Well come back to Revelation
chapter 9 where we looked at the first half of the chapter
two weeks ago. So I want to look at the passage
from verse 13 down to verse 21 and I've entitled the message,
As in the days of Noah. I wonder what it was like in
the days of Noah, because we read that Noah was building the
ark, wasn't it 120 years? And all that time he was preaching
the righteousness of God, and he was preaching the need to
repent and to flee from the sin that was all around. The sin
that we see in this world today grows worse day by day, it really
does. Oh no, they've always said, no
they haven't, not like it is today, it grows worse and worse
and worse. And God will judge sin, as he
did then. I wonder what it was like. watching
and waiting. If you were watching Noah, who
built this ark according to the specification God had given,
and he preached the righteousness of God all the time he was building
it, it went on for 120 years, and they laughed him to scorn.
They thought he'd lost his mind. He was building an ocean-going
ship nowhere near the sea, and they laughed him to scorn, they
rejected his notion, it was just utterly ridiculous, absolute
rubbish, the sort of thing that we hear all around us today.
And then one day came when God shut them all in the ark, Noah
plus seven of his family, sons and their wives, and his wife,
and the animals so that life was preserved, air-breathing
life was preserved, and the flood came, and there was one place
of safety, and one alone. You couldn't go to your own place
of safety, you couldn't cling onto your own piece of floating
debris, you were either in the ark or you were dead. You were
either in that ark that Noah had built at the specification
of God, or you were dead, because God destroyed it. Why did God
destroy it? Because that world was threatening
to achieve Satan's objective. of a worldwide unity without
any reference to or any respect for the righteousness, the holiness
and the justice of God. And God who is holy and above
all and supreme, and of such higher thoughts than our thoughts
that we cannot imagine, He cannot allow that, and He did not allow
it. He swept it away because Satan's kingdom could not succeed. And so it is today, and so it
is down history. God will not allow Satan's kingdom
to succeed. What is Satan's kingdom? It is
actually God's kingdom, that Satan usurped from God by deluding
Adam into eating the forbidden fruit. He
deceived Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but nevertheless for
the love of Eve, Adam sinned and disobeyed, and the whole
of mankind, we were plunged into that same situation of being
the enemies of God and being part of Satan's kingdom until,
until God comes. and snatches us from that situation.
And this is where the notion of salvation really becomes sharp,
doesn't it? If you were there in the days
of Noah and he was building the ark, the day the flood came you
would have known what salvation meant and that you were outside
of salvation if you were not in that ark. You would have known
that vividly. And so it will be, as it is in
the days of Noah. That's today. An end is coming. A terrible end is coming. And
it's whether you are in the ark that God has provided. The ark
that God has provided is the Lord Jesus Christ and Him alone. You see, the book of Revelation
that we've been studying for several weeks now, is given,
as verse one of that book says, to show God's servants things
which must shortly come to pass. There are people who really get
upset about this, I mean there was one guy that I came across
that thought I'd got it completely wrong by trying to observe how
the history of the world is developing and relate it to what Revelation
is saying. When verse one of Revelation, the very first verse,
says it's given to show God's servants things which must shortly
come to pass, I think it means it. I think it's given so that
we know what's coming. what's coming in the destruction
of Satan's kingdom. That's what this book is about,
how God is going to overthrow and defeat the kingdom of Satan,
how God's kingdom must be triumphant. This passage that we're looking
at, the second half of chapter 9, this passage speaks of dreadful
war before the end of time. It really does. Oh, can't we
spiritualise it and make it not quite so blunt and so alarming
and shocking? You know, there are young people
listening, you don't want to scare them to death. I'm saying
what God's Word says. There is dreadful war coming
before the end of time. That's what this sixth trumpet
is about. You see, in the last century,
sort of, 75, 80 years ago, people thought that World War II ended
war for good. There wouldn't be any more wars.
It's been so bad that we'll put things in place that will prevent
there being any more wars. We'll have the United Nations,
and we'll have that balance of power between the nuclear powers,
and nobody will ever go to war again because the prospect of
it is so dreadful. And we'll set up all of these
globalist organizations that will keep us safe, and there
will never be war again. But here's the thing. Sin continues. You that have a sensitivity concerning
the Word of God and the justice and righteousness of God, have
you ever seen in this world sin quite like it is in the society
that we live in, in this country of ours, in the United Kingdom,
and I know wider afield as well? It's at an appalling height.
Every day I read of something more that appalls me more about
the unrighteousness, the evil of sin. It grows worse. and divine
justice must be upheld. God must triumph. His kingdom
must triumph over Satan's kingdom. Why does he send war? For God
sends war. For God summoned forth the red
horse of the second seal, back in chapter 6 of Revelation. God summoned forth the red horse,
the red horse of war, setting nation against nation. Why? to frustrate Satan's objective
of worldwide unity without respect to the righteousness and justice
of God. This is so serious, if we had
the merest hint, the merest feeling for what it really means. God
is holy, God It cannot tolerate sin. It cannot go unpunished. It cannot go unbalanced. It must
receive double, as Isaiah says. Isaiah 40, receive double for
her sin. What I mean by that is the perfect
reflection, the perfect balance. Every sin must receive its just
penalty. It must happen. So, a world war
more devastating than the wars of the last century is coming.
That's what I believe we read here in verses 13 to 21. A world
war more devastating than the wars of the 20th century is coming. Now you say, what a shocking
thing to be preaching about on a Sunday morning in lovely weather
and nice peaceful conditions and here you are talking about
war. Well, let me tell you this. There's two messages in this.
If you are amongst Christ's redeemed, his believing people, those he
has cleansed from their sins by his sacrifice on the cross
of Calvary, taking that sin and satisfying the justice of God
for it, if you are qualified for the kingdom of God, a citizen
of the kingdom of God, qualified for heaven, then here's message
number one to you who believe, to you therefore who believe,
to you whom Jesus Christ is precious, fear not. These dreadful things
are definitely going to happen, but you don't need to fear. You
do not need to fear. There is nothing for the believer
to fear, but you need to be aware of what's going to happen. But
here's the second message. If you have scorned God's gospel
and said, no, I can't believe all that stuff. No, rubbish. I don't believe that. Hear what
he has said. and flee from the wrath to come. Hear what God has said, as it
was in the days of Noah. He gave a warning, and they scorned
it, and spurned it, and treated it with contempt. And the flood
came, and in a day swept them all away. And the only place
of safety was in that ark that God had specified to Noah to
build, for the saving of life on earth. It will be the same,
as in the days of Noah, said Jesus, it will be the same in
these days. You see, in the days in which
we live, and this is my first point, sin is still calling for
divine justice. Look at verses 20 and 21 of chapter
9. And the rest of men which were
not killed by these plagues, yet repented not of the works
of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols
of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood, which
neither can see, nor hear, nor walk, neither repented they of
their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor
of their thefts. You see, that is all sin against
the law of God. the precepts of God, the righteousness,
the holiness of God. The first verse, verse 20, speaks
of worship of devils, of idols, of gold and silver and brass
and of stone and of wood. These are all false gods. That's
the first table of the law, the first table of the Ten Commandments.
The law of offenses against God. You shall worship only one God. There are not multiple gods,
there are not idols of your own making. You will worship only
one God, you will honour his name, you will respect him, you
will worship him, you will bow to him. That's the law of this
universe, and yet these wren, despite the plagues and despite
a third of the people being killed by the things that God sent via
the sixth trumpet, they repented not of them. And then in verse
21, it's the second table of the law. Sins against your fellow
man, murders, sorceries, fornication, thefts, it all boils down into
those things. Murders, sorceries, fornication
and thefts, the second table of the law. These are the increasing
sins of the world today. This is this world in which we're
living. It grows worse and worse in its sin, in its rejection,
in its violation of the justice of God. There's a surrender in
society in general to the spiritual host of wickedness. We saw it
in the locusts in the first half of the chapter, which is demonic
forces let loose into society, alluring, attractive to the sins
of the flesh, very appealing and yet with a painful sting
in their tails. They can't die from it, but they
suffer, hurt and torment. And that sin is increasing, and
our society has surrendered to the spiritual host of wickedness. You know, when so much, don't
you see it? Even ordinary thinking people who try to live a decent
life, and I'm not saying trying to live a decent life, is the
thing that will make you right with God, for it isn't, for there's
only one thing that will make you right with God. That's what
Peter preached. There is only one name given
among men whereby we must be saved, and that's the name of
the Lord Jesus Christ. But this spiritual host of wickedness
all around us, this society has given in to it. I mean, I just
read articles every day saying, oh, no, they've done that now.
Oh, well, what more can I expect? That's just the way it is. I
read one this morning in a secular newspaper, an online secular
newspaper, just glancing the headlines. I couldn't believe
the report of what is being taught in some state schools to our
children. about their created situation
and what they should do. It's absolutely diabolical, literally,
of the devil, diabolically, diabolical. The spiritual host of wickedness,
our society has surrendered to it. God has provided us armour,
those of us who believe, He said, there are all these hosts of
evil, but put on the whole armour of God, Ephesians 6 is where
you need to refer. But you see, the justice of God
cries out about this sin. The justice of God cannot just
let it go. The justice of God cries out.
Sin must receive its due reward. It must receive its penalty. The justice of God must be balanced. God cannot allow sin to go unbalanced
with the due retribution, the due punishment of that sin. Look
at verse 13. When the 6th trumpet sounds,
and of course the 6th trumpet is the 6th of 7 that issued from
the 7th seal of the plan of God for the overturning, the destruction
of the kingdom of Satan and the triumph of his kingdom. And the
6th of these trumpets, this is it, it sounds in verse 13 and
John hears a voice. from the four horns of the golden
altar which is before God, saying to the sixth angel which had
the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great
river Euphrates. And the four angels were loosed,
which were prepared for an hour and a day and a month and a year,
for to slay the third part of men. And the number of the army
of the horsemen were two hundred million, no doubt a symbolical
number, but symbolical of a very large number. and I heard the
number of them and thus I saw them. That trumpet sounds and
a voice comes from the four horns of the altar. We've seen this
altar before in Revelation. Obviously this is all vision.
This is vision that John was given of things that are outside
of this realm of space and time that we live in, in this created
universe. But in heaven, come up hither,
he said at the start of chapter four. Come up hither, come up
from this realm of physical the world and the universe and the
forces that God has created. Come up into heaven and see God's
plan unfold for the destruction of Satan's kingdom and the triumph
of his own kingdom. And here he is there We've seen
before, as I say, a golden altar with four horns in the temple,
the Israelites' temple, the tabernacle first, but then the temple. There
was the altar of burnt offering and the altar of incense, and
they both had four horns on the altar. Horns are symbols of power. And there was a voice from the
four horns of the golden altar, which is before God. A voice.
Why was there a voice? I'll tell you what I think it
is. Pretty. You have to look in the context of the rest of
Scripture. But this voice from the four horns of the altar is
God's judgment on unrepented sin. It is the voice which God He brings his judgment against
the contempt of mankind for the atoning blood of Christ. You
see, the four horns of the altar in the sacrifices of the Old
Testament, if you read Leviticus and the books where the worship
of God was specified, the animal sacrifices were symbolical, right
from when Abel brought his lamb that he'd slain to God. They
were symbolical of the death of Christ and the shedding of
his blood for the satisfaction of the justice of God on behalf
of His people. And that blood that was symbolical,
the animal blood, was to be placed, was to be put by the priest on
the horns of the altar. It spoke of what Christ would
accomplish. It spoke that here is the redemption
from sin which accomplishes the atonement, the at-one-ment with
God. And yet, society has complete
contempt for that atoning blood. It despises it. It treats it
as a common thing. Look at Hebrews chapter 10 and
verse 29. Paul is telling us here about
how the Old Testament temple worship symbolized that which
Christ would accomplish, and the dangers of treating it with
contempt, and the need for us to hold fast our profession of
faith without wavering. and let us consider one another
and all these things. He said, if we sin willfully,
verse 26, after we've received knowledge of the truth, there
remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking
for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries.
He that despised Moses' law died without mercy under two or three
witnesses, just He that despised Moses' law, verse 29, of how
much sore a punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy
who hath trodden underfoot the Son of God, and hath counted
the blood of the covenant wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing,
and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace. For we know
him that said, Vengeance belongeth to me, I will recompense, saith
the Lord. This is a despising of the salvation
that God has set forth in Christ. The sixth angel sounded and I
heard a voice from the four horns of the golden owl. Judgment is
coming. He's sending forth judgment.
Look at 2 Thessalonians, which I forgot to mark, so give me
a moment just to look for it. 2 Thessalonians and chapter 2. That's the passage in which we
read about God setting apart his people through sanctification
of the spirit and belief of the truth. But from verse 7 of 2
Thessalonians chapter 2, the mystery of iniquity doth already
work. That's what's going on in our
world, and has done, since Paul wrote it. with all power and signs and
lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that
perish, because they received not the love of the truth, that
they might be saved from the judgment of God that's coming.
And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that
they should believe a lie, that they all might be damned who
believe not the truth. You see, You say, what came first? I don't know, but the scripture
says, because of unbelief, God sent a strong delusion. God sent
a strong delusion that they should believe a lie. Is that not what
we're seeing in the world today? And the voice from the four horns
of the altar, is crying out with that judgment. They despise God's
grace. Society all around us despises
God's grace, has contempt for it, has no interest in it. This
world, even respectable society, has zero interest in the grace
of God in Christ, because they're good enough on their own, aren't
they? They're respectable enough on their own. Look at who they
are and what they've done. Don't you go telling me I'm a
sinner. Oh, don't you dare do that. We've all sinned and come
short of the glory of God. This world is spiraling into
ever deeper depravity. It's spiraling into sorcery. Sorcery, drug abuse, drug abuse,
lying. Where can you find truth today?
We're bombarded by messages and emails all of the time. And how
many of them are lies? They're just plain lies with
the aim of deceiving and tricking you and thieving your money.
Worship of worldly wealth. Look at it. Look, what's the
thing that most people covet more than anything else? A lottery
win. Oh, just think what I could do with a lottery win. You'll
condemn your soul to hell if you get involved with that. Covetousness
is idolatry, is what Paul says in Colossians 3 verse 5. Look,
Abraham was rich. Solomon was rich. I'm not saying
that riches are wrong, it's the love of money that is the root
of all evil. Enjoy what God has given. Enjoy
the wine and the oil that God has given. Enjoy the beauty of
the creation all around, but do not set your hopes and affections
here. Set your hopes and affections,
as Jesus said, on things above. Things above, where Christ is.
That's where the bliss of God's people lies, not in the things
of this world. There's the idolatry of false
religion which is all around, the greed fueling theft and deceit
and fraud, the sexual perversity from the created order. It's
never been worse, has it? It's reaching a peak, viewed
by the world as ever growing better and more tolerant, of
what God calls perversity and sin. Striving for world unity,
but without the justice and righteousness of God. The sixth trumpet is
instructed to sound, to implement God's response. Satan cannot
be permitted to succeed. And we have precedents. We have
precedents in the flood, we have precedents in Sodom and Gomorrah. Look at Luke 17 verse 26. Luke
17 verse 26. As it was in the days of Noah,
so shall it be in the days of the Son of Man. This is Jesus
speaking. What was going on in the days of Noah? They did eat,
they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage until
the day that Noah entered into the ark and the flood came and
destroyed them all. This is the Word of God spoken
by the Son of God, God in whom The man in whom dwelt the fullness
of the Godhead bodily spoke these words, do you not think we ought
to listen? Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot, this
is in the days of Abraham and Lot and Sodom and Gomorrah, they
did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they
builded, everything that normal life went on, but the same day
that Lot went out of Sodom, and he didn't go out until the angels
came and grabbed him by the hand and dragged him out. The same
day that Lot went out, it rained fire and brimstone from heaven. Brimstone is sulphur. Burning
sulphur is a horrible... Have you ever been near a piece
of burning sulphur? It chokes you. It produces sulphur
dioxide, which is an acrid, poisonous gas. It rained fire and brimstone
from heaven and destroyed them all. Listen. Listen. You've got two examples, the
flood and Sodom and Gomorrah. Verse 30, Even thus shall it
be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed, in that day
he which shall be upon and so on. Don't hang around. It's coming. You see, it's ripe for judgment.
As we read earlier at the start, God saw that the wickedness of
man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the
thoughts of his heart was only evil continually, exactly as
today, openly, blatantly, sinning and despising the gospel of grace,
pouring scorn on the only means of salvation, which in Noah's
day was the ark and now is Christ and his gospel, until all were
destroyed. Let's look at what the 6th trumpet
summoned forth, the plague of the 6th trumpet, for so it is
called in verse 20, these plagues, the plague of the 6th trumpet,
a voice, verse 13, the violated, despised grace of God to repentant
sinners, that's what it is. God is gracious to repentant
sinners. That violated, despised grace
of God calls for a dreadful plague to be released. It releases four
bound angels in the great river Euphrates at a precise time,
verse 15, an hour, a day, a month, a year. Very precise. So it's
an event which is coming. I don't believe it's come yet,
but it's imminent, it's coming. And the purpose of it is to kill
a symbolical third of the people. You know the wars of the last
century killed a tiny fraction of the people of the earth. I
mean it was an awful lot of people, but it was a tiny fraction of
the people. This talks about killing a third by a symbolical
army of 200 million horsemen. Not literal numbers, but it speaks
of a vast army. Is this fanciful nonsense? Look, verse 17, I saw the horses
in the vision, and them that sat on them, breastplates of
fire, and of jacinth, and of brimstone. Heads of horses were
as heads of lions, and out of their mouths issued fire, and
smoke, and brimstone. Did you ever see the Lord of
the Rings trilogy at the cinema? And it portrayed things like
this. And I used to think that words
like this were just as fanciful nonsense as the Lord of the Rings. But has God's word ever lied
to you about anything else? The older I get, I've never once
found it to lie to me. There have been times when I've
struggled, but I've always found that the word of God is right.
So why not listen, and heed the warnings, and prepare? But what
does it all signify? It's a greater level of detail
and intensity of that same thing which is signified in the second
seal, the sending forth of the red horse in chapter 6. As the
end approaches, these things are going on all the time, but
as the end approaches, they become more vivid, more intense, much
sharper. You see, the river Euphrates
symbolizes the eastern border of Israel, which was God's kingdom
in its Old Testament manifestation. The river Euphrates is symbolical
of the eastern border of the kingdom of God's people. Beyond
were the peoples of what's called Gog and Magog. You read about
that in, well, later on in Revelation, but in Ecclesiastes, about chapter
37. the peoples of Gog and Magog,
where the white horse, the first horse, the first seal, the white
horse of God's truth and of gospel grace, had never ventured until
later New Testament times. You know, yes, there were missionaries
who went to China, but on the whole, on the whole, for century
after century, those peoples lay without any light of the
gospel of God's grace. They're marked by spiritual darkness
and superstition. The city that sits on the river
Euphrates was Babylon. And Babylon was where God's people
were sent to show them they were on the border of the kingdom
of God and the kingdom of this world. That's where Babylon was
situated, all that represents that which is the kingdom of
Antichrist and against God. We'll see Babylon is fallen,
Babylon is fallen later. And that barrier of that river
is opened to the peoples of Gog and Magog. Just turn over to
chapter 16, Revelation 16, And, where is it, verse 12, where
we've got the same thing. The sixth angel poured out his
vial, so this is when we get to the vials, upon the great
river Euphrates. And the water thereof was dried
up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared.
You see, when you get to the vials, you're into the final,
final destruction of this created order. It's the same idea in
its final intensity. But an enormous army is symbolized
by 200 million horsemen, not literal. They have heads of lions,
they have breastplates of fire, there's smoke, and there's brimstone,
which is sulfur. They all symbolize, this is the
key thing, the fire is the fire of war. Fire always speaks in
scripture of war. The smoke speaks of the desolation
which follows. You know when you've had a bonfire,
you know, the fire is burning and then it dies down. But the
picture is just one of desolation. You're not going to find anything
any good in the smoke that is the end of a fire. And then the
brimstone, the sulphur, speaks of the disease, of the pestilence,
the noisome pestilence, as it's called in Scripture. the just
ill effects of this war, and the result is that a third of
men are killed. That's more than the quarter
that the second seal summoned forth. Many will think this is
fanciful nonsense, but is it not ever more plausible as these
days advance, as the population of the world explodes like it
never has before? You know, nearly 8 billion people,
nearly quadrupled in my lifetime. It's ever more plausible. The
rise of China and other Eastern powers, godless Gog and Magog. People will say, oh, this is
racist nonsense. No, it's not. This is scriptural. This is what
God has told us, that we might know what's coming. The West's,
I'll put it this way, the West's provocation of Russia. I'm not
excusing Vladimir Putin for one minute. I deplore his invasion
of Ukraine. I think he's done outrageous,
terrible things, but please, for one minute, do not think
that there's nothing other than shining righteousness and goodness
in the powers of the West. No, we've provoked Russia to
the extent that, I just read yesterday, he's moved lots of
nuclear warheads into Belarus next door. There's a shift of
world economic power. The West, America and Britain,
and the European states, are so incredibly indebted and China
is so phenomenally rich. And then there's mass immigration
into once Christian Western countries. The society, the river's been
opened. The forces are flooding in. Gog
and Magog largely were outside of world history for many, many
years. World history proceeded between God's kingdom Israel
and Satan's world empires, his attempts to produce this worldwide
unity. The empires of Egypt and of Assyria
and Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome, all those great empires
were Satan's attempt, but they happened in what we now know
as the westernized, Christianized world of Christendom. But Gog
and Magog weren't involved in that, but now they're coming.
In Noah's day, God warned sinful man that a flood was coming because
of their sin and they laughed at the very idea until Noah plus
seven with him were taken into the ark and the flood came. A
war of unprecedented intensity is coming. This is what this
is telling us before the end of time and it's coming for what
reason? To cripple Satan's objectives
of a kingdom without God's righteousness and justice. When will it happen? Only God knows. I don't know.
But it will happen. And nothing that man can do can
stop it. God has spoken. God has spoken. When you see it drawing closer,
do not be surprised. Now finally, and quickly, This
war's impact on mankind. We read in verses 20 and 21,
a third are killed. The rest are not killed, but
apart from the people of God, they're unrepentant. They're
just furious at what they've lost because all of their hopes
are tied up in this world. And they're calling on the mountains
and the rocks to fall upon them as we read in earlier passages. There's a lesson in this for
us. Judgment is just. God's judgment is just, but don't
think that it will achieve what the gospel has failed to achieve. You may say, I don't like using
the words gospel and failed in the same sentence, but I mean
it in this sense. If the preaching of the gospel has not persuaded
this approximately two-thirds of mankind to repent and seek
God while he may be found, then, you know, It will not do it. Judgment won't do it. The thing
that will is this. We read in 1 Corinthians 1.21,
it pleased God, what? By the foolishness of preaching.
Not by the threat of judgment to save them that believe. No,
the gospel of grace and redeeming blood was despised, and that
calls for retribution, penalty, and death. And so it will be.
But what about God's believing people? Just as those were swept
away in the flood, they didn't believe, they despised the ark,
and they died. They were destroyed. God, it
repented God, and that doesn't mean God changed his mind by
the way, but we won't go into that now, but it repented God
and he destroyed man from the face of the earth and he's coming
and these are going to die for their sins. What about God's
believing people though? What about those who've trusted
Christ? embraced his redemption, longed for his kingdom, weathered
the storm of this world's opposition to divine truth, those who have
not gladly partaken of the world's sin, even at the expense of being
treated with contempt by the world. Even at the expense of
being hated by the world, and persecuted by the world, what
about those who are Christ, who believed Him, and longed for
Him, and follow Him, and love Him, to whom He is precious? Christ prayed that they be kept
from the evil, that's John 17. They might be touched physically
by this great war that's coming, the wars in the 20th century.
There were those that were true believers who were killed and
wounded in the wars of the last century. But this is the point. God's true people are spiritually
immune from harm. Because why? They are sealed. Revelation 7 verse 3, Hurt not
the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed
the servants of our God in their foreheads. They're stamped with
the ownership of God. None can pluck them from his
hand. If you're stamped with the ownership of God, you cannot
be swept away in this judgment that is coming on the earth.
Satan's kingdom cannot seduce you to join him. in his kingdom
to your eternal harm. If you're Christ's, your affection
is on things above. So what does God say to his people? To you, if you belong to him?
In 1 John, I know I quote it often, but chapter 2 verse 15,
love not the world. This is what he says to his believing
children. Love not the world, neither the
things that are in the world. Use it as you need, all things
needful. If any man loves the world, the
love of the Father is not in him. Take what it gives, use
what it gives, do your best, have ambition, do that which
is right in the sight of God. But, but, do not love the world. For all that is in the world,
the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of
life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world
passeth away, and the lust thereof. But he that doeth the will of
God abideth forever. Trust wholly in Christ. Jesus
said in John 16, 33, He said, These things I have spoken unto
you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world you shall
have trouble, tribulation, but be of good cheer, for I have
overcome the world. Nothing can stop you, child of
God, believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, nothing can stop you
from inheriting the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of
the world. Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit that kingdom.
Nothing can snatch you from the Father's hand. My Father, said
Jesus, is greater than all. You will be taken to paradise
when God has decreed, and not a moment later, nor a moment
earlier. What if then you say, oh, I've
heard the warning and I know I'm not Christ's. You say you
fear being outside of the ark when the flood comes. You fear
being outside of God's people and God's gospel when these things
come as the signs are so clear that they're coming. And I would
just say to you on the strength of God's word, Why do you not
seek him today while he may be found? That's what he says. Seek
the Lord while he may be found. Seek the Lord while he is near.
He won't turn you away. He will not turn you away. Jesus
himself said in John 6.37, All that the Father giveth me shall
come to me. And hear this, listen. Him that
cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. Lord Jesus, I do not
understand everything by a long way, but I know this. I am with
this sinful mankind that is deserving of your eternal punishment. But
I know that you have paid the price of the sins of your people.
Heavenly Father, show me that I am yours. Show me that I am
yours. Teach me what it is to trust
in the Lord Jesus Christ and know that I am safe from all
of these things. Amen.