The question has been posed quite
often and I've had it asked of me, what's it going to be like
when the Lord comes back and we're all caught up, we who are
saved are caught up with him and glorified and we inhabit
the new heavens and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness?
What's it going to be like? There are some things about that
revealed in the scripture, but there's not a whole lot. And
I've got to be honest with you, I'm just like you in that sense
when it comes to... Somebody asked me one time, what
are we going to be doing in glory? You know, we always say, what
are we going to be doing when we get to heaven or something
like that? But what are we going to be doing?
How is our time going to be occupied? Well, I can tell you this, we're
not going to be laying on a cloud with wings playing harps or anything
like that. We don't turn into angels. We're
given a new body, a new spiritual body. We're told something about
that, especially in 1 Corinthians 15, I think gives the most information. on the glorified state of a believer
but there's some other scriptures but what I'm saying is and those
questions we have we have more questions than we have answers
and the reason is is because God hasn't revealed so much about
that in his word and and those are areas where I believe that
we have to speak where the scripture speaks and we have to be silent
where the scriptures are silent but I know this Our time in glory
will be occupied with worship. Pure, uninterrupted worship. Now that doesn't mean we're all
going to be sitting in some kind of an eternal church service
singing hymns all the time. I suspect, if I have to speculate,
and I normally don't do this now, but I suspect that we'll
live lives working, doing things every day. The work, though,
will not be a toil, the curse that's upon man by the sweat
of your brow. It'll be something we enjoy,
something that we are honored with, all of that. I suspect
it'll be something like it, but I know this, we'll be worshiping
the Lord with an attitude of worship continually. And what is worship? You know,
the Lord told the woman at the well in John chapter four that
one of God's purposes in the salvation of his people was that
he would have a people who would worship him in spirit and in
truth. Paul wrote in defining true believers
in Philippians chapter three, he said, we are the circumcision,
which he's talking about circumcision of the heart there. We're born
again by the spirit. And that's evidenced by we worship
God in the spirit. And I was writing on that for
this, the new book that's coming out called, What is a Christian?
And I made this comment, you know, one of the, One minor controversy,
I don't know if you call it minor, in scriptural translation is
the letter S when it comes to spirit. Do you capitalize it
or is it lowercase? And if I had to take a position
on Philippians 3.3, we worship God in the spirit, I would say
it's capitalized, but you can take it either way. Which means
this, that we worship God as we are guided by the Holy Spirit.
And the Holy Spirit guides us not by emotions and feelings.
Now, don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with emotions and
feelings, but that's not the benchmark of our worship. Somebody
said, well, I just felt the Spirit. Well, how do you feel the Spirit?
If you're just talking about emotions, that's not the Spirit. The Spirit guides us in worship
by the Word. And if the Word is missing, if
the truth is missing, there's no worship. Now, if through the
word you become emotional, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with
that. I'm not putting that, but here's
what has to be present. The preaching of Christ and him
crucified because all worship is based on and revolves around
the glorious person and finished work of Christ in his redemptive
work for his people. Worship involves prayer. How
do we pray? We pray because we have a great
high priest who's passed through into the heavens. He did all
the work. We're righteous in him, therefore
we're fit to pray. Somebody said, well, you better
straighten up your life or you can't pray. One of the main reasons
we do pray is because our lives aren't straightened up. Think
about it. And I'm not talking about hypocrites
now. I'm talking about true believers. So we pray through Christ. We
sing our hymns. We try as best we can to find
hymns that are honoring to the Lord and that reflect what we
believe to be true. There's so many hymns that don't
do that. We call upon the name of the Lord. You know, the first,
well, we'll say the phrase, whosoever shall call upon the name of the
Lord shall be saved. All right, the first wording of that in
scripture is found, I think it's back in Genesis, it's either
12 or 15, but it's Abraham. And it says, Abraham called upon
the name of the Lord. Now that's not the first example
of a sinner calling upon the name of the Lord. If you wanna
see the first example of a sinner calling upon the name of the
Lord, go back to Genesis four, that's Abel. All right, and of
course we knew how Abel called upon the Lord. Well, what did
Abraham do before he called upon the name of the Lord? You know
what he did? He built an altar and shed blood. And that's how
you call upon the name of the Lord, through Christ. That's
what that picture. On the basis of the blood of Jesus Christ,
his righteousness alone. Now, as we read through these
scriptures, you're going to find that all that holds true as far
as worship. Look at verse 11. Now, remember
what he did. He defined, he talked about the
144,000. And then he talked about a multitude which no man can
number. And there's a lot of different ways people interpret
that. I believe what he's talking about basically is the whole
true church of Jesus Christ, the believers. Some say that
the 144,000 just refers to Jewish believers. And then the multitude which
no man can number refers to Gentile believers. I don't believe that's
so. The reason I don't is because the 144,000 is a number, 12 times
12 times 1,000, that depicts and symbolizes the whole church. Now, some people say the 144,000
means the whole true church on earth, whereas the multitude,
which no man can number, depicts the true believers, true church
in heaven. That could be, but I just don't
see a necessity to make a separation here. Here's the thing about
it. Whoever he's talking about there, it represents all the
elect of God redeemed by the blood of Christ and called by
the Holy Spirit in the new birth. Now that's one thing. And here's
what he says, and what he's trying to do here, these are the ones
who are sealed in their foreheads, who are safe and secure in Christ. The wrath of God against sin
will not come upon them. Now they may feel the infirmities
of the flesh here on earth. Some of them have been martyred
for the truth and all of that, and they still experience physical
death, but they're sealed and secure unto salvation in Christ."
And what he's doing here in Revelation 7 is showing them that, look,
these bad things that are going to happen in the last days leading
up to the second coming of Christ, these are bad things, they're
terrible things, it's God's wrath against sin, but don't you fret,
you're safe and secure in Christ. Who shall lay anything to the
charge of God's elect? It's God that justifies. God
saves us, God keeps us. And here's what he talks about.
Look at verse 11. He says, all the angels stood
round about the throne and round about the elders and the four
beasts. That's the four living creatures, remember. So that's
talking about not a wild beast, that's talking about God's ministers. And it said these angels fell
before the throne on their faces and worshiped God. Now these
are the elect angels. And they too are worshiping God.
They too are praising God. And they do it, you might say
it this way, they do it by proxy. The elect angels have not experienced
redemption. But they see it in the redemption
of God's elect from our sins by the Lord Jesus Christ. And
they worship God. You might say it like this, they
worship God as spectators. Just like we had a lot of spectators
watching football yesterday, didn't we? You weren't down there
on the field playing. And if your team won, you experienced
that elation. Your team lost like mine did,
and some of y'all's did too. We just don't want to talk about
it, do we? But here's the angels. Their
team has won. You could say it that way. God's
elect are going to be saved. And they see the glory of God
in the face of Jesus Christ as spectators. This is amazing to
them. Things which angels desire to
look into. And so they're worshiping God
just as we are, except as spectators. We worship God as recipients
of the blessings of God's grace. Sinners saved by the grace of
God. And notice what they're doing.
They're sitting around the throne. That's the throne of God in heaven. And it says, look at verse 12,
here's the substance of their worship. And they say, amen. Now you know what amen means,
that means so be it. And what that means is this,
that's a submission to the sovereignty of God. If God says it, it's
true. If God does it, it's right. And
it's a submission to God's way of salvation. This is the way
that God saves sinners. He saves us by His grace based
on the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's what
it means to submit. You remember Paul wrote of the
Jews who would not submit. That's an unbeliever. That's
all of us by nature. We wouldn't submit either unless
God the Holy Spirit came and convinced us of sin, of righteousness,
and of judgment, and gave us a new heart. So in other words,
whatever God does, whatever God says, what do we say? We say
amen. That's the way it is. Somebody said, well, I don't
understand it all. Well, you're not going to understand. Are
we so foolish to think that we could understand it all? Somebody
told me one time, said, well, when we get to heaven, we'll
understand it all. I doubt it. We'll be perfect. In humanly speaking, in spiritual
bodies, no sin, no sorrow. We're gonna talk about that.
But we're still not God. Isn't that right? We'll be redeemed, glorified
creatures. And God will still be God. God
will still be high above us. I suspect eternally there'll
be things that continually amaze us. But you know what? We'll
continually say amen. Amen. So that's worship now.
That's how we approach God. We approach God His way that
glorifies Him, not in our boastful way like men do today. And he
says in verse 12, he says, blessing. Now blessing, that refers to
all spiritual blessedness in Christ, but it's attributing
unto God all that He is. Peter wrote about that, I think
it's 1 Peter 3, 15, when he talks about blessed, when he talks
about how we are to sanctify the Lord God in our hearts. Now,
how do we sanctify God? We set him apart. There's no
God like our God. There's none even to compare
to him. Always, I think years ago, a man was telling me, he
was talking about the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit. And he told me this, you know, and here's the problem. You'll see men try to use illustrations,
earthly illustrations, to describe the Trinity. And I want to tell
you something, don't do that. That's not a good thing. And
he said, I've got that figured out. And I said, oh, you do?
He said, yeah, he said, it's kind of like me, he said. He said, I'm a son to my father,
I'm a husband to my wife, and I'm a father to my son. And I
said, well, that's not going to do it. He said, why not? And
I said, that would be like one God in three different roles.
And that's not what the Trinity is. I've heard the illustration
of, you know, use water. He's a liquid. If you heat it
up, it becomes a gas. If you cool it down, it becomes
a solid. Well, that would be one God in
three forms. That won't do it. Here's the
problem. There is no earthly illustration that will define
or describe the Trinity. It's one God in three persons.
Now, that is mind-boggling, isn't it? That's mind-boggling. But that's what the Scripture
teaches. What do we say? Amen. And that's it. That's it. And it is mind boggling. But
we do recognize the truth of it. And that's why we say, blessed
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed
us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places. In verse
11, or verse 12, he says, glory. That glory is the glory of God
in Christ. That's the effulgence of his
nature. who is god how does he distinguish
himself and identify himself uh... above everything else that
so that we can say there's nothing to compare to god who will you
liken me unto he said it's his glory that's his redemptive glory
too wisdom the wisdom of god who in the world could have figured
out the answer to the question of all questions. How can God
be just and justify the ungodly? And I've often said, you know,
when I was on my journey through darkness in religion, I had never
even considered that issue, let alone knew the answer to it,
until I heard a man preach on that message out of Isaiah 45,
a just God and a savior. How can God, who is holy, forgive
me, a sinner? How can that happen? And Him
still be God? And here comes the infinite wisdom
of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. He
set up Christ to be my surety, charged Him with my sin, sent
Him into the world to stand as my substitute and die on the
cross. and bring forth an everlasting
righteousness, whereby he could be both a just God and a Savior,
which is, and that righteousness imputed to me. That's wisdom. That's infinite wisdom. And then,
thanksgiving. Well, that's what it's all about.
Love and thanksgiving. That's the motivation of all
worship. Thank you, Lord, for saving my
soul. Thank you, Lord, for making me
whole. It's nothing we earned, nothing we deserved, You see,
that's grace, gratitude, and love. That's the motivation for
all service. Honor here, he says. That's the
goal of worship. What are we here to do? What
are we here to do? We're here to honor Christ, to sing his
praises, to talk about his goodness, his glory, his power, his works,
his righteousness, everything. It's all about him. It's not
about us. People say, well, I want to go
to church where they can meet my felt needs. My friend, we
don't even know what we need until the Holy Spirit shows us
what we need through the Word of God. And then when we see
what we really need, we'll want nothing but Christ and Him crucified
and raised from the dead. We'll want nothing but His blood.
Our need will be to hear of Him and to honor Him and to glorify
Him. And then he goes on, he says
here, power and might. That's the power and the force
of God to save us, to preserve us, to bless us, and bring us
to glory. Not our own power, not our own
force, but God alone. And then he says, be unto our
God forever and ever. Amen. All this belongs to God. Salvation is of the Lord. He
said it back up in verse 10. He cried with a loud voice saying,
salvation to our God, which sitteth upon the throne and unto the
land. There's salvation. It's of the Lord through the
Lamb, the Lord Jesus Christ. Look down at verse 13. He says,
And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these
which are arrayed in white robes, and whence came they? Who are
these that have these white robes on, and where did they come from? Where did they come from? And
then look at verse 14. Here's the response. And I said
unto him, Sir, thou knowest. He asked the angel, or the angel
asked John, and John said, sir, you know. Now John knew who they
were, but this is for information. This right here is attributing
everything to God. And he said to me, look at verse
14. Now this is important. Here are
the true worshipers of God. And everyone else, I don't care
if they go, listen, I'm not saying this just to be mean or try to
be some kind of elitist, but here's what the Bible says. I
say that on the TV program all the time, because I know sometimes
if you're going through the scripture, you're going to get into things
that people are either ignorant of, or if they're not ignorant
of, they don't like it, they don't want to receive it, they
don't want to believe it. And I always tell people, I say,
look, what's important here, what matters here is what this
book says. So my point is this. He's going
to describe the true worshipers here. And there are no other
true worshipers except these here. And I don't care what they
do. They can go to a church service,
they can get on their knees and pray, they can take pilgrimages,
they can try to reform, whatever. But who are these? which are
arrayed in white robes. Sir, thou knowest, and here they
are. Verse 14, he said to me, these are they which came out
of great tribulation. Now there's the tribulation.
Now we're going to talk about the tribulation when we open
up the seventh seal. I'm not going to get into all
that today. You know how people think about this. You know, there's
arguments, there's different positions, and most of which
are not biblical. But that's, what is tribulation?
It's trouble. It's trouble. One of the men who are, in the
past, one of the forerunners of what they call the pre-Trib
movement, that believers are gonna be taken out of the world.
You know why he reached that conclusion? And it's in his writings. J.N. Darby's his name, if you
wanna look him up. He just didn't want to believe that Christians
were gonna go through that much trouble. And that's why he adhered
to the pre-trib thing. Well, look, when have Christians
ever gone through this world without trouble? Christ told
his disciples, he said, in the world you'll have trouble. But
he said, be of good cheer, I've overcome the world. He talks
about, blessed are you when men persecute you for righteousness'
sake, say all manner of evil against you. He said in John
15, he said, marvel not if the world hates you. In John 16,
he said, don't be amazed that they'll throw you out of the
synagogue, that they'll try to kill you, try to murder you.
But it's trouble. And these came out of great tribulation.
Now trouble comes in many forms to many degrees. As you know,
the early church in Jerusalem suffered greatly at the hands
of the government and the moral majority, the state religion. So much so that they had to be
scattered. Read about it in Acts 8 and Acts
9. And they went out throughout the world preaching the word.
You say, well, how could God let that happen? My friend, God
determined that that would happen. Read it. This is how God got
the gospel throughout to the Gentile world. You say, well,
does that make God the author of evil? No. No. But he controls
all things. Hey, look, either he's in control
or somebody else is. Either he's in control or we
are. If we are, let's quit. Go home. So, I mean, think about
those things. So what he's saying here is they
come out of great tribulation. Well, that in some form refers
to every true believer. Now, we in our day have been
spoiled rotten. And I know, I'm not saying we
haven't gone through troubles, but it's kind of like what the
writer of Hebrews said in Hebrews chapter 12 there when he's talking
about persecution, which to a believer One who's washed in the blood
of Christ and clothed in his righteousness is really the chastisement
of God, an expression of his love, a proof that we're the
children of God. But here's what he said. He said, you have not
yet resisted unto blood. Nobody's killed you yet. And
you look in the day and age that we live in, we've been protected,
haven't we? God has truly protected us. And
we're going to be talking about that a little bit in the message
today, and we'll talk some about it in the next verses. Revelation
7, well, goes all the way up to chapter 11 on the seventh
seal with the seven trumpets. And it talks about, you know,
we think about this, there may come a time when The Constitution
of the United States of America is so perverted that the state
will be able to come in and persecute us. I hope not. I pray God that
we're still protected. But we've been spoiled, haven't
we? And that may stop. But here's
the thing about every believer in some form or another, to some
degree or another, comes out of great tribulation. But here's
the key. Look at it. And have washed their
robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Now there's
the key. What does it mean? How did I wash my robes and make
them white in the blood of the Lamb? That is an expression of
faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and repentance of dead works. Now, it is God who saves us. When we talk about being washed
in the blood, we sing that song, are you washed in the blood,
in the soul-cleansing blood of the Lamb? What can wash away
my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
Now, you know that that washing is a metaphor, don't you? You
know that. And what is he talking about? Well, he's talking about,
ultimately, at the heart of it, at the ground of it, the fact
that Jesus Christ, as our surety and substitute, having our sins
imputed, charged, accounted to Him, put away those sins, washed
away those sins, by his death on the cross as our surety and
substitute. And how does that make our robes
righteous? The robe in the scripture is a metaphor for a sinner standing
before God. And there's really only two robes.
There's either the robe of rags, filthy rags of a sinner's works
or there's the white robe of Christ's righteousness imputed.
And when we stand before God, we're either gonna stand there
in the filthy rags of our own works, pleading something other
than the blood and righteousness of Christ, or we're gonna stand
before God in the robe of Christ's righteousness. And what that
is, that's not talking about a literal robe that we put off
and put on. The Bible speaks of us putting
on Jesus Christ. That's a metaphor. What do we
do? We believe in Him. We rest in Him. We submit to
His righteousness. That's what that means. We don't
put it on and take it off. And it's the righteousness of
God. That's what He's talking about. And it's imputed, charged,
accounted to us. God will never take it. Listen.
We didn't make it. We didn't appropriate it. God
put it on us when He imputed it to us back in eternity past.
And He'll never take it away. It cannot be tarnished. It cannot
be torn. It cannot be contaminated. We're
set before God justified in the righteousness of His Son imputed
to us. And we put it on experientially
in our experience when we believe in Him. It's already put on us,
but we evidence that by believing. God-given faith. And that's who
worships God around the throne. If you're not washed in his blood
and clothed in his righteousness, you can forget it. Everything
that we are and do by way of worship, whatever it is, is based
on this right here. Nothing else. You say, well, you gotta try
to be a better person. Yeah, we all do. But that's not
what qualifies us for worship. Somebody say, well, you gotta
stop doing that sin and start doing this act of obedience. Well, that's okay, yeah, but
that's not what qualifies us for worship. What qualifies us
for worship? I'm washed in the blood of Christ.
I'm clothed in his righteousness. He's my high priest. the blood
of the Lamb. Verse 15, look at it. He says,
therefore are they before the throne of God. That is, they
have a complete righteous standing with God. See, Christ is not
saying to these, depart from me ye that work iniquity, I never
knew you. They're before the throne of
God. They serve him day and night in his temple. His temple is
his church among his people. And I believe this is something
of what it's talking about, of what we'll be doing in glory.
I don't know what it all involves, but it'll be serving him in some
way. And he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them.
The tabernacle of God. We know the tabernacle of God
is Jesus Christ himself. John 1 14, the word was made
flesh and dwelt, meaning tabernacled among us. In him dwelleth all the fullness
of the Godhead body. But we also know that his church
is called his temple, his tabernacle, his dwelling place, because we
dwell in him. We're one with Christ in the
view of God's law and justice. We're united to Christ. And look
at verse 16. He says, they shall hunger no
more. Now, does that mean that literally we won't have to eat
in heaven or in glory? I don't know. I really don't
know. I know Christ in his glorified
body after he appeared in resurrection, he ate. Maybe that's an indication
that we will too. I know this, we'll eat healthy. You won't have to get on each
other. Now you better eat healthy. No, we'll eat healthy and all
of it will be used for our nutrition, whatever it is. I don't know
these questions, but I know this. We won't hunger anymore to be
totally free from sin. Right now we're free from sin's
condemnation, aren't we? Right now we're free from sin's
deception that keeps us from knowing the truth and coming
to Christ. But then we'll be free from the presence of sin,
the effects of sin, the contamination of sin. Sinless. There is absolutely no way that
we can even imagine what that's going to be like. Did you know
that? Because I'll tell you what, everything about us now in our
own persons, even our best efforts to serve God are sinful. They
fall short. They have to be washed in the
blood of Christ, don't they? Even our prayers. That's what
Peter said in 1 Peter 2. Our sacrifices, which is our
service, our obedience, our prayers, our worship, is only acceptable
to God through Jesus Christ our Lord, washed in his blood, clothed
in his righteousness. And then he says, there'll be
no more thirst. Christ is the water of life.
Neither the sunlight on them, nor any heat. Why is that? Because the sun, Christ, is the
light. And the heat there meaning, I
believe, in reference to the fiery wrath of God. There'd be
no wrath. Christ already took care of that
on the cross. And then verse 17, for the lamb which is in
the midst of the throne shall feed them. He's the bread of
life. And shall lead them unto the
living fountain of waters. That's Christ the fountain, the
springing up. and God shall wipe away all tears
from their eyes, there'll be no sorrow. Now we'll see more
about that as we continue through the book of Revelation.