Revelation chapter 14. I told
the lesson this morning, gospel preaching and its effects. The first thing we see in our
text, which begins in verse six of Revelation 14. First thing
we see is the gospel being preached. John says, and I saw another
angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel
to preach unto them that dwell on the earth and every nation
and kindred in tongue and people. And what this is giving us a
picture of is God sending his gospel to be preached over the
whole world. The angel here is not a creative
being with wings, you know, flying into heavens, shouting where
the earth can hear. This angel represents God's pastors,
God's preachers. He told us that's exactly what
those angels represent in chapter one, when we begin studying this
book. So this is the gospel being preached over the whole world.
But you know full well in this world, there are many different
gospels. But Paul said another Jesus, a false gospel being preached.
So how can we identify which gospel is God's gospel when we
hear it preached? And John gives us several ways
we can identify it here. First, God's gospel is an everlasting
gospel. It's eternal both ways. It doesn't
have a beginning and it doesn't have an ending. When we talk
about something that's eternal, It never begins with us and goes
on forever. No, it doesn't have a beginning
or an ending. That's the gospel. God's gospel doesn't have a beginning
and it will never have an ending. The gospel is the declaration
of God's eternal purpose that is being carried out in time.
Nothing that God is doing, God sending his son to be the sacrifice
for sin, is not a reaction to what men have done. That wasn't
a reaction to Adam's fall. That wasn't a reaction to, well,
men can't keep the law, so now we'll try something else. No,
this is the declaration of God's eternal purpose. God's always
seen his people in Christ the lamb slain from the foundation
of the world. Salvation in Christ is not God's
plan B. It's his eternal purpose. So
salvation does not depend on something that we have to do
to make it effectual. The gospel message is this. It is done. It is finished. All
of salvation is done in Christ. God's gospel never tells us to
do, ever. It never says do. It always says
don't. The gospel always says rest in
the Lord Jesus Christ. The eternal gospel declares an
eternal salvation, an eternal justification. God's elect have
been eternally justified. In the mind of God, they're eternally
justified. It's all that matters, isn't
it? It's all that matters is in the mind and purpose of God.
Whatever is God's will, whatever his mind is, it's done. God purposed it in eternity.
So you know what he did? He carried it out in time. He
sent his son to accomplish it and he sent his spirit to apply
it to the hearts of his people. You know, this is not a difficult
matter to understand, the eternal justification. You have to understand
who God is, that God's eternal, that God can never change. You
know, people always want to pin down the exact moment when a
sinner is justified. They say, well, you know, were
they justified in eternity when the Father elected them? Were
they justified at that moment that Christ died for them and
shed his blood? Or were they justified the moment the Spirit
gave them life and the new birth? You know, which is it? And my
answer is always, yes, it's all three. The only thing that's
being done in time is what God purposed to do in eternity. That's
everything he purposed to do in eternity is what he's carrying
out in time. The gospel is an everlasting
message that declares an eternal salvation. And it will always
be preached. The gospel is the everlasting
gospel. It'll be preached until time is no more. Actually, there's
a sense in which the gospel will always be preached and never
stop being preached. In eternity, there won't be preaching
like what we're doing right now. But you know, we will sing the
gospel forever. We sing the praises of Christ
and we sing of what he's done for us, how he loved us, how
he washed us, how he found us in our sin and cleansed us from
our sin, redeemed us by his blood, by his purpose, by his grace.
That's going to be singing the gospel, isn't it? Singing what
Christ has done for us poor, needy sinners. And that's what
we do. We preach the gospel story. It's
just telling sinners what Christ has done for them. It's the eternal
gospel. Second, I tell you the way you
can identify God's gospel. Everybody needs it. If there's
a message that's just for good people, just for people that
can do this or do that or do something else, it's not God's
gospel. Everybody needs God's gospel. This gospel is preached
to all that dwell upon the earth, to every nation, every kindred,
every tongue, and every people. You know why that is? God's not
wasting his time preaching the gospel in all these places. This
gospel is preached everywhere because everybody needs this
gospel. Everybody needs the Savior that
our gospel declares. You and I are lost in sin. You
can make that statement to everybody in the whole world. And that's
true. You and I are lost in sin. Christ is the only Savior. He's
our only hope. I don't care what culture you
have. I don't care what language you speak. I don't care what
color your skin happens to be. We need Christ. He is the one
thing we need. He will satisfy your soul. I
promise you that's true. Everybody needs this gospel.
Third, this is how you can identify God's gospel. God's gospel will
reach his elect, and they'll believe it, because that's God's
purpose for them. And His purpose is always done.
It's to please God by the foolishness of preaching to save them to
believe. So the gospel is preached to
every nation, every kindred, every tongue, and every people.
Because in His infinite mercy, God has an elect people out of
every kindred, every nation, every tongue and every people.
God's elected a people from everywhere and he sent his gospel to them.
And they're all going to hear and they're all going to believe
the same gospel. They're all going to believe
and they're going to love the same savior because that's God's
will for his people. Now, it seems like here and in
other places in scripture, it seems like that the scriptures
teaching that before Christ returns, right before he returns, that
there's going to be a great revival. But if that's going to happen,
if there's going to be a great revival, if there's going to
be a great calling out of God's elect all at one time from all
across the world, I can tell you what's going to have to happen.
The gospel's going to have to be preached. Before God's going
to save anybody, the gospel's going to be preached. Now, I
don't know if we're in the last days, the last time of the last
days. The last days are all the days
from the time Christ ascended to the time he comes back. I
don't know if we're in the very last of those days or not. There's
no way for me. I don't know when Christ is going
to return. It's going to be soon, but soon could be one day or
1,000 years. I don't know when Christ is going
to return. But I do know this is true. The gospel is being
preached. across the whole world more today
than at any time in human history. The gospel is being preached
everywhere. There are so many good gospel
preachers now and the gospel is being heard not just from
them and the different pulpits. The gospel is being heard via
the internet just across the whole world. This place right
here is just almost the tiniest dot on the map that you can find
And the gospel preached from this pulpit was heard in 27 different
countries last month. The gospel is being heard across
the whole world. And I say that to say this, I'm
not trying to say, oh, you know, we better do something different
because the Lord is about to return. And we better keep doing
what we've always done. Keep looking to Christ, keep
preaching Him, keep loving His people, loving Him, taking care
of one another. I make this point that the gospel is being preached
over the whole world for this purpose. You just don't have
to worry about God's life here in the gospel. They're going
to hear it. How are they going to? Well,
I don't know exactly, but God will see to it. He's going to
send a preacher that fell out in the middle of the wilderness,
just one man, because that's his sheep. They're going to hear
the gospel. God will not fail. His people
are going to hear the gospel and believe it because he's going
to see to it. That's the gospel that's being
preached. And here's the second thing I
want us to see. Let's see some effects of believing the gospel. Verse seven, this is the message
of God's preacher saying with a loud voice, fear God, give
glory to him for the hour of his judgment has come and worship
him that made heaven and earth and the sea and the fountains
of waters. Oh, this is the commandment of
the gospel. Fear God. Period. The gospel commands us,
give God The gospel commands us to worship him. Worship the
creator of physical and spiritual life. And you know, God's people
always obey those commandments. They do. Because God gives them
a new heart. They can't do anything else.
So the first effect of the gospel, when it's believed, is fear. Every believer fears the Lord. That means reverence is God.
God is not our buddy. God is not our co-pilot. God
is not the old man upstairs. God is the Almighty. And we reverence
Him for who He is. He's the Almighty. God has spoken
to men. In the Old Testament, He spoke
audibly from heaven to men, to the prophets, to different people.
And you go back and read those times when God spoke to men.
Every single time, they were full of fear. Now, they're thankful
to hear from God, but they always heard him reverently, didn't
they? They always bowed. They always shook. This is an
awesome thing to hear from God, to have him speak to us. Now,
today, God doesn't speak audibly like he did to Abraham. He spoke
audibly to Abraham. Abraham didn't have the word.
God's going to speak to you and me. He's going to do it right
here through his word. This is how he speaks to us now. We do hear
from God. And we hear from God through
the preaching of the word. You know what we need to remember?
You know, I don't know how many times that God spoke audibly. Just use Abraham's example. I
don't know how many times God spoke audibly to Abraham. Every
time he did, Abraham was reverent, full of fear. But I'm confident
of this. We've heard the gospel preached
more than Abraham heard audibly from God. Don't let the fact
that you've heard the gospel many times, don't let the fact
that you're planning on hearing it today and then again on Wednesday
make you not hear it reverently. This is an awesome thing. Let's
be thankful. God speaks to his people through
his word. And when he does, we're full of fear if we believe him.
The second effect of the gospel when it's believed. is to give
God the glory. Every believer does that. They
all give God all of the glory and salvation. I don't get any
of the credit for it, I don't get any of the glory for it, because God
did it all. The Father's the one that began
this thing. He purposed it in eternity. He purposed it in an
election. He chose a people to redeem.
God the Son came to this earth as a man. He carried out God's
purpose of redemption by His obedience, by His death, by all
of His work. And God, the Holy Spirit comes,
He applies that gospel, He applies life to the, when He gives life
in the new birth, and He does it through the preaching of Christ.
That's how sinners are saved. You notice what we did in that?
Not one thing differently. Father, Son, Holy Spirit did
it all. And we gladly, thankfully give Him all the glory, Lord.
How thankful we are for His wondrous work of grace for His people. And this thing of salvation,
what a miracle. You know, in order to do that,
God had to take away sin. He had to completely remove it.
That's harder than what you and I imagine it might be. That's
all we are. We are sin. So this is only something
God could do, to take sin away. And I'll tell you how He did
it. John here speaks about, for the hour of his judgment is come. That's speaking primarily of
the hour of hours. The hour when Christ was made
sin for his people at Calvary and the Father judged him for
it. Injustice. And Christ suffered and he died
to put that sin away. And he put it away completely. He didn't put away most of it.
He didn't put away some of it. He put the sin that was laid
upon Him, He put it away completely by His precious blood. And how
sinners, saved by His grace, want to give Christ all the glory
for doing something so amazing. I can understand something, at
least in my mind, I can understand that God is love, that God is
wise, He's gracious, that He would find a way to redeem sinners,
not just in mercy, but also in justice. I can see that God would
do that for people because that's who God is. This is the amazing
thing. That God would do something like
that for somebody like me. That makes me want to give God
all the praise, doesn't it Chief? That makes me want to bow and
worship Him. And we love, believers love to
give God the glory. Through the preaching of the
word, through hearing the gospel preached, through saying songs
of praise, through just talking to each other about the Lord,
what He's done to redeem me. He gives His people a heart that
loves to give Him all the praise and all the glory. And when we
talk about Him, the believer's heart is full of joy and comforted.
I thought this morning, I was going over my nose, about folks
here and folks in other places that are in such great difficulty. Wow, their hearts are just, oh,
just crushed. The only way they can keep going
on is God's grace. It's the only explanation. You
want comfort for your heart. I'll tell you a good way to do
it. Start talking about the Lord.
Start talking about your Savior. Start talking about what He's
done for you. How this marvelous work of grace that He would love
you, that He would die for you, that He would give you life.
You start doing that, your heart's going to be comforted. Because
He's a comfort in me. But this hour of judgment is
talking about another hour too. Christ is coming back to gather
all those people that He purchased. He's coming back to gather them
to Himself. And the message of the gospel is fear God, bow to
Him, give God the glory, submit to Him. And He's come back to
judge the world in righteousness. That's the other thing this hour
of judgment means. And we who believe on Christ,
we cannot wait for His return, can we? Because then we're going
to be able to give Him the glory face to face. Then we're going
to be able to do it perfectly, not like we're doing it right
now. Well, the third effect of believing the gospel when it's
preached is worship. And I thought, what does worship
mean? What is worship? Well, if you
want to find out matters like that, I'll tell you what to do.
Go to God's word and find out. So I looked up the word worship
in my lexicon there to see what does the Greek or Hebrew word
worship. What is it when that word is
translated worship in the Bible? What does that word mean? I'll
give you just the three or four most common words that were translated
worship here in the King James Version. First, the word worship. It means to prostrate yourself,
just to present yourself as helpless before God to do with you what
he wills. That's worship. Then the word
worship is translated. It means to bow in reverence. I bow in his presence because
I'm not worthy to be there. I'm not worthy for him to even
look upon me. So I bow in reverence before
God. Then it means to revere. We revere
God because He's so high above us. His mercy and His grace and
His love is so high, so infinite, so wonderful. We revere Him. And then the word worship, this
word translated worship means this. It means to kiss like a
dog licks his master's hand. I'm not sure exactly what a dog
means when a dog does that, licks your hand. I think he's saying,
I'm your dog. I'm your dog. I love you. I love
being your dog. You've heard me talk about these
two crazy Yorkies we have. One of them, for some unknown
reason, he's my dog. He just loves me. He wants to
just be touching me, sitting on me all the time. And almost
every single time I ever pick that little dog up, you know
what he immediately does when I pick him up? bends around,
starts licking my hand. And if I just stand there still,
he'd lick me till my skin came off or something. He just would
never stop. I just think, ugh, stop it. I only licked my dog. Our Savior never, ever, ever
does that. We worship Him. You come before
Him. I'm your dog. I love being your
dog. And you just lick His hand. Never,
ever, ever pull it away. That's worship. You think, I'm
no vice dog. Lord hasn't done a work of grace
in your life. You believe the gospel, you're his dog. You lick
his hand, you lick his feet, you lick him. You'd love to be
his dog. That's worship. And there's only
one gospel that makes sinners worship. There's just one. It's
the gospel of sovereign grace. We'll never worship, ever, until
we worship the sovereign. When I can't get him to do anything
for me. When he's not obligated to do
something for me if I make a decision. If I can't bribe him by being
good, if I can't bribe him by being better than somebody else.
If he's not obligated to me in any way, but he can just do with
me what he will. He can have mercy on me if he
will, or he can pass me by if he will, and either way he's
right. that sovereignty, and that's the only Savior I'll ever
worship. He might show mercy to me, or
he might not. That's the Savior that I'll prostrate
myself before. I'm helpless before Him, and
all I can do is worship. That's the Savior a sinner will
worship. And when by God's grace we see the Lord Jesus Christ,
that He is a sacrifice for my sin. When I see something of
the untold mercy and grace and love that God has to somebody
like me. When I think about the unspeakable gift of God's Son
for me, that He could love somebody like me, that He give His Son
for somebody like me. I see the infinite wisdom it
took for God. God found a ransom for a sinner
like me. God found a way to save somebody
like me and still be God, still be just, still be holy, and still
be merciful. Well, I see that God uses His
infinite power to take a poor, weak, dumb, rebellious sheep
like me all the way to glory. That makes me worship, doesn't
it? All right, here's the fourth effect of believing the gospel. It's the tearing down of idols
and religious strongholds in the hearts of God's people, verse
8. And there followed another angel saying, Babylon has fallen.
It's fallen, that great city. Because she made all nations
drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication. Now Babylon
represents all false religion. The wine of her fornication is
her message. It's a drink that people just
drink it down of spiritual adultery, spiritual fornication. That's
simply a message of this. Something other than Christ.
A spiritual fornication. And the flesh just drinks it
up, just gets drunk on this message of the flesh, something other
than Christ. But God gives us this promise.
Now that message is just disgusting, it's revolting to the hearts
of God's people. And God gives us this promise,
that Babylon, that false religion is going to fall. Now certainly
we know at the end of the time, at the end of human time, there
will not be any more false religion, is there? But this is not just
talking about the end of time. This is talking about the experience
of the believer on this throughout history on this earth. All of
us are born loving false religion. We're born loving self because
that's what we love is self. We're born with idols that are
in our hearts because we're dead. We don't know God. So of course
we're going to worship an idol. Look at second Corinthians chapter
10. That false religion and idolatry is going to end in the hearts
of God's people when they hear the gospel preached. 2 Corinthians 10, verse 4. For the weapons of our warfare
are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds,
casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth
itself against the knowledge of God and bringing into captivity
every thought to the obedience of Christ. Now, how can I be
brought to the to trust the obedience of Christ and not my obedience.
It's only through the power of the gospel. And the church at
Thessalonica was the perfect example of that, wasn't it? Paul
said that you turn from your idols, that you became followers
of us and of the Lord. When did that happen? When the
gospel came to them in power. So the gospel preached has a
great effect on the hearts of God's people. But the third thing
we see is this. It's the effect of not believing
the gospel. Back in our text, Revelation 14 verse nine, and
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, the same should drink of the
wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture
into the cup of his indignation. And he should be tormented with
fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the
presence of the land. and the smoke of their torment
ascendeth up for ever and ever. And they have no rest, day nor
night, who worship the beast in his image, and whosoever receiveth
the mark of his name." Now you know full well what those verses
are telling us. Anybody who does not believe
in Christ is going to be damned. Anybody who believes in this
spiritual fornication, this idolatry, is going to be damned because
that idol can't save. And people are going to be damned
because of their unbelief, because of their insistence on their
own righteousness, they will not submit themselves to Christ.
Our great sin is this. It's refusing to believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ. It's refusing to rest in His
obedience as my only righteousness. It's refusing to see His sacrifice
as the only thing I need to put my sin away. Now, I don't like
talking about hell. warn you, beware to listen to
somebody who likes to talk about hell. I wouldn't talk about it,
try to scare anybody because no one's ever been scared into
a profession of faith because they're scared of hell. Isn't
that what the Lord told the rich man in hell? He said, your family
is not going to be scared and believe in Christ because they've
heard about this place. People believe Christ because they see
him, because God gives them faith in Christ. Sinners believe on
Christ because they believe the word preached, not because they're
scared of hell. But our text does give us some indication
of what hell is. And just like the rest of the
book of Revelation, I don't have any doubt that there's figurative
language here, so I don't know if hell is a constant physical
burning and fire and torment or not. But I do know this, the
suffering that's there, the real suffering, is suffering the burning
wrath of God, as Mr. Darcy knew. God's justice is
poured out on those in hell without any mixture of mercy. That's
what he means here when it is poured out, he said, without
mixture into the cup of his indignation. It's God's wrath without any
hint of mercy. And the suffering there is so
great because it's suffering without the presence of Christ
in his mercy. Now it says it is in the presence
of Christ and His angels, but it's in His presence in justice.
It's not being in His presence with mercy and grace. And the
suffering there never ends. It's eternal. It's everlasting. There's never any rest from it. Because no matter how much we
suffer for our sin, we can never satisfy God for it to make us
quit. That's what this is teaching about hell. So let's not end
there. Let's end back with what gives
the hearts of God's people some joy. Let's end with the glory
of Christ our Savior. Christ has saved His people from
their sin. Now that's the preeminent thing. This is when we talk about
being saved, we're saved from sin. We're not talking about
being saved from wrath or saved from hell. God's people are saved
from sin. But by saving His people from
their sin, Christ has ensured His people never suffer for it
because Christ suffered everything that God's justice demands for
the sin of His people. Christ already suffered God's
wrath without a hint of mercy from His Father. He drank the
dregs of that cup dry. Then there's not a drop of it
left for His people. They'll never suffer that. Christ
suffered. being without the presence of
his father for those three hours of darkness so that he cried,
my God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? The substitute suffered
that. So his people never will. Christ
suffered eternal hell in just three hours. He could do that
because of who he is. So his people will have rest.
They'll never be condemned because Christ has satisfied God's justice
for them. God's people, thank God, It's
not just thanking God when I have to suffer. Nobody wants to suffer.
What thrills the heart, what makes us thank God is the Lord
Jesus Christ. His gospel declares who he is
and what he's done for his people. And that makes us fear. That
makes us reverence him. That makes us worship him. It
makes us give him all the glory. Alright, I hope God will bless
that too.