Two Journeys

There are two comings of Christ to the earth. The first was a coming of grace. The second will be a coming of glory. The first occurred in meekness, lowliness, and obscurity. The second will occur in power, radiance, and majesty. The first was surrounded by animals in a stable — as a baby, he was wrapped in swaddling cloths and laid in a manger. The second will be surrounded by the mighty armies of heaven. The first was a picture of infinite humility and poverty. The second will be a display of position and authority. The first was announced by an angel to the shepherds, proclaiming “Peace on earth, good will toward those on whom His favor rests.” The second will be announced with trumpets of war, with wrath and destruction to His arrogant, wicked enemies.

The first, He was like a lamb. The second, He will be like a lion. These images of lion and lamb have been opened for us throughout the book of Revelation. Revelation 5:5-6 says, “‘Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.’ Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain.”

Jonathan Edwards spoke from this text of Christ’s amazingly diverse perfections and excellencies. How different a lion is from a lamb! Lambs are meek and gentle, easily led to shearing and to the slaughter with quiet bleating. Lions are terrifying, overpowering creatures, weighing over 500 pounds sometimes, whose roar can be heard five miles away, whose teeth can rip to shreds instantly, whose paw can strike to the ground effortlessly. These are opposite images.

On the first coming, Christ was like a lamb. He was meek and gentle in his deportment to sick and dying sinners. He was patient and tender-hearted day by day. Quoting Isaiah, Matthew 12:20 says, “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.” This is a picture of his gentle dealing with sinners. We are like bruised reeds; he does not break us but is very gentle with us. We are also like smoldering wicks — there is a work of grace in us, but also a smoldering through indwelling sin. We are mixed. He does not snuff out that spark of grace that he has lit in us. He is able to fan it into a flame until it is a bonfire of righteousness. Christ is meek and patient and tender-hearted. His most powerful description of himself comes in Matthew 11:28-30: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

It is the only description where he puts adjectives to himself. Gentle, humble in heart, a king whose yoke is easy. If we bow to place our stubborn necks under his yoke, we will find that it easy and his burden is light. That is the nature of King Jesus. His most powerful action in his first coming was dying on the cross like a lamb. As Isaiah predicted in Isaiah 53:7, “He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.”

After Revelation 5, the title of Lion is not ascribed again to Jesus. He is repeatedly referred to as Lamb, even with the odd phrase, “the wrath of the lamb” in Revelation 6. Revelation is written for believers, and to us, He is always Lamb, never Lion, except on our behalf. Over 20 centuries of church history with the advance of the Gospel, we also see how lamb-like he is even to unbelievers. He is patient, forgiving of blasphemies and the hard words spoken against him. No human being in history has been so slandered as Jesus Christ, but he says, in the passage about the blasphemy against the Spirit in Matthew 12:31: “And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven.” See how gracious he is. He is not vindictive. For 20 centuries, he has not been vindictive against people who hate and denigrate and oppose and fight him every step of the way. Instead, he has stood all day representing his Heavenly Father, as did the father of the prodigal son. Romans 10:21 says, “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people.” He reminds people over and over, “Come unto me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.”

He was gentle toward Saul, who was breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples on the day he was converted. Saul had a vision of the resurrected glorified Christ while on the road to Damascus. Instead of the terrifying image in Revelation 19, that gracious glorious Savior said, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? Now, get up and go into the city. You will be told what you must do.” Saul never got over that vision; all he wanted was to see it again. In Philippians 3, he says, “All I want is to know Christ, that one that appeared to me in radiant glory.” He sensed, more and more as he went on in sanctification, how much he deserved to be struck dead that morning. Instead, Jesus was a lamb to him, very gentle, and forgave him. But someday, dear friends, all of that will end.

At the Second Coming, Christ’s terrifying wrath will be on full display. He will be Lion on that day to his enemies. He will roar like a lion; he will rise up to defend his people, his bride, to fight for her. He will rip apart His enemies with no mercy. Joel 3:16 says, “The LORD will roar from Zion and thunder from Jerusalem; the earth and the sky will tremble. But the LORD will be a refuge for his people, a stronghold for the people of Israel.” We can say plainly that Jesus Christ is a sweet and gentle Savior, but Revelation 19 shows what a terrifying enemy He will be at the end of the world.

At the Second Coming of Christ, we will see a promise fulfilled: Jesus’ promise to come back, which he gave in his own words as well as through his messengers. Revelation 19:11-21 is the account of the terrifying Second Coming of Christ. It is the fulfillment of a promise He made to us, the Church. Christ’s name is revealed in the context of his promises to his people. Verse 11 says, “I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True.” He is faithful to his promises. He is not a liar or a promise-breaker.

There are many promises of the Second Coming. One of the most powerful is there at the beginning of the book of Acts. Jesus died on the cross as a bloody atonement for sinners like you and me, but God raised him from the dead on the third day. After his resurrection, he appeared over a period of 40 days to his disciples to train them, and he taught them many things about the Kingdom of God from the Scriptures. Acts 1:6-11 says, “So when they met together, they asked him, ‘Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?’ He said to them: ‘It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’ After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. ‘Men of Galilee,’ they said, ‘why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.’”

Those are his final marching orders, “You will be my witnesses by the power of the Holy Spirit to the ends of the earth.” When that work is finished, He will come back. Jesus himself promised the Second Coming many times. John 14:1-6: “‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I'm going.’ Thomas said, ‘Lord, we don't know where you're going, so how can we know the way?’ He said, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through Me.’” Now, we come to Him by faith, but some day he will come back to take us to be with him forever.

Matthew 16:27: “…the Son of Man is going to come in his Father's glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done.”

Matthew 24:27: “…as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.” He will come like lightning across the sky. The summer after I graduated from MIT, I crossed the country with a friend of mine who was taking a job in the aerospace industry in Los Angeles. It was a great trip. Driving down a highway across a long valley in Montana — Big Sky Country — there was an electrical storm such as I had never seen in my life, with massive clouds — I call them Second Coming clouds — lit up by flashes of lightning, obvious and big and visible. As lightning that flashes in the east is visible in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.

Matthew 24:30 says, “At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory.” It is a clear prediction of the Second Coming of Christ.

Matthew 24:37-39: “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.”

Matthew 25:31-32 says, “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.”

He predicted it during his trial before Annas and Caiaphas, the Jewish leaders who hated him and had conspired to kill him. They were ready to kill him, but the false witnesses could not coordinate their stories, frustrating the leaders. Finally, the high priest said, “I charge you under oath by the living God: Tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God.” Jesus replied, “I Am” — God’s name.

Predicting Daniel, he said in Matthew 26:64, “‘I say to all of you: In the future you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.’ Then the high priest tore his clothes…” The prediction of his own second coming in glory is what condemned him to death.

Jesus is depicted here as faithful and true. He promised he would do this, and he will do it. Earlier in the same book, in Revelation 1:7: “Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him. So shall it be! Amen."

The context of the Second Coming is the final battle. Eschatology, the study of the end of the world, is like a big jigsaw puzzle — pieces here, pieces there, and fitting together. The book of Revelation is like that, so remember what we have already learned, that there will be a massive final battle. It is into this battle that Jesus comes back. Something is happening ging on on earth that motivates Him, to put it mildly, to come from Heaven to earth to end human history. John says, “Then I saw the beast [the Antichrist, the one world ruler who is in charge of the final empire] and the kings of the earth [subordinate to the beast] and their armies gathered together to make war against the rider on the horse and his army.”

These armies have come from all over the world, assembled under the authority of the Antichrist, ruler of the empire. Their purpose is to make war on Christ and his army, though they likely did not expect that they would fight Christ directly. They did not think the Second Coming would happen. They did not anticipate a warrior from Heaven descending with his army. The kings of earth are coming together for genocide, to wipe what is left of the people of God, the Jews, from earth, centered in this particular location in Palestine called Armageddon. By now, God has taken away the blindness from the hearts of the Jews. He will remove that veil that has hidden their eyes from seeing Christ in these prophecies. Romans 11 says that He will take away the heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh, and they will turn and all Israel will be saved.

The Jews have refused to bow down to worship the beast or to receive the mark of the beast on their forehead or hand. They have not played along, so they are the enemy. Revelation 16:12-16: “The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the East. Then I saw three evil spirits that looked like frogs; they came out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet. They are spirits of demons performing miraculous signs, and they go out to the kings of the whole world to gather them for the battle on the great day of God Almighty. [These deceptive demons trick people to assemble under the Antichrist to fight Jesus and His people.] Behold, I come like a thief! Blessed is he who stays awake and keeps his clothes with him, so that he may not go naked and be shamefully exposed. Then they gathered the kings together to the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon.”

The Antichrist’s worldwide kingdom is made up of lesser kings who give their power to him. He is therefore an infinitely lesser version of the King of kings and Lord of lords. Revelation 17 speaks of these lesser kings and their desire to assemble and fight for the Antichrist in his efforts to wipe out all of God’s people. Revelation 17:12-14 says, “The ten horns you saw are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom, but who for one hour will receive authority as kings along with the beast. They have one purpose and will give their power and authority to the beast. They will make war against the Lamb, but the Lamb will overcome them because he is Lord of lords and King of kings-- and with him will be his called, chosen and faithful followers.” They will fight, but they will lose because Jesus is omnipotent; He never loses.

The Antichrist gives the order to his henchmen, the demons, to do supernatural deceiving signs and wonders. People are tricked and lured into gathering by these signs. Behind the scenes is the dragon, Satan. His bitter hatred for the people of God drives his desire for the genocide. Throughout redemptive history, he has sought to slaughter the Jews. Now he has the chance to do it, so he thinks, especially now that they love Jesus and have found in him the Son of David, the Son of God. 

Satan especially wants to kill them there at Armageddon. Revelation 12:17: “Then the dragon was enraged at the woman [Israel] and went off to make war against the rest of her offspring — those who obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus.” Behind the scenes, the dragon and lying demons seem to be in control, but ultimately Satan, the demons, the Antichrist, the kings bringing their armies are not causing all to gather in one place.

The real mover here is Almighty God, assembling all of Christ’s enemies into one place for that final battle. They think they will put an end to Israel to destroy the people of God, but God is actually gathering them for their own slaughter. This is predicted plainly in the book of Joel, which I am currently memorizing. I am living in the battle of Armageddon every day. Nothing like Joel’s words of prophecy have yet been fulfilled in Israel’s history.

Though Joel is a “minor prophet”, it is a significant book. Peter quoted Joel 2 for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. Joel 3 predicts the final battle. Joel 3:9-17: “Proclaim this among the nations: Prepare for war! Rouse the warriors! Let all the fighting men draw near and attack. [The sixth bowl judgment in Revelation 16 dries up the Euphrates and sends out frog-like demons to gather the kings of the world.] Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears [the reverse of the more well-known verse]. Let the weakling say, ‘I am strong!’ [Still weak, but ready to fight.] Come quickly, all you nations from every side, and assemble there. Bring down your warriors, O LORD! [See Revelation 19:14] ‘Let the nations be roused; let them advance into the Valley of Jehoshaphat, [“the Lord judges”] for there I will sit to judge all the nations on every side [See Revelation 14]. Swing the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, trample the grapes, for the winepress is full and the vats overflow-- so great is their wickedness!’ Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision. The sun and moon will be darkened, and the stars no longer shine. The LORD will roar from Zion and thunder from Jerusalem; the earth and the sky will tremble. But the LORD will be a refuge for his people, a stronghold for the people of Israel. ‘Then you will know that I, the LORD your God, dwell in Zion, my holy hill. Jerusalem will be holy; never again will foreigners invade her.’” Revelation 19 is exactly what Joel said would happen.

The immediate context of the Second Coming is clear. The seven bowls have been poured out: the world is in its death throes. The oceans have turned to blood and every living thing in them has died; the fresh water has turned to blood. The sun’s heat has greatly increased, scorching people like fire. The earth was plunged into total darkness for a short time and has passed  — nothing can be done in that kind of darkness.

Finally, the Euphrates River has parted to allow these kings of the East to assemble for their death. They are motivated by Satan’s hatred for God and His people. Antichrist is motivated by his own prideful rage that this remnant will not bow down to worship him; his arrogance reaches to heaven. They assemble in Palestine, assuming it will be an easy battle. It be a very easy battle, the easiest in history, but not the way they think. They are confident in their own victory because they will be fighting against a small number of people who have no military strength and will be easy to wipe out, so they believe.

But as they assemble to slaughter God’s people, the heavens open. Revelation 19:11: “I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war.” At the baptism of Jesus, the heavens were ripped open and a dove came down. When the heavens are ripped open this time, it is not a dove coming down. This is the final demonstration of God’s right to interfere with the affairs on earth, to get involved in human history. He has that right because He is the King.

Jesus is riding a white horse, in clear contrast to his entry into Jerusalem the week before he was crucified. There, he rides on the foal of a donkey, meek and humble, Zechariah told us, a picture of humility. I don't ride horses or donkeys, but it is obvious that donkeys are much lower. It is easy to knock someone off a donkey. I will not be riding anything in a battle, but if I did, it would not be a donkey. A horse is massive. Heavy cavalry would be almost unstoppable. This is a picture of power. The entry into Jerusalem was about peace and humility, but this time he is here to wage war.

Many commentators say that this horse is symbolic. You horse lovers hope it is not symbolic — you would like to see Jesus literally on a horse. We have no way of knowing whether it is symbolic or not and it does not matter, but it could be that like the sword coming out of the mouth, it is symbolic. Either way, there is a sense of awesome military power.

He is called Faithful and True. He is keeping his promise. His overwhelming, perfect justice is in focus here. It is absolutely right what he is about to do. The justice of Jesus is depicted in Isaiah 11:3-5: “He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked. Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist.” As sinful human beings, when we read Revelation 19, we tend to see carnage, an absolute bloodbath. We may become queasy and pull back. We may want to charge God with injustice, like when Joshua entered Jericho and they killed everybody — men, women, children, infants. We have a hard time with that kind of bloodshed, but this is what the text says. Here the perfect righteousness and justice of God is on display. These are wicked warriors who are assembling to slaughter the innocent.

Revelation 19:12: “His eyes are like blazing fire…” This is a picture of perfect holiness. Habakkuk 1:13 says of God, “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong.” He sees everything and everyone with pure eyes. Proverbs 20:8 says, “When a king sits on his throne to judge, he winnows out all evil with his eyes.” He is judging with justice and can sift out everything to burn up the chaff.

Revelation 19:12: “…on his head are many crowns.” Like that great hymn, Crown Him With Many Crowns. The Lamb upon His throne. This is the lion upon his horse crowned with many crowns. This pictures his authority, his right to judge. He is the king of every nation, the king of the universe.

Verse 12 also says “He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself.” It's a powerful verse. I thought a lot about that. My initial reaction is, "John, why did you tell us then?” Why would you tell us? He has a name written on him that only He knows.

Years ago, a beloved missions professor, Christy Wilson, told me he had been in at a missions conference. He said, “Someone there knew you and said to say hello.” I said, “Really? Who was it?” He said, “I don't remember, but he said to say hello.” I thought, “I don't know what to do with that, but thank you.”

This verse may beg the question, “So why tell us?” But the reason is powerful. Jesus wants us to know that we do not know everything about Him. He has a name that he calls himself which we know nothing about, though perhaps we will one day. In heaven we will be learning Jesus forever — we have much to learn about him. He has other names given here in this very passage that he wants us to know, like King of kings and Lord of lords, and Word of God, but this name written on him is not revealed.

Revelation 19:13: “He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood.” This is not His atoning blood. The time for that is over. This is the blood of carnage of His enemies, depicted prophetically in Isaiah 63:1-6, in which Jesus is trampling the grapes of the wickedness of Edom. “Who is this coming from Edom, from Bozrah, with his garments stained crimson? Who is this, robed in splendor, striding forward in the greatness of his strength? ‘It is I, speaking in righteousness, mighty to save.’ Why are your garments red, like those of one treading the winepress? ‘I have trodden the winepress alone; from the nations no one was with me. I trampled them in my anger and trod them down in my wrath; their blood spattered my garments, and I stained all my clothing. For the day of vengeance was in my heart, and the year of my redemption has come. I looked, but there was no one to help, I was appalled that no one gave support; so my own arm worked salvation for me, and my own wrath sustained me. I trampled the nations in my anger; in my wrath I made them drunk and poured their blood on the ground.’”  

Isaiah 63:1-6 is clearly talking about the Second Coming of Christ. His garments are spattered in blood. Though it may seem strange that there blood on His garments before the battle, remember that this is his final battle, not his first. The wrath of God is being revealed right now against all the godlessness and wickedness of men. He has been doing this for 20 centuries, but this is the final battle.

Revelation 19:13: “…and his name is the Word of God.” There is no question that this is Jesus. John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John 1:14 says, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” The law was given by Moses; grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. This is the Second Coming of Christ, the Word of God. He is so named because by his word, he created the heavens. By his word, he saved his people, those who repent of our sins and believe: “I am not ashamed of the Gospel because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.” But also by his word, his enemies will be slaughtered.

Revelation 19:14: “The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean.” This is an image of perfect holiness. These are likely all of the 100 million angels as well as all of the redeemed throughout history. They are dressed in garbs of holiness. When the Son of Man comes, He will bring the angels and the redeemed. However, none of them seems to be armed, or at least none of them is depicted as fighting. The casualty list at the end on our side will be zero. We will be there as witnesses, not to fight.

Revelation 19:15: “Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. He will rule them with an iron scepter.” The double-edged sword is symbolic of the power of the word of God, the most devastatingly powerful weapon in human history, more powerful than a thermonuclear bomb or any weapon ever conceived. It is simple. Jesus looks at His enemies, says “Be dead,” and they are dead.

The Word of God is like a sharp double-edged sword, and it cuts right through. Nothing slows it down. When Jesus was arrested in John 18, around 600 Roman soldiers came with Judas, who was filled with the devil. Jesus went out to them, unafraid. John 18:4-6: “Jesus, knowing all that was going to happen to him, went out and asked them, ‘Who is it you want?’ ‘Jesus of Nazareth,’ they replied. ‘I AM!!!’ Jesus said. (And Judas the traitor was standing there with them.) When Jesus said, ‘I am he,’ they drew back and fell to the ground.” Satan, in Judas, fell on the ground in front of Jesus.

2 Thessalonians 2:8 says, “And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming.” John quotes Psalm 2:1-5 “Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the LORD and against his Anointed One. ‘Let us break their chains,’ they say, ‘and throw off their fetters.’ The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them. Then he rebukes them in his anger and terrifies them in his wrath…’ saying, ‘I have installed my king on Zion, my holy hill.’” The Father says to the Son in Psalm 2:8-9, “Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession. You will rule them with an iron scepter; you will dash them to pieces like pottery.”

Revelation 19:15 also says, “He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty.” Jonathan Edwards never got over that verse. He used this text, among others, to portray the wrath of God in his famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”

The KJV of this verse says, “He treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.” Edwards said this: “The Words are exceeding terrible: if it had only been said, the Wrath of God, the Words would have implied that which is infinitely dreadful: But ‘tis not only said so, but the Fierceness and Wrath of God: the Fury of God! the Fierceness of Jehovah! Oh how dreadful must that be! Who can utter or conceive what such Expressions carry in them! But it is not only said so, but the Fierceness and Wrath of ALMIGHTY GOD. As tho’ there would be a very great Manifestation of his almighty Power, in what the fierceness of his Wrath should inflict, as tho’ Omnipotence should be as it were enraged, and excited, as Men tend to exert their Strength in the fierceness of their Wrath. Oh! then what will be the Consequence! What will become of the poor Worm that shall suffer it! Whose Hands can be strong? and whose Heart endure? To what a dreadful, inexpressible, inconceivable Depth of Misery must the poor Creature be sunk, who shall be the Subject of this! He treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.” The phrases stack up to give us a sense of how terrifying it is.

Revelation 19:16: “On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.” The Antichrist is an imposter — his time is done. Jesus is the true King of kings and Lord of lords. Who are the kings and lords over whom he is King and Lord? We are. The saints will inherit the earth and rule under him forever.

Revelation 19:17-18: “And I saw an angel standing in the sun, who cried in a loud voice to all the birds flying in midair, ‘Come, gather together for the great supper of God, so that you may eat the flesh of kings, generals, and mighty men, of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all people, free and slave, small and great.’” By now the darkness has passed, but this angel stands mid-heaven blocking the sun like an eclipse with his mighty power and summons carrion birds “for the great supper of God.” Human bodies are God’s direct work. He knit us body together in our mothers’ wombs. He gave us our blood, kidneys, lungs; He is sustaining us right now. Our organs, blood, all parts of our bodies are gifts from Him. But He will rip apart the bodies of these wicked warriors on that battlefield; it will be a bloodbath.

All levels of society from kings and generals and mighty men to the lowliest slave and free people will be there. This is a vast slaughter, reminding us of Jesus’ ominous words in Matthew 24:28: “Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather.”

At the end, Christ conquers all of his enemies. Revelation 19:19-20: “Then I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies gathered together to make war against the rider on the horse and his army. But the beast was captured, and with him the false prophet who had performed the miraculous signs on his behalf. With these signs he had deluded those who had received the mark of the beast and worshiped his image. The two of them were thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur.” This is a quick battle. The opposing general and his false prophet are captured quickly and thrown into Hell. Revelation 19:21: “The rest of them were killed with the sword that came out of the mouth of the rider on the horse, and all the birds gorged themselves on their flesh.” The Second Coming of Christ brings terrifying carnage. 

In the day of salvation, flee to the Lamb. This gentle, meek, humble Savior says, “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest. Stop fighting me. Take my yoke upon you, learn from me. Yield to my kingly rule and find in me a gentle, humble, tender hearted Savior.” God gave him as a propitiation through his blood for anyone who believes. You need only to trust in him. You do not need to do anything except to hear the Gospel — Jesus is the Son of God, who died on the cross for sinners — and to trust in him. In fact, you must not do good works to pay for your sins. When you trust in Jesus, you will be forgiven. At that point, you will know you will be with him on that final day, dressed in a white robe of righteousness that you do not deserve. Come to Christ. 

Second, ponder the fact that Jesus has a name written on him that only he knows. Eagerly anticipate  the education we will receive in Heaven. “When we've been there 10,000 years, bright, shining as the sun…” we will still have things to learn about Jesus. That is exciting — I look forward to that. Jesus has aspects to his personality we do not know. We may have a hard time seeing Jesus as depicted in the account I have read, but it is true. Ponder the greatness of Christ and yearn to follow Him.

Let us, as believers, be ready for the Second Coming. He has not told us exactly when it will happen. He told a series of illustrations about a master who goes away, entrusting his affairs to his servants, and then he returns. We must be ready for Him to come back all the time, to be busy doing what He wants us to do. That includes the two journeys: first, the internal journey of holiness. 1 John 3 says, “When we see him, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.” We will be instantly transformed; everyone who has hope in him purifies himself as he is pure. That is holiness. Second, the external journey of evangelism. We are told to share the Gospel. Let’s do some workplace evangelism this week. Let’s talk about the Second Coming of Christ. Let’s warn people who are not ready for Him.

When I was a missionary in Japan years ago, I traveled every week from Tokushima to Takamatsu where I taught English and Bible classes. It was a wearying trip. Japan is a hard place to work. They are very respectful and kind, but they do not repent and come to Christ easily. I was weary. One day, as I got off the train and started walking to the English class, I looked up and, like that sky in Montana, the sky was full of dramatic electrical storm clouds. The final verse of the hymn “It Is Well with My Soul” came to mind: “And Lord, haste the day when our faith shall be sight: the clouds be rolled back as a scroll; the trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend! Even so, it is well with my soul!”

Lord, thank you for the truth that the Scripture tells us of the future. We would have no way to know that this is coming except that you have told us. Christianity is different from any other religion in the world in this issue of prophecy. You have told us that you are coming, and you have told us to get ready, to be busy and occupied until you return. Help us to be filled with the Spirit. I pray for any who walked in here as unbelievers, that they would flee the wrath to come and find salvation in the Lamb of God. Help all of us, O Lord, to be faithful, diligent, and holy; to put sin to death; and to warn our neighbors, co-workers, unsaved relatives and total strangers here in Durham to flee to Christ. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Revelation 18 ends with the sound of a great crash, the fall of Babylon the Great, which we could hear by faith. The image given is of a mighty millstone cast down with violence into the ocean; with such violence, Babylon the Great will be cast down. Babylon the Great refers to the world system of satanic allurements and temptations and the persecution of the church. In Revelation 18, lamentation arises as the worldlings, the Babylonians of that modern era, so to speak, grieve and mourn the fall of Babylon. Thus ends Revelation 18.

Revelation 19 opens with a different loud sound — Hallelujah, a sound of triumph and victory and worship and praise. Four times in Revelation 19:1-10, the word “Hallelujah” is shouted. We can hear it as well by faith. It is a word of praise, ripping apart the lamentation of the citizens of Babylon.

Hallelujah! This section of Revelation is all about celebrating the fall of Babylon the Great. Heaven’s citizens could not be more thrilled. Babylon’s history is dark and sordid. There was a moment in time, a long time ago, when the earth had one language and one culture, and the citizens of Babylon — Babel at that time — built a tower to reach up to Heaven. God confused the languages at that time and scattered the people to the distant parts of the earth.

God has sent messengers to those distant shores. Some of the inhabitants of almost every tribe and language and people and nation have believed in Christ, and they assemble in worship this very day as the sun makes its circuit through the earth’s 24 time zones. I have attended assemblies in many nations — Japan, China, Kenya, Pakistan, India, Greece — and have heard that word pronounced roughly the same way with slight variation: “Hallelujah!”

It is a Hebrew plural imperative. I am not from the South originally — thank you for welcoming me and my northern family into this southern culture — so I do not yet say, “All y’all,” and I probably never will use it as a natural expression. However, you understand when I say, “All y’all praise Yahweh (or Jehovah).” Everyone together simply praise the Lord. It is human-centered with us in view — we as redeemed creatures are being commanded to praise Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Heavenly worship is the context of this chapter.

Context is vital to understanding what we read. Revelation 19:3 is a powerful and troubling verse: “Again, they shouted, ‘Hallelujah. The smoke from her rises forever and ever.’” We need to understand why Heaven’s inhabitants are celebrating eternal torment, smoke rising forever and ever. We need to step back and look at the whole book and get a sense of where we are in Revelation. 

Revelation, or apocalypse, is the pulling back of a veil. We are able to see the invisible by faith in the Word of God. Revelation 1:1 begins, “The revelation of Jesus Christ…” Above all, Christ is revealed in ways that no other book of the Bible reveals Him. Jesus himself is the revelation of God — the image of the invisible God. Through Christ, we see God more clearly through this book of Revelation. In addition, at the very beginning, in the first verse, the future is unveiled as well. “The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place.”

The Apostle John, who wrote this book for us and who shows up in the text unusually today, was in exile on the rocky island of Patmos, because of the testimony he had borne for Jesus. He had a vision of the resurrected glorified Christ, walking among seven golden lamp stands. These lamp stands represent literal churches in the province of Asia, near Patmos. Biblically, the number seven is a number of idyllic perfection, so these literal seven churches also represent all the local churches over 20 centuries, including us. This is a picture of the resurrected Jesus Christ ministering to those churches.

Revelation 2 and 3 reveal the letters from Jesus to the seven churches. Although they were literal churches, they represent the strengths and weaknesses and challenges and successes and sins of local churches throughout all of history. We are admonished in every case. “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” — plural. Because we are a local church, we need to hear what Christ would say to us now.

In Revelation 4, John has a vision of a door standing open in Heaven. He hears a voice inviting, commanding him, “Come up here.” He is empowered through the Spirit to go through that doorway into the Heavenly realms. There he sees the central reality of the universe: a throne with someone seated on it — the throne of Almighty God. He describes concentric circles of 24 elders, four living creatures, and 100 million angels, all worshipping and celebrating God the Creator. Revelation 4:11 says, “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.” It is vital to understand that God created earth and everything in it — all resources which Babylon the Great uses for idolatry were made by and belong to God.

In Revelation 5, John sees a scroll in God’s right hand, with writing on both sides and sealed with seven seals. A cry goes out, “Who is worthy to take the scroll and open its seals?” No one in Heaven or earth or under the earth is worthy to take the scroll. John weeps because no one is found worthy, but he is told, “Do not weep. Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah has triumphed.” He sees a Lamb looking as if it had been slain. Both the Lion and the Lamb depicted in Revelation are Jesus. For the rest of the book, he is called Lamb rather than Lion, because this book is written for us who believe. To us, he is the Lamb, but to outsiders, he is a Lion. The Lamb takes the scroll.

In Revelation 6, the Lamb breaks open the seven seals, which initiates a series events on earth that bring the end of the world. The events from the seven seals are described as the beginning of birth pains, though the sixth seal brings a type of resolution in which stars fall from the sky and every mountain and island moves from its place. The end of all things is foretold in Revelation 6:15-17: “Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and every slave and every free man hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. They called to the mountains and the rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?’” Who will survive when Almighty God pours out His wrath?

Revelation 7 answers that question. Who is able to stand? The answer is the redeemed from every tribe and language and people and nation, including from every tribe of Israel. They are sealed and chosen, and they are the redeemed. This is the success of the Gospel to the Jew first and then to the Gentile. Revelation 7:9-10 says, “After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: ‘Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.’” I want to be part of that multitude. Through faith in Christ will you be there, covered in white by the atoning work of Christ? That is the point of redemptive history, that multitude around the throne in Heaven forever.

Revelation 8 and 9 depict the beginning of what I consider to be the final phase of human history, what many call the Great Tribulation — the final seven years. It starts with seven trumpet judgments which emanate from the seventh seal. These judgments bring cataclysms that have never happened on earth before. They are not only in John’s future, but ours as well.

With the first trumpet blast, a third of the plants and all the green grass is burned up. The second trumpet sounds and a third of the sea is turned to blood, killing a third of the living creatures in it. The third trumpet turns a third of the fresh waters turned bitter. With the fourth trumpet, a third of the sun, the moon and the stars are struck, reducing their light on the earth. The fifth trumpet summons demons from the Abyss, pouring up like billowing smoke from a furnace to plague the earth. The inhabitants of earth are bitten with scorpion-like stings. They long for death but cannot die. This lasts for five months. The sixth trumpet sounds, calling forth a huge demonic army to move out over the surface of the earth. The army kills a third of the population of the earth. Nothing like this has ever been seen in human history. These terrifying judgments will change the face of the earth and will usher in the final phase of history. They will erase national boundaries and send the human population into upheaval.

John pauses his narrative at this point to give us a glimpse into the invisible spiritual realm. In Revelation 10, a mighty angel gives John a scroll. He is commanded to eat it and to prophesy to many nations, which he does by writing the book of Revelation.

Revelation 11 brings the seventh trumpet judgment, which ushers in the final phase of human history.

Revelation 12 gives us an insight into the spiritual realm, which is vital, we need to understand, we are so materialist in the West, we're scientific. We don't see the spiritual realm, we need to see it by faith, behind all of this wickedness, there is an enemy, Satan, portrayed in Revelation 12 is a giant dragon, also called the serpent, the Devil who leads the whole world astray. He's portrayed in that chapter, Revelation 12 as mighty and powerful, but also defeated again and again, he's far more powerful than we are, and yet he's thwarted again and again, he stands in front of the pregnant woman to devour the male child, but he can't do it. He pursues the woman he's gonna try to destroy her, but he can't do it, he tries to take over Heaven, but he can't do it, and is thrown down to earth with a third of the stars, referring to the demons. He tries to pursue the offspring from the woman, who is Israel, the offspring are believers who follow Christ.

Revelation 12 gives us an insight into the spiritual realm, which is vital to understand. We are materialist and scientific-minded in the West, believing only what we can see and prove. We do not see the spiritual realm, but we must to see it by faith. Behind all of this wickedness, there is an enemy, Satan, portrayed in Revelation 12 as a giant dragon, also called the serpent, the devil, who leads the whole world astray. He is portrayed in Revelation 12 as mighty and far more powerful than we are, but also thwarted and defeated again and again. He stands in front of a pregnant woman, Israel, to devour her male child, Christ, but he cannot. He pursues the woman to destroy her, but he cannot. He tries to take over Heaven, but he cannot. Instead, he is thrown down to earth with a third of the stars, or angels, which refers to demons. He tries to pursue the further offspring of the woman, which are believers who follow Christ. Revelation 12:17 says, “Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to make war against the rest of her offspring-- those who obey God's commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus.” This describes a vast, vicious satanic persecution on the Church, believers in Christ.

Revelation 13 reveals Satan’s masterpiece of destruction, the consummation of what he sought to do in the human race — the Beast from the Sea, which is a worldwide wicked empire that unifies all nations under one head, the Antichrist. The beast then becomes one person ruling over the one-world empire. Another beast, the Beast from the Earth, becomes the false prophet to validate the Beast from the Sea. This beast organizes a worldwide religion, obsoleting all the other religions, to focus on the Antichrist.  All the people of the earth who are not chosen before the foundation of the world, not elect, will bow down and worship the beast and his image. They will receive the Mark of the Beast on their forehead or hand to be able to buy and sell. This worldwide empire is a vast satanic consummation of what he sought to do in the human race from the beginning.

Revelation 14 shows God’s incessant warnings and pleas through human evangelists who do not love their lives so much as to shrink from death. They follow the Lamb wherever he goes, and they boldly, courageously witness in that final phase of human history. God also gives dire warnings through John to people not to receive the Mark of the Beast, lest they burn in Hell forever.

Revelation 16 reveals the seven bowl judgments, the seven last plagues that God causes to fall from Heaven to earth, preparing the way for the end of the world. After these, the world cannot long survive, not even for weeks. The first bowl produces ugly festering sores on the bodies of earth’s inhabitants. The second and third bowls turn the entire ocean to blood, kill every living creature in the sea, and turn all the fresh water on the earth to blood, which is why we cannot long endure after that. The end will come within a very short amount of time.

The fourth bowl causes the sun to scorch people with blistering heat. The fifth bowl plunges the earth into a deep darkness. The sixth bowl prompts, by demonic influence, a huge army from all over the world to gather for the final battle, called Armageddon, for which Jesus returns.

As the final battle is set up, John pauses to explain the world system, which he calls Babylon the Great. In Revelation 17, she is portrayed as a harlot, a prostitute, alluring the world to wickedness and sin and sexual immorality, drinking the blood of the saints. She is also portrayed as the great city that rules all earth in Revelation 18. She is the world system of commerce and materialism and prosperity. 1 John 2 describes it as “the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life.”

In Revelation 18, Babylon the Great is cast down, destroyed forever. In Mark, regarding the temple, Jesus asked his disciples to observe the massive stones. He told them not one stone would be left on another; every one would be thrown down. It was just one building, the temple, but Revelation 18 demonstrates this judgment of God — all of the stones of human design will be cast down with a great crash. Those who are affected are people who have built their house on the sand; the rain comes and the streams rise, and the winds blow and beat against that house, and it fasll with a great crash. The sound of that crash is described at the end of Revelation 18.

Revelation 19 brings a sound of celebration. Without the context, Revelation 19:3 makes little sense. It would seem cruel — what kind of twisted people would celebrate the smoke of torment rising forever? As we come to Revelation 19, we need to keep in mind the call that Revelation 18:4-5 has given to us: “Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues; for her sins are piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her crimes.” The Lord is calling us to come out.

The overall message is “Hallelujah, Praise the Lord, for in His sovereign kingly rule, he has destroyed the great harlot of Babylon, and He has rescued his bride from her filthy clutches.” In the middle of the chapter, God Himself commands the people to praise him. This praise is overpowering and jubilant; it cascades and flows in a mighty overpowering roar. Yet, it seems difficult to grasp how it will be possible to celebrate such destruction and judgment. Hold onto this thought: any reticence toward understanding and joining the Heavenly celebration comes in part from the fact that we are now still a bit hung over by the cup in the hand of the great harlot. We have drunk from that cup, and we are still overcome by a haze in our minds and our souls. When we get to Heaven, that will be cleared up, and we will understand.

Revelation 19:1-2: “After this I heard what sounded like the roar of a great multitude in heaven shouting: "Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, for true and just are his judgments. He has condemned the great prostitute who corrupted the earth by her adulteries. He has avenged on her the blood of his servants.” Who celebrates? A great multitude in Heaven, the redeemed from every tribe and language and people and nation on earth. They have been protected by God’s power in this present evil age, and in Heaven they celebrate God’s victory.

Babylon is like a witch, with an intoxicating spell to cast on people. Revelation 18:23 says, “By your magic spell all the nations were led astray.” The phrase “magic spell” comes from the Greek pharmakeia, from which we get “pharmaceutical.” It is a sense of being drugged, like Frodo in Lord of the Rings when he was stung by the massive spider, Shelob, wrapped up with sticky webbing. He was not dead but left for the spider to return later to devour him. The pharmakeia, the magic spells, of Babylon have similar effect. We are in a drug-induced haze. Even we who have been converted and have the mind of Christ still do not see the world like we should, as we will in Heaven. In Heaven at last, our heads and our hearts will be clear. We will breathe in the pure Heavenly air. We will see the glory of the kingdom of God and we will see the despicable, wicked, twisted nature of Babylon.

The people in Heaven celebrate with mighty voices. Nothing is done halfway in Heaven or with any hesitation. The Lord’s prayer says, “May your kingdom come, may your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven!” This means fully and immediately. Let us praise like they do in Heaven.

Mighty voices praise God in Heavenly worship, saying, “Hallelujah! — Praise the Lord! All of you join in praising the Lord; one cannot praise alone. Let us praise the Lord together!” It is a plural imperative. Praise and worship, because in Heaven Babylon the Great will never trouble us again. We will never be allured by her again. We will never have another wicked or idolatrous or lustful or prideful or selfish thought. Those days are over forever. Hallelujah! This great enemy that was the world’s system is thrown down like a millstone to the bottom of the ocean.

They say, “Salvation and power belong to our God.” The word “salvation” indicates that the redeemed in Heaven know they were saved out of Babylon. We were part of her but we were saved by God. Salvation belongs to our God, and the power belongs to our God. We could not have changed our own hearts. Jeremiah 13:23 says, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots? Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil.” We could not have said on our own, “I do not like Babylon. I will come over to the kingdom of Heaven.” In our own strength, we are controlled by the mind of the flesh. It is impossible for us to change ourselves.

But God takes out our hearts of stone and gives us hearts of flesh. He saves us by His power. We will know it in Heaven even more than we do now. Romans 8:5-8 says, “Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you.” We were rescued out of that.

Ephesians 2:1-9 describes how we were at one time part of Babylon the Great. “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions-- it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-- and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast.” Salvation and power belong to our God, or we would be suffering eternal torment with them.

It takes power to save you. My engineering mind loves machines like the Saturn V rocket, which is the heaviest, most powerful flying machine that man ever designed. 7.5 million pounds of thrust can put 300,000 pounds in outer space. It requires so much thrust because of the earth’s gravitational pull. Babylon the Great pulls on us like earth’s gravity, back into wickedness and sin. It has taken infinite power to save us from that pull. That is why “Salvation and power belong to our God!”

The power of God is also displayed in Babylon’s crushing defeat. The final Babylon, the system of Antichrist, will more powerful than Nazi Germany or the Iron Curtain ever was. Incredible power will be required to defeat the vast system of wickedness with Satan behind it. Such power is nothing to God; the battle will not be difficult for Jesus. His might and power and omnipotence will be on display at the destruction of Babylon.

We also see justice and righteousness on display in her destruction. Revelation 19:2: “…for true and just are his judgments. He has condemned the great prostitute who corrupted the earth by her adulteries. He has avenged on her the blood of his servants.” She either enticed and allured Christians to sin, or she crushed and incarcerated them and seized their possessions and freedom and tortured and killed them. It is true that she deserves to die; it is just that she will die. True and just are God’s judgments. Therefore, the inhabitants of Heaven show no reticence. They do not shrink back or hesitate to celebrate; there is no pity in Heaven for Babylon the Great. 

Hallelujah! for Babylon’s torment is eternal. Revelation 19:3: “And again they shouted: ‘Hallelujah! The smoke from her goes up for ever and ever.’” Hallelujah for that. This may trouble some of us. Why would the saints in Heaven celebrate the eternal torment of human beings? Imagine if you heard that a person or a group of people would suffer eternal torment in the lake of fire, and some responded, “Praise the Lord!” Something would seem wrong with that perspective.

But our hesitation to celebrate this final vision shows how much we underestimate the damage of the wickedness of Babylon the Great to us and to our brothers and sisters. These heavenly worshippers are not smug. They know they were redeemed by grace through faith. In Heaven we will be sober-minded, and we will see clearly and realize that God is just in what he does.

We will be like the angel pouring out the bowl on the the fresh waters. In Revelation 16:5-6, he says, “Then I heard the angel in charge of the waters say: ‘You are just in these judgments, you who are and who were, the Holy One, because you have so judged; [You are just because you did it. Everything God does is just] for they have shed the blood of your saints and prophets, and you have given them blood to drink as they deserve.’” The angels and the redeemed celebrate.

Revelation 14:11 says, “And the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and his image, or for anyone who receives the mark of his name.” Hell is all about eternal conscious torment. Therefore in Heaven, the saints will be very aware of the torment of the damned. God the Father will not hide it from the children. Isaiah 66:24 says, “And they will go out and look upon the dead bodies of those who rebelled against me; their worm will not die, nor will their fire be quenched, and they will be loathsome to all mankind.”

Why did God knit these people together in their mothers’ wombs only to end up in eternal torment? Paul gives a clear answer in Romans 9:22-24: “What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath — prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory — even us…” It was so that we would know how much grace was shown to us, so we would be saved in such a way that we would be humbled forever by it. By contrast, we will know what we deserved because we can see it. But in Heaven, Revelation 21:4 says there will be no mourning or crying or pain — no grief at all.

It is understandable to have a hard time grasping that. We are not there yet. We are in the day of salvation now, and we yearn for individuals to come out of Babylon. It is reasonable for us to weep as Jesus wept over Jerusalem and to have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in our hearts like Paul said he had for unbelieving Jews (Romans 9). But we also need to look at Babylon, the system, properly. Do not be like Lot’s wife. Jesus warned not to look back at what God will destroy, like Sodom and Gomorrah, fire and brimstone. Luke 17:32-33: “Remember Lot's wife! Whoever tries to keep his life [in Sodom or in Babylon] will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.” Do not try to hold on to your Babylonian life. Revelation 18:4: “Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues.”

All heaven is agreed in this; there is no pocket of hesitation or uncertainty in heaven. There is full participation in the celebration. Revelation 19:4 says, “The twenty-four elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God, who was seated on the throne. And they cried: ‘Amen, Hallelujah!’” All the elders, the living creatures, and 100 million angels say Amen! to the fact that the smoke of her torment rises forever and ever.

In verse 5, Jesus commands His servants to do this. Revelation 19:5: “Then a voice came from the throne, saying: “‘Praise our God, all you his servants, you who fear him, both small and great!’” Though the voice from the throne is seen as God’s voice, I say it is Jesus’s voice because he uses the same language as when he calls to the disciples, “My Father and your Father, my God and your God.” He says, “Praise our God, all you his servants, you who fear him, both small and great!” He is commanding us to praise God, to say Hallelujah! in our hearts for the final destruction of this system of Babylon. At the same time we weep over individuals, striving in reference to them that they be rescued, going as the missionaries we send out do to serve individuals and share the Gospel with them, lest they also be destroyed. That is why we do missions and evangelism. We should look at Durham — every city — and its inhabitants as the City of Destruction — not just one building but every stone on every building will be thrown down, destroyed. We must tell people. There is grief and sorrow now, but in the future, there will be none. We will look back and be delighted and rejoice.

Revelation 19:6: “Then I heard what sounded like a great multitude, like the roar of rushing waters and like loud peals of thunder, shouting: ‘Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns.’” The King James version is much more famous: “Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.” This is where the text of the Hallelujah Chorus in Handel’s Messiah cam from. This mighty waterfall of praise, like Niagara Falls, saying, Hallelujah! for the Lord God Omnipotent reigns! In 1741, when he was writing Messiah, a friend came in and found him weeping over sheets of music strewn all over the room. He said, “Whether I was in the body or out of the body as I wrote it, I know not. God knows. But I think I did see all Heaven opened before me and the Great God Himself.”

That was his reaction as God gave him a foretaste of this Heavenly celebration. They are celebrating the reign of the omnipotent God, the God who has all power in Heaven, earth, and under the earth. No one can hold back his hand, no one can resist him, no one can stop him. This Almighty, omnipotent God reigns as a king over all things. Hallelujah!

This is the one who raised Antichrist up for this very purpose, as He said to the wicked Pharaoh in Romans 9:17: “For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: ‘I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.’” God allows monsters and tyrants to be raised up, and then he effortlessly defeats them.

Revelation 19:7-8: “‘Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear.’ (Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the saints.)” This is a tone of overpowering joy and celebration of what God has done: the destruction of Babylon was to make ready for the bride of Christ and her wedding day to come. The harlot of Babylon in Revelation 17 stands in contrast to the beautiful bride of Christ in Revelation 21. She will be radiant, and she will be ready. Great joy comes from the triumph and the power, and God deserves all glory for it. The time of the wedding banquet has come, a great strong metaphor for the celebration we will all enjoy in Heaven as the bride groom, Jesus, and the bride are joined together forever.

The bride has made herself ready, and in Revelation 21, she is made ready by God — she descends from God prepared. That is the partnership that we have in sanctification: once we have come to faith in Christ, we are called on to purify ourselves from all unrighteousness, to put sin to death by the power of the Spirit, to do the works of mortification of sin, of holiness, of evangelism and service. These righteous acts are the linen, it says, that we are given to wear, so we will have made ourselves ready. Though she was defiled, sinful and corrupt, having come from Babylon, it was granted to her to wear white on her wedding day, What a gift of grace. We will be seen to be pure and holy on that day. Christ has been getting her ready, all of this time. Ephesians 5:25-27 says, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.” She is ready, and the time has come.

Praise God that John wrote it down. Revelation 19:9: “Then the angel said to me, ‘Write: “Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!”’ And he added, ‘These are the true words of God.’” God willed that this be written down. Here and in many other subtexts, we are hereby invited through the word of God through the Gospel to partake in the wedding banquet of the Lamb. Jesus told a parable about this in Matthew 22:2-5: “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come. Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’ But they paid no attention and went off-- one to his field, another to his business.”

But there is an invitation now to all of us to come to the wedding banquet, to trust in Christ, to find forgiveness of sins, to be covered in his imputed righteousness. When we do, the Spirit dwells in us and we begin to cover ourselves with righteous works of holiness and service to God. Matthew 8:11 says, “I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.” Your invitation has been issued. Come unto me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest, and I will give you a place at the banquet table. Trust in Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.

Revelation 19:10: “At this I fell at his feet to worship him. But he said to me, ‘Do not do it! I am a fellow servant with you and with your brothers who hold to the testimony of Jesus. Worship God! For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.’” This is a weakness of God’s servants. The Bible is very honest about its heroes’ foibles and sins and rebellions and problems. This was a problem. John was so overcome by this angel that he fell down in worship, but the angel told him to stop, admonishing that angels and the redeemed are fellow servants. They were serving and worshiping the same God. One proof of the deity of Christ is that he did accept worship. People feel at his feet to worship Him as God. Thomas at his resurrection, said, “My Lord and my God”, and Jesus said, “Because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed [that I am God and you should fall down and worship me].” The angel would not accept worship. His statement that “the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy” means that throughout the Old Testament, through all of the prophets, the spirit of prophecy was testifying to Jesus. 

Accept God’s gracious invitation. You are invited to flee Babylon and to come to the wedding banquet now. What are you waiting for? What more gracious invitation could come? All of your sins will be forgiven by the atoning blood of Jesus. You do not need to do any works to forgive yourself or to be justified. All you need is, by faith, to trust in Christ. 

This command stands over all of us: Come out of Babylon, O people of God, and be separate. Find out how the Babylonian spirit is in you. How are you worldly? How is your mind affected by Babylon? How is your heart drawn out after money and entertainment and pleasure and power and earthly things? What corrupting influences does Babylon The Great have on your heart? Come out and be separate. Jesus said to cut off your right hand or gouge out your right eye if it is leading you to sin. Take whatever decisive measures you can take to put sin to death. Come out.

Warn people, like John Bunyan did in 1672 in Pilgrim’s Progress when Christian, the pilgrim in the allegory, realizes by reading the Word, “I live in the City of Destruction.” He wants to know, “How can I escape?” The evangelist came and pointed him to the light of the Gospel in Christ. That is the only way. Our job is to warn people who are pursuing Babylonian things in their daily routines. Talk to them about these very things, and God will use you as an evangelist, a messenger to help people cross over from death to life. 

Lord, thank you for the time we have had to study Revelation 19:1-10. Thank you for the fourfold Hallelujah that we can hear only by faith. Lord, enable us to worship you now on earth as you are presently worshipped in Heaven. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

My goal is to work through each chapter that the Lord has laid on my heart to teach. I preach so that you would have a strong faith in Christ formed in you. The Lord has given me an insight into the nature of faith, that it is the eyesight of the soul. By faith, we are able to see past, present and future invisible spiritual realities that we could not otherwise see. By the Word of God, written for our faith, including the Book of Revelation, such hidden past, present and future realities are unveiled for us. Apart from Christ, we were spiritually blind to these things, but through the ministry of the Holy Spirit based on the Word of God, scales fall from our eyes.

We  see the past in Revelation 12, with the activity of the dragon, of Satan and his demons throughout redemptive history. He is a wicked adversary who has created a world system that is called Babylon in Revelation 17 and 18. Babylon has a long past history. We are also able by faith to see the present threat of Babylon to our souls. There is a present spiritual reality of Babylon that is assaulting our souls every day. Revelation 18:4-5 is a command from Christ to come out, to be separate from it, to touch no unclean thing, to be pure and holy from this defiling world system that Satan has set up. That will take every strength and grace that God will give to fight that good fight, to finish that race and to keep the faith. There is also a future form of Babylon that is yet to come with the system under the final world ruler, the Antichrist. There is a predictive element to this as well. 

In many ancient cultures, there is a myth of a radiantly colored bird called the Phoenix. Sometimes it is depicted as a large bird which looks similar to a peacock, with purple and red flowing feathers. It could live for a very long time, even as long as five centuries. As the time of its end draws near, it makes an elaborate nest of kindling wood before being consumed in a raging ball of fire. From the ashes, the bird’s progeny rises and begins its own prodigiously long life. This cycle of fiery death and rising from the ashes is a tale often told in the ancient world, and has yielded the expression “like a Phoenix rising from the ashes”. 

To some degree, the Phoenix is a picture of Babylon as a lasting spiritual reality in human history. The history of the city-state of Babylon has been woven together with overt rebellion against the God of Heaven and against His chosen people. Babylon was an actual city in Mesopotamia, built by a mighty and godless hunter named Nimrod, just years after the flood of Noah. It was built in the fertile region of Mesopotamia, right on the Euphrates River, less than 75 miles from the Tigris River in modern Iraq, only about 50 miles south of modern Baghdad.

It was well situated in the area called the Fertile Crescent between the Tigris and Euphrates River, which connected the Persian Gulf with the Mediterranean Sea. It prospered both from the fertile soil and from traffic along the major trade route on which it was located. Thus, it began as a nation of merchants. Ezekiel 16:29 calls it the Land of Merchants. It was also a land of warriors like their mighty founder, Nimrod, the hunter. From Babylon and these other city centers, the concept of the city-state emerged — a region controlled by a city.

In the course of time, the inhabitants of the city-state of Babylon said in Genesis 11:4, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, [listen to their motives:] so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” That is the essence of the Babylonian spirit, the defiant spirit of human potentiality and capability, using technology and intelligence to make a name for oneself.

The mighty Babylonian empire rose in time. It was a vassal state under the Assyrian empire, dominated by the Assyrians until at last, under Nebuchadnezzar’s father Nabopolassar, they threw off the Assyrian yoke. When Nabopolassar died, Nebuchadnezzar became the mighty king of Babylon.

The Babylonian empire was awesome: irresistible in military power, complex in culture, exquisite in architecture, shrewd in politics. Its army came back up the Fertile Crescent to topple what was left of the dying Assyrian Empire, then swept down through Palestine, conquering what was left of the Jews in that land— the kingdom of Judah. The remnant of Jews that were left in Judah and Jerusalem were deported to Babylon, thus ending Jewish reign in Palestine over the Promised Land. The exile to Babylon was a line of demarcation in the history of the Jews.

Prior to that, however, God raised up prophets among the Jews to predict the fall of Babylon. He did this through Isaiah and Jeremiah and other prophets. Isaiah 13:19-22 “Babylon, the jewel of kingdoms, the glory of the Babylonians’ pride, will be overthrown by God like Sodom and Gomorrah. She will never be inhabited or lived in through all generations; no Arab will pitch his tent there, no shepherd will rest his flocks there. But desert creatures will lie there, jackals will fill her houses; there the owls will dwell, and there the wild goats will leap about. Hyenas will howl in her strongholds, jackals in her luxurious palaces.” That was written a century and a half before the Babylonian empire came to be.

Jeremiah, who was among the remnant deported in the Babylonian exile, also predicted the destruction of Babylon. In Jeremiah 25:12, speaking of the 70-year exile of the Jews to Babylon, it says, “‘But when the seventy years are fulfilled, I will punish the king of Babylon and his nation, the land of the Babylonians, for their guilt,’ declares the LORD, ‘and will make it desolate forever.’”

The beginning of the end for Babylon is written in Daniel 5. During Belshazzar’s feast, the writing appeared on the wall, predicting the immediate end of the Babylonian empire. The Babylonians were arrogant, thinking that their mighty, lofty, thick walls would protect them from the invading Medo-Persian army.

Belshazzar hosted a drunken feast that night, neglecting to guard the walls. The Medo-Persian invading army took advantage of this by diverting the Euphrates River from under the walls and crawling through the portcullis, unlocking the city gate, and slaughtering the Babylonians while they lay in drunken stupor. This is the very thing Jeremiah had predicted 70 years before. Jeremiah 51:39: “‘But while they are aroused, I will set out a feast for them and make them drunk, so that they shout with laughter — then sleep forever and not awake,’ declares the LORD.”

The destruction and desolation of the literal city of Babylon in Mesopotamia did not happen overnight, but gradually fulfilled the words of the prophets. Cyrus the Great of Persia ruled Babylon but destroyed its immense walls so the citizens could not revolt. Alexander the Great wanted to make it the capital of his empire, but he died there before realizing his dream. In 309 BC, a Greek successor of Alexander the Great leveled Babylon. In 275 BC, Antiochus the First deported the remaining civilian population to other cities. Pausanias, a Greek writer and geographer of the Roman period, said there was nothing left within the walls of Babylon by his time. In the last century before Christ, ancient geographer Strabo wrote, the great city had become a wilderness, thus fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy. Roman emperor Trajan, eager to visit, was disappointed in the wasted, unidentifiable pile of rubble.

In the modern age, as recently as a century ago, its ruins were discovered by archaeologists. Saddam Hussein had plans to rebuild Babylon, but was thwarted by his toppling in the Gulf War. Some Iraqi leaders want to turn it into a theme park centered around archeological artifacts, but Allied troops that have been there have taken many of the artifacts and ruined the site, which is uninhabited except by wild animals and birds, as Isaiah said it would be.

The literal city of Babylon slowly sank down into the dust of history, but the spirit of Babylon has risen like a Phoenix from the ashes and moved from place to place ever since, a demonic spirit of the world. 1 Peter 5:13 is the key passage to understand the transfer of the spirit of Babylon from the literal city to another city: “She who is in Babylon, chosen together with you, sends you her greetings, and so does my son Mark.”

Tradition places Peter in Rome when he wrote that, meaning Babylon was code language for Rome. The spirit of Babylon rose from the ashes to infuse the Roman empire of Peter’s day. Babylon itself was a howling, empty wasteland, but “she who is in Babylon, chosen together with you” indicated the bride of Christ, which was locally the church at Rome.

Thus, the spirit of Babylon has moved around according to the dominating empire — Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome; the Vandals, the Huns, the Vikings, the Mongols, the Spanish, the French under Napoleon, the English under Victoria, the Germans under Hitler, and so on. Through the ages, two common aspects have characterized the spirit of Babylon: military power and economic power. In Babylon, neither power is wielded for the glory of God or the advancement of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, but for self glory alone. “Come, let us ‘…make a name for ourselves.’” [Genesis 11:4]

The final phase of Babylon is yet to come. Antichrist will come as predicted in Revelation 13. He will set up a world-dominating kingdom. Babylon has one final phase, which Revelation 17 and 18 cover. Revelation is not only a prediction of the final seven years of human history, as some take it, but it is also relevant in every generation of church history. Every generation must read and take to heart the warnings therein. Every generation of Christians need to hear Revelation 18: 4-5: “And when you hear the voice of your Savior crying out to you, saying, ‘Come out from her, all my people and be separate.’” We cannot do something exegetically or hermeneutically if we say it is a future book that has nothing to do with us, if we deny the threat that Babylon is to us.

Babylon and its essential nature is a wicked world system in defiance of God. We will see its judgment through plagues, and we will hear the voice of God, of Christ, commanding, calling, pleading with us to come out from Babylon and be separate.

In Revelation 18:1-3, Babylon’s judgment is pronounced: “After this, I saw another angel coming down from Heaven. He had great authority and the Earth was illuminated by his splendor. And with a mighty voice, he shouted, ‘Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great. She has become a home for demons, a haunt for every evil spirit, a haunt for every unclean and detestable bird. For all the nations have drunk the maddening wine of her adulteries, the kings of the Earth committed adultery with her, and the merchants of the Earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries.’” The proclamation of Babylon’s final fall is entrusted to this heavenly messenger, but the decree and power behind the fall of Babylon originates from Almighty God. It is not the angel’s doing, but the angel is the messenger. 

The angel is described in words that are hard to fathom. He has great authority. Not all angels are equally authoritative. Some angels are called archangels, literally meaning ruler angels. In addition, he has great glory. An overwhelmingly brilliant light surrounds this angelic messenger, like the light of the glory of Heaven that shone around the angel that bore the message that Jesus was born on the hills around Bethlehem, which terrified the shepherds. This angel has the same illuminating glory that shines radiantly, and the light is shining in this dark age. If the earth is still plunged into a thick darkness from the fifth bowl, so deep that it could be felt, there is a general darkness, spiritually and maybe physically at that point at the end.

This angel has great authority and glory, and he speaks the decree from God with a voice like thunder, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, she has become a home for demons and a haunt for every evil spirit, for every unclean and detestable bird.” God will cast her down. The final fall of Babylon, or the final phase of Babylon being cast down, is yet in the future, but this proclamation is given with repetition in the prophetic past tense, as though it has already happened, giving a sense of prophetic certainty, urgency and finality to the announcement. 

Babylon has become a home for demons, a haunt for evil spirits. This borrows the language we already saw in Isaiah 13, where nothing but wild animals and birds settle down in the ruins of Babylon.  disgusting carrion birds. Often when we see dead deer and other animals along the side of the road, we also see those nasty black carrion birds, which really are doing us all a service. There is that same sense of decay and death here in Babylon.

Jesus said in the Little Apocalypse in Matthew 24:28, “Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather.” Remember that demons billowed from the guts of the earth in Revelation 9 with the fifth trumpet, and these especially vicious and evil demons perhaps will haunt the final form of Babylon. 

The wickedness of Babylon is exposed in Revelation 18:3: “For all the nations have drunk the maddening wine of her adulteries. The kings of the earth committed adultery with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries.” As with Revelation 17 which presented the great whore of Babylon, the prostitute, there is a sense of the allure and enticement of the world toward evil and sin and immorality, especially sexual immorality. 1 John 2 speaks of the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life. Being the essence of the world, the enticing allure of lusts, Babylon is a system of worldwide corruption, making all the nations drunk.

The phrase “…the merchants of the earth” indicates the issue of merchandise, commerce, trade, possessions that can be purchased in exchange for money. Verses 3, 7 and 9 mention Babylon’s excessive luxury. “…the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries. … Give her as much torture and grief as the glory and luxury she gave herself. …the earth who committed adultery [the kings of the earth committed adultery] with her and shared her luxury.”

Once when I was visiting at the home of a wealthy man, I skimmed through a magazine he had called Connoisseur which contained articles about the best of the best in various categories. One was about the best carving knives, valued for pure craftsmanship, made by craftsmen who have descended from the Samurai in Japan, with photos of really sharp knives going through tomatoes with no effort, and then again and again and again until it was microscopically thin. One paring knife cost $6000. Another article was about bespoke suits, tailor-made from Saville Row in London: $30,000 for a man’s suit and $40,000 for a pair of Italian shoes.

A number of you are wealthy and very generous with your wealth. But it is wrong for us to read Revelation 18, wealthy as we are, and think that the word “luxury” has nothing to do with us. We admire craftsmen and artists who spend a year on a painting or a sculpture, like Michelangelo who worked for years on the Sistine Chapel. We admire that level of skill and go museums to see their work. Is that an evil  and wicked thing to sell and purchase such a luxury?

This morning I was praying about the topic of luxury and started to see the future of luxury in the new Heaven. We will make things in Heaven with exquisite skill, but the things we make will not become idols. They will be done overtly for the glory of God. That is the future of fine craftsmanship in the New Heaven and New Earth — no idols and no sinful luxuries. In the present, such things are a threat to our souls; there is a warning against excessive luxury. If we take this before God and ask Him to deliver us from sinful luxury, that is the safest we can be. James 5:5, speaking of wicked oppressors, says, “You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter.” I pray that would not be true of any member of First Baptist Church. Do not excuse yourself from looking in the mirror, from asking God, “Is this true of me? I do not want to fatten myself in the day of slaughter.”

There is a category of people who escaped Babylon, whom God delivered. We see the future doom, but this invitation — truly, this command — is given in Revelation 18:4-5: “Then I heard another voice from heaven say: ‘Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues; for her sins are piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her crimes.’” This is the application from Revelation 17 and 18, God’s command to His people to come out of her and be separate. There is a warning, a negative motivation — “Flee the wrath to come” — but with a positive implication that “Jesus is better.”

That is why we flee, because Jesus is better than anything this world has to offer. He is better than “the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life.” [1 John 2:16] Lord, Make my heart believe that. I want to know and believe that Jesus is better than the lusts and the pleasures of the flesh.

Paul picks up on the command to flee in 2 Corinthians 6:17: “Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing and I will receive you.” This is the test of God’s people in every generation. We cannot excuse ourselves and say we are not in the final seven years, so therefore Babylon is not a present reality so we do not need to worry about the warnings. Do not do that. In every generation to Christians, The world will continue to offer benefits and pleasures and possessions and powers if we will only in some way deny Christ.

We must stand firm in our faith and be holy. The smoke from Babylon’s future fire can be smelled right now only by faith. The heat from Babylon’s future flames can be felt right now only by faith. The cries of Babylon’s future torment can be heard right now only by faith. We must look at our lives and see the way the luxuries of Babylon have worked themselves into our souls, and we must flee. 

In verses 6-8, we see Babylon’s judgment justified: “Give back to her as she has given; pay her back double for what she has done. Mix her a double portion from her own cup. Give her as much torture and grief as the glory and luxury she gave herself. In her heart she boasts, ‘I sit as queen; I am not a widow, and I will never mourn.’ Therefore in one day her plagues will overtake her: death, mourning and famine. She will be consumed by fire, for mighty is the Lord God who judges her.”

God explains Babylon’s judgment to us. He is the just and right in casting down this city; it is payback time now for all the torment that Babylon has caused His people. She will drink torture and grief from the cup in her hand — she has mixed out a huge cup of luxury for herself and she has been drinking from that cup. God will pay her back the same measure she weighed to herself.

Her over-confidence is exposed here. This is the same language we see in the book of Isaiah, that Babylon boasts that nothing bad will ever happen to her. She sits like a queen surrounded by her own; she cannot be touched or threatened, so she believes she will never mourn. Widowhood will never come on her nor the loss of children; she is safe. But she is forgetting about the power and the holiness of God. The judgments listed include death, mourning, and famine.

The source of the judgment is listed as well: “…for mighty is the Lord God who judges her.” Isaiah 14 says about the fall of Babylon and of Assyria, “This is the plan determined for the whole world. This is the hand stretched out over all nations, for the Lord Almighty has purposed, and who can thwart Him, His hand is stretched out and who is able to turn it back?”

In Revelation 18:9-19, Babylon’s citizens and merchants will lament and grieve her fall through her judgment. This the end of everything they have loved, everything they have lived for, everything they have built their lives on. Idolaters do not give up their idols easily. The sadness that they feel at the fall of this wicked world system shows the wickedness of their own hearts too. They are sad at the fall of Babylon because they loved her.

The kings of the Earth will lament her. Revelation 18:9-10: “When the kings of the earth who committed adultery with her and shared her luxury see the smoke of her burning, they will weep and mourn over her. Terrified at her torment, they will stand far off and cry: ‘Woe! Woe, O great city, O Babylon, city of power! In one hour your doom has come!’”

The merchants of the earth, those who traded with her, will also grieve. Revelation 18:11-17: “The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes any more-- cargoes of gold, silver, precious stones and pearls; fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet cloth; every sort of citron wood, and articles of every kind made of ivory, costly wood, bronze, iron and marble; cargoes of cinnamon and spice, of incense, myrrh and frankincense, of wine and olive oil, of fine flour and wheat; cattle and sheep; horses and carriages; and bodies and souls of men. They will say, ‘The fruit you longed for is gone from you. All your riches and splendor have vanished, never to be recovered.’ The merchants who sold these things and gained their wealth from her will stand far off, terrified at her torment. They will weep and mourn 16 and cry out: ‘Woe! Woe, O great city, dressed in fine linen, purple and scarlet, and glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls! In one hour such great wealth has been brought to ruin!’”

Even the ships’ captains who delivered the cargo to Babylon will lament her. Revelation 18:17-19:“Every sea captain, and all who travel by ship, the sailors, and all who earn their living from the sea, will stand far off. When they see the smoke of her burning, they will exclaim, ‘Was there ever a city like this great city?’ They will throw dust on their heads, and with weeping and mourning cry out: ‘Woe! Woe, O great city, where all who had ships on the sea became rich through her wealth! In one hour she has been brought to ruin!’”

The days of luxury and ease sinful self-indulgence will end forever, but not everyone will be grieving.

Not everyone will be sad about the fall of Babylon — it will be a source of energetic praise and joyful celebration among the servants of the Lord. Revelation 18:20: “Rejoice over her, O heaven! Rejoice, saints and apostles and prophets! God has judged her for the way she treated you.” Babylon the Great, in Revelation 17:6, was “drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of those who bore testimony to Jesus.”

Worldly people do not understand why Christians do not plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation. 1 Peter 4:4 says, “They think it strange that you do not plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation, and they heap abuse on you.”

When Babylon the Great is finally thrown down, all of Heaven will celebrate. We will hear the sounds of the the fourfold Hallelujah. We will be so done with Babylon when we get to Heaven, we will be healed from it forever. 

Babylon’s judgment will be completed and symbolized by the casting down of a large boulder. Revelation 18:21-24: “Then a mighty angel picked up a boulder the size of a large millstone and threw it into the sea, and said: ‘With such violence the great city of Babylon will be thrown down, never to be found again. [The overthrow of Babylon will be a violent thing; God will do it. Violence has been a part of the seven trumpets and the seven bowls, and then the Second Coming of Christ.] The music of harpists and musicians, flute players and trumpeters, will never be heard in you again. No workman of any trade will ever be found in you again. The sound of a millstone will never be heard in you again. The light of a lamp will never shine in you again. The voice of bridegroom and bride will never be heard in you again. Your merchants were the world's great men. By your magic spell all the nations were led astray. In her was found the blood of prophets and of the saints, and of all who have been killed on the earth.’” We can imagine the action of hurling a boulder the size of a millstone, a massive stone used for grinding wheat into flour, into a pond or a lake — the splash would be huge. It is a symbol of Babylon’s violent fall.

With the fall of Babylon comes the end of Babylon’s music. What a payback! Think about the Jews in exile and how they sat by the waters of Babylon, mocked by their tormenting captors, in Psalm 137:1-4: “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ How can we sing the songs of the LORD while in a foreign land?” This is a reversal of that. The songs of Babylon will never be sung again. Instead, we will hear a new song, the song of Heaven, the song of Zion, and we will sing and play that song forever. What payback for that mockery that they did to the Jews in exile!

It is the end of all of Babylon’s work. All the skilled craftsmen who spent all their time on creating the luxuries will cease their labors. No one will buy them; their time has ended. As I pointed out earlier, skilled craftsmanship will continue in the New Heaven and New Earth forever. I look forward to seeing what we will all create. We will craft things for the glory and the radiant display of God and use our resurrection hands to make things far more skillfully than anything we find here on earth. But these Babylonian craftsmen are finished; no one will buy their luxuries ever again.

It is the end of all light. The light of the lamp will not be seen in Babylon again. It will become a place of utter darkness.

It is the end of all human relationships. People will be marrying and giving in marriage right up until the day of the Second Coming. At that point, the sound of bride and bridegroom will be heard no more.

Revelation 18:23-24 tells the reason: “By your magic spell all the nations were led astray. In her was found the blood of prophets and of the saints, and of all who have been killed on the earth.” Those who have been killed on the earth extend “from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. … all these things [this blood] will come upon this generation.” (Matthew 23:35-36).

None of the blood shed will be forgotten. Cain asked rhetorically, “Am I my brother's keeper?” to which God replied, “The blood of your brother cries out from the ground for vengeance.” All the blood that has been shed wickedly on earth will be avenged by the fall of Babylon.

In the Greek, the word for “magic spell” or “sorcery” is pharmakeia, from which we get the word pharmacy or pharmaceutical. It relates to drugs and perhaps also to a cultic secret religion. There is an alluring smell of sorcery or magic that Babylon has a hold of the minds and hearts of its subjects. We are only now, in our sanctification and our progressive growth, gradually coming out of the haze and stupor of Babylon’s influence. It is still in our minds and hearts. We are still allured and tempted by some of Babylon’s pharmakeia, but there will come a day when it will have no influence on us at all.

Feed your faith with the Word of God. Read Romans, Colossians, Ephesians; saturate your mind with the Gospels; read the prophecies in Isaiah and Jeremiah. You do not need to focus only on Babylon. Fill your mind and heart with the Word of God and your eyes of faith will get sharper. You will be able to see what is really happening. You will be able to see the surrounding world for what it really is — the world that John writes about in 1 John 2 — as a deadly threat to your soul.

Let it motivate you with a healthy fear, not of man, but of the temptations of the world. We should say, “Lord, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” We should be afraid of what the world can do. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, but also the conviction of things not seen. By that we are convicted of sin, and there is a holy fear that comes over us. Hebrews 11:7 says, “By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family.”

There is a fear that should grip us of Babylon. We do not build an ark, but we walk in Christ and we protect ourselves from the world. Concerning Babylon in America, do we suppose that the most dominant military nation and the most dominant economy is immune from the spirit of Babylon that rises from the ashes of every old empire and takes over? We have godly public servants that are elected to office like Daniel who are counselors to the rulers, able to give good advice, but the system itself is still Babylon. So come out and be separate. There is repulsion and attraction, so be disgusted and repulsed by the things of Babylon that we described here. She is a haunt of every unclean burden, every demonic spirit. Be disgusted by it and be attracted to the theme of the song that Jesus is better. I would rather follow Christ today than binge on Netflix. I would rather have Jesus than sin sexually by the Internet. I would rather have Jesus than do shopping therapy online or at the mall. Jesus is better than those things. I do not need any of those things to feel better in this life.

To any who are wealthy, which is all of us — and if you do not think so, go to Haiti, India, Pakistan, any country in the third world — take heed of Paul’s words to the pastor Timothy. Paul said in 1 Timothy 6:17-19, “Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.” Let 1 Timothy 6 command you to be generous and live for the future world. You alone know how generous God wants you to be with the wealth He has given you. Do not make assumptions. Ask, “God, what do You want me to do with all this wealth that You have given me?”

Today is Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. See abortion as part of the Babylonian system. Some day abortion will be obsolete, praise God. Let’s keep praying and serving and working toward that end. Find ways to help crisis pregnancy centers or women in crisis pregnancies. If you yourself have had an abortion in the past and you are broken and shattered by it, understand the grace of God and the mercy He gives at the cross. If you are sexually tempted with another person, stand firm and do not give in to sexual immorality, which is the root of so many abortions.

My final word has to be to you who are outside of Christ, or perhaps were before you came in here today. Come to Christ. “Come out of her and be separate" is Jesus saying, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Come to Christ. He can disentangle your heart and your soul from Babylon and save your soul.

Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank You for the things that we learn continually from Your Word. We know that the Word is wise, it is powerful, it is able to save our souls through faith in Christ Jesus. Christ the Savior is better. Lord I pray that you call lost people out of darkness into light. Help them to turn away from worldly wealth and power and pleasure, and the things that do not matter, to turn to Christ and find forgiveness in Him. And help us to share that message. We are a wealthy nation; help us to be willing to talk about Babylon the great and its future fall and to warn people, and to urge people to find in Christ a beautiful Savior. In His name we pray. Amen.

A number of years ago, the Bible for Life Missions class was talking about the hidden and pervasive influence of culture and how we do not fully realize how it affects us. Those who have experienced different cultures on overseas mission trips realize how differently people approach basic things of life — food, clothing, shelter, interpersonal and societal relationships and more.

The BFL teacher asked this question one morning: Does a fish know that it's wet? It is a humorous question, signaling a sense of pervasive influence around us at every moment of which we are not fully aware. It has to do with our inability to rise above our surrounding culture to see it as it really is, and even more, to see how it affects us, influencing our minds and hearts and the way we live every moment. To get above that to be able to see it, we need something from the outside. The deeper question is, do we realize the ways the world is influencing us the way the New Testament speaks of the world? Can we see the danger of the corrupting influence on our souls and flee to Christ for refuge, for cleansing, for ongoing transformation and protection? We are in mortal spiritual danger every moment from the world.

The one asking the question about the fish is obviously human, standing outside of the sea, looking down on the fish with that perspective. The human is dry but knows what it is to swim and be wet. We are vastly above the fish, able to see its environment for what it is and to ask that interesting question. But we cannot do that for ourselves; we need someone outside of us to help us see. That is what the Holy Spirit does through Scripture. He is perfect, holy, above the world, looking down with objectivity, saying, “Let me reveal this world system that is pulling on your soul every moment; let me show you the world in all of its allure and enticing power and utter revulsive wickedness. Let me pull back the veil with this book of Revelation in ways that no other book of the Bible does. Let me unveil the great prostitute of Babylon, the world and all of its corrupting influence, in which we live and move and have our being.”

1 John 2:15-17 is the key text in the New Testament on the danger of the world, a partner text to our passage in Revelation 17. 1 John 2:15-17 says, “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life — comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.” That is the theme of Revelation 17 and 18. This world system will pass away, not in a benign way but under the judgment and wrath of God. The one who will survive is he who does the will of God. John warns us directly of this magnetic world system of lusts that attracts us off of the path of righteousness and holiness to serve sin.

James also warns us of the same threat in different language. James 4:4-5 says, “You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us?” That is a difficult passage. “Spirit” could be the Holy Spirit or the human spirit with us; both could make sense in opposite ways. We will assume the former. The Holy Spirit who dwells within us is jealous over our affections. James uses the analogy of spiritual adultery — to go after the world is to be drawn away from what Paul calls, in 2 Corinthians 11, “sincere and pure devotion to Christ”, and to go after worldliness. James says to be in love with this present world is like committing spiritual adultery to God, like being a wandering unfaithful wife who cannot stay put and love and please her husband, and it provokes his spirit to jealousy.

The prophet Hosea was commanded by God to marry a prostitute, Gomer. He had purchase her to be able to spend time with her, and then had to prevent her from leaving to pursue lovers. If we put ourselves in that story, we are not Hosea but Gomer, and we need protection — “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. Here’s my heart, Lord, take and seal it; seal it for thy courts above.” Seal it from the world and all its influence.

In Ephesians 2:1-3, Paul tells us the origin of this evil, corrupted world system and why it is so evil and powerful: “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.”

There is a spiritual kingdom of the air whose prince is Satan. He has crafted and set up this worldly, alluring system, singing a siren song to us as we navigate, calling us to wreck the the ship of our souls on the shoals of sin. That is happening every moment of our lives.

Satan, the prince of the power of the air, is invisible, powerful, constantly surrounding us. Paul says the essence of life in this worldly system is to gratify the cravings of our flesh, those bodily drives and desires, the pleasures of the body and mind. That is the nature of the world. This world system has been working its devastation for millennia, and it is working right now. Are you aware of its influence, the daily assault on your soul? Do you know that Satan is pulling on you to cause you to depart from a path of sincere and pure devotion to Christ, to worldliness, pushing you to act and lust. Defying God, his holy laws, little by little, like the proverbial frog boiling in the pot, until you don't notice anymore?

Does the fish know it is wet? Do we know how we are worldly? No chapters in the Bible so clearly reveal the world from the spiritual Heaven-down perspective as do Revelation 17 and 18. Chapter 17 unveils in vivid terms the mystery of Babylon the Great, portrayed in this apocalyptic vision as a prostitute riding the beast, dressed in luxury, drinking from a golden cup. It will give a sense of how she is right now. Chapter 18 will show us plainly how she will be at the end of the world, her outcome, the final demands, the fall of the world system called Babylon the Great.

Both chapters contain a plain warning. Revelation 18:4: “Then I heard another voice from heaven say: ‘Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues…’” The central application is a command to the people of God for holy separation from the surrounding world. So that we may know the end, the outcome of this system of elicits sin and pleasure and worldliness, that we may see where it is heading while there is time, and flee to Christ.

Revelation 17:1-2 begins, “One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, ‘Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute, who sits on many waters. With her the kings of the earth committed adultery and the inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries.’” Revelation ends with two women unveiled: the great horror or prostitute of Babylon in Revelation 17, and the radiant bride of Christ in Revelation 21. The language used to frame each woman is strikingly similar, in order to reveal them both plainly to understand their true nature. Here the vision is revealed and guided by one of the seven angels who poured out his bowls of judgment on the earth in Revelation 16.

Revelation 17-18 are a pause and a parentheses to help us understand what is being judged. What is God pouring out his judgment on and why? Revelation 16 describes an overwhelming destruction, one that we can scarcely imagine. Life on earth will not be possible for long once the judgments are complete, right before the Second Coming of Christ. Revelation flashes back now to show us the enemy that Christ is fighting and will destroy with the breath of his mouth.

After the third angel pours out his bowl on the earth and turned all the waters in the earth into blood, he celebrates the justice of that judgment with these words in Revelation 16:5-6: “You are just in these judgments, you who are and who were, the Holy One, because you have so judged; for they have shed the blood of your saints and prophets, and you have given them blood to drink as they deserve.” The world and its hatred for Christ and his people has shed their blood, has made martyrs of them.

Revelation 17 describes the blood-thirsty woman, drunk with the blood of the saints. She drives the slaughter of God’s precious children and deserves to drink of blood for what she has done. One of the seven angels invites John to travel with him in the Spirit to see a prophetic vision: this prostitute who sits on many waters, filthy and alluring and wicked. With her the kings of the earth have committed adultery, and the inhabitants of the earth are made drunk with the wine of her adulteries. John goes away in the Spirit to see her. Revelation 17:3-4: “Then the angel carried me away in the Spirit into a desert. There I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names. The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls. She held a golden cup in her hand, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries.”

Revelation 21:9-11 uses similar language but very different content, inviting comparison: “One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, ‘Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.’ And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.”

These two women are meant to be held side by side. It is a contrast — one alluring and enticing but filthy and wicked, the other radiant, majestic, holy, stunningly beautiful, shining with the glory of God — the prostitute versus the bride. Revelation 17:18 tells us who she is: “The woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth.” She is also called Babylon the Great. She represents the collective group of individuals who are both allured and enticed by Satan’s appeal to the flesh, and enticing and alluring to others to sin with them. They live rebellious lives, being deceived and intoxicated with the world, and then become part of the problem. Jesus says whoever does not gather with me scatters. Babylon has a wandering corrupted heart and must be paid for all her affections and services. She is not faithful; she has no commitment to a bridegroom.

By contrast, the bride of Christ is the church, the godly people from every tribe, language, people and nation, who have escaped the allure and corruptions of the world and have devoted themselves entirely body, soul and spirit to the bridegroom, to Christ, the lover of her soul.

The lesson of this chapter is the judgment of the prostitute. First, her character is revealed. Second, when she is known, her judgment or punishment is revealed. The point is Revelation 18:4, that we will flee in disgust and fear from her and follow Christ and be protected by faith in Christ. The goal is to see the nature of the world and its alluring system of corruption and her future judgment. Revelation 17:1 “Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute, who sits on many waters.” God tells us through John that she is doomed to destruction so we flee the wrath to come.

She sits on many waters. Many of the greatest cities in the world, ancient cities of Tyre and Sidon, modern day cities like New York, Singapore, Hong Kong, are port cities because of the ease of commerce and trade. Revelation 18 shows the perspective of a ships’ captains who watch Babylon’s fall from afar.

Verse 15 tells us what the waters represent. “Many waters” refers to the fact that her power and influence derives from the teeming mass of humanity worldwide. Revelation 17:15: “Then the angel said to me, ‘The waters you saw, where the prostitute sits, are peoples, multitudes, nations and languages.’”

Revelation 17:2 “With her the kings of the earth committed adultery and the inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries.” This world system allures people all over the world to sin through temptations. The angel initiates a vision with John to show him, and through him all Christians and every generation, the true nature of the harlot city of Babylon the Great.

Revelation 17:3-36 provide the apocalyptic vision of a drunken woman riding a beast, symbolic language to describe this world system. Verse 3: “Then the angel carried me away in the Spirit into a desert.” Isaiah and many other prophetic books in the Old Testament use the desert as a picture of the judgment of God — sterility and fruitless deeds of darkness which Paul discusses. Nothing eternally good comes from this system of wickedness; it is the absence of God’s blessings and of life.

Revelation 17:3-5: “There I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns. The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls. She held a golden cup in her hand, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries. This title was written on her forehead: ‘MYSTERY BABYLON THE GREAT THE MOTHER OF PROSTITUTES AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.’”

She is seated on a scarlet beast. Both the beast and the woman are scarlet, a vivid, lurid color, which reminds one of the shedding of the blood of the saints and prophets. The beast, the Antichrist, a tyrant, rules a geopolitical world system. We know that the beast has consolidated power into a worldwide geopolitical and military system. Sitting on the beast, the woman shows either that she is riding the beast where she wants it to go, like she is in charge, or that the beast is supporting her and enabling her to do the things she wants to do. The latter is a better fit, because toward the end of this chapter, the beast rises up and shreds her after using her for his own purposes.

The beast, the Antichrist, is covered with blasphemous names, indicating that he openly embraces blasphemy. He demands to be worshipped as God, and he defies the true and living God, so he is blasphemous. Like the dragon, Satan, in the vision in Revelation 12, he has seven heads and ten horns. These represent the different kingdoms and nations that come together to make the beast’s empire, and it also represents the total harmony between Satan, the Antichrist, and the wicked world system together.

The Antichrist supports the woman, enabling her to live a lifestyle of luxury, power and comfort. Her garments are purple and scarlet, symbols of wealth. In John’s day, purple dye was obtained from the secretions of mollusks — snails and clams — native to the Mediterranean Sea. Four species in particular give off a purple dye; it would take approximately 8000 of these small aquatic sea creatures to make a single gram of purple dye. Thus, purple cloth was extremely expensive and almost exclusively reserved for royalty and nobility — the wealthy and powerful in every nation. In addition, she is glittering with gold, precious stones, and pearls. She is holding a golden cup in her hand, a picture of wealth.

She is drinking from the golden cup, a picture of ease and pleasure as she reclines on the beast. The cup is filled with abominable things and the filth of her adultery. She is drunk with illicit pleasure. Revelation 14:8 says, “A second angel followed and said, ‘Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great, which made all the nations drink the maddening wine of her adulteries.’” She is drinking the wine that gives insanity. Since the word adultery is used, we can see her reclining at a raucous feast, getting drunk on wickedness, living out a life of pleasure and ease and immoral, sensual excess, especially sexual.

In verse 5, she has a mysterious title written on her forehead, proclaiming her identity to John and through him to us, to the world. “Mystery. Mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of prostitutes and of the abominations of the Earth.” The word “mystery” refers to the special spiritual insight you need to understand this vision. Her identity and activity in the world are a spiritual mystery, hidden from us unless God reveals it.

It may also refer to the secret mystery religions of the ancient near East, in which gaining ascendancy in circles of knowledge yielded access to more words of knowledge and higher levels. Jesus speaks of the prophetess Jezebel in Thyatira in his warning in Revelation 2, who is leading some of the church members to commit sexual immorality with her in secret. Jesus speaks of those who have not learned Satan’s so-called deep secrets. There is a hidden mystery to the allure and intoxication of their wickedness.

For this reason, many evangelical interpreters think this woman represents a religious system or the religions of the world, immoral pagan religions that come together under the beast for a while, but then are replaced as the beast sets himself up in his own final religion. Nothing overtly points to religion in this chapter, so it seems to be safer to stay with the idea of worldliness here. There will be a religious impact, but the woman represents worldliness more than an organized pagan religion.

She is called Babylon the Great. Babylon is a symbol of a worldwide pagan empire, the essence of human rebellion against God, begun in Genesis 10 by a hunter named Nimrod who founded the City of Babel. The people who lived there, the Babylonians, began to build a Tower of Babel to make a name for themselves and to show their own greatness and their own elevation, so God confused their languages.

Babylon’s empire came down along the Fertile Crescent, ended the Assyrian Empire, and invaded the kingdom of Judah under Nebuchadnezzar, deporting the Jews into captivity and ending Jewish sovereignty in the Promised Land. Babylon, as was predicted under Isaiah and Jeremiah and other prophets was crushed and judged by God, but it happened over centuries. However, the spirit of Babylon rose up out of the ashes of the literal city of Babylon to move to wherever the dominant geopolitical, military, and economic power was centered. In time, according to church history and tradition, it became Rome. In 1 Peter 5:13, Peter says, “She who is in Babylon, chosen together with you, sends you her greetings, and so does my son Mark.”

“She who is in Babylon” is the church, the bride of Christ, in Rome. She is in Babylon because although the old city of Babylon is long gone — crushed, destroyed, razed — the spirit of Babylon has moved from place to place since Rome fell, and it is with us today. It is a vast unifying system of illicit pleasure, with an intelligence behind it, manipulating the appetites of the senses through food and drink and drugs and material possessions and luxuries and power on a worldwide scale.

In Verse 6, she is drunk with the blood of the saints. Revelation 17:6: “I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of those who bore testimony to Jesus. When I saw her, I was greatly astonished.” The woman is drinking a mixed wine of adulteries and immoralities and illicit pleasure, but also the blood of the saints and prophets, the followers of Christ, whom she hates. They will not join in her immorality, so she heaps abuse on them and take pleasure in seeing them killed, getting drunk with their blood. The Romans were an example of this: they delighted in watching defenseless Christians be ripped to shreds by wild animals or killed by Gladiators; they could not get enough of it.

John’s reaction to this is amazement; he marvels. This is an important concept. We cannot know her unless God reveals her to us. John is surprised; he underestimates the wickedness of this woman, Babylon the Great. Let me apply this here: ask God to show you immediately with eyes of faith this world we live in, what it will look like on Judgment Day, to warn you away from this corrupting influence.

The interpretation in verses 7-13 focuses exclusively on the beast and his horns. Revelation 17:7-8: “Then the angel said to me: ‘Why are you astonished? I will explain to you the mystery of the woman and of the beast she rides, which has the seven heads and ten horns.’ The beast, which you saw, once was, now is not, and will come up out of the Abyss and go to his destruction. The inhabitants of the earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the creation of the world will be astonished when they see the beast, because he once was, now is not, and yet will come.”

The final phase of this world-wide godless system of domination will be under the reign of the final Antichrist. But every era of history sees waxing and waning types of such a reign. Empires rise and fall back into the dust in various versions of the same thing. John says the beast once was, now is not, and will come up out of the Abyss. The word “Abyss” shows the demonic nature of all this. Revelation 9 tells of the deep pit, the Abyss, out of which this demonic invasion billows up. The woman is inspired and dominated by demons. The beast’s kingdom is demonic, and so is the world system. When Jesus returns, he will destroy the final phase of that empire.

The astonishment could refer to the miracle in which the beast apparently receives a mortal wound but comes to life again. The whole world is astonished and worships the beast as a god. But the elect, those chosen from before the foundation of the world, whose names are written in Christ’s Book of Life, will not be deceived or take part in this. We know what is going on because he has told us. If you are elect, chosen, you are wise to flee all this in this present evil age.

Revelation 17:9-10: “This calls for a mind with wisdom. The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits. They are also seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come; but when he does come, he must remain for a little while.” With prophetic visionary books like Revelation, Daniel or Matthew 24, the Little Apocalypse, whenever there is a call for wisdom, we must combine Scripture and its predictions with current events. Jesus said, “…when you see the abomination of desolation rising in the place where it ought not to be, then run for your lives.” That will be a current event in its time, something to be watching for; we do not run for our lives in every generation or every day.

It is the same here. The final generation will know exactly what is happening. To John’s generation, the seven hills represented Rome, a city on the Tiber River, built on seven hills and nicknamed City of the Seven Hills, the dominating power of John’s era.

Many protestant commentators from the Reformation on see the great prostitute of Babylon as the Roman Catholic Church and its corruption of the Gospel. However, that seems too narrow. The spirit of Babylon moves and does not focus only on the one city of Rome. We should want to critique the Roman Catholic presentation of the gospel (for example, do they preach the gospel of justification by faith alone?), but it is too narrow to pin this passage on Roman Catholicism. The spirit of Rome today is not only one of religion but also one of power, domination, wealth.

The number seven, the Seven Hills, is symbolic as the number of completion. The hills represent man’s lofty ambitions, like the Tower of Babel, or Nebuchadnezzar on the roof of his palace, looking out over Babylon saying, “Is this not the great Babylon I have built for the praise of my glory?” Isaiah 2 says that the final day will come when the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established above all the other hills. All the lofty things — towers and tall trading vessels and oaks of Bashan — will be leveled, and the Lord alone will be exalted in that day. The Seven Hills represent human pride and arrogance as they try to replicate the Tower of Babel in every generation, arrogantly defying God.

Revelation 17:10-11: The Seven Hills “are also seven kings. [Clearly it is not only Rome, but a series of kings leading a series of empires, one after the other.] Five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come; but when he does come, he must remain for a little while. The beast who once was, and now is not, is an eighth king. He belongs to the seven and is going to his destruction.”

Empires arise one after the other. The United States has its place, as does the British Empire. Who knows what will come after the US is no longer the most powerful nation on earth. The spirit of Babylon will continue in every generation. Do not imagine that this nation is exempt, do not imagine that every inclination of the policy makers of Washington are only the glory of God and of his Christ all the time. 

The ten horns represent a coalition of final kings. They may or may not be alive right now, but they do not yet have their power in a way that can be identified. Revelation 17:12-13: “The ten horns you saw are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom, but who for one hour will receive authority as kings along with the beast. They have one purpose and will give their power and authority to the beast.”

The seven trumpets sound and bring ecological disaster on the earth in Revelation 8 and 9. People seek fresh water because one-third of the water is turned to blood at that point. Borders are destroyed, and out of the economic upheaval rise a coalition of leaders like in the United Nation. From that comes one man, the most Machiavellian leader ever, who is able through intrigue and assassination to take control. He then becomes a parody of Jesus, a king of kings and lord of lords, ruling over lesser kings who run their kingdoms and their areas. They come together to give him his power.

They had not risen in John’s day; they may not yet have risen in our day; but they will make an alliance and rule the world for a very short time. This coalition of force will give their power and authority to the beast, who will use them to rule the world, but God will use them to gather the world together for one final battle. They think they are carrying out their own agenda but instead, God is using them. They have one purpose; they are of one mind: they serve the beast and fight against Christ and against his people.

In Verse 14, “They will make war on the Lamb…” They are fighting Jesus, whom they hate. The ten kings and the beast will come together to try to kill Jesus, but they cannot get to him. So they go after Jesus’ people. They assemble to fight this one final battle. The remaining dissidents against the beast, the Antichrist, are believers, both Jewish and Gentile. They will not receive the mark of the beast. 

Many Jews may be consolidated in Jerusalem, the area of the Promised Land. The Antichrist comes with the ten kings — one giant army to fight the Lamb, with genocidal intentions toward the Jews, who are now believers in Christ. As predicted in Zechariah, God has taken away the blindness from their hearts and they have called on him and cried and mourn for him as for an only son. They turn at last to Christ, and the Lord loves them.

The Lamb is loyal to his people; their names have been written in the Book of Life from before the foundation of the world. They have not received the mark of the beast; they will not bow the knee. They have very little power. In Revelation 16:16, the Antichrist pulls all of this power together in the most one-sided battle ever in history. “Then they gathered the kings together to the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon.” Though one-sided, the outcome does not favor the Antichrist.

Revelation 19:19 “Then I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies gathered together to make war against the rider on the horse and his army.” They come together to make war on the Lamb. Verse 14 says, “but the Lamb will triumph over them because he is Lord of lords and King of kings…” Jesus cannot be defeated, and victory will not be difficult for him. He will not break a sweat. He will speak and they will be judged. It is that simple.

God’s purpose in all of this is to consolidate and destroy evil. The woman is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth; the waters are the nations, peoples, multitudes, and languages.

Revelation 17:16: “The beast and the ten horns you saw will hate the prostitute. They will bring her to ruin and leave her naked; they will eat her flesh and burn her with fire.” This is a challenging verse. The woman represents worldly pleasure. When it comes to pleasure and happiness, we must understand Satan’s intention: he has no interest in allowing any joy. In truth, he is anti-human in every respect — he hates the Antichrist, his own servants, and every human being. Satan is a thief who comes to steal and kill and destroy.

The Antichrist is like Satan. The wealthy, luxurious, and powerful of the world have yielded their power to him but he does not love them or want them to have anything good. Under his rule, they will come to total ruin; they will be stripped and destroyed. He does not seek to bless and enrich and help them.

In Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, an older demon advises a younger demon about tactics of temptation. On the topic of normal physical pleasure, Screwtape says to his nephew Wormwood, “Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on enemy territory. I know we [devils] have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is [God’s] invention, not ours. [God] made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is encourage the humans to take the pleasures which [God] has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden. Hence we always try to work away from the natural condition of any pleasure to that in which it is least natural, [reminding people] the least ... of its Maker, and least pleasurable. An ever-increasing craving for an ever-diminishing pleasure is the formula. ... To get the man’s soul and give him nothing in return — that is what really gladdens [Satan’s] heart.”

Satan’s method is increasing enslavement to decreasing pleasure. Adolf Hitler represented this mindset to a degree. There was no pleasure in his life. He did not love food — he had an abstemious diet; and he seemed to have no sexual tendencies at all. He was a twisted, sick, strange individual who lusted only for military conquest and power. He ended his life in a reinforced concrete bunker, apart from anything beautiful or delightful, surrounded by the smoldering rubble-filled city of Berlin. The people who gave him his power yearned for prosperity and comfort and ended up with nothing; they ended up dead.

God’s plan in all this is to draw out and collect all of the evil in one place to make it obvious and clear. That is happening now in human history. In the end, we will see how bad evil is. Their purpose is to give power to the beast, but God’s purpose overrides. Revelation 17:17: “For God has put it into their hearts to accomplish his purpose by agreeing to give the beast their power to rule, until God's words are fulfilled.” Romans 4, referring to Adam’s sin, says, “The law was added so that the trespass might increase. [God did that.] But where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more.” This whole thing is to educate the elect, the godly, so we can see evil and hate it and turn from it in the end.

Revelation 18:4-5: “Then I heard another voice from heaven say: ‘Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues; for her sins are piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her crimes.’”

Ask God to show you that you are wet, surrounded by the world. The world has an influence on the way that you think and live — the way you think about money, time, your profession, your future, marital relations. You need first to see how it is, and ask God to give you a heart of repentance. Sexual immorality is a particular area of weakness for humans. Ask God to show you if you are violating your conscience in the sexual area. Ask him to grant you repentance and protection from sexual sin. Ask if you have any pattern of addictions in your life. Paul says all things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be enslaved by anything. He also says in 1 Corinthians 9:27, “I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.” What does it mean for you to beat your body and make it your slave? What are your appetites? What are you addicted to? Ask God to give you freedom.

For you who are not yet Christians, I urge you to flee to Christ, the world has an even greater influence on you than it does on the Christians. Flee the wrath to come in Christ, find in Christ, in his atoning work, in his blood shed, your forgiveness, your salvation.

Finally, understand the future of this Babylonian system we living in, the future of pleasure. That pleasure is going to destruction, but there is a greater pleasure that is coming —  the pleasure at the right hand of God, of knowing and dwelling with God and his Christ. Psalm 16:11 says, “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”

Father, we thank you for the things that we have learned in this very difficult chapter. Help us to be aware of how the world is influencing us and drawing us away from holiness. Help us to stand firm and to fight and not allow ourselves to be corrupted and polluted by the world. Help us to help each other, men to help men, and women to help women. Help us to disciple each other and ask each other questions of accountability. Help us to pray for each other, and Lord, help us to yearn for the day when there will be no more evil, no more wickedness in this world. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

A common phrase, meant to comfort one experiencing affliction, but in effect demonstrating a shallow and flippant lack of compassion, is, “It’s not the end of the world.” Today we will study a prophecy of the end of the world which reveals the truth behind the opposite of that phrase. It is a weighty thing. We see and experience the world around us — blue skies, cold temperatures, the cycle of seasons, the shore and the ocean, mountains and islands. It is difficult to grasp in our minds that some day the ocean will be murdered by human sin and the mountains and islands will flee away. They are not permanent but temporary. Let it settle in your heart and affect the way you see all aspects of life — your education, your job, your marriage, your parenting — all that you do. We are aliens and strangers in this temporary world that will be destroyed by the wrath of God because of human sin. That is the impact of Revelation 16.

The end of the world will be worse than we can imagine. It is hard to imagine as we read these prophecies to understand their weightiness. It will be worse than any film can show. It is a prediction, a prophecy of the future.

Revelation 17, 18, and the first part of Revelation 19 provide a parenthetical descriptive insight into the wickedness of the world in which we live, called Babylon the Great, which is the reason for the destruction poured out from the bowls. She is described as a whore riding on a beast and as a big city with commerce and trading. Revelation 19 celebrates Babylon’s destruction, then depicts the Second Coming of Christ. The bowl judgments are the last events on earth right before the Second Coming. In Revelation 16, we come to the end of God’s patience waiting for sinners to repent.

His patience is immeasurable and matchless but not endless. A day is coming in which God will judge the earth for its sins. Verse 14 says they will go out and gather the kings of the whole world for battle “on the great day of God Almighty” (other Scriptures call it the “day of the Lord”). Why is God patient with us? We must not misunderstand his patience; it is not because he does not care about sin or because he is not holy, or because he is impotent. 2 Peter 3:9 says, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. …  Bear in mind that our Lord's patience means salvation.”

He is waiting for sinners to repent and be saved. The Apostle Paul said in Romans 2, that God’s goodness, kindness, patience, and tolerance are meant to lead us to repentance. God was patient with Paul as he was punishing the church, hardening his own heart, dragging off Christian brothers and sisters, throwing them in prison, breaking up homes, seeing that people were executed for faith in Christ.

Paul says in 1 Timothy 1:15-16 “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners-- of whom I am the worst [not was]. But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life.”

In Romans 9, Paul writes of the astonishing level of patience God shows to vessels of wrath who will never repent, even in the end. Romans 9:22 says, “What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath — prepared for destruction?” What if he did this to make the riches of His glory known to us, the objects of His mercy, whom He prepared in advance for glory? God is patient with objects of vessels of wrath to teach us how gracious he was to us in Christ. God is an amazingly patient God. The Scripture reveals this again and again.

In Genesis 6, in the days when Noah was building the ark, God waited patiently for sinners to repent even though every thought and inclination of the hearts of humans at that time were only evil all the time. God still waited patiently.

He waited 400 years for the sin of the Amorites and the Promised Land to reach its full measure. During that same 400 years he waited for the Egyptians to stop enslaving and beating His chosen people. After the Jews took the Promised Land and started following the ways of the Canaanite nations around them, God waited patiently for them to repent. He sent many prophets, calling them to turn away from following the Canaanite ways. He is a very patient God, every day of human history showing patience towards sinners. Every day is a display of His unlimited patience, because human history is filled with a river of sin we cannot calculate. Every one of us underestimates it. It is a wicked world that we live in, and that wickedness is pouring out from human hearts. 

Paul describes it plainly in Romans 1:29-32, “They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.” That is the world we live in.

As we come to Revelation 16, we should not be at a loss to understand why God would pour his wrath on the planet. The angels know exactly why God is doing it. His matchless patience will come to an end. The great day of the Lord God Almighty is coming.  2 Peter 3:10 says, “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief.” There will be no further announcements. The heavens will disappear with a roar, the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the Earth and everything in it will be laid bare.

The Book of Revelation has several purposes. It is a revelation of the future as it states in both the very first verse, 1:1, and the last chapter, 22: “to show his servants what must soon take place.”

It is also a revelation of Almighty God seated on His throne ruling the universe (Revelation 4). Everything circles around Him. It is a revelation of Jesus Christ (Revelation 5), the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, a Lamb looking as if it had been slain. He takes a scroll, perhaps representing the title deed of ownership of the earth, from the right hand of Almighty God, the one seated on the throne. The scroll is sealed with seven seals, which the Lamb breaks open, initiating the flow of judgments from Heaven to earth. Thus, it is also a revelation of judgments on earth, the final process of God’s wrath (Revelation 6).

It is a revelation of the point of redemptive history (Revelation 7), showing a multitude greater than anyone could count from every tribe and language and people and nation standing before the throne, wearing white robes, waving palm branches, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” They are a great multitude of the redeemed, the glory of God.

It is a revelation of the final seven-year period of history (Revelation 8 and 9). It begins with the seven trumpet judgments, overt punishments and wrath never before witnessed or experienced in history. It is not an analogy or metaphor for something in church history, but a vision of the future. A third of the trees and all green growing things and all of the green grass burn up; a third the sea turns to blood, so a third of the living creatures in the sea die. A third of the fresh water turns to poison. A third of the celestial bodies — the sun, the moon, and the stars — is struck in some way, or their light is reduced by a third. A demonic assault ensues as demons come blowing up out of a furnace, afflicting people with stings as of scorpions. A demonic army appears, killing a third of the population of the earth.

Judgment continues in Revelation 16 with the seven bowls. On the surface they appear to be a reiteration of the trumpets; however, some significant differences between the trumpets and the bowls indicate that they are a new set of judgments.

First, the seven trumpets have a limited effect on the earth, destroying one-third, leaving two-thirds untouched, demonstrating God’s restraint at that point (He still shows restraint with the seven bowls but less so). Second, the seven trumpets do not end human life on the same scale or scope as the bowls. The trumpets seem to provide a final opportunity for repentance, and some do repent, but the text emphasizes through repetition that no one repents following the bowls. Third, there are details — for example, the fourth bowl which intensifies the sun’s power, the fifth bowl which plunges the world into darkness — that have no parallel in the seven trumpets or anything we know in human history. Fourth, the bowls are identified specifically as the last judgments: “These are the last, because with them God’s judgment is finished on the earth.”

God finally ends the day of salvation because the time has come; the last elect person has come to faith in Christ. The rest of the world is hardened in their sin. The wickedness has reached such a level it is time to end human history. Revelation 9:20-21 says, “The rest of mankind who were not killed by these plagues still did not repent to the work of their hands; they did not stop worshiping demons and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone, and wood — idols that cannot see or hear or walk. Nor did they repent of their murders, their magic arts, their sexual immorality, or their thefts.”

It is a revelation of the dragon Satan (Revelation 12) and the Beast from the Sea, the Antichrist (Revelation 13). The beast is a world ruler who is directly influenced by Satan himself, given power over the entire world. He also becomes a religious figure, worshiped as a god. He becomes the final government and the final religion. The power of the government is overwhelming — the mark of the beast is required to buy or sell anything. Everyone who is not a believer in Christ, sustained and protected by the sovereign grace of God, bows down to this man, receives the mark of the beast, and worships him as God. They go along to get along and so are involved in that system.

It is a revelation of incredibly courageous, bold witnessing in this final phase of human history (Revelation 11, 12, 14). It begins with two witnesses with supernatural power, boldness and courage to stand before this wicked ruler. They clearly proclaim the Gospel until he finally kills them. God raises them up three days later and they ascend to heaven. Many other witnesses, servants of God, do not love their lives so much as to shrink from death. They overcome Satan by the word of the Lamb and by their blood; they boldly proclaim the testimony of Jesus. A specific group of men do not defile themselves with women but follow the Lamb wherever he goes. No lie is in their mouths, and they boldly give themselves fully — metaphorically making themselves eunuchs for the kingdom in order to be witnesses. An angel flying in midair, proclaims the Gospel, “Fear God who created the heavens, the earth, the sea, and everything in them. Fear God and give him the glory.”

All these are witnessing. It will have effect; there are converts during that final phase of human history, but with the bowls, God will wait no longer. The last elect person, chosen before the creation of the world, has been brought to faith in Christ. The rest are hardened and the time has come for judgment.

Revelation 16:1 begins the bowl judgments with a command from God: “Then I heard a loud voice from the temple saying to the seven angels, ‘Go, pour out the seven bowls of God's wrath on the earth.’” These seven angels are identified in Revelation 15:5-7. They come out of Heaven, receiving from the living creatures these seven bowls of the most toxic spiritual substance ever seen, the wrath of God that will be poured out on the earth. Many evangelical commentators see this as a literary technique of symbolic language, which is not a safe way to approach Revelation. Some link the bowls to the plagues in Exodus. One says that because so much human commerce relies on oceans and seas, the judgment on the ocean is really a judgment on the economy of the world.

God will judge the economy of the world, but this is judgment on the ecology of the world and will literally happen as described. From the Garden of Eden, God has linked the planet we walk on and the sin of man through Adam. Adam’s curse was a curse on the ground. Meditate on that. God said to Adam, our father, “Cursed is the ground because of you, because of your sin. It will produce thorns and thistles for you.” That has unfolded since then.

Psalm 8:5-8 says, “You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet: all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.” The earth is judged because of human sin. This makes perfect sense. God is very consistent about this. Romans 8:19-22 says, “The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.” At that time, the world will be resurrected as we will be, but now it is groaning. There is a definite link and it makes sense theologically.

Revelation 16:2: “The first angel went and poured out his bowl on the land, and ugly and painful sores broke out on the people who had the mark of the beast and worshiped his image.” The angel does not hesitate as he pours this poisonous bowl on the land, resulting in a direct assault on human bodies. One translation says “… loathsome and malignant sores.” The Greek word is tied to the English word for ulcer — disgusting, ulcerating, bleeding, running sores on the skin, bleeding, like Job had when he scraped his skin with pottery.

Who is judged? Everyone who receives the mark of the beast and worships his image. The saints — those who believe — are excluded. They do not experience the sores. 2 Peter 2:9 says, “…the Lord knows how to rescue godly men from trials and to hold the unrighteous for the day of judgment, while continuing their punishment.” God rescued Lot from Sodom and Gomorrah; he rescued Noah from the flood; he is able to make a distinction between the wicked and the redeemed.

Revelation 16:3: “The second angel poured out his bowl on the sea, and it turned into blood like that of a dead man, and every living thing in the sea died.” The sea is turned into blood — a red substance,  sticky, oozing, thick, dark, coagulated, like the blood of a man who is gunned down, bleeding out on the floor. Some commentators link it to red tide, but that trivializes it. This is far worse than any red tide ever seen, in that every single living creature in the sea dies. That is absolutely mind-boggling.

We have no idea how many living creatures are in the sea. Billions? Trillions? Think of all the krill and plankton; the Great Barrier Reef, said to be the largest single living entity, if it is indeed single; all the beautiful tropical fish that swim in schools through the clear water of the Caribbean; all the stingrays and sharks and orcas. Biologists estimate 50% to 80% of all living creatures live in the sea — that is a wide range. How could they possibly give a more precise percentage? We do not know what is in the depths of the sea, but they will all die because of human sin. Let me intensify, because of our sin, they will die. It is incalculable and unimaginable.

They did not die in the flood; in fact, they prospered. But at the end of history, they are the first creatures to die. After the sea dies, we die. This must be the end of human history. There is no way to survive if the ocean is dead. From the sea we get 70% of our oxygen and 83% of our rain water. Billions of people cannot survive long without that level of oxygen and rain water. Given the fact that God will soon pollute all the fresh water, we will have no water to drink, no rain, nothing. The end will come quickly.

Revelation 16:4: “The third angel poured out his bowl on the rivers and springs of water, and they became blood.” This is an expansion of the third trumpet judgment, which polluted a third of the fresh water and turned it into wormwood. This bowl affects all fresh water — all rivers and springs of fresh water in the world are turned to blood. John MacArthur said, “The destruction of what is left of the earth’s fresh water will cause unthinkable hardship and suffering. There will be no water to drink; no clean water to wash the oozing sores caused by the first bowl judgment; no water to bring cooling relief from the scorching heat that the fourth bowl judgment is about to bring. The scene will be so unimaginably horrible that people will wonder how a God of compassion, mercy, and grace could send such a judgment.”

An angel speaks in God’s defense in Revelation 16:5-6: “Then I heard the angel in charge of the waters say: ‘You are just in these judgments, you who are and who were, the Holy One, because you have so judged; for they have shed the blood of your saints and prophets, and you have given them blood to drink as they deserve.”

These devastating judgments are displays of God’s perfect wisdom, justice and righteousness. Note how angels think. As Jesus taught us to pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” How is God’s will done in Heaven? These angels display how immediately and with great zeal the will of the king is executed in Heaven. There is no hesitation, no squeamishness, just vindication of God. The angel does not shrink back or question; he celebrates what God is doing. “You are just in these judgments, you who are and who were, the Holy One…”

The process of vindicating God is called theodicy. Both reasons given by the angel are important for vindicating and justifying God. First, everything He does is right, because he does it. He is the standard of justice and righteousness. If a measuring stick is off even by a little, it is not the Bureau of Standards and Measurements that is in error. Our measuring stick is off — we are messed up; we are unjust. How could we judge God who is perfectly just? His character proves the justice of His action. There is no standard of righteousness or holiness above God that He obeys. When Abraham interceded for Sodom and Gomorrah, he said in Genesis 18:25, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” The judge of all the earth is right, and everything He does is right.

Second, God created angels and humans alike with minds and hearts to evaluate God’s actions and our own. We can see a rightness in what is happening. It lines up. He is just, “…for they have shed the blood of your saints and prophets, and you have given them blood to drink as they deserve.” This is appropriate for these blood-thirsty killers. The ground will disclose, as Jesus said [Matthew 23:35], “… all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.” These blood-thirsty killers will be given blood to drink; it is what they deserve. Proverbs 26:27 says, “If a man digs a pit, he will fall into it; if a man rolls a stone, it will roll back on him.” There is a rightness to it, like when Haman was made to hang on the gallows he made for Mordecai.

Verse 7 says, “… I heard the altar respond: ‘Yes, Lord God Almighty, true and just are your judgments.’” The altar is where the martyred saints from the fifth seal are, crying out. Revelation 6:10-11 says, “They called out in a loud voice, ‘How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?’ Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and brothers who were to be killed as they had been was completed.” That is complete now. The full number of martyrs is in, and it is time for judgment.

Revelation 16:8-9: “The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and the sun was given power to scorch people with fire. They were seared by the intense heat and they cursed the name of God, who had control over these plagues, but they refused to repent and glorify him.”

The bowl is poured on the sun. The sun is in the hand of God, and He can do whatever He wants with it. The sun has served the earth since the fourth day of creation. It gives us light and heat, which we need for living. All life depends on sunlight because of photosynthesis. Every second the sun puts off the same amount of energy that our human race would consume in 500 million years. The surface of the sun, the outer corona, is 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The core is estimated to be 27 million degrees. NASA is attempting to send a probe to the core of the sun to send a radio signal to find out exactly how hot it is.

The sun is 93 million miles from the earth, positioned exactly where it needs to be to sustain our fragile life and our fragile ecosystem. Imagine a scale model of the relationship between the sun and the earth, with the earth here at the podium and the sun at the back. The North Pole was at -24 degrees Fahrenheit this week. Quito, Ecuador was at 66 degrees Fahrenheit. That is a 90 degree difference. The difference overall, percentage-wise from the North Pole to the edge of the Equator at the scale of our model is the thickness of a dime. In other words, a step forward the thickness of a dime will create a difference of 90 degrees. Do you see the precision with which God has set up our world? He will not turn it way up or we would instantly die. The surface of Venus, a third closer to the sun, is 864 degrees Fahrenheit. A minute adjustment will create a searing heat, made more miserable because of lack of drinking water. That will genuinely be global warming. The ice caps will melt and the oceans will rise, meaning the death contained in the seas will flood the coastal cities, bringing unimaginable disease and suffering.

Revelation 16:10-11: “The fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and his kingdom was plunged into darkness. Men gnawed their tongues in agony and cursed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, but they refused to repent of what they had done.” God plunges the world into darkness. Light and darkness are metaphors for good and evil, but we also know that God declared light itself good. When He takes light away, it is a tremendous judgment on us, lining up with our spiritually dark hearts. John 3:19 says, “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” It makes sense that the bowl is poured out on the throne of the beast, plunging this dark kingdom of Antichrist into darkness. The people are powerless to stop it; there is nothing they can do.

It reminds us of the 10 plagues in Egypt. The 9th plague, right before the final plague on the first born, is a plague of darkness. Exodus 10:21-23 says, “Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘Stretch out your hand toward the sky so that darkness will spread over Egypt— darkness that can be felt.’ So Moses stretched out his hand toward the sky, and total darkness covered all Egypt for three days. No one could see anyone else or leave his place for three days. Yet all the Israelites had light in the places where they lived.” God makes a distinction between the righteous and the wicked. He also sets limits. The darkness does not continue forever, because history does not unfold in total darkness. The kings of the earth that are coming for the battle of Armageddon must have light to see. Though it is short-lived, it will be like Hell on earth. Matthew 8:12 says that the wicked “will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” The world is in total darkness and people are seared with the heat of the sun, crying out in anger and rage, not repenting of their sins.

Revelation 16:12-16: “The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the East. Then I saw three evil spirits that looked like frogs; they came out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet. They are spirits of demons performing miraculous signs, and they go out to the kings of the whole world, to gather them for the battle on the great day of God Almighty. ‘Behold, I come like a thief! Blessed is he who stays awake and keeps his clothes with him, so that he may not go naked and be shamefully exposed.’ Then they gathered the kings together to the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon.”

This bowl is preparatory. The Euphrates River was the northern boundary of the promised land. Jeremiah saw these invasions referenced in Jeremiah 1, like a boiling pot tipped over from the north and flowing across the Euphrates. The Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks all come pouring down into Israel by this path. The river is a barrier or a boundary that, given the global warming, the kings of these nations cannot remove nor cross to come to Armageddon. They need help.

The night the Israelites crossed the Red Sea, the powerful Egyptian army aimed to slaughter and wipe out the Jews. They streamed after the fleeing nation of Israel but were stopped by a pillar of fire and a pillar of cloud, which stood between the Israelites and the Egyptians. The Israelites cried out to God, hemmed in between the army and the Red Sea, when God opened a way through the Red Sea. When the time came for them to go, the pillar moved around to the front and led them through. Pharaoh and his army started into the bed of the Red Sea; the wheels of the chariot became mired and stuck. Only then, even after the ten plagues, did they realize, “the God of the Jews is fighting for them.”

The same thing will happen right before the Second Coming of Christ, only much bigger. The kings of the earth under Antichrist will gather together to wipe the believing Jews from the face of the earth. They will come to this place called Armageddon, and they will be gathered, passive voice, for the day of battle. Why are they there? To die. It will not be much of a fight, but they will be gathered. These demonic frog-like spirits go out performing signs and wonders to get them to come, and the Antichrist and all the armies will be there. Joel 3 details how they will be gathered to the valley of Jehoshaphat (“the Lord judges”). He will judge the nations on every side, multitudes in the valley of decision. When they are gathered there, God will pour His wrath out on them.

He gives Christians a final warning: “‘Behold, I come like a thief!’ Blessed is he who stays awake [we are not like those who sleep; believers have been forewarned, so be alert] and keeps his clothes with him, so that he may not go naked and be shamefully exposed [when Jesus returns].” That is about personal holiness, personal faith in Christ. We are to be like the five wise virgins who have oil for their lamps to keep them burning, to be ready for the Lord to return. We are to be aware of what time is about and how much God hates sin. It is because of such things as sexual immorality and lying and covetousness, and all manner of wickedness described plainly in the Bible that the wrath of God is coming. We are not to violate our conscience. Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5 that this day is no secret to us. We know it is coming so we are not to be like those who sleep but rather to be awake and sober.

Revelation 16:17-21: “The seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and out of the temple came a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘It is finished!’ [Just as Jesus cried out the same phrase from the cross, there is power in this declaration — this is the finish of God’s wrath on the earth.] Then there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder and a severe earthquake. No earthquake like it has ever occurred since man has been on earth, so tremendous was the quake. The great city split into three parts, and the cities of the nations collapsed. God remembered Babylon the Great and gave her the cup filled with the wine of the fury of his wrath. Every island fled away and the mountains could not be found. From the sky huge hailstones of about a hundred pounds each fell upon men. And they cursed God on account of the plague of hail, because the plague was so terrible.”

The seven bowls are poured out onto the land and the sea, the rivers and springs, the sun, the throne of the beast, the River Euphrates, and into the air. All the realms are covered; everything is touched. God is judging the universe — the end has come.

The seventh bowl sets the stage for the Second Coming of Christ. The kings and their armies are all gathered, but not all people, so around the world there will be judgements. A terrifying divine storm rages,  with flashes of lightning and peals of thunder. The massive earthquake, the likes of which has never occurred, is a judgment on all the great cities of the world. Every city on earth, especially Babylon the Great, will split apart and fall. My family and I experienced an earthquake on January 17th, 1995. Even a smaller scale earthquake is terrifying — there is no escape from it — but this one will shake the whole earth. In addition to the earthquake, 100-pound hailstones fall from the sky. Even small hailstones the size of a marble can cause damage, but these massive ones are killing people.

Physically, the worst part of these plagues is that they are cumulative. Spiritually, the worst part is they do not produce repentance. God’s word says again and again that the fear of the Lord is a servant to us as sinners to bring us to Christ. Proverbs 1:7 “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.” John Newton said, “’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved.”

The people affected by the judgments do no fear God — they are angry at Him. Revelation 16:9, 11: “They were seared by the intense heat and they cursed the name of God, who had control over these plagues, but they refused to repent and glorify him. … and cursed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, but they refused to repent of what they had done.” This is a foretaste of Hell. When they have been there 10,000 years in total darkness, they will be no closer to repenting and giving God glory than the first day they were there. If anything, the bitterness in their hearts will continue to develop. They will not justify God or acknowledge that they deserve their punishment.

Revelation 16:21: “…they cursed God on account of the plague of hail, because the plague was so terrible.” Do you realize, oh saints, brothers and sisters in Christ, that God has granted you repentance? If you know that you are a sinner, if you have cried out to Jesus to forgive you of your sins and received the gift of forgiveness, and received the gift of the Holy Spirit in your heart testifying that you are a child of God, you have been given an immeasurable gift. He opened his hand through the Spirit and granted to you repentance unto life. None of these judgments will do that for these vessels of wrath.

Behold, therefore, in conclusion, the goodness and severity of God — goodness to you, patience to you, and severity to those who will not repent. As we depart, the world will look like it always has. You have to believe by faith that these things will come, or it will be nothing to you, and you will continue in your life as you always have. If you know that you are not a Christian, how much longer will you wait? Today is the day of salvation. Repent of your sins and trust in Christ. Faith comes by hearing. See the wisdom of God in moderately tweaking His judgments — instead of giving us 946 degrees Fahrenheit, he increases his sun just a little bit. God is so wise, even in cursing the earth. He is meticulous and precise. See His holiness and how much He hates sin. Look at your heart, how have you violated your conscience over the last week. Do you yearn to stop violating your conscience over this upcoming year? Will you put sin to death by coming to faith in Christ by the power of the Spirit? In this way, be holy, as God commands.

For believers, warn lost people that these days are coming, though they do not think so. You may have an opportunity at work to share what we have studied today. My kids said, “This is a hard, bad story,” I replied, “No, it is a good story.” There is so much glory that comes after all this suffering.” Imagine if Jesus had died in the middle of the night and risen by morning, and he told his disciples, “I died last night, but I am alive again.” He was crucified for our sins; they watched him die, and great was their joy when he came alive. The suffering makes the joy infinitely greater. We will live in a new world that will be perfect. We will remember all this, and we will hate sin as God does and delight in the New Heaven and New Earth that He will make. 

Lord, thank you for the things that we have learned in Revelation 16, an intense, long and difficult chapter. Thank you for giving us patience to sit under it and learn from it, and now Lord, give us grace to live according to it. Help us to be holy, to put sin to death, to have garments of holiness, imputed righteousness from Christ around us, help us to love one another, help us to share the Gospel and be bold to warn other sinners of the end that is most certainly coming, and coming soon. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Pastor Andy Davis preaches a sermon on Matthew 2:1-12 and explores the Magi's visit to Jesus Christ.

The most famous, miraculous sign in the Old Testament was the burning bush. As Moses was tending his father-in-law, Jethro's sheep, and he saw this amazing sight that broke all the laws of physics. How this bush was burning, but not consumed.  Well, I want you to imagine a similar scenario in which you are hiking out West, let's say you're out in the Rockies and you're hiking up a steep mountain and you're going through the woods and you're getting tired, it's hot, and suddenly you hear a rushing mountain stream, vigorous rushing mountain stream. And so you make your way through the woods to the stream, only when you get there, you see something you can't... It defies all the laws of nature, all the laws of physics. The stream's going up the mountain.  

What would you think? What would you think if you stood there? You'd be like, "I don't know if I would drink from it, I would be so stupefied. I'd be like, "Is it water? Is it healthy? What could I do? What should I do?" I'd just stand there in amazement. Isaiah chapter 2:2 gives a prophecy of the success of the Gospel in that kind of an image. In Isaiah 2:2 it says, "In the last days, the mountain of the Lord's temple will be established as chief among the mountains. It'd be raised above the hills and all the nations will stream to it. And many peoples will say in that day, "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us His ways and show us his laws, we will walk in the light of His laws. The law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem and all the nations will see it, and they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, and they will not learn war anymore. Come, oh house of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the Lord."” 

So here's this image of a mighty river flowing up a mountain, the highest mountain in the world, even. How would we explain it? Well, it has to do, I think, with the success of the gospel to the ends of the earth as people come to faith in Christ and they make spiritual pilgrimages to Christ. Spiritual pilgrimages. They don't need to physically go anywhere. And the idea of water running, rushing up a steep mountain defies all the laws of physics, it's not a natural streaming. It's a supernatural streaming. It can only be affected by supernatural forces on the people that are making the pilgrimage. Nothing but a supernatural force will cause them to leave their old way of thinking, to leave their old way of worshipping, their old value system, and make a pilgrimage to Christ to come to Christ. 

Now for me, I love those stories, I love hearing the stories of how brothers and sisters in Christ from all over the world came to faith in Jesus, especially if there are signal providences, amazing signs, visions, dreams, other things involved. A few weeks ago we gave you in an insert, a prayer, a week of prayer, a guide from the IMB. And there was a story in there of a woman given the name Delara from Central Asia. We're not told her country, we're not told her real name. But we are told the circumstances of her, a Muslim woman, coming to faith in Christ. She had a dream and in that dream she saw a structure she'd never seen before and three men there in front of that structure who she didn't know. But in the dream, she knew one person, Jesus, and Jesus lifted her up in her dream, out of her bed, set her on her feet, and invited her to come to this building. And then she woke up. Within the next week, she was in a certain part of the city and there she saw the building and it was a church. She'd never been there before, but it was definitely that place. And she went inside and the three men were there, including one man who spoke to her and led her to Christ.  

Now, I'm gonna get to heaven, I'm gonna hear 100 million stories like that, of how the nations streamed up against all odds, against every inclination of the sinful human heart, against all of the teachings of their native religions, whatever they were, to come to faith in Christ. A few weeks ago, I was meeting with a woman who is serving as a missionary in North Africa, in a Muslim country in North Africa. She told me a similar story, this is remarkable. Of a man who came to faith in Christ, a Muslim man, who had just within the last year been a member of an ISIS cell group, preparing... And he was preparing for a suicide bombing mission. And he was training and preparing for this. And he was told he had to go to Mecca, make his Hajj, his pilgrimage to Mecca, to purify himself for his entry into paradise.  

So he went on the pilgrimage, but when he got there he could find no transportation to the Kaaba, the Black Stone that all the Muslims go around seven times counter clock-wise, that's the consummation of their pilgrimage. He couldn't get there, he couldn't get... I don't know, from the airport or exactly, I don't know the details, but he couldn't get there. There was no bus, there was no taxi, there was no way to get there.  

Finally, this little bus comes and the door opens and there's this man there, and he says, "I'm trying to get to the Kaaba" and this man looks at him for a long time, doesn't say anything, just looks and he says, "You're going the wrong direction." "Beg your pardon?" "You're going the wrong direction." That's all he said. Door closed, drives off. Wow, that was unnerving. He somehow found a way to complete his Hajj, went back to his home country. A few weeks before he was to die in a murderous suicide bombing in the name of Allah. He went to the home of a Christian for dinner, someone he knew, and when he got there, on the wall, there was a picture there of the Last Supper. He was immediately fascinated, he said, "Who is that man in the middle?" "Well, that's Isa, that's Jesus." He said, "No, that was the driver of that bus." Now, you're like, "What did Jesus look like?" And don't go there. It doesn't matter. What matters is that was the man he saw. And he knew what he was doing was sinful, it was wrong. He knew he was going the wrong way, he had no peace in his heart. And so, from the Muslim context of honor and respect for Jesus, even beyond that, to the fact that Jesus actually is not merely a prophet who did miracles, but actually God in the flesh, he was led to faith in Christ. And then told the rest of the story to his brothers and sisters there in his home country. 

Now for me, I love to hear those kinds of stories, I wanna know what God does to bring someone from point A to point B, to bring them to faith in Christ. Now, the account we're gonna read today of the Magi is one of the first such stories, maybe the first, of a pilgrimage made from a distant land by Gentiles, pagans, to come to worship Jesus. And so we're gonna walk through that this morning.  

Now, we have an endless fascination with the Magi, which is part of the Christmas scene, and we are interested in it. And so you're probably wanting to know what I'm going to say about the Magi, you're hoping I'm not gonna touch too sharply on your nativity set. Well, I'm probably gonna mess with your nativity set a little bit, and mine too. But we're gonna find out about the Magi.  

Now, Christmas is filled with all kinds of images and we know it's powerful, it's a powerful force in our culture. Very strong feelings. Some of those forces are good, some are not so good. Christian parents would do well to saturate the minds of their children in the theological truths of the birth of Christ, to tell them the truth about who Jesus was. You heard Wes reading John 1:1, "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God." He was with God in the beginning, all things were made through him. A number of verses later, verse 14, "The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory of the only begotten, from the Father, full of grace and truth." A few verses after that, "The law was given through Moses, grace, and truth came through Jesus Christ."  

 We're not wondering who he's talking about at all in John 1. So for us as Christian parents, to just saturate the minds of our children and say, "Teach them this, teach them who Jesus is, that He is God in the flesh." And teach them why he came. 1 Timothy 1:15, "This is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst." That's a great verse, year-round. Cherish that verse. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the worst. If you ever feel like the worst sinner, that's your verse. That's why he came. Now, the biblical images of Christ are powerful enough to consume our imaginations, our minds for the rest of our lives. We don't need all of the other myths and legends. Luke 1:30-33, which we looked at last week a little bit, where the angel Gabriel said, "Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor or grace with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give Him the throne of his father, David, and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever." Son of God, Son of David, the incarnation. And then the angel appearing to the shepherds outside Bethlehem, "Today in the town of David, a Savior has been born for you." Isn't that powerful? A savior for you, and he is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign to you, you will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. 

So this is the theology of Christmas, the incarnation, the idea that God became human and came to save us from our sins. Now we know that there are overwhelming images, many of them secular, lining up with Christmas. I'll like to count all of the different phrases that you hear on the radio as you're listening to seasonal music. So it is the most wonderful time of the year. Silver bells. I've personally never seen chestnuts roasting on an open fire, I don't know what happens. I would picture they would explode, but I don't know. 

And then you've got the other weird things that entered somewhere around when I was a little kid, like the Grinch and the Snow Queen and the elves and all that sort of stuff that come in with those TV programs that come in every year. Then you've got Ebenezer Scrooge and the three ghosts, past, present and future. I saw recently, a movie, The Man Who Invented Christmas. Some of you have seen that, about Dickens and the circumstances of him writing The Christmas Carol. And it's just striking how unimportant Christmas was in Victorian England back before that time. But it was really Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and then Dickens in the story that made it huge. So just all of these images. And then there are other threads that are theological, like the hymn we just sang, "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" is the most... I think the most theologically rich Christmas carol we ever sing. "Christ by highest heaven adored Christ the everlasting Lord. Laid in time, behold him come, offspring of a virgin's womb. Veiled in flesh, the godhead, see. Hail the incarnate deity." Incarnate deity. "Pleased as man with man to dwell, Jesus our Immanuel."  

What you may not realize is Charles Wesley wrote maybe dozens of verses to that and those were the best. The four that we know are the best. Wes chose a few extra. Where did you find those? You have to ask him. Where did you find out about the second Adam? That was amazing. But I know that Charles Wesley wrote more than made it in the hymnal. Very rich and powerful, and so we should saturate ourselves in it. 

Now when we come to the Magi, there are lots of misconceptions. So here I have to go there, I have to talk about the nativity sets. So there we see Joseph, Mary, baby Jesus, the shepherds, that's all good. A barn, maybe, might have been in a cave, but barn, manger, fine. And there they are, the three kings, alright? And they're in rich kingly robes and they've all got different ornate boxes and they're offering... I've got it too. I set it out every year without any pangs of conscience at all.   

Now honestly, the number of the Magi is unclear. Because they gave three gifts we think there are three of them, we don't know. The Magi are not in any way said to be kings in the account. They're Magi. Talk about what that means in a moment. Those two misconceptions come together in a very famous Christmas carol, "We Three Kings... " You know that one, "We three Kings of Orient are bearing gifts, we traverse afar. Field and fountain, moor and mountain, following yonder star." In the 14th century, a cleric named John of Hildesheim wrote a work called "The History of The Three Kings." So you can look it up, you can get some of the text online, it's public domain at this point. 

He included some details about the star they followed, details that are not found in the Bible. He gave us their three names, Melchior, Balthasar, and Gaspar. They were said to be kings of Ind, Chaldea, and Persia. They chanced to meet on the outskirts of Jerusalem, all of them guided by the star, they bumped into each other and then they proceeded together to Bethlehem where they presented their gifts. They departed back together to the border of the ancient realm of Ind, where a watchtower is maintained, that's where the star had first been sighted. On and on, this account goes. Turned out that all three of the kings returned to the watchtower on the border of Ind, and there they built a large and ornate tomb for themselves and they all died on the same day and were buried in that tomb.  

Well, so much for John of Hildesheim's account. In the city of Cologne, Germany, you can go and actually find supposedly the bones of all three kings. So, if you wanna make a pilgrimage to Cologne, Germany, and go to the shrine of the three kings, there are some bones. I don't know whose bones they are, but there are some bones there. But today, I think it's better for us to walk through the biblical account and see what Matthew tells us and what timeless lessons we can take from this beautiful narrative. 

So let's begin at verse 1 of chapter 2 of Matthew. Verses 1-2, "After Jesus was born in Bethlehem, in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, 'Where is the one who has been born King of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship Him.'" So this occurs some time after the birth of Christ. The only account we have of that, of course, is Luke 2, which I've already cited a little bit, the account of the shepherds, the angelic visiting, the army, the host of heaven, the glory of God.  

Here in this text, the time is set as the reign of King Herod, Herod the Great. Herod was a thoroughly evil man. He was paranoid, he was insecure, very powerful. Under his rule, the Temple, the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem was refurbished and greatly expanded with mighty stones, the very things that Jesus' apostles pointed out to him right before his death, such that the temple in Jesus' day was called Herod's Temple. He was given the title "King of the Jews," though he actually wasn't Jewish at all, he was Idumean. 

His father, Herod Antipater, had done some favor for the Romans and as a result, Herod's family was given the right to rule Judea under Roman rule. Herod was a consummate politician. He did everything he could to curry Roman favor and maintain his power. In return, the Roman Senate gave him an army and with it, he expanded his borders into Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. He was ruthless and merciless as a ruler.  

He slaughtered zealots by the score, any who would cause any trouble to the Romans. He had 10 wives and 12 sons. One of his wives, Mariamne, had a brother named Aristobulus who was the Jewish high priest. Herod the Great thought he was a threat and had him murdered, then he had Mariamne killed as well. He was so paranoid that he had his two eldest sons put to death. His entire life was one of plots and assassinations, all of them geared to keep him in power. One of the final acts of his life was the arrest of some leading citizens of Jerusalem with the command that they be killed the moment he died so that there would be weeping in Jerusalem at the time of his death. He knew very well no one would be weeping for him.  

So this is the king, this is the setting, this is the one who is in our account. Now, who are the Magi? As we've already said, they almost certainly were not kings, but rather were counselors to kings. The word magi links them directly to the priestly cast of the Medes, those that linked up with the Persians to topple the Babylonian Empire, the Medes, according to the ancient historian, Herodotus. They were active throughout Babylon, Persia and Mesopotamia during the region of the Old Testament. The original Magi were priests of the Zoroastrian religion. Zoroastrianism was the official, the state religion of the Persian Empire. Amazingly, it's still practiced by a very small group in India called the Parsis, who fled when the Muslims took over in Persia, modern-day Iran. 

Zoroastrianism has some parallels to Judaism, monotheism, animal sacrifice, hereditary priestly cast like the Levites has that, but the religion was essentially satanic because it had a mixture of the occult. They did a lot of witchcraft, sorcery, potions. And especially, they would blend science, would be a legitimate science, chemistry, etcetera, with the occultic issues. So you would have astronomy, which would be the stargazing. When you're looking up at the sky, the night sky and noting the alignment of the stars, the planets, different motions, and the spheres, that's astronomy, science. With astrology, which is taking whatever insights you find from the stars and applying them to current events here on earth or about the future, so that's astrology. And they did both. They were experts at both. 

They were greatly desired as counselors to kings throughout the ancient Near East, they rose to positions of power in the courts of the kings and the Babylonian and middle Persian and Greek empires. The word magistrate in English comes from them. The Latin word for teacher is Magister also comes from magi. And of course, we get the word magic or magician from them as well.  Now, we meet them in the Book of Daniel, and this is very relevant to our story in Daniel chapter 2. Nebuchadnezzar had a dream and he wanted to know what it meant, and the Magi were experts at interpreting dreams. They frequently would write down interpretations of dreams, a scheme that you would take when you see these symbols. They had whole libraries of Dream Interpretations. Nebuchadnezzar didn't trust them as far as he could throw them. So in order to confirm that they could give a right interpretation of his dream, he wanted them to tell him what his dream was, the content of the dream and then he would give them permission to interpret it, this is all in Daniel chapter 2. And so he calls the men in Daniel 2:2, the king summoned the magicians, enchanters, sorcerers, and astrologers to tell them what he had dreamt.  

None of them could do it. But God revealed the content of the dream and its meaning to Daniel and his friends as they fasted and prayed throughout the night. And it had to do with the flow of human history, it was a statue with a head of gold and chest and arms of silver and belly and thighs of bronze and legs of iron and feet, partly iron, partly clay. It was a statue and it had to do with the unfolding of human empires, one empire succeeding the next.   

And at the end, the interpretation of that, Daniel 2:44 says, "In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but will itself endure forever?" An eternal kingdom. And every kingdom needs a king. So we're talking about an eternal king of an eternal kingdom. And it's quite possible that Daniel, and perhaps other Jews and succeeding generations kept these prophecies, these Jewish prophecies alive in that region of the world, and it's specifically among the cast of the Magi. The Magi speak in this text of one born King of the Jews. No one is born King. You can be born the crown prince, the heir to the throne, but Jesus is born a King, and that's prophecy, there was no baby gonna be born in Palestine who would be born King of the Jews. 

And so that's all got to do with prophecy. So we see this rich heritage of dreams and stars and Jewish prophecies perhaps coming together. And look at verse two, at the star they had seen. "Where is the one they said who has been born King of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship Him." Magi were stargazers, astronomers and astrologers, both. They were led by dreams and visions and they also had these prophecies. And suddenly, this celestial portent comes up in the skies. You would imagine a larger, more radiant, more glorious, different, don't know, just different caught their attention, never seen anything like it before. It appeared. Either in the East or it's rising, can't tell from the Greek. But it had the ability to move and it was the kind of thing that you would want to follow if you're into that type of thing, where you thought that the celestial portent meant something for the future on Earth. And they did believe that. And so clearly, they started to move and they started to follow this star. Now many have wondered, tried to figure out what this thing was.  

They link it to Jupiter or the moons of Jupiter or a comet. I don't think any of those explains actually what the star did. Its ability to move, to lead people, to... It wasn't moving rapidly like a shooting star. It was just... The journey would have taken a long time, weeks. And it had the ability to stop over a specific place in Bethlehem and identify where the baby Jesus was. If you look at verse 9, it says, "The star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was."  All I can do is speculate, I can imagine it was an angel or something, they're sometimes likened to stars or just an inanimate light that had these attributes similar to, let's say the pillar of fire that led the Jews out of bondage in Egypt. A light that would go at night and lead them on and identify a specific house where the baby was. Now, when they come with this question, this question disturbs Herod. Look at verse 3, "When King Herod heard this, he was disturbed. He was turbulent within him and all Jerusalem with him." 

This is no surprise, from what you've already heard about Herod, how paranoid he was, how zealous to hold on to his throne... What would it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? Willingness to give up. Whoever finds his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. If he said, let him have my throne, I wanna worship Him, everything would have been different, but that wasn't his nature. And specifically the phrase, "Where is the one born King of the Jews?" That was his title. He was jealous for it, he was shaken deeply and he shakes Jerusalem with him. I don't know what that means, but we can imagine.  

So he calls in the scholars in verses 4-6 to ask a biblical question. "When he had called together all the people's chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Christ was to be born. "In Bethlehem, in Judea, they replied, for this is what the prophet has written." But you, Bethlehem in the land of Judah, by no means least among the rulers of Judah, for out of you will come a ruler who will be shepherd of my people, Israel."" So this is amazing, these chief priests, scribes, coming together and they've got the right Bible answer ready to go.  

And they know exactly where the Messiah is to be born, they've got the right biblical answer. Don't you wonder why they didn't go and look for themselves? It's not a long trip from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, why not go and find out? But they had no interest in it. So they've got the right prophecy, the Jewish religion was all set up with the prophecies, but they didn't think they were being fulfilled. And this becomes a pattern that's lasted to our present day.  

Accurate thinking about the prophecies, but not thinking they've been fulfilled in Jesus. And so they didn't go anywhere. Now, at this time, we are putting the accounts together, the census was going on, populations were moving to their ancestral homes, and those of the household of David, the lineage of David, were going to Bethlehem, the city of David. And so this was all going on. Now, the words of the prophecy come from Micah chapter 5:1-2. And it speaks there of a ruler whose origins are from ancient times, from eternity past. And he's gonna come in and be a ruler who will shepherd the people of Israel. What a beautiful prophecy and a prediction.  

Well, Herod hears this, he's got the location, he's got this shocking turn of events of Magi saying that a baby has been born king of the Jews. So this paranoid, wicked tyrant is not gonna let this sit. He was an evil man, but he was hardly passive, he was not lazy or indolent. He was a man of action. He was a doer. And so he hatches a plan to use the Magi to lead him to the baby. Look at verses 7-8, "Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. [He's got the location, now he needs the time. Verse 8] He sent them to Bethlehem and said, "Go and make a careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me so that I too may go and worship him."  

Well, obviously, we know his intentions are dark, he had no intention of worshipping this child. He knew the general location, the vicinity, but he didn't know exactly where this baby was and he wanted to know the timetable. 'Cause we know exactly what he's going to do, he's gonna try to kill this child. He's gonna search for the child to try to kill him. Well, "After they had heard the king, [verse 9] and they went on the way, and the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was." So we've got this moving, heavenly, glorious being, angel or star moving on ahead and they follow the short distance from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. And it stops and it illuminates, verse 11, it speaks of a house. So again, sorry for your nativity set. But the baby is in a house at this point. Which house? They didn't have addresses back then, they didn't have numbers on the houses, so it's helpful to have a heavenly column of light, don't you think? Illuminating the house, just like your Christmas card show. I think that's probably exactly what happened. "This is the house, go here." It's incredible. And so the house is glowing with a heavenly light and so they go there. And it's identified in verse 10, I love this, "When they saw the star, they were overjoyed."  

Oh, how I love meditating on that. The purpose of all of this is your joy in the glory of God. That's what's going on here. That you would be redeemed out of dark idolatrous wicked thoughts to find joy in the glory, the radiant glory of almighty God, salvation. The joy of salvation, that's what we've got here in verse 10. That's the whole reason for Jesus coming, as it says in Luke 2:10 and 11, the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David, a savior has been born to you. He is Christ the Lord." Isaiah 9 speaks beautifully of this incredible joy that should be filling our hearts. It says in Isaiah 9, "You have enlarged the nation and increased their joy. They rejoice before you as people rejoice at the harvest, as men rejoice when dividing up the plunder. For to us, a child is born, to us, a son is given. The government will be on His shoulders. Great joy and enlarging of a nation's prosperity, the beauty of a harvest and of the military conquest." Sheer unadulterated happiness, that's what it's all about. I know we've seen many times that saying, "Wise Men Still Seek Him." 

I was thinking about that yesterday, I was thinking about that statement, "Wise Men Still Seek Him", it's like, yes, but they only seek him because He first sought them. We love because He first loved us, we seek because he first seeks us. It says in John chapter 4, "These are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks." He seeks us, he sought the Magi where they were living. He brought these compelling forces into their lives to get them to get up and move and go and find Jesus.  

So the real wisdom to seek Jesus comes from God ultimately from him first, and so they sought him and they found him and they found him at a... Joy, overwhelming joy. But what I find so amazing is how little they know about Jesus and His mission at that point. I think they're just happy at coming to the end of their journey. They found the baby, they saw the King who has been born, the King of the Jews, but the joy is infinitely greater for them now. They bowed down and worshipped this baby based on a very small amount of information. We know more now, don't we? We know all of the reasons why Jesus came, at least those recorded in scripture, we know what he came to do. And so how much greater should our joy be?  

I was praying this morning as I was preparing to preach, I was like, "Oh God, just give me the ability to communicate the words of scripture in such a way that God's people, my brothers, and sisters would feel the joy they should feel."  You should have a foretaste of joy that cuts through all of the materialism, all of the business and all of the cares and grieve that are attended to 12 months a year of sickness and death and sorrow and sin. Just let all of those things slip off you. Some day, if you're a Christian, someday they're all gonna slip off you. You're gonna leave them behind like Elijah left his cloak behind. You're gonna just be ascended up into heaven and you're gonna be free and you're gonna celebrate, and you're gonna be learning Jesus up in heaven.  

These Magi knew very little about this baby and what he had come to do, but they were still filled with joy. Verse 10, "When they saw the star, they were overjoyed." "And then they bowed down... " Verse 11, "On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary and they bowed down and worshipped him." This worship is the point of our salvation, God sent his Son into the world to free us from empty idols. To serve the living and true God. And to worship Christ is to worship the living God. Jesus said, "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father."  

 So we can say, anyone who worships Christ through him worships the Father. And so they worshiped him. And then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh. These gifts represent sacrificial worship. They're costly to the Magi and therefore acceptable to God. Practically, it could be that Joseph sold them and used them to pay for their time in Egypt. Joseph and Mary were not wealthy. Then the Magi were warned in another dream in verse 12 not to go back to Herod and they returned to their country by another route. 

Now we know the tragic epilogue, the rest of the chapter. God warns Joseph in a dream to get up and take the child and his mother, and he got up during the night and fled for their lives to Egypt. So it could be fulfilled the prophecy out of Egypt, I called my Son, but then Herod realizing he had been outwitted by the Magi was enraged and sent soldiers to Bethlehem and to its vicinity to kill all the boy babies that were two years old and under in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. A terrible tragedy, fulfilling the words of Jeremiah the prophet, "A voice is heard of lamentation weeping, great mourning. Rachel, weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted because they are no more."   

So isn't it amazing how we go from incredible joy in verse 10, exceeding joy to incredible lamentation by the end of the chapter? Jesus was a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering. He had to weigh down into our misery, in our sorrow and sin and death and bring us up out into lasting joy. Alright, that's the account. Let's just look at some timeless lessons by way of application.  

First of all, the Magi represent first fruits from the Gentile nations. God has a saving intention to every tribe and language and people and nation. And instead of them coming to the promised land, the Old Covenant was a come-and-see type of religion. Where the Queen of Sheba came from the ends of the earth to see Solomon's wisdom and glory. The new covenant is a go-and-tell kind of religion, where from Jerusalem through Judea and Samaria to the ends of the earth the message goes out.  

And so the Magi are first fruits of that in Matthew 8:11, it says, "I say to you, many will come from the east and the west and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven." Psalm 22 predicted it. 27 through 29, it says, "Now all the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations will bow down before Him. For dominion belongs to the Lord and He rules over the nations. All the rich of the earth will feast and worship. All who go down to the dust will kneel before Him", those who cannot keep themselves alive, they're gonna bow down before him and worship him, Psalm 22.  Isaiah 66, almost at the very end of that incredible prophecy, verse 19, it says, "I will set a sign among them and I will send some of those who survive to the nations, to Tarshish, to the Libyans and Lydians, famous as archers, to Tubal and Greece and to the distant islands that have not heard of my fame or seen my glory and they will proclaim my glory among the nations." That's missions.  

And so God overruled the false religion of the Magi and compelled them physically to go. But now no one needs to go anywhere. Jesus said to the Samaritan woman, "You don't need to make any pilgrimages anymore, neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem." God is Spirit and you can worship him anywhere you want. We have to go and tell. That's all about missions.  Jesus said in Luke 24, after his resurrection, this is what is written, that Christ would suffer and rise from the dead. And repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations beginning at Jerusalem. So the Magi were the first fruits from the Gentiles.  

Secondly, the star represents supernatural testimony to God, to Christ. God crafted the heavens and made a normal communication of his glory and the stars and the planets and the sun, the moon. And the heavens are telling the Glory of God, it says in Psalm 19, day and night, they display knowledge. Day after day, there's no language where their speech is not heard. So that's natural theology, that's the communication of the existence of a great God. But then, there is one night for the Magi, supernatural, unearthly testimony. Supernatural in breaking to the natural order that led them to change their lives and their way of thinking, their way of worship. And that represents the supernatural communication that is in the scripture.  

And we are given the word of God to know who Jesus is and what he came to do, how he was born of a virgin, how he was an incarnate God, how he lived a sinless life and did all these signs and wonders and miracles and how he died on the cross and rose from the dead, and how if you believe in Him, if you put your trust in Him, all your sins will be forgiven. That's supernatural, and the two come together.  

Thirdly, dreams, unusual guidance. I began the sermon with a couple of illustrations of this. I was reading a book called, "Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus", Nabeel Qureshi. I would commend it to you. A tremendous story about how this very intelligent, capable college student, a Muslim, came to faith in Christ. God used three different dreams to kind of finish Nabeel's doubts and concerns coupled with a Christian friend who was continually sharing the gospel with him. So when we get to heaven, we're gonna hear these stories of the streaming of the nations, supernaturally uphill. Can't wait. 

Fourthly, the prophecies of scripture are God's clearest guidance. Micah 5 tells us where Jesus is to be born. But the most important prophecies in the Old Testament don't have to do with the physical details of Jesus's life, how he was Jewish, how he was born in Bethlehem, etcetera, it has to do with why he came, what he came to do. And of all of the prophecies that described what he came to do, Isaiah 53 is the most important. There it says in verses 2-6, "He grew up before him like a tender shoot and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him. There's nothing impressive, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces, He was despised, and we esteemed Him not. Surely He took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows; yet we considered Him stricken by God, smitten by Him, and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities, the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds, we are healed. We all like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way, and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all." That's why he came. There's no text in all the Bible that says it more clearly than that. Jesus came to die in our place that we might live forever.  

So the question for you is, do you know Him? Have you trusted in Him? That text, Isaiah 53, begins with these words, "Lord, who has believed our message? Or to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?" Has the arm of the Lord been revealed to you, to your heart? Do you see in Jesus, your Savior, from the wrath of God?  

Fifth, the priests represent Jewish indifference. As I mentioned, they couldn't be bothered to go from their study of the scripture to actually see the fulfillment there in Bethlehem. And Paul says that even to this day, a veil covers their hearts whenever scriptures are read, for the greater part of the Jews do not yet believe that Jesus is their Messiah. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive Him. And yet, someday we believe that God is gonna do a supernatural work in the Jewish people and remove that heart of stone and put in a heart of flesh. He's gonna take that veil of blindness away from their eyes and they're gonna see in Christ the glory of God. 

Sixthly, the king represents royal hostility to the gospel. We live in a world set against Christ where kings and prime ministers and lowly government officials use their positions of influence to try to stop the spread of the Gospel, it's happening in nations all around the world: Communist nations, Muslim nations, atheistic, secular nations, Hindu nations, rulers use their positions to try to hinder and stop the spread of the Gospel. It is a futile battle. Psalm 2 says, "Why do the nations conspire and rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his Anointed One." 

They say, "Let us break their chains and throw off their fetters." The One enthroned in heaven, what does He do? He laughs. There is nothing these low-level kings can do to stop the spread of the Gospel, but we as Christians, we need to be mindful of that battle and prayerful. When Peter was arrested and put in jail by another King Herod, the church gathered and spent the whole night in prayer for him. So also we Christians who know nothing but religious freedom, at least right now, we do, we should be mindful of the fact that brothers and sisters in Christ are incarcerated in other countries and pray for their release. There are ministries that talk about the persecuted church, find out more, and pray for them. 

Seventh. The slaughter represents spiritual warfare. I thought I would never have mentioned Revelation 12 in a Christmas sermon again, but here I am, I'm mentioning the fact that Revelation 12 reveals behind the scenes that the slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem was motivated by Satan. He hates Jesus, he hates Jesus's people, he hates all humans, and he orchestrated the slaughter of the infants and that struggle is still going on. It is Satan that is moving and pushing these low-level kings and officials and all that to do what they do, he's the puppet master. And so we need to be mindful of the spiritual warfare involved in the Christian life and put on our spiritual armor. 

Eighth. The gifts represent sacrifices of love. Psalm 72, 8-11 says, "He will rule from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth. All the Desert tribes will bow down before Him and His enemies will lick the dust. The kings of Tarshish and distant shores will bring tribute to him, the kings of Sheba and Seba will present him with gifts. All kings will bow down to him and all nations will serve him." So here are these Magi picturing that, Psalm 72, they're all bowing down before Jesus. And the gold to me represents tribute, the most precious metal there is brought in tribute to this king. It's a sacrifice. And the incense was frequently mingled with sacrifices and would go up in a fragrant offering to God, and this, I think represents the deity of Christ, they're mindful of the deity of Christ. 

And then the myrrh, of course, was there at Jesus's death when Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus used it to wrap him up in cloths. The evidence of his physical resurrection still smelled of myrrh. All of these things are very expensive. They're very costly, they represent the principle of sacrifice and worship. We can't give to Christ a sacrifice that costs us nothing. So you have to ask what does your Christianity cost to you? What costly patterns of service are you involved in? What patterns of outreach and service to alleviate suffering among other people in the world, especially eternal suffering of hell, are you involved in? And if you must answer honestly, not much, if any, at all, then I would urge you to pray. Then in the year 2018, God would give you a pattern of ministry, a regular ministry that will cost you something. It will cost you time, energy and money and will result in the alleviation of suffering, especially eternal suffering through the preaching of the Gospel. Pray for God to give you an identifiable ministry so that a year from now, if I were to say, "What ministry would you say cost you something in sacrificially giving on your part", you'll be able to tell an answer. So if you don't have one, ask God to give you one.  

One way you can sacrifice now, and we've said it all month, is 'The Lottie Moon Christmas Offering'. I'm a trustee of the International Mission Board, and the missionaries need funds to stay on the mission field, it's literally true that with insufficient funds missionaries are called back and have to enter a different pattern of service here in the States. That's what happened two years ago to balance the budget. So I'm saying going forward, the budget balanced, it's healthy, the IMB is on solid financial ground, but it depends every year on the gifts of Christians like you. So give. Ask the Lord what he would have you to give and give sacrificially. 

Ninth and finally. Worship is the ultimate purpose. They came to worship Him, they bowed down and worshipped Him. I would suggest that tomorrow, set aside some time to worship Christ. At the name of Jesus, every knee is gonna bow and every tongue is going to swear that Jesus Christ is Lord. Set aside time to worship Christ tomorrow. I just wanna finish with these words. The real gift of Christmas has nothing to do with what you bring to him, has nothing to do with your version of gold or incense or myrrh. The gifts the Magi brought, they were a nice touch and they symbolized our giving to Christ, but honestly, what's far more important is what he gave you or came to give you. The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. And out of Jesus's death flows every gift you'll ever need, full forgiveness of sins. By the shedding of his blood, all your sins are forgiven.  

Adoption as sons and daughters of the living God. A guaranteed place at the banqueting table with Christ in the new heaven, new earth. Every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, a lifetime of good works that he wants you to do. And then a resurrection body just like his that will shine like the sun in the kingdom of your Father. That's what he came to give, far more important than any gift you could ever give to him. 

 Close with me in prayer. Lord, thank you for the time we've had to celebrate with great joy, the truth of Christ being born, the truth of Christ, God incarnated, walking amongst us, the truth of Christ dying in our place on the cross, the truth of his physical resurrection from the dead, his ascension to the right hand of God. Oh God, I pray that you would now fill each of my brothers and sisters in Christ with a sense of supernatural joy, that despite anything they may be going through right now in their lives, that they feel a foretaste through the Holy Spirit, a foretaste of their heavenly inheritance, which is joy in Christ. And Lord, I finally pray for those that walked in here as yet unconverted, speak to them, speak to their hearts, let them know, Lord Jesus, that you are a tender-hearted and merciful Savior and that you can and you will save them of sins if they will simply call on the name of the Lord. In Jesus name, I pray. Amen. 

Pastor Andy Davis preaches a verse-by-verse expository sermon on Matthew 1:1-25. The main subject of the sermon is the person and purpose of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Turn in your Bibles this morning to Matthew chapter 1. I know that we have been working carefully through the incredible book of Revelation, and it seemed wise to me to take a break from that and have two weeks of looking at the gift that Jesus is the Incarnation. So I felt led by the Spirit to go to Matthew chapter 1 this morning, and God willing, we'll look at Matthew chapter 2 next week. And for me, as I think about the Christmas season, I wanna caution this morning, as I begin this message, with the issue of asking the right questions, when I was a child, my heart was filled with all kinds of childish questions about Christmas. Some of them I will not repeat here at the pulpit, probably some of you know why. I don't wanna be the one to bear the news to small children of some things that parents should tell their children. But I was under all kinds of misapprehensions about Christmas when I was growing up, and I would stay up late at night into the wee hours of the morning based on answering a question that I'm not going to ask, but there were other questions too, like as I got older. Am I going to get what I asked for for Christmas? It was very materialistic. And then as I got even older, I wanted to know if I would be able to sleep in. That's when I knew I had moved out of childhood into at least my college years, just finishing final exams. My parents were asking the same question. I probably shouldn't tell this family story, but there was a morning that my grandmother led an insurrection at six in the morning on December 25th. Saying it was time for the kids to get up and it was time to open the gifts, but my parents didn't take it kindly.                                        

There are other questions that we ask as well, materialistic questions. Questions of finances, “Will I be able to pay my credit card bill in January?”, that's a big issue. “What are we gonna have for Christmas dinner?”; “Who are we gonna invite over?”, and these are practical issues, but I wanna focus our attention on two questions, it just came up in the hymn that we just sang. “What child is this who laid to rest on Mary's lap is sleeping?” It's the first question, first verse, second verse, “Why lies he in such mean estate where ox and lamb are feeding?” Or to put it a little more simple and less poetically. “Who is Jesus and why did he come to the earth?” Now, these are the questions that should dominate our minds, and our hearts, the identity of Jesus Christ and his  purpose. These should be the two central issues of Christmas. Honestly, apart from these, I think Christmas has no significance at all. Just another secular holiday, in a secular year.

The apostle Matthew, as he opened up for us, the New Testament begins with this chapter, Matthew chapter 1, and he wrote 25 verses, the first chapter of his gospel to answer these questions, “Who is Jesus and why did he come?” And in order to answer these questions, he uses a genealogy in the first half of the chapter. And then a beautiful narrative about Joseph and Mary. And in the midst of that narrative, he uses an angelic message, an angelic visitation to give the theology behind him and specifically uses the names of this baby, Jesus, Christ, Emmanuel, to explain who he is and what he came to do.                                        

And the lesson is clear for us as Christians, this baby was God incarnate in a human body. He came to save his people from their sins. This is the clear lesson of Matthew chapter 1, but let's walk through it. I did not have the scripture begin at Matthew 1:1, because the first 17 verses cover a genealogy. The kingly ancestry of Jesus Christ. Honestly, the first verse of the New Testament is a very abbreviated genealogy of Jesus. Look at verse 1, it says, "A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." That is a genealogy. Genealogies don't always list every name but that very much gets to the point, but then follows a 42-name genealogy that traces out the kingly lineage of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world. And it's important for us as western readers, as American readers, to not skip the genealogy. 

Many of us, I think, find genealogies boring, but I think this is an American perspective, I don't know, perhaps other places in the world would find them boring as well, but honestly, in other countries, many people are fascinated with genealogies, they're very interested in their ancestors, very interested in what they did, what they achieved. Some tribal religions even include ancestral worship as part of their religion. European aristocracy would be very interested in seals and titles and performance and honors that went on in the past, and perhaps any benefits it would bequeath to the present generation from knowing that you had such an exalted noble ancestor. The Japanese, where my wife and I ministered for a number of years ago, are proud of the ancestry of their emperor who can trace his lineage back to the year 660 AD through 125 successive generations. It is the longest continuous hereditary monarchy in the world.

America's perhaps not so interested in genealogies because of the history maybe of our nation, of immigration practices a century or more ago. Perhaps as our ancestors came to Ellis Island or other ports of entry, and the official there couldn't understand the name, couldn't pronounce it properly or write it down improperly, there would be kind of a severing. Just getting on a boat and coming across the ocean, imply to kind of a severing with the Old World, some people are actually trying to flee their past and wanted an entirely new start, and we're glad for an entirely new name, and were not trying to trace ancestry back. 

But in any case, the Jews were very much interested in genealogies, perhaps too much, some of them are way too interested in genealogies, Paul has to address that in one place. But in another place in Romans, chapter 9, he talks about the benefits of being a Jew. The benefits of being among the people of Israel, and in Romans 9:5, he says, "Theirs are the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and from them, the Jews is traced the lineage or the human ancestry of Jesus Christ, who is God over all, forever praised."

So the Jews had the benefit of giving to the world the Savior through the genealogy. And so the Jews were very careful keepers of genealogies. In 1 Chronicles 9:1, it says, “All Israel was listed in the genealogies recorded in the book of the kings of Israel.” And this practice dated back to creation, back to Genesis chapter 5:1, it says, "This is the written account of Adam's line," so back to Adam genealogies were kept. This is exactly how Jesus' genealogy in Luke's Gospel can be traced all the way back to Adam. At the time of Ezra, there was a careful consideration of genealogies. And priests would be excluded if they could not produce their genealogical records, proving that they were able to minister at the altar, but it was especially crucial for David's descendants.

God had made a covenant with David in 2 Samuel:7. You remember at that time, David had wanted to build a house for God. It just, the Ark of the Covenant had been in the tabernacle, and he wanted to build a house. And instead, through Nathan the prophet, the Lord declared to David, he said, [2 Samuel 7:11-13] "The Lord declares to you that the Lord Himself will establish a house for you. When your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you. Who will come from your own body and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my name and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever." God maintained David's lines through all kinds of challenges throughout Israel's history, through some very rough times, for example, sin in the case of Jehoram. In 2 Chronicles 21:7, Jehoram, one of David's descendants, was a terrible sinner, but it says in the account there 2 Chronicles 21:7, "Nevertheless, because of the Covenant the Lord had made with David, the Lord was not willing to destroy the house of David. He had promised to maintain a lamp for him and for his descendants forever." So we could have shut David's line down, but because of the promise he made to David, he would not do it. Also in the case of danger, in the time of Joash. Ahaziah, one of the descendants of David, was killed by Jehu, then Athaliah, Ahaziah's mother, a wicked woman, decided she would kill the entire royal family, the entire living descendants of David. Shut down the kingly line. But one woman took little baby Joash and hid him in a bedroom with a nurse. That's how close the Davidic line came to being snuffed out. 

But the key concern was the coming of the Messiah, so look at verse 1 again, a record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Matthew is writing for a Jewish audience, and he seeks to establish, Jesus' right to be king, the right to the kingship of Israel. It's one of the three times in the entire gospel that Matthew uses the whole phrase Jesus Christ. And from the very beginning, Matthew is proclaiming Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of David. But he's gonna go very much beyond this, for he was Incarnate God as well, and so the themes in the genealogy, I think are three main themes, God's faithfulness first, God's patience second, and God's grace, third. God's faithfulness first and foremost, to fulfill the promise he made to Abraham. A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Jesus was a descendant of Abraham; he was a Jew. As he said to the Samaritan woman, salvation is from the Jews.

This goes back to Genesis 12, where God called Abram, who was living at that time at Ur of the Chaldeans. And the Lord had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household, and go to the land. I will show you, I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you. I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse, and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."

That's the promise to Abraham, that through Abraham's descendants, all the peoples and nations and tribes and languages all over the world would be blessed through Abraham's descendant. And so the apostle Paul writes in Galatians 3:8, "The scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith." That means give forgiveness of sins to Gentile peoples, non-Jews, by faith and announced the Gospel in advance to Abraham, saying, “All nations will be blessed through you.” The forgiveness of sins through Jesus, the Son of Abraham, and the promise to David. Psalm 132, "The Lord swore an oath to David, a sure oath that he would not revoke one of your own descendants, I will place on your throne, if your sons keep my covenant and the statutes I teach them, then their sons will sit on your throne forever and ever." 

Now, by the time of Joseph and Mary, the whole system of the Davidic kingship had fallen into disrepair. It would have been no great honor to be called a son of David in Joseph's time, and that was exactly through the statement that God had made to David, "If your sons do not keep my law, then they will not be blessed." And so the Gentiles came in and there was the exile to Babylon, and by the time they came back, they were under Gentile domination in Joseph's time, it was under Roman domination. And so Joseph, in verse 20, as you look, he was called a son of David, Joseph was. It was important for Joseph to be a son of David, because he had to be in the legal kingly line in order for Jesus also to be in the legal kingly line. But Joseph for himself derived no great benefit from being a son of David, he was a simple carpenter, a tradesman, not in any wealth or power. And yet for all of that we see the faithfulness of God. God never forgot his promises to Abraham or to David.

We see also in the genealogy God's patience. Look at verse 17. "Thus there were 14 generations and all from Abraham to David, 14 from David to the exile to Babylon, and 14 from the exile to the Christ." Now, Matthew purposely omits certain names from old testament genealogies to get to his numerical perfection of two times seven - three times - two times seven; two times seven; two times seven, he's got this sense of perfection and balance. But the real issue here is God's patience. 42 generations are listed. Archeologists tell us that Abraham lived around 2000 BC. That's 2000 years of God's patience and faithfulness to Israel. At the right time when the time had fully come, it says in Galatians 4:4, “God sent his son, born of a woman,” after 2000 years of protection by God. 

So if I can just stop and apply this to you, your life is unfolding as God wills, it's difficult to understand the doctrine of Providence, to understand exactly God's timetable for you, but never imagine that God doesn't know exactly what he's doing in your life. And that everything's on a timetable, and the time when it fully comes everything that God intends for you will occur. God is faithful to keep his promises.

We see also God's grace in this genealogy. I was raised Roman Catholic myself. There is a strange dogma that came down, not from scripture, but from Catholic tradition, and from the ex-cathedra statement of the pope in the 19th century that the Virgin Mary was born by immaculate conception. Many Protestants misunderstand when they see the Church of the immaculate conception, they think it's talking about the virgin birth of Jesus, but it's not, it's talking about Mary, that Mary was in some miraculous way protected from original sin by herself being immaculately conceived. The idea is that if Mary were a normal sinful woman then she could not give birth to the perfect sinless Savior of the world, that's the mentality. But not so, God actually delights to show his grace.

Even in this genealogy, the genealogy is woven through with sinfulness, if you know any of these stories, you know exactly what I'm talking about. For example, sinful Jews like David himself, an adulterer and a murderer. In the case of Bathsheba and Uriah the Hittite. And then Solomon was an idolater, fell into gross idolatry later in his life. Rehoboam was an arrogant boaster. Manasseh, perhaps the worst of them all, sacrificed his own son to an idol and practiced sorcery, and killed so many innocent people it's said that he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood.

We see also his grace to gentiles. We're gonna talk more about this next week in chapter 2, but it's woven throughout the genealogy as well, and then interestingly to outcast women. If you look at verse 3, there is mentioned Tamar, and according to Genesis 38, after her husband died, she dressed up like a prostitute and had relations with her father-in-law Judah. And so Jesus is called the Lion of the tribe of Judah, but it came originally from that act of sexual sin. And then in verse 5, we have this woman Rahab mentioned, she was in the Book of Joshua, identified as a Canaanite prostitute. Who was saved by faith, by believing in the God of Israel, even before the walls of Jericho fell. She entered the nation of Israel, she married Salmon who gave birth to Boaz in the story of Ruth.

And then Ruth herself, in verse 5, was a godly woman, the very one who said to Naomi that she would not leave her. "Where you go, I will go and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God will be my God. Nothing will separate us but death," and she was a godly woman, and her character is on display beautifully in the Book of Ruth, but she was a Moabitess. She was from an outcast race of people who traced their origination from the incestuous relationship between Lot and his daughter in the cave outside Sodom and Gomorrah. The whole race was rejected by God.  In Deuteronomy 23:3, it says, "No Moabite may enter the assembly of the Lord, even down to the 10th generation." And then, of course, we have the case of Uriah's wife, not mentioned by name here, Bathsheba, but Uriah is mentioned. And it was his wife that David took. And probably well definitely the worst part of David's life. David's partner in adultery, and after David murdered her husband, she became his wife, and they had Solomon together in Luke's genealogy of Jesus.

Now, three of these four women were gentiles showing God's-saving intention to the Gentile people. And then finally we see God's mercy and grace to downtrodden nobodies after the exile of Babylon, we have a listing in verses 13-15 of ten straight men about whom we know literally nothing, absolutely nothing. They're obscure.

So the genealogy shows three major things about God, his faithfulness to keep his promises, even after 2000 years of history, his patience in waiting for just the right moment to fulfill his promises and his grace, in using such sinful people to bring Christ into the world. Now, Joseph brought his contribution to Jesus in this, his kingly name. The legal right to be king over the Jewish people, Mary put her body to God's services despite the scandal that would come, but Joseph put his name to God's service thus bringing himself under suspicion of having fathered a child himself. He was willing to bear that, but it was crucial so that Jesus would legally bear the name of a descendant of David, a king of David.

Now, you may wonder why are there two genealogies? There's one in Matthew and then there's one also in Luke, Luke's genealogy, for the section it covers is identical from Abraham to David, same names. But after that it follows David's son, Nathan, not the kingly line. Matthew's includes all the kings of Judah. But in Matthew's lineage, we have a curse on Jehoiachim. This is in Jeremiah 22:24, 30, speaking of Jehoiachim, “Even if you were a signet ring on my right hand, I would pull you off.”, “This is what the Lord says, Record this man as if childless, a man who will not prosper in his lifetime, for none of his offspring will prosper and none will ever sit on the throne of David or rule anymore in Judah."

So the line in that way was cut by the curse on Jehoiachim, how could that curse be fulfilled and still have the kingly line coming down through that name? The answer is the virgin birth. Joseph was not the father of Jesus, and so the legal rights to rule came, but not the curse. And so God is very precise about these things. So fundamentally, these genealogies trace the human ancestry of Christ, and they establish him as a Jew who has the right to rule over the Jews and who is human. Fully human. And so for us, he can be our mediator, 1 Timothy 2:5- 6, "For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus who gave himself as a ransom for all men, the testimony given in its proper time." 

So we see the rest of the chapter then unfolds the answer to these questions in narrative form. We've already seen the genealogy answer the question, but now we're gonna see the narrative. “What child is this, who laid to rest on Mary's lap is sleeping? And why lies he in such mean estate where ox and lamb are feeding?”                                            

Look at verse 18, “This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about. His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit.” Note the remarkable simplicity of this account. There's no embellishment, it's not over-stated it's just very simple. She was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. That's all it says. Now, we tend to zero in, and I think we're interested in rightly, so on the human servants on Joseph and Mary, we have interest in them, that God used to bring Jesus into the world in Mary's case and bring him up in the world, in Joseph and Mary's case. 

So who were they? Well, Mary was a godly submissive, obedient and faith-filled Jewish girl, a young, probably teenage girl and a virgin. Joseph was, it says, a righteous man, meaning he was obedient to the Mosaic Law, he was a manual laborer, some say, carpenter, could be a mason or some kind of builder, a man who is not even given a single direct spoken line. Now, I've said this for a few years, alright. But I was corrected this very morning as I listened to the Scripture being read, because Joseph called his name Jesus, so I guess then Joseph had one line in the Bible, and that was actually one word, “Jesus.” That's pretty awesome. Other than that, he's a man of not few words, but in the Bible, no words, he says literally nothing else. But he's a godly man, and we see his quiet godliness and his manly protection of his wife and his wife's son, the baby Jesus. And so he's a very beautiful picture of what a husband and a father should be in his protective role. Probably he also was a teenager as well.

Now, Joseph had a significant problem right away. Joseph and Mary had been betrothed, and the wedding process came in those days in the Jewish culture, in two stages, there would be the betrothal, and then there would be the wedding, the wedding ceremony. The betrothal would be arranged by the families of the bride and groom involved the payment of a dowry, the contract was legally binding and a couple was seen to be legally married, but there would be a probationary period, probably about a year in which they did not come together as husband and wife. Notice in verse 19, that Joseph is called Mary's husband, even though they had not come together. But the union was not consummated until a year later after the wedding ceremony, thus any immorality that would have occurred during that time would have been considered adultery, and the answer would have been divorce.

And so that's the issue, they're betrothed, but not yet married, they have not had their wedding ceremony yet. Before they came together, the text says she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. It's clear that Joseph and Mary had never been sexually intimate. Mary got the news from the angel, from Luke's gospel, Luke chapter 1:26-35. This is what the account says. "In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored, the Lord is with you." Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be called great, and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him  the throne of his father, David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever. His kingdom will never end." "How will this be?" Mary asked the angel, "Since I am a virgin?" The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God.""

So in that angelic announcement to Mary, we have the clear fact that he is the son of David and also the son of God, and that's the essence of the incarnation, fully human and fully divine. Now, Mary in due time told Joseph. And Joseph could not believe her, not initially, and we can well understand this, this is the only example of this in the entire history of the human race. Nothing like this had ever happened up to that point, and nothing like this has ever happened since then.

It's completely unique. It was too much for Joseph to believe. And yet, it contradicted everything he knew about Mary's character. It didn't make any sense, and so he was deeply troubled by it. And so he pondered it and worked it through. And in verse 19, he came up with a solution, because Joseph, her husband, was a righteous man who did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. 

So Joseph's character is clear, it's established he is a godly law-abiding Jew. The Mosaic covenant would have required death for sexual immorality. But at that point, Israel was relatively lax about aspects of the Mosaic Law. So in his day, there would have been two options, a public exposure and censure of Mary and divorce, or a private separation, which she would go off quietly and be able to raise her son in seclusion or in separation. Joseph was a righteous man, but also merciful one, he had a tender heart toward her and he loved her. He didn't wanna see her exposed to disgrace, and so he had resolved in his mind to divorce her quietly. So he's in agony working this through, and God and his timing allows him to come to this conclusion.

This is what he's going to do. Look at verse 20-21, "But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife. Because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.""

Five times in these two chapters, Matthew 1 and 2, angels give messages to human beings in a dream. I don't know how that happens, I don't know even what that means, it causes me to scratch my head and ponder. Other people, “Sure, I can move on.”, I ponder I slow down and think, do angels have access to our brains? Do demons have access to our brains? And it seems like they do, they can insinuate thoughts, they can put things in our minds. But it doesn't matter what I ruminate with, it's clear that the angel appeared to Joseph in a dream and told him what to do.

From the first, most important dream of them all in Matthew 1 and 2 is the angel telling Joseph the same thing that Gabriel had told Mary, in Luke chapter 1. The child within her had been conceived by the Holy Spirit, but he goes beyond this to say that Joseph... To tell Joseph why the baby will be born, why lies he in such mean estate. Why is he going to end up being born into humility and lowliness in the world? He will be born and will enter the world to save his people from their sins. And he's told right away, "Fear not. Do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife." Why would fear come in? Well, there are two aspects of this, human judgment and God's judgment. Concerning human judgment, he would come under suspicion of being the father of the child, as I mentioned, and especially if he treated her kindly and took her in, it would be almost an admission of guilt, people would just assume that the reason he's being kind to her is that he's responsible for her pregnancy, so he had to bear with that public censure.

Then there would be the issue of God and the Mosaic Law, and the fact that there is clearly it seems some sin had been committed. Well, the angel lifts the second right up off him, “God is at work in all of this, this is the very thing that God is doing. So do not be afraid Joseph to take Mary, she's a godly woman, everything that's going on here is coming from God through the Holy Spirit.” But he did not promise to protect Joseph from public ridicule or secret ridicule, or gossip or slander or a difficult life, not at all. This would turn his world upside down. He didn't know what would happen, but he had to go down to Bethlehem to register for the census, and he didn't know that soon after that he'd be fleeing for his life, running from Herod's wicked troops. So this would change his world in so many ways.

Well, Joseph obeyed, in verse 24- 25, “When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he had no union with her until after she gave birth to a son.” He did not know her. It says in the ESV meaning, have sexual relations with her. Although he had the right to do it, he refrained. So he's willing to pay the price, secret shame and whispering. He was quietly submissive. He gave the baby the name Jesus, it wasn't his child to name, he was under authority from heaven, and he was willing to forego marital rights with his lawful wife Mary until after Jesus was born. Now again, raised as a Catholic, I was taught the perpetual virginity of Mary, that she was always a virgin till the day of her death, but that's just not true biblically. It's implied here that he had no union with her, did not know her until a certain point, but even beyond that, in other accounts, we have a record of Jesus' brothers and sisters. 

I'm thinking the only way he's getting brothers and sisters is by the normal way, they were not conceived by the Holy Ghost. And so Joseph and Mary had a normal married life, and they had other children and raised them up in the normal way. And so it is Joseph's role to be a godly husband to his pregnant wife, and then when the child is born, a godly protector to Jesus.               

So this brings us to the doctrine of the virgin birth. How essential is the virgin birth for our Christian faith? And I say it's absolutely essential that we would understand and not reject the idea as though it's somehow coming from mythology. We can trace it back to some strange pagan religions, and the idea of incarnations and maidens that are impregnated by Greek gods and all this kind of stuff, and people who do comparative religions do all this type of sullying, and they track it down to Christianity coming from myth. As a matter of fact, over 100 years ago, theological liberals were overtly attacking the concept of the virgin birth.

In the early part of the 20th century, Albert Schweitzer and Rudolf Bultmann began something called the quest for the historical Jesus. They set aside Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, they wouldn't look at those accounts as trustworthy, so they're gonna find some other way. And they thought as modern scientific historians, they'd be able to trace down through history and be able to find the true Jesus, the historical Jesus. Bultmann specifically spoke of demythologizing, taking the myths away. The virgin birth was very much in his mind as though it were somehow a myth. In 1922, liberal Protestant preacher named Harry Emerson Fosdick, who wrote a hymn called “Guide me O thou great Jehovah”, preached a sermon entitled, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” In that he said, Christians can hold differing views on the virgin birth, some accepted as it's written, others have a more broad-minded scientific view, and it's okay within the Christian church to hold it. More recently, in June of 2002, Bishop Joseph Sprague and the United Methodist Church gave an address at a theological school in Denver, Colorado. He claimed that the myth of the virgin birth was not ever intended as a historical fact, but it was actually more of a literary device to help us understand the spiritual fervor of the early church. Friends, I tell you that the virgin birth is essential to the Christian faith. It's essential because it's taught plainly in the text, and it's essential because it helps us understand, what child is this who laid to rest on Mary's lap is sleeping? That this is the incarnate Son of God.

John Piper gave us four reasons why it's vital to believe in the virgin birth. First, it highlights the supernatural essence of Jesus' person and mission, on one hand of Jesus' life lies his  supernatural conception and birth, and at the other end of his  life lies his  supernatural resurrection and ascension into Heaven to the right hand of God. And so He's supernatural from beginning to end, he is God come to earth.  Secondly, the virgin birth shows that humanity needs redeeming from the outside in, we couldn't generate our own savior, we couldn't save ourselves, and so God had to enter the world in order to save us.

Thirdly, the virgin birth shows God's initiative in all of this, God has taken the initiative. Do you notice that the angel didn't ask Mary if it would be okay? He told her what was going to happen. Now, I don't in any way minimize that she said, "Behold the servant of the Lord," and she was willing. But it was going to happen. The angel was telling her what God was going to do. He also knew that she would be willing. And finally, this virgin birth hints at the fully human and fully divine natures of Jesus united in the incarnation, an infinite mystery beyond anything we can ever finally understand. 

None of this reasoning would mean anything if it weren't taught in scripture, and so Matthew brings us back to a prophecy seven centuries before Jesus was born. It's right there in the text. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet. The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel, which means God with us. And so this brings us finally to the three names that identify Jesus, Christ is the name of prophecy, Jesus is the name of purpose, and Immanuel is the name of personal identity. Christ, the name of prophecy. For 2000 years, a prophecy had been made that the Son of Abraham would come to save the world. Jesus as the Christ, the promised one, fulfilled an earlier prophecy made in the Garden of Eden, that the seed of woman, the son of woman, would crush the serpent's head.

And so for 2000 years, Jesus was long expected. As the hymn said, "Come thou long expected Jesus." So Jesus is the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Christ. The name Jesus is the name of purpose. Why was he born? Why did he enter the world? Look again at verse 21, "You are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins." Well, the link between the word Jesus and the saving from sin isn't so clear to us if we don't know Hebrew. But Jesus name literally is Jehoshua or Joshua, and it means Yahweh saves or salvation is from Yahweh, or from Jehovah. Just like Jonah 2:9 says, "Salvation is from the Lord." And so that's what the name means, Jesus' salvation is from the Lord. We couldn't save ourselves. We had to have God save us and he will save us from sin. The Jewish people were waiting for a political military salvation to get the Roman boot off their neck. But the real yoke that burdened them, the real rod of their oppressor was their sins and the judgment that would come from God because of their sins. And so Jesus came to save us from our sins. It's sin that destroys families through adultery and alcoholism and pornography and abuse. It's sin that ruins friendships through arguments and unforgiveness and pride. It's sin that oppresses our thoughts and hinders everything we do, slows us down in every effort we ever make to serve God. It is sin that causes people to be selfish to all the needs that surround us every day.

And so Jesus was sent into the world to save us from our sins. Do you know him? Do you know him as your personal Savior from your sins? You know what I'm saying is true, if you're acquainted with the law of God. If you're acquainted with your own life, you know that you are a sinner and that you have no hope of saving yourself, you cannot lift yourself up out of the muck of your own sin, you can't scrape the defilement off of yourself, you can't cleanse your heart, you can't do anything about your past history, there's nothing... What's done is done. You can't go back in time and undo that action... Un-say that word. It's done. You need a Savior. Do you know him? Do you know Jesus as your personal savior? Have you trusted in him for the forgiveness of your sins? And finally, we have this name Immanuel, “They will call him Immanuel, which means God with us.”

This morning as I was preparing for this, I was thinking about the text in Philippians chapter 2[:6-8], where it says, "That Jesus, who being in very nature God did not consider equality with God, something to be grasped, but made himself nothing. Made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross." So why lies he in such mean estate? It's gonna get even lower than that, it's gonna get even lower than being wrapped up in swaddling cloths and laid in a manger, it's gonna get as low as being our sin bearer, stripped and exposed and beaten and bloody and dead on the cross. That's how low his estate will get, and he did that to stand in the way of the wrath of God and take his wrath into himself, so that we might have forgiveness of sins. And that's what Immanuel is all about. God with us, not God against us. God with us to save us, not God against us to condemn us.

And as I was thinking about this, I was led to a Spurgeon's sermon. Charles Spurgeon in 1854, Christmas Eve. He was 20 years old and preached his first Christmas sermon, and he preached it on Isaiah 7:14 on Immanuel. First time he ever preached a Christmas sermon, Park Street Chapel became metropolitan pulpit, and he preached on that text, “The virgin will be with child and you will call his  name Immanuel, which means God with us.” So I adopted his approach and some of his language, but I kind of wrote my own version of Spurgeon's sermon, I'm gonna close with that.

God with us, my soul ring with these words again. God with us, it is a bell struck first in heaven. Let us strike it again here on Earth. God with us, it is a single note from an eternal poem. God with us, tell it out, tell it out to everyone you know. God with us. That is his  name, God with us, God by us, God alongside us, by his  incarnation, for the infinite creator and ruler of the universe chose to walk upon this globe, he who made a million orbs, each more mighty and vast than this earth chose to become an inhabitant of this tiny atom. He who was from everlasting to everlasting, came to this world of time and stood upon a narrow neck of land between two unbounded seas.

God with us. He has not lost that name. Jesus had it on Earth and he has it still in heaven. He is right now, God with us. Believer, he is God with you. He is with you to protect you, you are not alone because the Savior is with you. Put me in the desert where no vegetation grows, I can still say “God with us.” Put me on the wild ocean and let my ship dance madly on the heaving waves. I will still say Immanuel, “God with us.” Put me upon the highest mountain on earth where the fierce, cold wind blows, and I see no life. I will still say, “God with us.” Even in the grave, sleeping there in corruption, I can see Jesus' promise there, “God with us.” But to know that name fully, you must be instructed by the Holy Spirit, what's the use in coming to church, if God is not there? Unless the Holy Spirit takes the things of Christ and applies them to our hearts, it is not God with us, it is God against us as a consuming fire. But it is God with us that I love. It is God with us that I serve, it is God with us that I yearn to see when I die.

Now ask yourselves, do you know what God with us means? Has it been God with you in your times of sorrow, in your times of pain, and trial and affliction and suffering? Has it been God with you when you open up the scriptures and search its words, has it been God with you when you kneel down in prayer? Has it been God with you in conviction of sin, when he leads you by his  spirit to Sinai and you're searched by the law of God and convicted of his sins, has it been God with you when he then leads you to the foot of the cross and you see there in that bloody sacrifice, everything you need for full forgiveness from God. Is it God with you then? Has it been God with you to come by faith with the eyes of faith to Jesus' empty tomb and look at the stone removed, and look at the grave clothes empty, and see there your own future resurrection. Is it God with us then for you? Oh my God, teach us the full meaning, teach us the full meaning of this one word, Immanuel, God with us. Close with me in prayer.

Father, we thank you for the things that we've learned. We know that we will never be able to plumb the depths of God with us, of Immanuel. Thank you for what was said by the angel to Joseph concerning Jesus, that he would call him Jesus because he would save his people from their sins, and thank you for the scripture that you put in the heart of Matthew reaching back seven centuries to Isaiah's prophecy, that the virgin will be with child and would give birth, and they would call him Immanuel, which means God with us. Help us, O Lord, to be filled with joy in this season, and help us to tell out from our souls the joy of knowing Christ our Savior, in his name, we pray. Amen.

Revelation is the incredible book of the unveiling of Jesus Christ, the Glorious One, whose glory we cannot see now. We have never seen him, as 1 Peter 1 says, and yet we love him. Revelation also reveals the coming future.

In 1734, Jonathan Edwards preached a sermon in preparation for perhaps the greatest revival of religion that has ever been seen in the United States, the First Great Awakening. He began the sermon with these words: “It is the manner of God, before he bestows any signal mercy on the people, first to prepare them for it.”

He preached from 1 Kings on the contest between Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. Edwards pointed out that God had been preparing the Jewish nation for years for an amazing revival of religion that day on Mount Carmel. To prepare the people for that, God had with withheld dew and rain from the land for three-and-a-half years. There had been a drought, which brought severe famine as a result on the land. He had raised up an amazing and bold prophet named Elijah, who carefully set up this contest with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel at the instruction of God. Elijah said in his own prayer that he had done everything at God’s word.

In this contest on the summit of Mount Carmel, two altars were set up — one for Baal, and one for Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. A sacrificial animal was laid on each one. Prophets of Baal would call out to Baal and Elijah would call out to the Lord; the God that answered from Heaven to earth by fire would be revealed as the true God. All of this was carefully orchestrated by God in advance. When the fire fell from Heaven to earth, the people fell on their faces and said, “The Lord, He is God.” In their turn prior to Elijah’s, the prophets of Baal had failed to do anything. There had been no supernatural display of Baal’s power in answer to their prayers.

The Book of Revelation makes a similar but opposite point to Edwards’ point about how God prepares His people for His signal mercies; I put it like this: “It is the manner of God, before he pours out his just wrath on the wicked of the earth, first to prepare them for it.” God has been setting up a clear display of evil and wickedness of sin and rebellion against God throughout redemptive history, and it will culminate at the end of the world. God has been preparing the wicked of the world for such a time as that will be.

Proverbs 16:4 says, “The LORD works out everything for his own ends — even the wicked for a day of disaster.” God works everything out for His own purposes, including rebellion; He has a meticulous careful plan for the wicked of the Earth. The Bible reveals that God is slow to anger. He is patient, as He revealed to Moses in Exodus 34:6-7: “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished.” There will come a day when his righteous judgment will be revealed. Romans 9 says that God bears with great patience the objects of His wrath, but the same verse says that they are prepared for destruction.

God has meticulously planned how He will deal with the wicked. He has borne with great patience their wickedness in every generation: they have flouted His laws, flaunted their freedoms, abused His people, fanned their lusts into a flame, blasphemed His holy name, taken in the blessings of His sunlight and rain without giving Him thanks, worshipped false gods of various types, and much more. God has borne all of this with great patience.

All this has been part of God’s plan to give us what we wanted, what our first father asked for in the Garden of Eden on our behalf. We wanted an education in evil, starting with the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. We have since had millennia of education in wickedness and evil. God has drawn it out, as the Book of Romans says, “…in order that the trespass might increase…” that we might actually see in all of its dark colors just how evil and wicked sin is.

The wicked of the earth have worshipped various gods and goddesses and made idols. This idolatry will be consolidated in the end into one final idol, the Antichrist, the man of sin, who will come up out of the sea. A corresponding image of him will be formed to focus the wicked idolatrous hearts of the people of the earth on this one man. This will be the final false religion. At the end of time, God will pour out His judgments in a very wise, orderly way, little by little, but escalating and increasing. Revelation 9:20-21 makes it plain, however, that the people, even with great judgments being poured on them from Heaven to earth, still will not repent. Revelation 9:20-21 says, “The rest of mankind that were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the work of their hands; they did not stop worshiping demons, and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood-- idols that cannot see or hear or walk. Nor did they repent of their murders, their magic arts, their sexual immorality or their thefts.”

God will unleash a series of meticulously prepared judgments, one after the other, that culminates in a final crescendo of judgment depicted in Revelation. Previously in this book, Jesus has broken open the seven seals, resulting in a series of escalating judgments. Out of the seventh seal come seven trumpets (Revelation 8 and 9), judgments on the ecology of the earth in which a third of the plants and trees are burned up along with all of the green grass, a third of the oceans are turned to blood, a third of living creatures die in the ocean, a third of the fresh water is poisoned, and a demonic army is unleashed on the inhabitants of the earth, resulting in the death of a third of mankind.

Even in His wrath, God is showing restraint. There is still a vast number of survivors, the ecology somewhat recovers, and life goes on for a short time longer. They have been warned one final time. All of these things were prepared or planned in the mind of God before the world began. Now in Revelation, the time will have come to unleash the final judgments, the final plagues, like the most devastating doomsday machine ever seen.

The most terrifying, devastating doomsday weapon ever concocted by humans is the atomic bomb, made in the Manhattan Project of World War II. The greatest physicists, mathematicians and engineers available worked together for three years at a total cost of over $2 billion (a huge amount of money in the mis) and a workforce of 120,000 people. They produced the weapon that unleashed the power of the atom. The science was precise and complex and the final effect was unspeakable. On July 16th, 1945, the first nuclear blast in history was detonated at the Trinity site in New Mexico.

The man in charge of the project, physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, quoted Hindu poetry at that moment, saying, “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” When it was dropped on Hiroshima, the atomic fireball over that city was devastating and awesome, killing 90,000 people in one explosion. I have been to the Peace Museum in Hiroshima, a sobering sight. But all of that is as nothing compared to what will be unleashed in the seven bowl judgments depicted in the next chapter, Revelation 16.

Revelation 15 is a preface, the shortest chapter in the Book of Revelation. It introduces the careful preparation of the final judgment that will be poured out from Heaven on earth for human sin, flowing from the character of God and His heavenly temple.

Revelation 15:1 says, “I saw in heaven another great and marvelous sign: seven angels with the seven last plagues — last, because with them God's wrath is completed.” John opening words emphasize his role as seer, a visionary prophet, able to see into the heavenly realms things that we cannot see. He calls it a “great and marvelous sign.” The word “sign” was used of Jesus’s miracles, called signs and wonders, indicating what the coming kingdom would be like, where there would be no more death, mourning, crying or pain. Jesus in His mercy banished illness and even death for a short time in the few years that He ministered, able to handle any disease and sickness. Those were signs of a coming kingdom.

The great and marvelous sign here is the coming judgment of God on the wicked of the human race.

This brief chapter of Revelation introduces the bowl judgments, seven last plagues brought by seven angels, to be revealed in detail in the next chapter. The seven angels will be God’s chosen instruments to pour out these bowls of judgment on the surface of the earth. The number seven is familiar — a number of perfection or completion. The seven seals give way to the seven trumpets, which give way finally to the seven bowls.

Verse 1 says, “seven angels with the seven last plagues-- last, because with them God's wrath is completed.” The wrath of God is a perfect expression of His character. It is nothing that He must repent from or snap out of later; it is not irrational or mindless. It flows from His character, a perfect expression of His justice and His passionate nature. Our God is passionate; He has emotions. We are created in His image, so we have feelings too. Our anger, however, is usually unrighteous, not often mirroring God’s righteous wrath and righteous indignation. Usually our wrath is based on pride or inconvenience.

Wrath is His necessary, perfect emotional reaction to the existence of evil, and it also relates to His love for His people and for His creation. He hates anything that harms His people and destroys his beautiful creation. His wrath is linked with His love, but this display of His wrath in these judgments is not His home base, not His central nature. God is love. His wrath is not one of the things presented first and foremost about Him. Isaiah 28:21 speaks of God’s wrath being His strange, alien work, not His normal home base. That is why He puts it off so long.

In the book of Jonah, the only thing harmed is the vine that grows up. All the threatened judgment never happens. Everything survives — the pagan sailors, the whale, Jonah, the worm — everything except the plant, because God is deferring His wrath and judgment on Nineveh and on Jonah.

This is strange, alien work, but it will come. With the seven bowls poured out, God’s wrath will be finished for redemptive history. There will be no more such display of His wrath of God in the New Heaven and the New Earth, except for the eternality of hell.

Revelation 15:2-4 says, “And I saw what looked like a sea of glass mixed with fire and, standing beside the sea, those who had been victorious over the beast and his image and over the number of his name. They held harps given them by God and sang the song of Moses the servant of God and the song of the Lamb: ‘Great and marvelous are your deeds, Lord God Almighty. Just and true are your ways, King of the ages. Who will not fear you, O Lord, and bring glory to your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship before you, for your righteous acts have been revealed.’”

In this heavenly vision of triumphant worship, the victors, who have survived all of the attacks on their souls and the terrors of the reign of Antichrist, the Beast from the Sea, are assembled there to worship and celebrate that God is about to finally destroy all of their enemies and display His power and His righteous indignation. This is a song of victory for them, celebrating God’s character and the mighty deeds.

They are on the crystal sea, which we saw first in Revelation 4 in the vision of God seated on His throne ruling over Heaven and earth. Revelation 4:6 says, “Also before the throne there was what looked like a sea of glass, clear as crystal.” In this heavenly vision, the sea is mingled with fire. This crystal sea is in direct contrast to the churning turbulent sea out of which the four beasts in Daniel 7 and the one beast in Revelation 13 emerge as a restatement or consolidation of the four beasts.

The original vision, Daniel 7:2-3, says, “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me were the four winds of heaven churning up the great sea. Four great beasts, each different from the others, came up out of the sea.” Four great beasts came up out of the churning sea. The sea represents God’s judgment upon nations with their turmoil and fighting, wars and rumors of wars. Isaiah 57 says, “But the wicked are like the tossing sea, which cannot rest, whose waves cast up mire and mud.”

But in Heaven, the crystal sea is placid. God reigns over a heavenly harmony and peacefulness. It is hard to imagine. We are so filled with anxiety and turbulence. The crystal sea in Heaven is first seen on Mount Sinai. Moses and Aaron and Nadab and Abihu and the elders of Israel went up on Mount Sinai and saw the throne of God and an expanse, like sapphire, clear like the sky, between them and God. He was reigning over this crystal expanse.

Ezekiel 1 tells of the incredible, almost indescribable vision of God of wheels within wheels, eyes on the rims of the wheels, wheels of fire and Seraphim and more, and then above and above and above. Imagine being Ezekiel having to try to put that into words. He did the best he could on the iteration of the Holy Spirit, but it is difficult to picture. Above all of this is an expanse, like a crystal ceiling, and above that comes the throne of God.

This crystal sea is mingled with fire, which is not mentioned in Revelation 4. This fire must represent the peacefulness of God in His heart, but also His vengeance and justice which will be poured out on the sinners of earth. As the river of fire flowed from God’s throne onto His enemies in judgment, so the fire combined with the crystal sea indicates that God is at peace while He judges His enemies. It doesn't ruffle Him or destabilize His soul to do so.

The NIV says “beside the sea”, but “on the sea” is more accurate — the triumphant saints, walking on the sea almost like Jesus walking on the water, experiencing the perfect tranquility and peacefulness of God in Heaven as they walk there before Him.

These triumphant saints are described as conquering heroes in Revelation 15:2 (CSB): “I also saw something like a sea of glass mixed with fire, and those who had won the victory from the beast, his image, and the number of his name, were standing on the sea of glass with harps from God.”

They are conquerors who have run the race with endurance and crossed the finish line, especially in the final phase of human history, the most terrifying and dangerous time. It will take the most courage to stand up for Jesus during the reign of the Antichrist and the Beast from the Earth, the false prophet. On pain of death, they will testify to their allegiance to Jesus. They will conquer; they will overcome.

Jesus ends every letter to the seven churches in Revelation 2 and 3, “To him who overcomes…” To those who overcome, he promises reward: the right to eat from the Tree of Life, a new name, a place in the temple of God, never to leave it.

These rewards are promised to the victors, who stand firm to the end. Romans 8:35-37 says, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: ‘For your sake we are being slaughtered all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” These super conquerors are the ones who stood firm in the hardest test and triumphed over the beast and his image and the number of his name.

Revelation 13 tells us who the beast is: the Antichrist, the one-world ruler who will come under the power of the dragon, the Devil. He will claim his throne over all the peoples and languages of the earth, not only going to be political power but religious power as will. People will worship him as God and bow down before him. He will require everyone small and great to receive the mark of the beast on the hand or forehead; no one will be able to buy or sell without it, and those who will not receive it will be executed. They will behead those who will not yield and bow down to worship the idol or the beast. Revelation 12:11 says of them, “They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.”

These triumphant conquering heroes stand on the crystal sea mingled with blood, holding harps given to them by God, singing a worship song. Harps and trumpets are the only two musical instruments mentioned in the Book of Revelation. God gives them this gift to celebrate the triumph. The song of triumph is called The Song of Moses and of the Lamb.

The Song of Moses reminds us of the days of the Exodus. Moses is called the Servant of the Lord because he did the Master’s bidding. God used him to lead the Jews out of four centuries of bondage in Egypt. God brought them out with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm after pouring out ten terrible plagues on the wicked Egyptians. But He hardened Pharaoh’s heart to chase the Israelites with his mighty army and pin them against the Red Sea. The people were terrified and cried out. There seemed to be no escape, but Moses called out to God, who extended His hand over the Red Sea. A mighty east wind came all night and opened for them a way through the sea. They crossed as on dry ground, with the water walling up on the right and on the left. Two million Israelites crossed at night, with the pillar of fire leading them.

It is a picture of coming up out of darkness, out of death into resurrection — a picture of our faith in Christ. There are many images like this in the Old Testament. When the dawn came, Pharaoh’s heart was hardened one more time, and he led his army into the Red Sea. The water came crashing down; the enemies were destroyed and they all died. The enemies they saw that day, they would never see again, just as God had promised.

When that finally happened and those words were fulfilled on the other side, they sang a song of celebration. It is called the Song of Moses, the song of triumph. Exodus 15:1-3 says, “Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the LORD: ‘I will sing to the LORD, for he is highly exalted. The horse and its rider he has hurled into the sea. The LORD is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation. He is my God, and I will praise him, my father's God, and I will exalt him. The LORD is a warrior; the LORD is his name.’”

This song is not called that. That was a great deliverance, but we have an even greater deliverance to celebrate at the end of all time, the deliverance worked for us by the Lamb of God, Jesus. However great that exodus was, however mighty was God’s hand over the enemies of the Jews back then, this is even greater. We will be delivered at last from all the enemies of our soul, from the world, the flesh and the devil, delivered by the Lamb of God who shed His blood on the cross for sinners like you and me. We deserve to be swept away in the wrath of God, but we will reach the other side. We will be on that crystal sea, and we will celebrate the greatness of the grace of God, to the praise of His glorious grace.

We will celebrate and sing, perhaps with incredible singing voices. We will celebrate the victory of the Lamb who shed His blood for our souls, the Song of Moses and of the Lamb. At the end of Revelation 5, the worshipers around the throne sing a song when Jesus, the Lamb of God, takes the scroll from the right hand of Him who sits on the throne, in cascading worship. Revelation 5:9-10, 12 says, “And they sang a new song: ‘You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth…. Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!”

The only lyrics to the Song of Moses and of the Lamb that we know are the few that are given here in this chapter, though I think it will be a longer song. Revelation 15:3-4 says, “Great and marvelous are your deeds, Lord God Almighty. Just and true are your ways, King of the ages. Who will not fear you, O Lord, and bring glory to your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship before you, for your righteous acts have been revealed.”

The song celebrates God’s great and marvelous deeds. These are all the deeds of sovereign grace that He has worked throughout history — miracles and mighty acts — to save the elect, to redeem them and bring them safely to Heaven, but also to judge the servants of Satan, the enemies of the Gospel. Works of salvation, works of judgment. In Heaven, we will be church historians. Do not dread it; it will not be boring. We will retell the great and marvelous deeds of God and celebrate His character.

He is the sovereign ruler of the universe, and His ways and judgments are just and true. He is no tyrant, acting capriciously. He acts perfectly according to justice. He is the King of the Ages. His reign will last forever and ever. Antichrist gets three and a half years. Nebuchadnezzar realized that he would die and his  kingship would end, but God gave him a revelation of a kingdom that would never end. He celebrated in Daniel 4:34: “His dominion is an eternal dominion; his kingdom endures from generation to generation. Who will not fear you O God and bring glory to Your name?”

Imagine being in a terrifying situation, like the earthquake my family and I experienced in Japan. Someone asked us if we were afraid. Seeing the entire house shake under your feet, with nowhere to go, who would not be? I cannot imagine a person in that situation who would not feel fear.

These saints are saying the same thing. “‘Who will not fear you, O Lord, and bring glory to your name…’ O majestic King of the Ages?” It doesn't make any sense to have no fear in His presence. It shows the irrationality of the world’s rebellion, and yet the overwhelming majority of people on earth, even at that time, will not fear His name and will not bring glory to His name. These saints cannot comprehend it; they give reasons why He should be feared — God alone is holy there is an infinite gap between God and all creatures; He is immeasurably high and lifted up.

All nations will worship before God because He deserves it and has mandated it. Outside of the door to my right, there is a world map above which is one of my favorite verses, Habakkuk 2:14: “The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. All nations are going to worship Him and bow down before Him.” Psalm 22:27-28 says, “All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations will bow down before him, for dominion belongs to the LORD and he rules over the nations.”

Who will not fear such a God, who will not bring praise to His name? All nations will come. Because God’s righteous acts have been revealed, culminating in the work of Christ, who would be so insane as to not fear Him, not come bow down before Him?

The song of the victors pinpoints the theological source of the wrath of God. It flows from His character and His position in the universe. He is a holy righteous King, and He loves righteousness and hates wickedness. His wrath flows from His person and His commitment to His people. He is motivated to vindicate His people and protect them from their enemies.

Revelation 15:5 tells us, “After this I looked and in heaven the temple, that is, the tabernacle of the Testimony, was opened.” The word “tabernacle” is not in the ESV but is a better translation. John, with prophetic eyes, looks into the heavenly Holy of Holies. According to the Law of Moses in the Old Covenant, the Israelites set up a tabernacle, a tent, in concentric layers around the holy place and the most holy place, or the Holy of Holies. Only the high priest could enter that innermost space, and only once a year, and never without blood, which he offered for his own sins and the sins of the people.

Solomon’s temple was a physical building that depicted the same idea with the Holy of Holies, but the heavenly temple is the reality. The tent and the building are shadows and types. They are gone, nowhere to be found; they have been destroyed. But John is able to able to gaze into the heavenly reality of the Holy of Holies with prophetic vision.

Revelation 15 speaks of the tabernacle of the testimony, referring to the Ark of the Covenant, the golden box in which the stone tablets, on which God inscribed His laws with His own finger, were placed. It is on the basis of God’s holy law that these judgments flow, out of this tabernacle, out of the law of God that is perfect and holy. He demonstrates His commitment to His holy law, the Ten Commandments, which the human race has violated every day of its existence. “I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make any idols or worship any idols. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Do all your work in six days and rest on the seventh, for God made Heaven and Earth in six days and rested on the seventh. Honor your father and mother. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

If we have any uncertainty about the spiritual nature of these commandments, how they apply to our hearts, the tenth commandment makes it plain. Coveting is something you do with your heart. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus extends that heart focus to the commandment about murder. Though we may never murder, we likely have been angry enough at times to want to kill. Even that puts us in danger of the fire of Hell. We may not physical commit adultery, but looking at another person lustfully is adultery in one’s heart. Jesus shows that none of us can survive the scrutiny of the Ten Commandments. After making this clear, He summarized all of the law in two great commandments. Matthew 22:37-39 says, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

We cannot keep and have not kept the Ten Commandments or the two commandments. All of us have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

The judgments in Revelation 16 flow from God’s commitment to that holy law, which we have violated. John gazes into the righteous, holy character of God and His commitment to His commandments for the human race. From this heavenly tabernacle of the testimony, this wrath will flow because of transgressions against His holy law.

Revelation 15:6 says, “Out of the temple came the seven angels with the seven plagues. They were dressed in clean, shining linen and wore golden sashes around their chests.” These angels are serving God, deputized to pour out on earth these seven last plagues. They are dressed in clean, shining linen with golden sashes around their chest as Jesus did in Revelation 1 — valuable attire symbolizing their perfect holiness and purity, enabling them to pour out the plagues to purify the earth in Revelation 16.  They emerge from the tabernacle to bring the curses of the law of God on the violators of His Word.

Revelation 15:7 says, “Then one of the four living creatures gave to the seven angels seven golden bowls filled with the wrath of God, who lives for ever and ever.” In Revelation 4:7-8, the four living creatures are before the throne of God: “The first living creature was like a lion, the second was like an ox, the third had a face like a man, the fourth was like a flying eagle. Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under his wings. Day and night they never stop saying: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come.’”

These four living creatures are actual creatures up in Heaven. They represent physical creation, which has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth, under bondage to decay because of human sin, waiting to be liberated by the redemption of the children of God and resurrection, waiting for the New Heaven and the New Earth. They are groaning. It makes sense for these living creatures to hand over the bowls of judgment to the angels, like liquid wrath to be poured out on the earth.

300 million people died of smallpox in the 20th century, and perhaps over half a billion people have died from it overall, making it the worst plague in history. Because of Edward Jenner’s vaccination, little by little it was conquered to some degree. Now, the only place it exists is in two research laboratories, one in Russia and one in Atlanta, Georgia. Imagine being responsible for transporting this liquid death in a box.

Smallpox is nothing compared to this round of judgments in Revelation 16. It is hard to describe what we are about to see. The human race cannot long endure after the seven bowls are poured out — it will not be a third this time but the entire thing — the whole ocean, all the rivers. It is terrifying. These four living creatures give the seven angels the liquid death and wrath in these bowls.

Revelation 15:8 says, “And the temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power, and no one could enter the temple until the seven plagues of the seven angels were completed.” We have seen this before. When the tabernacle was finished, Exodus 40:34-35 says, “Then the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle. Moses could not enter the Tent of Meeting because the cloud had settled upon it, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle.” Even His choicest servant could not enter in at that point. God alone was in that place.

When the temple was dedicated, 1 Kings 8:10-12 says, “When the priests withdrew from the Holy Place, the cloud filled the temple of the LORD. And the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the LORD filled his temple. Then Solomon said, ‘The LORD has said that he would dwell in a dark cloud.’”

God is unapproachable. 1 Timothy 6:15-16 says, “God will bring about in his own time — God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see.” The smoke in Revelation 15 makes a cloud of unapproachable darkness. God is doing this on His own. He is using the angels and the four living creatures, but this is something that He alone has the right to do. He is unapproachable in His time of wrath; no one can approach Him or stop Him.

Isaiah 43:13 says, “No one can deliver out of my hand. When I act, who can reverse it?” Moses interceded for Israel in Exodus 32:12: “Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people.” God heard Moses’ intercession, but in these last judgments, He will hear no petitions for mercy; the time of His wrath will have come, and the end will be near. Isaiah 14:27 says, “For the LORD Almighty has purposed, and who can thwart him? His hand is stretched out, and who can turn it back?”

First, our top priority is to the Gospel call. It is vital for us sinners to realize the danger that we are in apart from the redemption of Christ. We need to understand what Jesus is a Savior from. He saves us from the terror of the wrath of God. We need to flee to Christ now, while there is time. This is the day of salvation. In His first coming, His first advent, Jesus is presenting Himself as meek and mild and lowly and humble. He is gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

The picture of the Virgin with child and the baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and laid in a manger is a picture of the mildness and meekness of Jesus. This is the time to come to Christ, the time to confess that we have violated God’s Ten Commandments. We are not under any deception about this; we know we have broken His commandments. We have not loved Him with all of our heart. We have not loved our neighbor as ourselves. Flee to Christ.

For Christians, this is our time. Not only this December Christmas time, but this day of salvation, this avenue of grace, is opened and we are its messengers. “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’” [Romans 10:13-15]

That is our job. We get to bring the good news to lost people even this week. Be prayerful about what kind of sacrificial giving you should do to keep missionaries on the field through our Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. I have the formal privilege of presenting the names of every missionary who will be appointed by the IMB this year. It is a glorious rubber stamp. I love to say their names and say that my sub-committee recommends them to be appointed as missionaries. But it takes a lot of money to keep them on the field; it is expensive. They are in big cities, with big city costs, reaching hundreds of thousands of people who have never heard the name of Christ, so be sacrificial and give.

Finally, look forward to the celebration that we will have when we are finally walking on that sea of glass, celebrating with the Song of Moses and of the Lamb. We will give Him the victory and the praise and we should do that now as well. I love doing corporate worship with you. Let’s worship by the Spirit continually, the praise and the redemption that Jesus has worked for us.

Father, we thank you for the time that we have had to study your Word. Thank you for the things that we have learned. Lord, we know this is an incredible introduction to an outpouring of wrath we can scarcely imagine. Help us to understand it, help us to be ready to take it in. But knowing that it is coming, O Lord, help us to live holy and upright lives in this present corrupt age, and to warn people who have yet to come to Christ, to flee to Him while there is still time. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

The Book of Revelation was given to enable us to see invisible things that we could not see unless God revealed them to us. Faith is the eyesight of the soul by which we see these invisible spiritual realities. Based on the word of God, we are able to see and understand these past, present and future hidden spiritual truths. Revelation reveals Jesus to us, above all else, as the one who conquered death. “Behold, I am alive forever more.” [Revelation 1:18]

In Revelation 1-3, the Apostle John has a vision in which he sees Jesus, radiant and glorious, dressed like a high priest, moving among and ministering to seven golden lamp stands, representing local churches around the world and across every era of church history. He speaks words of rebuke and correction and encouragement to each of the seven churches.

After this, in Revelation 4, John has a vision in which he is invited to ascend through the heavenly realms to a door leading into the presence of the Almighty God, who is seated on a throne. All of Heaven —twenty-four elders and four living creatures and 100 million angels — worships Almighty God.

In Revelation 5 God has a scroll in his right hand, sealed with seven seals. A mighty angel proclaims “in a loud voice, ‘Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?’” Jesus, the Lion of Judah, the Lamb that was slain — he alone has the right to break open the seals. He breaks them one at a time to unleash the final events on earth. Through John, we witness them unfold in their last phase. The initial phases are happening now, and have been for 20 centuries — wars, rumors of wars, famines and earthquakes in various places, uncertain signs showing that this world is broken. There are so many wrong things in this world, but we are heading toward a place where there will be no more death, mourning, crying, or pain.

In Revelation 8 and 9, the seventh seal releases seven angels with trumpets, each blown in turn, ravaging the earth’s ecology. All the green grass and a third of the vegetation and trees are burned up. A third of the ocean turns to blood. A third of the living creatures die in the ocean. A third of the drinking water turns bitter with wormwood. A dark billowing cloud of demonic assault comes up from the nether regions of the earth and torments earth's inhabitants for five months, as though they have been bitten with the stings of scorpions. An army of 200 million demons wages war, slaughtering a third of mankind.

Behind the scenes, in Revelation 12, a dragon appears, identified as Satan, who has a vigorous, aggressive hatred for God’s people. He is thrown down from Heaven to earth with a third of the “stars” or angels, known as demons. He pursues a woman, who represents Israel, and her children, who represent all believers in Christ. Satan persecutes the believers, filled with hatred and rage because he knows that his time is short.

In Revelation 13, we see his final, most vigorous and effective assault on the people of the world — the Antichrist, or the Beast from the Sea. He comes up out of the sea to dominate the entire world. Every tribe and language and people and nation is under his rule. Another beast, the Beast from the Earth, also called the false prophet, sets up a religious system to force all the inhabitants earth on pain of death to worship the Antichrist and to receive a mark on the forehead or the hand, without which they cannot buy or sell. This worship of Antichrist becomes the final world government and the final world religion. There is no separation of religion and state but a complete combination under the reign of the Antichrist.

Revelation 14 begins with 144,000 who are sealed — courageous, bold, pure, holy emissaries from God — based on the earlier sealing of the 12,000 from each of the 12 tribes of Israel. They are perhaps Jewish evangelists, and we assume they are male because they refrain from being defiled with women. They are dedicated, following the Lamb wherever he goes and witnessing boldly. The Gospel is being preached even during the time of the Antichrist.

God sends three angelic messengers flying in mid-air to warn the people of earth to fear God and give Him glory, to believe the Gospel and trust in Christ, and to flee the intoxication of the system of Babylon — the wickedness of this world system — or face eternal death. The second half of Revelation 14 depicts “the harvest of the earth,” depicting Judgment Day as harvests of grain harvest and grapes.

By faith, we must understand and be ready for the coming judgment and the end of the world. The world around us that we see and experience now, which continues as it always has, is less real than the hidden spiritual reality of eternity. Two passages highlight God’s reasons for postponing ultimate judgment:

God made a solemn covenant with Abraham that the land he stood on would be an inheritance for him and his descendants and told Abraham when it would happen. Genesis 15:13-16: “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.” For four centuries, God waited for the wickedness of the pagan Amorites in the Promised Land to reach its full measure. He waited as they worshiped pagan idols, bowing before the works of their hands, passing their own children through the fire in worship of blood-thirsty demons. In the same way, God waits patiently now for the sin of the world to reach its full measure.

Daniel was an exile from Judah in Babylon. He served in the courts of the Babylonian kings, the last of whom was Belshazzar. Despite the fact that the walls of Babylon were surrounded by the Medo-Persian army, Belshazzar hosted a drunken feast, toasting the gods of bronze, iron, wood and stone. He used the sacred vessels taken from the Temple in Israel. Suddenly a hand appeared and wrote mysterious words on the wall, “MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN…” No one could read them so the king summoned Daniel to interpret the mystery. He read: “‘Mene: God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end. Tekel: You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting. Peres: Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.’” All people have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Belshazzar was judged as lacking the massive weightiness of God that should be in all our souls. That very night, he died. Our days are numbered. God is waiting patiently. Judgment Day has not yet come, but it will.

God’s patience has a purposeful limit. One purpose is to give the elect time to repent and come to Christ. Another is to allow “the sin of the Amorites [of the world] … [to reach] its full measure,” its maximum level in God’s providence. Unbelievers do not make the best use of the time, unfortunately. Romans 2:4-6: “…do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God's kindness leads you toward repentance? But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God's wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. God “will give to each person according to what he has done.”

This morning, I watched two squirrels working on their nest. They had their mouths full of pine needles and leaves from the forest floor. They climbed 40 feet to an ugly-looking mass of debris from the ground, then repeated the process multiple times. In a similar way, every day, unbelievers add a little more to God’s memory, how they have lived that day without thanking Him or giving Him praise and glory or loving Him with all their heart or without loving their neighbors. They are “storing up wrath” a little more every day. It is tragic. It is our job as believers to warn them about that as Paul did in Romans 2.

Unscrupulous businessmen craft new ways to defraud people of their money. Corrupt national leaders use their positions of power to advance themselves and their own interests and to resist the Gospel spread. Urban gangs initiate new members by forcing them to commit random, wanton, malicious acts to show their manhood. Drug addicts resort to crime to feed their habit and cannot free themselves from slavery to the drug. Internet pornographers film the next images that will trap people in addiction. Terrorist cell groups plot their acts of mayhem and murder to further their political or religious agendas. Ordinary unbelievers pursue worldly agendas and pleasures without a single thought of thankfulness to God. Unsaved teenagers swim in a sea of social media, unable to lift up their eyes from their smartphones to see the God who knit them together in their mother’s womb and who sustains them every day. Secularists and social, sexual deviants on college campuses indoctrinate the next crop of college students in a worldview of aberrant, unbiblical sexuality. A river of sin continues unchallenged; people think everything goes on as it always has, and nothing will change. How wrong they are. We can see that day coming when the sickle will swing and human history will be cut off.

Two harvests are pictured here. One of them appears to be a harvest of standing grain, and the other a harvest of grapes. It is told in two parts but it is hard to know if it is the same harvest told two different ways or two different harvests. The harvest of grapes is definitely a harvest of wrath. Revelation 14:19-20 “The angel swung his sickle on the earth, gathered its grapes and threw them into the great winepress of God’s wrath. They were trampled in the winepress outside the city, and blood flowed out of the press, rising as high as the horses’ bridles for a distance of 1,600 stadia.” That terrifying image depicts God’s wrath falling on the rebels and unrepentant sinners of the earth.

The sickle to harvest grain is a heavy curved manual cutting tool with a long handle commonly used before the invention of grain-harvesting machines. Farmers would swing the long stick to cut the standing grain in this way. The sickle to harvest grapes is a similar tool but with a short handle. The Son of Man reaps the grain with his sharpened sickle; then the grapes are harvested.

Many commentators think that these are two different kinds of harvests, that the first one by Christ is the harvest of the righteous, the elect. It is a valid idea since many images in the New Testament link evangelism and missions to the image of a harvest. Matthew 9:36-38 says, “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.’”

In John 4, Jesus has an incredible conversation with the Samaritan woman about spiritual things. She is immediately moved to go tell others about him. Meanwhile, the disciples, who were on an errand and did not, it seems, say a word about Jesus, returned and were ready to eat. “…he said to them, ‘I have food to eat that you know nothing about… My food … is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Don’t you have a saying, “It’s still four months until harvest”? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Thus the saying “One sows and another reaps” is true. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.’”

In 1876, Charles Spurgeon preached a sermon on this text entitled “The Harvest and the Vintage” in which he made this exact connection, that the first harvest is the harvest of the elect by Christ bringing them into God’s garner, and the second harvest is the harvest of wrath.

It is also possible that these are two different images for the same harvest. Joel 3:13-14 has an image very much like in Revelation 14: “‘Swing the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, trample the grapes, for the winepress is full and the vats overflow — so great is their wickedness!’ Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision.”

Regardless of which way we interpret these two harvests, both events will happen. Every last elect person chosen by name from before the creation of the world will come to Christ, brought into God’s barn to spend eternity in the New Heaven and New Earth with Christ. Not one will be lost. “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son. … And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.” [Romans 8:29-30] 

And all of the wicked will be harvested and thrown into the fire. John the Baptist said this very plainly in Matthew 3:12: “His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

Revelation 14:14 says, “I looked, and there before me was a white cloud, and seated on the cloud was one like a son of man with a crown of gold on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand.” The Son of Man is the glorified Jesus Christ, reigning in Heaven. In Revelation 1, John sees “someone like a son of man”, dressed like a high priest, moving through the seven golden lamp stands.

The image comes from Daniel 7, which depicts the idea of coming world empires and the Antichrist. In the midst of that, Daniel sees the heavenly court, with the Ancient of Days, God the Father, seated on his throne and a river of fire flowing from it. Daniel 7:13-14 says,“In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.”

This is the exact same language as Revelation 14:14. It is an important prophecy about Jesus in the Old Testament. The incarnation — the fact that the Word became flesh, a human being who could speak and eat and be touched and who could die was actually Almighty God — presented a stumbling block. Jesus consistently called himself Son of Man more than any other title. In so doing, he was pointing his listeners to Daniel 7. This title highlights his humanity. He comes on the clouds of Heaven, which shows his deity. He comes in glory and sovereign power, and he receives the right to be worshiped by every nation. Verse 14 emphasizes the combination of his divinity and humanity.

In the Old Testament, clouds in connection with God symbolize His judgment on the wicked. Psalm 97 says, “The LORD reigns, let the earth be glad; let the distant shores rejoice. Clouds and thick darkness surround him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. Fire goes before him and consumes his foes on every side. His lightning lights up the world; the earth sees and trembles. The mountains melt like wax before the LORD, before the Lord of all the earth.” This is the very thing that Jesus prophesied that his enemies would see. The corrupt, wicked Jewish authorities, Annas and Caiaphas, charged Jesus under oath by the living God to tell whether He was the Christ, the Son of God. “Are you claiming to be God?” Jesus said in Mark's Gospel, “I am.” That was enough. But then he made a prophecy with Daniel’s words. Matthew 26:64 says, “In the future you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.” Jesus is coming on the clouds of heaven in wrath and judgment to bring an end to the wickedness of the earth.

This is the Son of Man glorified, in a position of judgment. His golden crown represents his kingly authority. Gold symbolizes purity and worth. Jesus’ glory of Jesus is his right to judge all the earth. He has the right to judge every human being.

John 5:22-23 says, “…the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father.” What an incredible statement — we are to honor Jesus with the same honor we give to Almighty God. The Father is jealous for that glory. He will not share His glory with a created being, an idol. But He shares it with His Son, the second person of the Trinity. The whole world will see Jesus’ glory because he “humbled himself by becoming obedient to death — even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” [Philippians 2:8-11] The Father wants us to glorify and worship Jesus, so he comes on the clouds in a position to judge.

Matthew 25:31-32 says, “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.” He will come in his glory with all the angels; all the nations will be assembled before him, and he will judge them. The Father has given to Jesus the right, the authority to judge, because he is the Son of Man.

Revelation 14:14-16 says, “I looked, and there before me was a white cloud, and seated on the cloud was one “like a son of man” with a crown of gold on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand. Then another angel came out of the temple and called in a loud voice to him who was sitting on the cloud, ‘Take your sickle and reap, because the time to reap has come, for the harvest of the earth is ripe.’ So he who was seated on the cloud swung his sickle over the earth, and the earth was harvested.”

This exalted, glorified figure, the Son of Man seated on the throne, seems to take an order from an angel, but more likely, the angel is a messenger from God the Father, telling him the time to reap has come. Even Jesus, in his reaping, is under the greater authority of the Father. Jesus was instructing and teaching his disciples in the days before His ascension, after His resurrection, and they said, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom in Israel?” He said in Acts 1:7 “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority.” The Father decides when it is time to reap; He knows the details He has determined.

In John’s vision, the time has come — the harvest is ripe. Either all of the elect have come to Christ, or all of the wickedness — the sin of the Amorites — has reached its full measure. All the days ordained for the earth were written in God’s book before one of them came to be. The time has come to bring history to an end. Joel 3:13 “Swing the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, trample the grapes, for the winepress is full and the vats overflow — so great is their wickedness!’

The last days will be filled with overwhelming wickedness on earth, the worst the world has ever seen. 2 Timothy 3:1-5 says, “But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God — having a form of godliness but denying its power.” The overwhelming majority of the world will worship the Antichrist as God.

It will be like the days before the flood, as Jesus said it would be. Genesis 6:5 says, “The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.” The sin of the Amorites had reached its full measure in that time.

The angel says to the Son of Man Revelation 14:15, “Take your sickle and reap because the time to reap has come for the harvest of the earth is ripe.” In the days of Noah, Almighty God, the only one who had the right, shut the door to the ark, which ended the opportunity for salvation at that point. Everyone inside the ark was saved. Everyone outside perished. As it was then, so now the time comes to swing the sickle.

For now, God is waiting. 2 Peter 3:9-10 and 15 says, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. … Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation.” But the time will come. Perhaps when all the elect have repented and trusted in Christ, an angelic messenger will announce the fact to heaven. George Whitefield, one of the most effective preachers in the history of the church, during the Colonial era, right before the Revolution, had a great voice and a sense of drama. He would picture an angel going up from that assembly, announcing, “The last person that will be converted today has been converted.” He would call out, “Stop! Isn’t there room for one more?” Everyone wanted to be that one more person. Today is the day of salvation; now is the time to come to Christ. There will not to be an opportunity after the sickle is swung.

Revelation 14:16 says, “So he who was seated on the cloud swung his sickle over the earth, and the earth was harvested.” That is a simple statement with no process described. It is instantaneous. The sickle is sharp like the Word of God. Hebrews 4:12 says, “…the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight, everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we will give an account.” The sickle does not meet with resistance; no stalks are particularly difficult for it to cut.

In popular culture, the figure of the Grim Reaper symbolizes death. I worked in an engineering group with a floor worker who had a disturbing tattoo of the Grim Reaper on his forearm. It was a black-hooded living skeleton with a scythe, the end dripping red with blood. I remarked to him that he had a constant reminder of Judgment Day on his arm.

In the early days of World War I after the Germans had invaded Belgium and killed maybe a few thousand people, a Dutch propaganda artist named Louis Raemaekers drew a powerful cartoon entitled “The Harvest is Ripe” of a skeleton in tattered clothes with a scythe. It depicted hordes of people in front of him facing impending doom. Little did Raemaekers know what the next four years would bring, that the hundreds who had died in those first few days in Belgium were nothing compared to the millions that would die by the end of the war.

In the end, the true Reaper in the Bible is not grim but glorious. He is not impersonal but very personal. He knows exactly what he is doing. It is Jesus Christ. Hebrews 9:27 says, “…man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment.”

The second harvest is clearly grapes of wrath. These grapes are crushed in the vintage. Again, God initiates this judgment by sending the angel from the temple, His dwelling place. Habakkuk 2:20 says, “…the LORD is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him.” Out of this glorious temple comes this angel, who also has a sharp scythe. The angels are involved in the reaping at the end of human history. A second angel exhorts or commands this reaping angel to begin his work. Revelation 14:18 says, “Still another angel, who had charge of the fire, came from the altar and called in a loud voice to him who had the sharp sickle, ‘Take your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of grapes from the earth’s vine, because its grapes are ripe.’”

The vintage is the grapes of wrath, wicked rebels who refuse to live by the truth, and believe in Christ. This angel is identified as having “charge of the fire,” which goes back to that Revelation 8 in which the angel coming from the altar with a censer takes fire from the coals and hurls it to the earth. That judgment of God came as a result of the prayers of the persecuted church, crying out for justice. This is God’s answer. Grace and tolerance for the wicked of the earth comes to an end. Clusters of grapes may represent the teeming cities, massive population centers with different tribes and languages and peoples and nations. They are harvested quickly. Joel 3:14 says, “Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision.”

Revelation 14:19-20 says, “The angel swung his sickle on the earth, gathered its grapes and threw them into the great winepress of God’s wrath. They were trampled in the winepress outside the city, and blood flowed out of the press, rising as high as the horses’ bridles for a distance of 1,600 stadia.”

The harvest is a display of God’s wrath. This crushing carnage is hard to picture. It is bloody. In those days the clusters of grapes would be put in the winepress and servants would trample and crush them with their feet. At the bottom, there was a trough through which the juice would flow to be caught in vats and fermented into wine. The flow of blood is difficult to comprehend. The blood came out out of the winepress up to a height of horses’ bridle for a distance of 1600 stadia, almost 200 miles. A horse’s bridle sits at about 4 feet; we are not told the width, but it is an incalculable amount of blood even if it is a narrow trough. In the temple where the animal sacrifice was — up to a quarter of a million sacrifices offered at Passover—  there would be a trough through which blood would flow.

The fact that it was “outside the city” is significant. That indicates the place of judgment and wrath, exclusion from God’s presence and the glory of his majesty. The wicked are thrown outside into the darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. They are cut off from the fellowship of the people of God. Jesus died outside the city for us. Hebrews 13:12 says, “And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood.” He was rejected and sent to the place of judgment and condemnation and hell for us. Revelation 22:14-15 says, “Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city. Outside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.” As the second angel swings his scythe, the wicked are harvested and trampled outside the gates.

Could this represent the final battle, Armageddon, referenced in Revelation 16 and 17? The forces of Antichrist gathered together to trample out the last vestiges of rebels who will not receive the mark of the beast or bow down and worship his image. They are huddled, hiding, waiting. Jesus said, “If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive. But for the sake of the elect, those days will be shortened.” The kings will gather together and give their power to the one, the Antichrist, to destroy the people of God and fight against Christ.

Joel 3 corresponds with Revelation 14. Joel 3:9-16 says, “Proclaim this among the nations: ‘Prepare for war! Rouse the warriors! Let all the fighting men draw near and attack. Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears. Let the weakling say, “I am strong!” Come quickly, all you nations from every side, and assemble there. Bring down your warriors, Lord! [All the wicked nations are together in one place as warriors from Heaven descend.] Let the nations be roused; let them advance into the valley of Jehoshaphat [“the Lord judges”], for there I will sit to judge all the nations on every side. Swing the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come trample the grapes, for the winepress is full and the vats overflow — so great is their wickedness!’ Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. The sun and moon will be darkened, and the stars no longer shine. The Lord will roar from Zion and thunder from Jerusalem; the earth and the heavens will tremble. But the Lord will be a refuge for His people, a stronghold for the people of Israel.”

Revelation 16 and 17 describe that battle. Revelation 14, is a foretaste of it, taking us ahead to that final moment when the harvest will be gathered in the context of a battle; hence, the flow of blood makes perfect sense. They came to shed blood, and their own blood will be shed.

This battle is depicted in Revelation 19:11-21: I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war. His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. [That’s Jesus in His Second Coming glory.] The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean.”

This is Joel’s imperative, “Bring down your warriors, O Lord!” I believe — others disagree — that this is when the rapture happens. At that point, he will send his angels to gather the elect from the four corners of the earth; they will meet him in the air as he descends with those who have died and are with Him. They will come down and be together as one to witness him taking care of business.

“Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. ‘He will rule them with an iron scepter.’ [That sharp sword that comes out of his mouth is equal to the sharp sickle with which he harvests the nations.] He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.”

He comes down into a battle in which the ten kings come together to give their power to the one, the Antichrist. They are gathered to fight against the people of God, to wipe them from the face of the earth. Jesus says, “No.”

“And I saw an angel standing in the sun, who cried in a loud voice to all the birds flying in midair, ‘Come, gather together for the great supper of God, so that you may eat the flesh of kings, generals, and mighty men, of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all people, free and slave, small and great.’ Then I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies gathered together to make war against the rider on the horse and his army. But the beast was captured, and with him the false prophet who had performed the miraculous signs on his behalf. With these signs he had deluded those who had received the mark of the beast and worshiped his image. The two of them were thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur. The rest of them were killed with the sword that came out of the mouth of the rider on the horse, and all the birds gorged themselves on their flesh.”

That is a parallel image to the river of blood flowing in Revelation 14. That's the Second Coming and the final battle

This is the day of salvation. This is the opportunity we have, before these things happen — before the ark door is closed and you find yourself on the wrong side of that door, outside of salvation. I am pleading with you, if you are outside and you know it, come to Christ while there is time. We are celebrating the Incarnation, the first coming; how different the Second Coming will be. How meek and mild was Jesus wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger! How beautiful is that image of the gentleness and peacefulness with which God is appealing and pleading with you to repent and come to Christ!

For those of us who have already found safety in the salvation of Christ, our job is to get this message out. Unbelievers are not ready for what will come on them suddenly. 1 Thessalonians 5:2-6 says, “…the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, ‘Peace and safety,’ destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. But you, brothers, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief. You are all sons of the light and sons of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be alert and self-controlled.” We must be children of the day.

The twin exhortations of 2 Peter 3: in light of all this, be holy, be evangelistic. It is what we are called to do. This month, talk to some unbelievers about the real gift of Christmas, God sending His Son into the world, that He might save us from the coming wrath. Ask what they think the season is all about, what their spiritual background is. Talk about their religious convictions, their holidays and festivals, and then share the truth that is eternally consequential, bigger than one season. Jesus is not the reason only for the season — He is the reason for everything, every moment. Share with people who need the Gospel.

Father, these are potent images, far greater than we could bear if it were not for the truth of the working of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. We know, Lord, that you are a patient God. We know that you are waiting for the sin of the Amorites to reach its full measure, and you are waiting for every single one of the elect who you knew by name before you formed them in their mother’s womb; waiting for each one of them to repent and come to Christ. And so, Lord, I pray that you would help us to be active, that we would not scatter but gather with Jesus. Jesus came to seek and to save the lost, and He said, “Everyone who does not gather with me scatters.” Help us, O Lord, to be active in evangelism, in gathering people to come to Christ. Help us to look beyond the festivities and the shopping and the errands, to look to a surrounding world of people who are “without hope and without God in the world.” Because judgment is coming, the sickle will swing and then it will be over. Help us to be faithful until that day comes. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

One of the hardest sermons I have ever preached — a very different kind of text than we are studying today — was the beautiful, magnificent soaring doxology at the end of Romans 11. After unfolding the doctrine of the Gospel, Paul ends by celebrating the greatness of God.

Romans 11:33-36 says, “Oh, the depths of the rich is the wisdom and the knowledge of God, how unsearchable His judgments and His past beyond tracing out. Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counselor? Who has ever given to God that God should repay Him? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever and ever."

I felt the weight of the text. I did not think I had the oratorical, exegetical, or homiletical skills to rise up to such an incredible text, with its joyful celebration of the wisdom of God in the Gospel. I thought it was beyond anything that I could do.

As we look at Revelation 14:9-11, I have the same problem with an opposite text. My emotions and experiences do not help me capture the weightiness of our subject with adequate words, emotion and tone. That is, that Hell is a place of eternal conscious torment — a fact taught clearly in Scripture.

I have prayed that God would enable me to speak in such a way that you would feel the weight of the truths in Revelation 14:9-11, and that He would open your heart and mind, especially for those who are outside Christ, that you would be warned and flee to Christ while there's time.

A number of years ago, I assisted in a funeral for a woman whom I did not know well. I do not remember the exact circumstances — she may have been the grandmother of one of the young people involved in our urban ministry. They asked if they could use the church for her funeral, and if I would read Scripture.

It is a tradition at funerals in some communities to have a time of testimony to honor the person who died. That is not our pattern but they asked for permission and I agreed. People stood up and spoke from their place in the pews to share their thoughts and memories of their loved one. 

One woman, the sister of the deceased, stood in her turn and stated, “Not everyone who dies goes to heaven.” Wow — total silence. “My sister didn't love the Bible, didn't love Jesus, didn't go to church. I can't lie, I have no great confidence that she's in Heaven right now. But we're still alive, and this funeral is a warning to all of us to flee to Christ while there's time.” Then she sat down.

Her simple, clear, short, truthful speech convicted me; I would not have spoken so plainly. I resolved that when given the opportunity to preach at future funerals, I would not fail to speak this clear, basic message: “It is appointed to man to die once, and after that, to face judgment.” [Hebrews 9:27]

The Bible reveals two destinations, Heaven or Hell. Today’s text describes Hell. It is one of the most challenging doctrines in the Bible, the idea that a righteous and holy God would consign people for eternity to conscious torment. This doctrine is the very reason that many in our world turn in disgust and unbelief from the God of the Bible. They cannot imagine a God who would choose infinite punishment for sins that were committed in space and time by finite people. Apart from Scripture, we can have no conception of Hell. Scripture teaches us about these invisible realities.

My understanding of Hebrews 11:1, based on what the Greek says, is this: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, [but also] the conviction of things not seen.” The word “conviction” relates to something that brings you to a point of realization of guilt, of the fact and weight of sin. Thus, faith has both assurance, a sweet, positive side, looking ahead with hope to the good things that God has promised, but also conviction, eyesight to see into the invisible spiritual realms to understand the threat or the warning for us as sinners. It is by faith we can see these invisible spiritual realities.

Hell as eternal conscious torment is an uncomfortable topic, and people tend to turn away from it as a doctrine. In 2015, in an interview, Pope Francis leaned toward annihilation for the lost sinner: “What happens to that lost soul? Will it be punished, and how? The response of Francis is distinct and clear: There is no punishment but the annihilation of that soul. All the others will participate in the beatitude of living in the presence of the Father. The souls that are annihilated will not take part in that banquet; with the death of the body their journey is finished.”

Obviously, this topic is one of the most difficult to face, but we cannot avoid doing so. Revelation 14:9-11 enables us to understand in part what the Bible teaches about it. Ironically, I believe that a healthy biblical meditation on Hell has the power to make Christians happier than ever. It is a paradox but it is true. The more we meditate on what we deserve but have been delivered from, the more a number of things happen:

Your thankfulness to God and to Christ will greatly increase. Your perspective on your own present sufferings will be helpful. You will turn away from murmuring and complaining. You will live a life of great joy and gratitude to God for what He has done in delivering you.

Apart from understanding this doctrine of eternal conscious torment, the words “savior” and “salvation” have little meaning. They imply a grave danger, not intended to apply to minor help. If we do not grasp our grave of danger, we do not see the need for a savior or salvation. But the Bible teaches that we do need a savior and we do need salvation. Praise God, it is available through faith in Christ now; today is still in the realm of the Day of Salvation that God has offered to all of us.

We are in the middle of Revelation, a book which pulls the veil back on the invisible spiritual realm. We see, above all, Jesus Christ and His glory, and we also see the future — “what must soon take place.”

We have been walking through this book chapter by chapter. In our current section, we now understand the spiritual force of evil in the heavenly realms. Satan, the dragon, has a vigorous hatred for the people of God — the saints. He presently attacks and accuses day and night, but in the future his hatred for and his attack against the people of God will greatly escalate.

He will bring forth his masterpiece of deception, the Antichrist, also called the Beast from the Sea, in Revelation 13. John does not use the word “antichrist” directly in Revelation but does in 1 and 2 John — it means “substitute Christ”, or one who takes the place of Christ. 2 Thessalonians 2 calls him the man of sin or the man doomed to destruction. Daniel calls him “the little horn..”

He will be a world ruler. According to Revelation 13, he will appear to be miraculously resurrected from a fatal wound and come back to life, thus winning the confidence of the world. Prior to this “miracle”, the world will suffer seven judgments initiated by trumpet blasts, described in Revelation 8-9. The ecology of the earth is ravaged — all the green grass and a third of the trees are burned up; a third of the oceans turn to blood; a third of the living creatures in the sea dies; and a third of the fresh water is poisoned.

We can imagine that in such a state of upheaval in the geopolitical realm, leaders will emerge. Eventually this one leader will come forth and take over the world. Revelation 13:7-8 says, “…it was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation. All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast…” Not only will he have control over the military and government, but he will be the focus of worship as well.

Revelation 13 also reveals a powerful false prophet called the Beast from the Earth, who will lead this new worldwide religion of worship for the Antichrist. He will build or create or craft a miraculous supernatural image, an idol, in honor of the Antichrist, and will use the machinery of the worldwide government, the police state, to compel worship.

At the end of Revelation 13, we have these words, “The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name."

Christians, those whose names have been written from before the foundation of the world in the Lamb’s Book of Life, will not partake in this false religion. They will not bow down and worship the idol or receive the mark of the beast, so they will be the focus of the Antichrist’s persecution and hatred. The prophet Daniel says he will kill many of them. He will wage war on them, and will win for a short time.

That is the context for Revelation 14. In the middle of the chapter, we see three angels, who are sent, one after the other, to warn people of the grave of danger of God’s imminent judgment.

Revelation 14:6-7 says, “Then I saw another angel flying in midair, and he had the eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth-- to every nation, tribe, language and people. He said in a loud voice, ‘Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come. Worship him who made the heavens, the earth, the sea and the springs of water.’”

Immediately a second angel follows, crying out, “Fallen! Fallen is Babylon The Great…” Babylon is that system of human culture and government and society united in rebellion against God, following the “lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life.” Revelation 14:8: “Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great, which made all the nations drink the maddening wine of her adulteries.”

The third angel is the focus of this sermon. Revelation 14:9-11 says, “A third angel followed them and said in a loud voice: "If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, he, too, will drink of the wine of God's fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and his image, or for anyone who receives the mark of his name.”

The people of that time, the final generation, will be under extreme pressure to worship the beast and his image, and to receive the mark of the beast in order to buy or sell. There are positive inducements for people to do so willingly — the Antichrist will be a compelling figure who will have, to some degree, rescued the world from economic disaster and the inability to eat or drink or even to survive under the previous judgments. Because of this, they will have an affection for him already. In addition, he is skillful but devious speaker and politician, attractive and compelling in his bearing. Adding to his persona, he is able to perform signs and wonders — his own resurrection from the dead will be one of many.

There are also negative inducements to worship the beast and obey his edicts — those who do receive the mark cannot buy or sell, and eventually will be put to death. A police state with supernatural, demonic powers to hunt down dissidents will engender overwhelming compulsion to bow down and worship. A great fear of the Antichrist and the police state and the government will fall on people worldwide.

But there is something infinitely worse than that which should supplant the temporary fear of Antichrist. Jesus said in Luke 12:4-5, “I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into Hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.”

Pastors, evangelists and missionaries who say, “I don't want to scare people into Heaven” are misguided at best. I would be delighted to scare people into Heaven, into an eternity in the presence of our Lord. Jesus did not mind scaring people. He admonished that we should fear God who can destroy us forever in Hell rather than fearing humans and human governments which can kill only the body and do no more after that. God is forcing a choice and warning the waverers even among believers: “Don't do it; fear God. Be willing to die for Christ.”

The pressure to take the mark will be unimaginable. Those who receive it do so willingly — it is a decisive spiritual act, not inadvertent. No one will stumble into it; there are no secret operatives or ninjas working for the Antichrist sneaking in and marking people while they sleep. It is a conscious decision that will be made in terms of one’s will in his heart to worship an idol.

The angel says, “If anyone receives the mark, he too will drink of the wine of God's fury.” The word “too” is interesting. It could refer to the second angel’s pronouncement: people are already drinking from the wine of the adulteries of Babylon The Great, and they will drink from the cup of God’s wrath “too.” Or it could refer to the many generations of the damned who had no opportunity to receive the mark of the beast because they died long before he came on the scene. They will receive the same torment as those who do receive it.

Regardless of the meaning of the word “too”, Hell is real. Verse 10 says, “…he, too, will drink of the wine of God's fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath.” The metaphor is one of completely absorbing, drinking in, being immersed in. The drink is described as the wine of God’s fury. Wine influences ones mind and heart.

Wrath is a strong immediate reaction from God — vehement, hot, passionate. Fury is more long-term indignation — a smoldering memory of a lifetime of rebellion by His creatures. It is long-standing, historical and intense. Used together, they greatly magnify the impact. It has been a settled fact in the mind of God for a long time that He will at some point unleash His rage like a burning forest fire or the sun. He holds back until the appointed time when He will set aside His patience.

Notice the strength of it. “…he, too, will drink of the wine of God's fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath.” Nothing is held back. It is undiluted, not mixed. In ancient times, people would mix wine with fruit juice or water to dilute its impact. This wine of God’s fury will be full strength, with maximum impact.

It is staggering to begin to comprehend the omnipotence and omniscience of God combined to focus like a laser beam on the destruction of an individual, like a laser beam focused down on a single individual. There is nothing more terrifying than that.

Verse 10 makes a simple prediction: “He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb.” This is surely the Lake of Fire from Revelation 20. The torment with burning sulfur, or fire and brimstone, similar to Sodom and Gomorrah, is constantly before the holy angels and the Lamb, Jesus Christ. The angels and Jesus are watching. This implies that there is no squeamishness, embarrassment, shame, or pity about this among the angels or with Jesus. It will not be done in a corner. God is not ashamed of the righteous display of His justice and holiness in His punishment of the wicked any more than He was ashamed to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and brimstone or the ancient world with a flood.

Isaiah 66:24 points to another audience. Isaiah says, “And they will go out and look upon the dead bodies of those who rebelled against me; their worm will not die, nor will their fire be quenched, and they will be loathsome to all mankind.” That implies that the redeemed are able to see it as well, which makes sense. Why would God hide it from His children? By then we can handle it and God is not ashamed of it. He wants us to know.

Revelation 21:4 says, “There will be no more death, mourning, crying or pain.” They will observe it without any crying, emotional pain, or anguish. Our experience in heaven will not in any way be diminished by knowing some of the damned. If anything, it will feed our thankfulness  and humility. We will realize we all deserved to be there; the only difference was the grace of God.

Verse 11 speaks of the eternality of Hell, “And the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and his image, or for anyone who receives the mark of his name.” Eternal conscious torment, the fact that there is absolutely no escape in the future, is one of the most difficult concepts for many to accept.

Like the hymn “Amazing Grace” says, “When we’ve been there 10,000 years, bright, shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise than when we first begun.” The mirror image of that is true in reference to Hell — no fewer days after 10,000 years. There is no future escape; the escape is now, today. “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.” This is the time to escape.

We benefit from looking wider to understand more of what the New Testament teaches about Hell, and what we are to do with that knowledge. Wayne Grudem says, “Hell is a place of eternal conscious punishment for the wicked.” Jonathan Edwards, in his famous 1741 sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, said:

“O sinner! consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in Hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it apart; and you have no interest in any Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment more."

Edwards struggled to find language to describe this reality. English literature classes in secular high schools across the country study this sermon as literature, typically for the purpose of debunking or mocking it to some degree. But why did he struggle with these images, with this language?

John Piper says, “What high school student is ever asked to come to grips with what really is at issue here? If the Bible is true, and if it says that someday Christ will tread his enemies like a winepress with anger that is fierce and almighty, and if you are a pastor charged with applying Biblical truth to your people so that they will flee the wrath to come, then what would your language be? What would you say to make people feel the reality of texts like these? Edwards labored over language, he labored over images and metaphors because he was so stunned and awed at the realities he saw in the Bible. Edwards believed that it was impossible to exaggerate the horror and reality of Hell. High school teachers would do well to ask their students the really probing question, ‘Why is it that Jonathan Edwards struggled to find images for wrath and Hell that shock and frighten, while contemporary preachers try to find abstractions and circumlocutions that move away from concrete, touchable Biblical pictures of unquenchable fire and undying worms and gnashing of teeth?’ If our students were posed with this simple, historical question, my guess is that some of the brighter ones would answer: ‘Because Jonathan Edwards really believed in Hell, but most preachers today don’t.’”

There is a natural human repugnance to this topic. Mark Twain compared the Jehovah of the Old Testament to the Jesus of the new and he said, “It’s a misunderstanding to think of Jehovah as a fire-breathing wrath-filled God, but Jesus as gentle, meek and mild. Jesus was a thousand billion times crueler than ever [Jehovah] was in the Old Testament... Meek and gentle? By and by we will examine that popular sarcasm by the light of the Hell which he invented.”

Charles Darwin said this, “I can hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true for if so, the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother, and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.” I would respond that wishing it to be true or not will not change the reality of it.

Clark Pinnock, a Canadian theologian who strayed far from his evangelical roots, said, “I was led to question the traditional belief in everlasting conscious torment because of moral revulsion and broader theological considerations, not first of all on scriptural grounds. [Do you hear that?] It just does not make any sense to say that a God of love will torture people forever for sins done in the context of a finite life.... It’s time for evangelicals to come out and say that the biblical and morally appropriate doctrine of Hell is annihilation, not everlasting torment.”

Even John Stott, who in every other respect was a faithful expositor of the Word, was drawn in by this. He said, “Emotionally, I find the concept [of eternal conscious torment] intolerable and do not understand how people can live with it without either cauterizing their feelings or cracking under the strain.”

More recently, Rob Bell published a book titled hopefully Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. Kevin DeYoung summarized it in this way, “Here’s the gist: Hell is what we create for ourselves when we reject God’s love. Hell is both a present reality for those who resist God and a future reality for those who die unready for God’s love.  Not quite ready when you die. Hell is what we make of Heaven when we cannot accept the good news of God’s forgiveness and mercy. But Hell is not forever. God will have his way. How can his good purposes fail? Every sinner will turn to God and realize he has already been reconciled to God, in this life or in the next.... In the end, love wins.”

The Bible does not teach these things. Jesus Christ taught more clearly and voluminously on Hell than anyone else because He came first to warn us of it, then to drink it for us to save us from it.

Matthew 5:21-22, the Sermon on the Mount: “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of Hell.”

Mark 9:43-48: “You have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery, but I tell you that anyone who even looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into Hell, where the fire never goes out. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into Hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into Hell, where ‘their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.’”

Matthew 8:11-12: “I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Matthew 13:41-42, the parable of the weeds and the wheat: “The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father."

Luke 16:23-24, the rich man and Lazarus: “In Hell, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’”

From these and other passages, we have the doctrine of Hell regarding its purpose, its percentage, its environment, and its effects.

What is the purpose of Hell? Hell is punishment for unrepentant sinners who have not claimed Christ as their Savior, for both sins of commission — things that we did and should not have done — and sins of omission — things that we should have done and did not do. Revelation 21:8 says, “But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars-- their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”

Note the sin of omission in Matthew 25:41-42: “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink…’” and so on.

What percentage of people will be in Hell? Jesus said in Matthew 7:13-14, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”  “Many” and “only a few” imply that the overwhelming majority of people are on the road to destruction.

What is the environment of Hell? It is likened to a lake of eternal fire. Some say that is a metaphor; if so, then a metaphor for what? “Metaphor” is merely a word, which is always a lesser experience than the thing itself, so that does not ease the reality.

What are the effects of Hell? First, every good and perfect gift that anyone has ever experienced, including common grace blessings, comes from God and indicates that God Himself is present. All of that will be removed because God’s presence is removed. This is important for unsaved friends who think they want to go to Hell because they think people they enjoyed as friends in this life will be there. Blessings of friendship and joy and celebration and happiness will be absent, leaving only bitterness and anger and suffering and hatred. All lawful and unlawful pleasures that they lived for and traded their souls for on earth will be gone.

Those in Hell are cast out, separated from everything good. 2 Thessalonians 1:8-9 says, “He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord.” They are shut out, as the five foolish, unprepared virgins find themselves in Matthew 25:11-12. They knock on the door and cry, “‘Sir! Sir!' they said. ‘Open the door for us!’ But he replied, ‘I tell you the truth, I don't know you.’”

We are responsible to bear the truth to those who speak with a very light-hearted attitude about and preference for Hell.

Second, conscious torment is taught in Scripture. In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, the rich man was aware of where he was and knew his own history. Abraham told him in Luke 16:25, “…remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony.” He was aware that he had brothers that he wanted to warn and was regretful about things. That is conscious torment.

Third, it is everlasting. The fire never goes out. Revelation 14:11 says, “And the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever. There is no rest day or night."

Fourth, it is a place of regret. Matthew 13:50 says, “…there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.”

Fifth, it is utter darkness. 2 Peter 2:17 “Blackest darkness is reserved for them.” Matthew 22:13 “…cast him into the outer darkness.”

We must refute a foolish sentiment: “God does not send anyone to Hell.” I hear it often from believers who affirm the reality of Hell but try to protect God from people’s aversion to the topic, as though God needed defending. They say it is not really God who sends people to Hell, that they go there of their own free will, that all of their lives, they have chosen to go separate ways from God, and God is in the end giving them what they have always wanted. That does not line up with the things we have studied today. No one will send himself to Hell on judgement day. When the reality of its horrors is revealed, they must be tied hand and foot and cast there by the angels. Many passages teach that. No one willingly goes there simply because they prefer to go there rather than be with God and with the saints.

First, this is a motive for fear and repentance and to come to Christ. We should not despise this as a motive — it is right to fear and flee the wrath to come into the arms of Jesus. According to several Scriptures, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Again from the hymn “Amazing Grace,” “’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved.” Every non-Christian in the sound of my voice should be motivated to flee to Christ now upon considering the realities of Hell. You do not know how much longer you have in this life, and after that it will be too late.

D.L. Moody tells a story in a sermon he preached on Hell: A man emerging from a saloon, getting on his horse, asked a deacon of the church who was passing by, “How far is it to Hell?” He did not know how to answer. The man rode off and the deacon turned and walked away, when he heard a sudden noise in the opposite direction. He turned back to see the horse rear and unseat the man, who broke his neck and died. For that man, the answer to his question was “Not far at all.”

This morning, as I drove here, I came upon a very bad accident. We were probably the second car on the scene; it must happened no more than 90 seconds before we got there. A somewhat heavyset man was holding his chest sitting off to the side holding his chest. I worried about his heart condition, but he said the seat belt and the air bag got him. His left front wheel was completely severed and lying apart from the body of the car with a part of the axle and a bunch of grease. I wheeled that out of the road and then sat with the man until the police and the ambulance came. The point is, he did not imagine that would happen to him this morning. I did not guess when I left my house that I would be present to talk to and pray for an accident victim. Thankfully, he is a believer and was on his way to worship at his church.

The point is, we do not know how long we have, so this is an inducement to flee to Christ, to run to our only refuge. Jesus died on the cross in our place that we might have eternal life. Hell is eternal, but it is not life. It is, however, escapable. You need only to turn away from the idea of your own goodness and righteousness and good works, and in faith, repent of your sins and trust in Jesus. See Him as your Savior.

I do not know language I can use to plead with you any more plainly. Do not put it off, do not think that you need more information, do not be afraid of what your unsaved friends will say. Do not fear anything except God. Today is the day of salvation.

Second, if you have fled to Christ, then let this be an infinite source of gratitude to God for saving you. This Holy God, who is a consuming fire, is the Father of the prodigal son. He has reached out to you and welcomed you back and forgiven all of your debts. “There is [for you] therefore now no condemnation,” since you are in Christ Jesus. Be forever thankful to Him.

I say this lovingly: If you complain of bodily aches and pains, stop it. Seek medical help; take your medicines. But do not let infirmities dominate your mind. God has delivered you from Hell. If you complain about of temporary setbacks and difficulties in the financial realm, stop it. God has delivered you from Hell. If you complain of feelings of isolation and rejection and loneliness that you feel the church of Christ should be but is not alleviating, stop it. God has delivered you from Hell. You have been delivered from an eternity of bodily pain, financial burden and isolation. It hard for some of us to imagine, but there will be no introverts, no recluses, in heaven. We will be very social there; you have been delivered from ultimate isolation. This doctrine has paradoxical power to make you eternally happy.

Charles Dickens’ third ghost in A Christmas Carol shows Ebenezer Scrooge that he would die. He seems shocked by the fact and wants to deny it. The musical film version of the story with Albert Finney, Scrooge, goes further than Dickens seemed to intend in that scene. The third ghost shows Scrooge an image of himself in Hell. When he wakes up after that ghost departs, the night is over, and it is Christmas day. He hugs his bed post and realizes he is not in Hell but very much alive. He begins lavishly giving and doing good things to as many people as he could find. That seems an appropriate response, a surge of joy and happiness and energy, to the realization of what God has done for us in Christ. You are free from condemnation and all your needs are met; be grateful and live to serve others.

Third, worship Christ for his courage. This enables us, as the hymn reflects, to “Go with me to dark Gethsemane”  to see him recoil from a cup as he was praying on the night he was betrayed. The cup contained exactly what we have studied this morning — Hell, with all its characteristics and implications. The Father was offering Him the cup of Hell to drink in Gethsemane.

Jesus prayed three times, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will… if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.” [Matthew 26:39, 42] That is the most courageous and loving act any human has ever done in history. The more we meditate on the torments of Hell, the more we understand the courage of Jesus. He drank that cup to its bitter dregs for us on the cross.

Fourth, this is a motive for personal holiness. Matthew 5:27-29, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into Hell.”

Is fear of Hell a valid motivation for Christians to be holy and not sin sexually? Jesus would say yes. Do not worry about analyzing that theologically. Flee sin. If some aspect of your life, whether electronic entertainment or pleasure or internet involvement or anything, is causing you to sin, cut it out. It is better to eliminate it than to go to Hell. If you think, “I am okay with going to Hell if it means I can continue living this way,” do not be deceived. Paul plainly warns in Ephesians 5:3-4, 6, “But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving… Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be partners with them.” So yes, fear of Hell is a proper motivation to take specific steps of practical holiness.

Fifth, sorrow for the lost. You are surrounded every day by people whom Jesus said are on that broad highway to destruction, to Hell. Ask God to give you a vision, a revelation of what that punishment is. What does wailing and gnashing of teeth look like? What can you do to be grieved and speak up?

Paul said, concerning the unbelieving Jews, Romans 9:1-4 “I speak the truth in Christ-- I am not lying, my conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit — I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel.” 

If you are not there yet, be honest and confess, “I don't have much of a sorrow for the lost, not like I should. God, would you work in my heart so I grieve over the spiritual destination of those who are outside of Christ.” He will move you to zeal and activity in evangelism and missions.

Years ago, Hudson Taylor, a great missionary in the inland regions of China, spoke at a missions conference to motivate complacent Scottish Christians in a large church to get involved in the mission to China. He told them a true story, something that happened to him while he was in Ningpo, China. While traveling on a junk, a type of coastal boat, he met a Chinese man with the Western name of Peter who had spent a little time in England. This man had not come to Christ yet. He was very interested in the gospel that Hudson Taylor was sharing, but he was also struggling with depression and discouragement, and he did not make a commitment to Christ. A short time later on that same trip, he fell overboard. 

Hudson Taylor called out to some Chinese fishermen who were fishing with a dragnet to come fish the man out before was too late. One fisherman called back, “It’s not convenient.” Taylor shouted, “Don’t speak of convenience, someone is dying!” They refused, so he offered to pay them the equivalent of $5. “Not enough” they replied. He countered, “I’ll give you everything I have in my pocket.” “How much is that?” “$14,” he answered. They agreed. Within a few moments, they fished Peter up, but it was too late; they could not resuscitate him.

As he told this story, the Scottish Christians that were listening were utterly indignant toward the fishermen who had such a callous attitude. He then replied, “But you are acting like the body is worth more than the soul. What about we who have the gospel message and we are able to deliver people from eternity in Hell, and we do nothing because it's not convenient?”

Evangelism and missions will never be convenient; it will always be costly. I would urge you to look for opportunities at work or on campus to share the gospel and warn others of the judgment that is to come.

Let us be faithful as a church to support missionaries that are on the field right now, through the IMB Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. Support them financially. The needs are great — the cost of having missionary units in the field is greater than ever before. We as a church need to be faithful and sacrificial in sending missionaries to the ends of the earth.

Father, this is a difficult, deep, sobering topic, and I pray, Father, that we would be able to feel the weight of the truth of these things in Revelation 14:9-11, that we not shrink back from Him, that we would understand that Jesus drank this for us that we might have eternal life, and that we would give Him thanks, and Father, that we will give You thanks for sending Your beloved Son and pouring out your wrath on Him, our substitute, our lightning rod, that we might be delivered and protected. I pray one more time for any that are here, who walked in this place unconverted, that they would believe in Christ while there is time and trust in Him. O Lord, I pray that You give us a greater zeal than we have ever displayed before for evangelism right here in the Raleigh-Durham area, and then missions to the ends of the earth. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.