Revelation chapter 14, the vision
that John is receiving here, looking through all of human
history. The church on earth now comes
to the end of time. I titled the message, The Final
Part. The final harvest is when our
Lord returns and He'll gather the wheat into one place and
the tares into another place. Each one put in the appropriate
place. Just like the farmers are doing
or getting ready to do right now. They're getting ready to
harvest. And when they do the corn, it's going to go in the
proper place. The corn is going inside of them. The wheat and the chaff and the
junk that's gonna be disposed of properly too. And that's what's
gonna happen at the end of the world, his final harvest. The
Lord's gonna come to gather his people to himself and gather
those who do not believe him to their proper place. And the
first thing I want us to see about this final harvest is the
character of the harvester, the character of the judge himself
in Revelation 14, verse 14. And I looked and behold the white
cloud. And upon the cloud one sat like
unto the Son of Man, having on his head a golden crown, and
in his hand a sharp sickle. Now the harvester, or the judge,
the one who will divide these two groups is our Lord Jesus
Christ. The one like unto the Son of
Man is the Son of Man, and the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ.
And the character of our Savior, the character of the harvester,
is seen in four different ways. First, his character is, he's
holy. He sat upon a white cloud. That
cloud is a picture of perfect holiness. Everything about our
Lord Jesus Christ, everything about him, everything he does
is perfectly holy. You hear the angels flying around
the throne of God cry out his character. Holy, holy, holy is
the Lord of hosts. Salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ
is a holy salvation. The salvation in Christ, the
forgiveness of sins in Christ satisfies God's holy character
and makes His people holy. It's all about holiness. The
throne of Christ is a holy throne. Everything done from that throne
is holy. Every decree of that throne which
shall be done is holy. And the throne of Christ is obtained
in a holy manner. How is it that He obtained this
throne? Jan, I watched the show recently,
historical, somewhat, I guess, somewhat accurate to history.
All these different keys of what they did to obtain that problem. I mean, it was horrible, the
things that they did, just horrible. Is there one closer to the throne
than me? Is he next in line to the throne
before me? Well, who cares if he's my brother?
I'm gonna kill him. Who cares if he's my brother?
Let's just kill him and then I'll get the throne. They just
do such unholy things to obtain that throne. But not our Lord
Jesus Christ. He sits upon that holy throne
because he earned it. Perfect life is holy life as
a man. He earned that throne. He does
His sacrifice, put away the sin of all of His people. The Father
said, you sit here on this throne. God, make your enemies your foes.
Christ sits on the throne because He's the rightful heir. He ought
to sit on the throne. He's the only begotten Son of
the Father. And whatever He does, as He sits
on that throne in judgment, whatever He does, every person who appears
before His judgment seat will be holy. Whatever he does with
every person that appears before him will be right. He won't give
anybody anything that they do not deserve. He'll give everyone
exactly what they deserve because he's holy. He sits upon a holy
throne. All right, second, the character
of Christ the judge is this. He's holy and he has all authority. He sat on this cloud. heaven,
trying to keep his throne from enemies who are scheming to take
it. He's not worried about them. They're defeated. He sat on the
throne because Christ has no rivals. He's not pacing the floors
of heaven, worried that his purpose for the salvation of his people
will not end. He's not pacing and wringing his hands, worrying
that someone of his people will not come to faith in him. No.
He sat. completely unworried because
the work of redemption is finished. He's sad because he knows his
will shall be done. And he sits with all authority,
without any worry. There's no questioning his authority.
He has divine authority to dispose of the harvest, to dispose of
all man as he sees fit. He has all authority. No one
can question his judgment. Third, the character of Christ
the Judge, Christ this harvester, is he is the mighty victor. He
wears a golden crown upon his head. Now this crown is not the
king's crown, although the one who wins the battle is typically
seen as the king. But this crown is the ring that's
given to the victor, given to the one who wins the war, wins
the competition. The Lord Jesus Christ, He has
won the battle. He has won the war by himself
and vanquished every enemy. And he's been crowned victor,
the mighty conqueror. So he has every right to divide
the spoils into these two groups. He can divide the spoils as he
sees fit. And then fourth, the character
of Christ is wisdom. He knows what he's doing. He's
not going to make a mistake. In his hand is a sharp sickle.
A sharp sickle is a sharp, curved harvesting tool. It can cut down
the stalks and then gather in the fruit, pull the fruit in
back where you want it. This is a sharp dividing tool. You better know how to use this
thing or you'll cut your leg off or yourself or somebody else.
Christ the Judge knows how to use this tool wisely. He knows
the difference between the wheat and the cabbage. Don't pull yourself into thinking,
oh, I know this person's safe because of this and this person's
safe because of this. I think we can see over time
someone has a good hope, but we don't know the difference
between the weak and the tares. Remember the tare of our Lord
told us about the enemy coming in and sowing tares among the
weak. And the workers went about pulling up all the tares. He
said, don't do that. You don't know the difference yet. When
they're first springing up, you don't know the difference between
the weak and the tares. and wait for the harvest. Then
it'll be easy to divide the wheat and the tares. This is what John's
telling us. Now that time has come. The time
of the harvest has come. The time has come for our Lord
to come and separate the wheat and the tares, and he's gonna
make them whole. See, this is Christ the judge.
The Father has given all judgment to the Son. This is his job,
and he's got the character for it. Father, our Lord says, judged
no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son. He's got
the wisdom, he's got the right, he's got the power, he's got
the holiness to judge and right between the wheat and the hares
and the sheep and the goats. So that's the character of the
harvester. Second, John shows us the harvest
of the elect, verse 15. And another angel came out of
the temple, crying with a loud voice to him that sat on the
cloud, thrust in thy sickle and reaped. For the time has come
for thee to reap, for the harvest of the earth is ripe. And he
that sat on the cloud thrust in his sickle on the earth, and
the earth was reaped. Now the time for the harvest
has come. This is God's appointed time. Now is the time for the
harvest. And this harvest will happen
at the end of the world, at just exactly the right time, just
exactly. Now, if there's going to be a
harvest, somebody had to do some planting first, didn't they?
Well, that's what's happened through all of human time. The
gospel that's been preached, while it's being preached, the
Holy Spirit goes and sows seeds, sows good seed on good ground
in the hearts of God's people, in the hearts that God has prepared
to receive His Word of God. He's made them see their need
of the Savior. He's made them see the Savior, and the seed
has been planted. But you know, you can go out
and plant seeds. at just the right time. But now you can't
just immediately go take that simple and start harvesting again.
That's going to take a while. You know, Clay Curtis wrote an
article recently about the first garden he ever planted a little
fella. He planted a seed, you know, he's waiting. And Clay
wanted to harvest. So he thought, I mean, what's,
how come nothing's growing? So he went out too early and
started picking up and looking at those seeds and seeing what
was happening. He had no harvest. He killed off his first all of
his vegetables. If you're going to have a harvest,
you've got to do it at the right time. But if you can't do it
immediately after the seed's been planted, you've got to let
that seed grow and mature. And at just the right time, that's
when you harvest. Solomon said to everything, there's
a season, and a time, and a purpose for everything under heaven.
There's a time to be born, and there's a time to die. There's
a time to plant, and there's a time to pluck up that which is planted.
There is a time for the harvest. And the right amount of time,
when it has passed, our Lord will appear at His harvest. He's
not going to come too early, and He won't come late. He'll
come right on time. He's not going to come to harvest
His people until the fruit is ripe, until they're ready, He's
not going to come in this harvest to gather his people to himself
until all of his purpose for the redemption of his people
is complete. He won't come until all of his
people have been saved by God's grace through faith in Christ.
The word right that John uses here means dry. The Lord's not
going to come until this earth is dry and has nothing left for
God's people. The Lord's not going to come
until no more fruit of His grace will grow in this earth. And
you think, the earth is already gone. The earth has already got
nothing for God's people, nothing for our benefit. And that's true. That's very true. We need heavenly
blessings, not earthly blessings. We need things that come from
above, not things that come from the earth. And whatever blessings,
earthly blessings, that the Lord is pleased to let us have in
this life, every last one of them is going to be baptized.
Spiritual blessings won't, but these earthly blessings will.
And when it comes time, we're not going to count them lost.
We're going to count it gained to leave those things and go
be with the Lord. So in that way, there's nothing
in this earth for the believer. There is still some benefit to
the kingdom of God from this earth. It's the benefit of the
physical birth of God's life, so that in time, their spiritual
birth can happen. The Lord will not and He cannot
come into all of His people who have been brought to faith in
Christ. They've got to be born. No, they've got to be born naturally.
And in time, they've got to be born again. They've got to be
given from this earth physical life before they have spiritual
life. Let's look back at Romans chapter 11. Romans 11, verse 25. For I would not, brethren, that
ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise
in your own conceits, that blindness in part has happened to Israel,
until the fullness of the Gentiles come in. All those Gentiles have
got to come in. And so all Israel shall be saved. All spiritual Israel shall be
saved. As it's written, there shall
come out a sign of the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness
from Jacob. This has got to happen. For this
is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins.
The fullness of the Gentiles, the fullness of God's people
from all over the earth has got to be brought in. And when there
will be no more benefit to wait, when it's not going to do any
good to wait anymore because all God's left have already been
saved, that's when the Lord will come. Not a moment earlier. And
when that time comes, it's the Lord himself who will appear,
and he'll gather his people to himself. That's this harvest,
it's a gathering. The Lord's gonna come and gather
his people to himself. He's gonna cover his people first.
His people are the first fruit to the harvest. They belong to
the Lord, and he's gonna harvest them, and he's gonna handle them.
They belong to him, and he's gonna gather all of them to himself.
and not one of them will be left. He'll have every last one of
them. He planted every one of them, and He's gonna harvest
every one of them. The end of this world for the
believer is the greatest blessing we can imagine. The Lord's gonna
come and harvest His people and gather them to be with Him forever. Eternal blessing. So are you
certain there's got to be another side of the coin? There's the
harvest of the unbeliever. Revelation 14, verse 18. And
another angel came out from the altar, which had power over fire,
and cried with a loud cry to him that had the sharp sickle,
saying, thrust in thy sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of the
vine of the earth, for her grapes are fully ripe. And the angel
thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine
of the earth, and cast it into the great winegrass of the wrath
of God. The winepress was trodden without
the city, and blood came out of the winepress, even into the
horse prides, by the space of 1,600 furlongs. Now, throughout
man's history, these tares have grown right alongside the wheat. Normally, you couldn't tell the
difference. There are unbelievers in the local church. Now, they're
not in the body of Christ on the church, but they're in the
local symbols. right alongside believers, and
the natural eye cannot tell the difference between the wheat
and the tares. But the Lord Jesus Christ, the Judge of all, He
sees them. He knows the difference between
the wheat and the tares, and He's going to come to separate
them. But some people think this other angel is Christ, just like
the first angel was. Other people think it's an angel,
a created being, who God sent to do this harvesting. But look
at Matthew chapter 13. Either way, whoever it is that
is doing this, I do know this. It's all happening under the
authority and direction of Christ himself. It's Christ's holy will
being done. I do know that. Revelation 13,
verse 36. Then Jesus sent the multitude
away, and went into the house, and his disciples came unto him,
saying, Declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field. He
answered and said unto them, He that soweth good seed is the
Son of man. The field is the world. The good
seed are the children of the kingdom, but the tares of the
children are the wicked ones. The enemy that sowed them is
the devil. The harvest is the end of the world, and the reapers
are the angels. As, therefore, the tares are
gathered and burned in the fire, so shall it be in the end of
this world. The Son of Man shall send forth
his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things
that offend and damage to iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace
of fire. There shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then shall
the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their
Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear. See, either way,
this is being done, whether it's angels or Christ himself, being
done under the direct control and authority of the Savior.
In this day when Christ returns for the harvest, I can tell you
what the issue is. Me and this flesh are too easily distracted by
too many different issues. The issue is going to be Christ.
This harvest, that's all that's going to matter, believing Christ. It's the only issue that matters
today, and it's the only issue that's going to matter then.
It doesn't matter whether these tares, whether they agree with
a lot of right doctrine or not. It doesn't matter. The only issue
is believing Christ, knowing Christ. There are several things
I want us to see, four things. I believe four things. There's
three things about this harvest of the unbelievers. First of
all, it issues Christ. They're going to be gathered
together, and they're going to be named. And the reason for it is unbelief,
not believing in Christ, not resting in Christ alone. This
angel that comes to harvest the unbelievers, to gather them together,
to be destroyed, comes from the altar. This angel comes from
the altar where the blood sacrifice of Christ has been offered before
the Father. Someone's going to be damned.
They're not going to be damned because all these sins that we
think are so awful, they're going to be damned for their unbelief,
for their refusal to believe Christ crucified is all their
salvation. The second thing about the harvest of the whip is this.
They will all receive exactly what they deserve, no more, no
less. And actually, in judgment, I've
already touched on this. That's exactly what's going to
happen to everyone The elect, too, are going to receive exactly
what they deserve. No more, no less. They are righteous
because they did what Christ their representative did. They're
joined to Christ by faith, so they're going to receive everything
that Christ earned for them. They're going to receive everything
that Christ earned by his perfect life and by his perfect substitutionary
destiny. Unbelievers are going to receive
exactly what they deserve, too. They're described in our text
as ripe. Now, this is a different word
than the word ripe used up in verse 15. In verse 15, that word
means dry. But here, the word ripe means
mature. Their sin and their rebellion
and their unbelief are finally mature. And now the Lord's come
to deal with them. When the Lord returns, his people
are going to be ripe for heaven by the fullness of God's grace
in them. Non-believers are going to be right for hell because
of the fullness of their own works. They're going to receive
exactly what they deserve for their unbelief. The third thing
I want us to see about the targets of the wicked is this. The result
of unbelief is eternal punishment. They're cast into the one press
of God's wrath and are crushed eternally. There will be great suffering
for not believing Christ. This 1,600 furlongs here is 200
miles. Their blood ran for 200 miles. Now, again, you know this is
not an exact, literal thing. It's just showing us the enormity
of suffering. This is what unbelief really
deserves. Holy God is not giving somebody
what they don't deserve. Eternal suffering is what unbelieving
Christ really deserves. And the one carrying out this
punishment, the one crushing them in the winepress of God's
wrath, is Christ himself, is the judge himself. And I can
show you that back in Isaiah chapter 63. Isaiah chapter 63. Verse one. Who is this that cometh
from Eden, with thy garments from Boston? This that is glorious
in his apparel, traveling in the greatness of his strength.
I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save. The one who's
glorious in his apparel, who's traveling in the greatness of
his strength. This is a mighty warrior returning
from a mighty victory. Well, this can't be anybody but
the Lord Jesus Christ. He's mighty to save. He's the
one who speaks in righteousness. He's the one who put away the
sin of his people by great victory over sin and death and hell.
He's traveling in the greatness, the majesty of his strength. But then they ask another question.
Those who see him ask this question in verse 2. Wherefore art thou
red in thine apparel, and thy garments like him that treadeth
in the wine press? What they're asking is, why are
your garments so covered with blood? This blood his garments
are covered with are the blood of the enemies that he has crushed
in the wine press. Verse 3, here's his answer, is
why my garments are covered with blood. I have trodden the winepress
alone, and of the people there was none with me. So I will tread
them in my anger, and trample them in my fury, and their blood
shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment."
Christ had trampled down his enemies in his fury. This is not just, well, we've
got to put him to death. No, he murdered, he crushed him,
stomped him in the winepress of God's wrath so that the blood
just spread everywhere, sprinkled all of his garments. Now, this
is not talking about, this chapter here is not talking about when
Christ suffered for the sins of his people. Certainly, at
that time, he went into the winepress of God's wrath alone. At that
time, when he suffered for the sins of his people, at that time,
Christ was the breadwinner. He was the one being crushed. Here, this is talking about him
doing the crushing. This is God's judgment. The Lord
Jesus Christ himself would destroy all of his enemies. And that crushing is going to
be eternal. It's going to be done in a holy
fury. Now, I hate to end there, so
let's end here. Why won't every son of Adam be
crushed like this? Our sins must be punished. They've
got to be. The Holy God can't do otherwise.
Our sins must be punished. Even if we're going to pay for
them, or we won't pay for them, or we'll suffer for them, we'll
hell forever. Christ is going to put them away
by themselves. One or the other. God's left. Those ones that He harvests as
His fruit and gathers Himself, they're not going to be crushed
by God's Spirit. Christ was already crushed for
them. He already suffered for them.
Christ already suffered the vengeance of God for them and satisfied
them by His sacrifice. So there's no more need for punishment.
There's nothing left to punish. The blood of Christ has completely
removed the sin of His people. And this day, when Christ comes
and He executes vengeance upon His enemies, that's going to
be the day that He fully displays His holy justice, His holy wrath
against sin. And that's also going to be the
day that He fully displays, for all of creation to see, He's
going to display His mercy, His grace, His love for His people.
That day, they're gonna receive everything just exactly as He's
prepared for them. Verse 4, it says, for the day
of vengeance is in my heart, and the year of my redeeming
is coming. The day of vengeance is coming.
The day of vengeance against those who will not bow, who will
not believe, but the year, the eternality. of the blessing of
my redeeming is come. I'm going to come, he says, and
gather them to myself. Enjoy eternal glory, eternal
bliss, eternal peace, eternally seeing Christ our Savior face
to face, because he's already suffered and put away.