, to this fallen star? God did. Now, does that mean
God is the author of sin? No. Does that mean God is the
creator of evil? Not in the sense of transgression
and sin and deception, but God is in control of all judgment. What's happening here is Satan
is being loosed to deceive the nations again. He was able to
deceive the nations back in the Old Testament. And then with
the death of Christ, he was bound. You can read that in passages
like John chapter 12. He was bound. And the gospel
shot out all over the earth and began to be preached in the Gentile
nations as well as the Jewish nation. And God began to save
his people, bring them into the fold. Now, we've already seen
how as time goes on and we approach the second, the last of the last
days, the second coming of Christ, the church will be, church on
earth now, the visible church we call it, will be corrupted
to where what is commonly known as Christianity won't be Christianity
at all. It'll be Christian in name only.
Why is that? Because Satan has been loosed
to deceive again. He's now infiltrating the church. He's now in the pulpits. He's
corrupting the doctrine of Christ. He's drawing people away. And
even in religion that's called Christianity, Satan is drawing
people away from Christ and focusing on themselves. Now you know this
is true. All you have to do is just look
at the general religious atmosphere. Go into the religious bookstores
today. And what's it all about? It's not about the gospel of
God's grace and how God can be just and justify the ungodly.
You ask most people today. Here, Paul writes in Romans 117,
that in the gospel is the righteousness of God revealed. Ask most people
who claim to be Christian what that righteousness of God is.
And how many of you think, how many of them do you think will
really know what it is? Why? Because it's not an issue
with them. The issue with them is, what
can I do? How can I be better? How can
I do this? How can I improve myself? Self-help,
self-will. The religion of freewillism is
rampant. Man is the determiner of his
own fate. Man makes the difference between
saved and lost. Where did all that come from?
It came from the bottomless pit. Now, what is this bottomless
pit? Well, I've got this referenced in your lesson. It's 2 Peter
2. And let's read that, 2 Peter
2. And I believe this will help
us to understand. What is the bottomless pit? Well,
now forget all of the fiction, all of the movies. The bottomless
pit is not some place here on earth like a big hole, like a
gate to hell. It's not a waiting room, it's
not a purgatory, the bottomless pit is not, it's not a big hole
here on earth, you know, that if somebody finds it, they gotta
close it up real quick, or something like that, or put a cross on
it, you know how movies, well, you know all that junk, all right.
What is the bottomless pit? Well, look at 2 Peter chapter
two and verse four. And he says here, if God spared
not the angels that sin, now that's the angels that fell with
Satan, but cast them down to hell and deliver them into chains
of darkness to be reserved unto judgment." Chained them up. Now the word for hell there,
if we were to transliterate that from the original, it would be
the word Tartarus. I don't know if you've ever heard
of that word before or not. Tartarus. You know, the general
word for hell would be Hades or Gehenna. You know, Gehenna,
that was a reference to that garbage dump outside of Jerusalem
that continually burned. They put garbage out there and
they had caretakers that would continually keep it burning.
That was Gehenna. And then others, Hades, that
means the grave. Well, this is the only time this
word Translated hell in the King James Version is used in the
New Testament. Tartarus. And you know what it refers to?
It refers to the realm of darkness. That's what it means. These angels
were cast into the realm of darkness and they are chained unto judgment. Now go back to Revelation 9.
I believe this gives us some understanding of the bottomless
pit. What is this bottomless pit? Satan was given the key
of the bottomless pit. The bottomless pit is the realm
of darkness. In what realm does Satan operate? The realm of deception. the realm
of darkness. When God saves his people from
sin, when they're born again by the Spirit, over in Colossians
chapter one and verse 13, it's described this way, that we are
delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom
of his dear son. How are the inhabitants of the
earth described in John chapter 3 and verse 19, for example?
Christ said, this is the condemnation, that light has come into the
world and men love what? Darkness and hate the light. Now, what is that darkness? It's
the deception of false, self-righteous, free will religion that makes
people proud of what they do or what they say or what they
decide. That's what it is. And that's
Satan's deception. Now, he's been bound in a limited
sense because Satan has always been allowed to deceive. You
can read about that in 2 Corinthians 4, how, you know, if our gospel
be hid, it's hid to them that are lost, in whom the God of
this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest
the light of the knowledge of the glory of God should shine
unto them. 2 Corinthians 4, 3 through 4.
And so Satan, but he's been chained in the sense of his limitations.
The gospel was able to go out at the beginning of the new covenant,
the New Testament age, and it began to spread and churches
began to be planted in places like Galatia and Ephesus and
Corinth and other places. And we've seen the spread of
the gospel in history. In a very limited sense, I mean,
it's not that the gospel was ever dominant over the earth,
but God has a people. He's always had a remnant. He
chose them before the foundation of the world. Christ redeemed
them on the cross and he's going to call them out by the spirit
and the preaching of the gospel. So what this bottomless pit is,
is the realm of darkness. Now Satan, as God's judgment
upon this world, we read about that in 2 Thessalonians 2, where
it talks about the mystery of iniquity, the deceivableness
of unrighteousness, that's darkness, you see? And how God's judgment
upon those who refuse to believe the gospel, that he send them
strong delusion that they would believe a lie, that's God's judgment.
Well, here it is in another, stated another way. Satan's been
given the key to the bottomless pit. Now he's gonna be set free
to deceive the nations again. And that's when you see this
great apostasy, this great falling away. He's once again loosed
into the realm of darkness and the fallen world to go about
and corrupt the church, deceive the world. You can read about
it again in Revelation 20. That's Satan being loosed, that's
another view of it. But look at verse two. It says,
and he opened the bottomless pit, the realm of darkness. And
what happened? Well, there arose smoke out of
the pit. Now, everybody here has experienced
being around a fire where smoke got in your eyes, haven't you? And what does it do? It blurs
your vision. You have to shut your eyes. You
can't breathe. You have to get away from it.
They say that in a fire, If a house gets on fire, a building gets
on fire, most people die from smoke inhalation long before
their bodies are actually burned by the fire. And that's so. So what is this smoke? Well,
this smoke is the deception. Look at it. He says, there arose
a smoke out of the pit as the smoke of a great furnace. This
is the fire of God's judgment, the smoke of deception, judging
the world. And the sun and the air were
darkened, the sun, that's the light, that's the warm. Christ
is the son of righteousness. The air, what is that? Well,
you got to have air, you got to breathe air to live, don't
you? That's life. So what he's saying here is here's Christ,
the son of righteousness, and he is our life. He's the air
that we breathe in essence. So he says, they were darkened
by reason of the smoke of the pit. So here's what you have.
You have this deception that clouds people's minds and hearts
from Christ and life in him. Why is there death? Because of
sin. You know what we believe? The
wages of sin is death, all right? Where is their life? Only in
Christ, the Lord our righteousness. Sin demands death. Righteousness
demands life. If my eyes and my mind and my
heart are smoked up, you might say, clouded from seeing the
only son of righteousness, then there's no life for me. If I don't have Christ and his
righteousness imputed to me, there's not going to be any life.
No spiritual life, no eternal life. So we see that Satan's
way of deception here, and again, go back to 2 Corinthians 4, what
does he do? What's Satan's main goal? It's
to keep sinners from seeing the glory of God in the face of Jesus
Christ. It's to keep sinners looking
to themselves for salvation. That's smoke. That's what that
is, that's doctrinal smoke. That's deception, that's darkness.
As long as Satan, listen, you know, people say, well, you know,
the devil, I was watching a little bit of that movie called Paint
Your Wagon, you ever seen that? And the preacher, you know, he
was funny. And he was going through the town talking about all this
sin in this town, you know, because they had a bar and they had prostitution
and all that, and all that is sin. But you see, you know what's
represented by that? It's not Satan's work, that's
just the natural depravity of selfish fallen man. Man, let
go. I'll tell you where Satan operates
the hardest. Through false churches and false
preachers. Keeping sinners looking to themselves
as that which makes the difference between saved and lost. trying
to establish a righteousness of their own through religion,
through sincerity, through morality. You see, there's nothing wrong
with sincerity and morality. We ought to be the most sincere
people, the most moral people on earth, but sincerity and morality
is not our righteousness before God. Christ is. Now, the one
thing Satan does not want people to see is that truth, and he'll
smoke up the whole religious landscape. to keep sinners from
doing that. Don't look to Christ alone for
righteousness. And those who do, those are the
ones who have life. So that's what's coming out now.
Look at verse three. He says, and there came out of
the smoke locusts upon the earth. Now this is Satan's false preachers. That's his ministers. And unto
them, unto these locusts. Now they're represented as locusts,
why? Well, locusts, especially back in the ancient days, locusts
were just, you know, and especially when they lived in an agricultural
society, they grew crops, they had fields. If you had a swarm
of locusts coming along, what did that mean? That means destruction.
Everything, everything living is destroyed. That's what it
was. And so unto them was given power. And he likens their power. Now
we know these are not literal locusts. He's not talking about
literal plagues upon earth here. Now, there may be literal plagues
upon earth. And I think there's going to
be in some form or another. Some degree or another. But that's
not what he's talking about here. These locusts are not literal
locusts. And how do you know that? Well,
he says their power was as the scorpions of the earth have power.
See, that's not literal there. Now what's he talking about?
What does a scorpion do? Stings with its tail and delivers
its poison. What is the poison of the locust
and the scorpion here? It's their false gospels. It's
their false doctrine. That's poison. It's poison for
a preacher to lead a sinner to seek salvation anywhere but in
Christ and him alone. That's poison, to seek righteousness
anywhere but in Christ and him alone. That's poison. So that's
what he's talking about, these locusts upon the earth. They
come and they destroy, you see. And then in verse four, and again,
this power is power to deceive with the poison of their false
doctrine. Let me just read this to you. It's over in 2 Corinthians
chapter 11. Listen to how Paul describes
Satan's ministers in 2 Corinthians 11, because it was amazing to
the Corinthians. And I'll tell you what, you could
just imagine this in the early days of the church, the New Testament
church here in Corinth, and they had preachers coming along claiming
to be Christian, claiming to preach the gospel. And it amazed
them that these preachers were not clear and concise in the
truth of the gospel, of how God saves sinners, how sinners are
made right with God, the gospel. And Paul talked about it. He
said, if he comes preaching another Jesus, which is not another,
which is no true Jesus. Well, look, in 2 Corinthians
11, verse 13, here's what Paul writes. He says, for such are
false apostles deceitful workers, deceptive workers. I mean, these
aren't the guys who stand behind pulpits and promote immorality. Are there people like that? Probably,
yeah. Do they fool most people? Not
most. They might fool a few. But these
are deceptive workers. And it says, transforming themselves
into the apostles of Christ. In other words, they change.
It's kind of like that old saying, when in Rome, do as the Romans
do. Years ago, there was a missionary who came to the church in 13th
Street, and he claimed to preach sovereign grace, claimed to preach
the gospel. But it became known that in order
to get support from other churches, if he went into a church where
a false gospel was preached, he'd preach that too to gain
support. But when he came into a church
where the gospel was the foundation, he transformed. He changed. But he couldn't stay there. In
fact, the tense of this whole construction here represents
a temporary transformation. It's like, uh, you know, we,
we, uh, our kids, they like those transformers. Well, these are
the transformers here. They're the deceptive, they're
the locust. And he says in verse 14, look here, second Corinthians,
he says in no marvel, don't be amazed for Satan himself is transformed
into an angel of light. Satan. can preach at times, he
can speak the truth at times, but a lot of times it's half-truths,
it's truth-making. You know what a half-truth is,
don't you? It's a lie. And he says, therefore it's no
great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers
of righteousness, whose end shall be according to their works.
They transform. I heard a preacher say one time
preaching on that, he said they transform and they become ministers
of righteousness. He said, but they preach man's
righteousness. Oh, no. They can at times preach Christ's
righteousness. How do you know he's talking
about? Because they have to transform to do it. You see, a false preacher
doesn't have to transform to preach man's righteousness. That's
what we do naturally. So in this transformation, they'll
come along and they'll speak the truth. But they won't stay
with it. They'll compromise it. They won't
stay with it because their heart's not there. We'll go back to Revelation
9. Well, look at verse 4. Now, I'm
gonna close with this verse and we'll pick up with verse 5 next
week or the week after. But he says, And it was commanded
them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither
any green thing, neither any tree. Now, what does grass and
the green thing, the tree represent, that's life. That's the people
of God. That's the ones who stand before
God justified based on the imputed righteousness of Christ. They
have life. God does not charge them with
their sins because he charged it to Christ and Christ died
for their sins. And these locusts who had this
poison of scorpions They can't hurt those. These are the ones,
remember we talked about those who are sealed in their foreheads,
hurt not the earth until those who are sealed. That's the power
of the Holy Spirit to bring a sinner in conviction to Christ, submitted
to his righteousness alone. And he says, but only those men,
you can hurt not, not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any
green thing, neither any tree. but only hurt only those men
which have not the seal of God in their foreheads. They don't
know the gospel. They don't believe the gospel.
They don't believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ is not their
only hope, their only righteousness, their life. They're looking elsewhere. They look to the earth. They
look to themselves. They look, look within. But they
don't look to Christ, they're not looking to him. So the point
of that is, is that the people of God throughout all of this
woe, the people of God are safe. If you're in Christ, you're safe,
you're secure. Your life is hidden with God
in Christ. That means you're safe and secure.
You have a righteousness that answers the demands of God's
law and justice. The wrath of God cannot come
upon you. because you are washed in his
blood and clothed in his righteousness.