Sermon Transcript

0:00:14.0

Imagine a place that is so quiet you can hear your heartbeat.  It’s not hard to imagine if you travel to the Orfield Labs in Minnesota.  This is a place that created a place just like that.  They call it an echo chamber.  They say that the chamber absorbs 99.99% of all sounds.  The Guinness Book of World Records called it the quietest place on earth.  And it’s the place where a lot of corporations go to test the sounds levels of their products.  It’s where NASA sends astronauts to test the stress levels that they might experience in a very quiet outer space.  The folks at Orfield Labs say that we don’t do very well in absolute silence.  In fact, the longest period of time anyone has endured the echo chamber is 45 minutes. They say most people become disoriented after only a few minutes in the chamber.  And that’s true for a lot of us, isn’t it?  We live in a busy, busy world and a noisy, noisy world.  It’s hard for us to find a place of quiet solitude.  And even when we do we’re little bit, you know, kind of disturbed by it.  We don’t like complete silence and complete solitude.  We’ve always got a little radio playing in the background or some kind of noise back there.  But a place of absolute quiet where you can’t hear the hum of an air conditioning unit or something like that, it’s really disturbing.  Which reminds me of what John said in the opening section of Revelation 8.  He says, “When the Lamb,”—that is Jesus—“opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.”  Now, a half an hour isn’t very long for us.  Most of us, you know, waste 30 minutes watching some silly television program, and we don’t think twice about it.  And 30 minutes compared to eternity where God dwells is just a blip on the radar screen.  But 30 minutes of absolute silence in the presence of God?  That’s a pretty disturbing thing.  It’s meant to grab out attention.  It’s that pregnant pause that says you need to lean into this a little bit.  In the context of Revelation 8 and 9, and really the whole book, this pause, this silence in heaven is really designed to tell us that there’s something bad that’s about to happen.  John in his vision that he sees, he sees seven angels around the throne of God.  And each one of those seven angels is handed a trumpet, and they're getting ready to blow the trumpet.  Now, in the Bible when a trumpet blows, it usually announces something that’s about to happen, like a war or some impending judgment.  Paul tells us in 1 Thessalonians 4 that when Jesus returns to rapture His Church, the trumpet of God will sound.  Well, these are seven trumpets that will announce impending judgment upon planet earth.  And John sees these seven angels gathered around the throne of God, each with a trumpet.  And then another angel comes in, and he has a golden censer.  And in that golden censer are the prayers of the saints.  It’s the second time in the book of Revelation where we’ve come upon the prayers of the saints in the presence of God.  Remember a few chapters ago where we met the 24 elders and their representation of the Church, we said.  And they have golden bowls in their hands.  And inside there are the prayers of the saints.  Aren’t you glad that your prayers don’t get lost somewhere out there in cyberspace?  God collects two things, the Bible says.  He collects our tears.  The psalmist tells us that.  And He also collects the prayers of the saints.

0:04:01.5

So John sees all of this in this vision while on the island of Patmos.  And then something very dramatic happens.  This angel who has this golden censer with the prayer of the saints, he reaches under the altar of God and grabs some fire.  And he tosses it into the censer, mixed in with the prayers of the saints.  And then, like a major league baseball player throwing a 90-mile-an-hour fastball, he takes that censer full of fire and the prayers of the saints and he hurls it at planet earth.  And John says what followed were peals of thunder and rumblings and flashes of lighting and an earthquake.  All descriptions of the judgment of God.  It’s interesting that the fire of God was mixed with the prayers of the saints, maybe because those souls that were under the altar of God—the martyred souls who were crying out in prayer to God that their blood would be avenged—maybe the prayers of the saints have something to do with the initiation of God’s wrath.  I don’t exactly know, but it’s interesting that all of that was mixed together there.  And all of this is a picture of what the writer of Hebrews says, that our God—and remember this—is a consuming fire.  And it’s a terrible, even a dreadful thing, to fall into the hands of the living God.  Those words are in the pages of scripture, friends.  Oh yes, He is a good, good Father who loves us and is full of grace.  And He’s full of mercy.  But there is a side to him, another side that you also need to understand.  It’s a side that will pour out wrath and judgment on the inhabitants of planet earth who have rejected His love.  And when He does, He is fully righteous and fully justified, 100% justified, in doing so.  I don’t say that with glee.  I don’t say that with any, you know, yippidee yahoo in my heart.  But I’m just saying, this is a part of how God has revealed Himself that—if we’re gonna have a full and complete and biblical understanding of the God of the Bible and who He is and what planet earth looks like as we race to the end of the age, we must leave room in our theology for a God who will use evil for His own righteous purposes without compromising His own righteous and His own holiness.  You have room in your theology for that?  You say, “Well, I don’t want to serve a God like that.”  Well, you serve a god that you’ve fashioned in your own mind that’s inconsistent with the way He has revealed Himself.  And I think one of the Ten Commandments calls that idolatry, right?  No, we worship God as He has revealed Himself.  This is the apocalypse, the revelation, the unveiling of Jesus Christ, who came once as the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world.  Who is coming again as a conquering lion, and with that brings the wrath of the Lamb and the judgment of God.

0:07:00.3

We’ve been studying through Revelation.  And chapters 6 through 18, you remember, details that period of time in future Bible prophecy known at the Tribulation on planet earth; 21 specific judgments that come upon the inhabitants of planet earth.  Seven of those in what are known as the seal judgments, then seven trumpet judgments, then seven old judgments.  Most Bible teachers believe that the seal judgments and the trumpet judgments all happen in the first half or the first three and a half years of the Tribulation period.  If that’s the case then, oh my, the devastation, the calamity, the catastrophe that come upon planet earth in such a short period of time through the seal judgments and the trumpet judgments that we’ll look at is beyond our imagination.  John does his best under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to write down and describe what he was seeing in the vision there on the island of Patmos.  One other thing before we get to the specifics of the seven trumpet judgments.  What differentiates the seven trumpet judgments from the seal judgments, one thing is that the trumpet judgments all come directly from the hand of God.  And it’s an ominous thing to consider, let along to read about.

0:08:14.7

So let’s pick it up in verse 6 where John says, “Now the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared to blow them.”  And he says in verse 7, “The first angel blew his trumpet, and there followed hail and fire, mixed with blood, and these were thrown upon the earth.  And a third of the earth was burned up, and a third of the trees were burned up, and all green grass was burned up.  The second angel blew his trumpet, and something like a great mountain, burning with fire, was thrown into the sea, and a third of the sea became blood.  A third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.  The third angel blew his trumpet, and a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water.  The name of the star is Wormwood.  A third of the waters became wormwood, and many people died from the water, because it had been made bitter.  The fourth angel blew his trumpet, and a third of the sun was struck, and a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of their light might be darkened, and a third of the day might be kept from shining, and likewise a third of the night.”  Now, let’s take a break right there.  Take a deep breath.  I mean, that’s a lot to digest, is it not?  Four of the trumpets blown.  And some of this sounds a little bit like the plagues of Egypt that befell the Egyptians many years ago when Moses came to the Pharaoh and said, “Let my people go.”  And Pharaoh hardened his heart over and over and over again.  And there were hail storms and bloody rivers and darkness that came upon…I mean, just one plague after another after another.  Some of this is reminiscent of that.  For example, the first trumpet speaks of hail, fire, and blood that comes upon the earth in such a way that one third of the earth is burned up.  We’ve all seen summer fires that devastate places like California and other parts of our country and other parts of the earth.  But nothing like this where one third of the green grass on planet earth is burned up.  You ever lived in a place where there’s not much green grass?  I lived in a place like that once.  My first job out of college was in New York City.  And I was this, you know, hayseed from Indiana who makes his way to New York City.  And I was there for about six months in a training program, a corporate training program.  Other than Central Park, there’s just not much of a blade of grass anywhere in that concrete jungle.  And after a while it just kind of got to me, you know.  Like, give me a blade of grass somewhere.  You know, I mow somebody’s grass.  Just let me go do it.  But imagine one third of planet earth and the green grass burned up.

0:11:07.9

The second trumpet blows, and John says he sees something like a great mountain burning with fire that slams into the planet.  Well, we don’t have to spiritualize or allegorize this to say something, you know, random that it means.  It’s easy to see this as perhaps a giant meteor that slams into the earth.  Scientists are telling us all the time that meteors are just missing planet earth.  And given the tilt of the earth and the rotation of the earth, it’s any wonder that more meteors don’t hit planet earth.  Colossians 1 tells us that Jesus sustains all the physics of planet earth and the tilt of the earth and the seasons and the rotation and the distance from the sun.  You mess with that just a little bit and great catastrophe comes to our planet.  And perhaps that’s what happens here.  Perhaps the one who holds the whole world in His hands adjusts the rotation just slightly enough to where a giant meteor, this great mountain burning with fire, slams into the earth.  And did you notice the economic and environmental disasters that are taking place on planet earth here?  Not only the green grass that is all burned up, but John tells us that a third of the maritime fleet, a third of the ships in the oceans are destroyed.  Perhaps because of the giant tidal waves that are created by a giant meteor that hits planet earth.  But in addition to that, a third of the marine life is destroyed.  If you love seafood as I do, there’s not gonna be much seafood left.  Your favorite seafood restaurant might go out of business because of the devastation to marine life.  And think of the trickle effect of ruin to the world’s food supply, not to mention the seafood restaurants and all of the chain of supply there that has to close down their businesses.  Environmental disasters, economic disasters come upon the earth.

0:13:15.1

The third trumpet sounds, and John describes what sounds like another meteor.  Verse 10, “The third angel blew his trumpet, and a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water.”  This is where another giant meteor perhaps slams into planet earth and pollutes a third of the drinking water on the planet.  There’s a name given to this star.  John says its name is Wormwood.  Interesting, there’s a little plant in the Middle East that’s a bitter plant when you taste it named Wormwood.  And it causes all the spring waters, the drinking water supplies to become bitter, John tells us.  It’s also interesting that C.S Lewis in his book on spiritual warfare called The Screwtape Letters, he names the junior devil in training…calls him Wormwood after this star right here.  And then John describes the fourth trumpet where the light from the sun and the moon and the stars is diminished by one third.  Another one reminiscent of the plagues of Egypt where darkness came across the earth, or at least that part of it in Egypt.  And picture here the God of the Bible and of Genesis 1 who created the heavens and the earth and who said, “Let there be light,” deciding, “Now I’m gonna dim the lights from the sun, the moon, and the stars by one third.”  Again, imagine the environmental disaster as plants and vegetation that rely on the light from the sun for the process of photosynthesis, that all of that is disturbed and messed up in some way and the environmental disaster that follows.  All of this, friends, describes, well, something that Jesus described.  It is very reminiscent of that.  Luke 21:25-26 where Jesus is talking about the end of the age to His disciples.  And He says, “And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth distress of nations in perplexity because of the roaring of the sea and the waves, people fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world.”  He says, “For the powers of the heavens will be shaken.”  Certainly as the first four trumpets are blown by those four angels and the judgment of God falls upon this earth, the powers of heaven are shaken in all of the ways that we’ve described here.  And I can just imagine the powerful people on planet earth not knowing what to say, not knowing what to do other than to blame it all on man-caused climate change or something like that rather than seeing that the God of heaven and earth is pouring out His wrath and it’s time to repent.

0:16:14.2

Now, at the end of chapter 8 John pauses a little bit.  And he says in verse 13, “Then I looked, and I heard an eagle crying with a loud voice as it flew directly overhead, ‘Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth, at the blasts of the other trumpets that the three angels are about to blow!’”  So we’ve blown the first four trumpets.  There are three more trumpets to come.  And John pauses, and he sees this eagle flying in heaven.  By the way, are there animals in heaven?  Birds and animals in heaven?  Well, there seem to be, right?  And this one is kind of like a scene out of Dr. Doolittle.  This one talks, this angel does.  “Woe, woe, woe,” he says.  What’s coming in the next three trumpet judgments are so devastating that this eagle makes this pronouncement over John and those that are in heaven.  “Woe, woe, woe,” he says.  It kind of reminds of the psychologist who was teaching a psychiatry class, a beginning class in college.  And on day one he just wanted to keep it real simple.  And he looked at the guy over here from Arkansas, and he says, “So tell me.  What’s the opposite of joy?”  And the boy says, “Well, I think I know the answer.  The opposite of joy is sadness.”  Looks over here to a young lady who was from Oklahoma and says, “Young lady, do you know the opposite of depression?”  And she says, “I think I know the answer to that question.  The opposite of depression is happiness.”  And then in the back of the room—he came in late—was a good ol' boy from Texas.  He had his cowboy hat on and he had his boots on.  Just as he sat down, the professor says, “Hey, Mr. Cowboy, do you know the opposite of woe?”  And the boys says, “Yeah, I think I do.  That would be giddy up, sir.”  I just dropped that in for a little lightheartedness in between the fourth trumpet and the fifth trumpet.  We need a little bit of that on this day, don’t we?

0:18:15.1

Let’s read on chapter 9.  Before we do though, do understand that the word “woe” appears about a hundred time in the Bible.  In Isaiah 5 it appears seven times.  And one of those times Isaiah says, “Woe to those who call evil, good and good, evil.”  And he goes on with, you know, six other “woe” statements.  From the lips of Jesus Himself this word came eight times in Matthew 23.  If you ever thought Jesus was politically correct, just read the Gospels.  He wasn’t.  In fact, He looked at the Pharisees.  And eight times He says, “Woe (0:19:00.0) to you, Scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites.”  And He laid them low with truthful words.  This word “woe” speaks of impending doom or impending judgment.  And maybe that good ol’ boy from Texas was right.  It is the opposite of giddy up in the sense that when the culture is galloping toward evil and toward darkness we need to go “Whoa, whoa, whoa.  Stop what you're doing.  Turn around and repent.”  But this eagle declares to those who dwell on earth that three more trumpets are coming.  Time to strap on your seatbelts here.  Chapter 9 and verse 1, “And the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and,” John says, “I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit.  He opened the shaft of the bottomless pit, and from the shaft (0:20:00.1) rose smoke like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke from the shaft.  Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth.  They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any green plant or any tree, but only those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads.  They were allowed to torment them for five months, but not to kill them, and their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings someone.  And in those days people will seek death and will not find it.  They will long to die, but death will flee from them.”  John sees a star falling from heaven.  It’s not hard to figure out who this is.  It’s a picture of Lucifer, that high-ranking angel that so pictured the beauty and the glory of God.  But he wanted to be God.  And he rebelled against heaven.  And he took one third of the angelic host with him, the scripture tells us, who then served him as demons.  And this star fallen from heaven, some say this is the second time perhaps that Lucifer or Satan the devil fell.  Whether it’s the second or a reminder of the first, John says that when he fell to planet earth he had a key, a key to subterranean place known as the abyss in the Greek language, or the bottomless pit.  And he takes that key and he opens it up.  And he unleashes a horde of evil spirits onto planet earth that cause untold devastation and havoc on planet earth.  He says they looked like locusts and have the power of scorpions.  Now, when a scorpion stings you, it doesn’t kill you.  Nobody dies from a scorpion’s sting.  A scorpion’s sting just lingers.  The pain just lingers on and on and on.  And John says that these evil spirits released from the bottomless pit have five months to inflict pain and suffering on planet earth.  For 150 days these filthy, frustrated, angry demons who have been locked up in the abyss for a long, long time have 150 days to wreak havoc.

0:22:31.8

Now, I believe that these particular demons are the ones that Peter mentions in 2 Peter 2:4 when he says, “God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment.”  Jude says a similar thing in Jude 6.  “And the angels who did not stay within their proper dwelling he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day.”  What’s that all about?  Well, as I understand scripture, when Lucifer rebelled against God and took one third of the angelic host with him, God in heaven took a portion of those demons and locked them in the bottomless pit.  The rest of them were given permission to roam planet earth along with the devil himself, who is not omniscient and omnipresent.  But he has a whole army of demons who are doing his bidding.  Those that were locked into the abyss were locked up for a particular time, hour, day, year.  They were locked up for the time when the fifth trumpet blows and that star falls from heaven.  He’s got a key to the abyss.  He unlocks it, and hordes of evil spirits who have been locked up for who knows how long…but they’re angry.  They’re frustrated.  They’re filthy.  And they got 150 days, five months, to wreak their havoc on this earth.  And it’s a devastating time.  It’s a devastating time.

0:24:06.8

John goes on to describe get face of evil.  Verse 7, “In appearance the locusts were like horses prepared for battle: on their heads were what looked like crowns of gold; their faces were like human faces, their hair like women’s hair, and their teeth like lions’ teeth; they had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the noise of their wings was like the noise of many chariots with horses rushing into battle.  They have tails and stings like scorpions, and their power to hurt people for five months is in their tails.  They have as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit.  His name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he is called Apollyon.”  Now, some Bible prophecy teachers have become a little too enthusiastic, in my opinion, on how they interpret John’s description here.  And they want to say this is a description of, you know, the B29 bomber or black hawk helicopters, you know, with those scorpion tails.  And I think that’s going a little bit too far.  I think what John is doing is giving us a picture of the unseen spiritual realities, the spiritual warfare that is not seen with human eyes but whose affect is felt on planet earth.  Remember, Paul said in Ephesians 6:12, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and power, against the rulers of darkness of this world.”  He described…he pulled back the veil, as it were, and gave us a glimpse into the unseen spiritual realities.  And John does a similar thing here.  He does the best he can to describe what we cannot see with human eyes but will have a devastating effect on planet earth.  And he says again, these locust-like creatures, these filthy, frustrated, angry, evil spirits are unleashed onto planet earth.  And they do so for one reason, and that is to bring great devastation onto planet earth.

0:26:17.6

John tells us that in addition to these who are released, that there is one particular angel.  And you’ve got to understand that the devil is highly organized and there is a hierarchy.  You know, again, Paul said, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood but principalities, powers, rulers of darkness.”  There are demons that are assigned and given rankings in hell.  And there is one particular angel or demon that comes out of the abyss to lead this army, this horde of evil spirits.  And in the Hebrew his name is Abaddon, and in the Greek his name is Appolyon.  And it means one thing, and that’s “destroyer”.  Again, these are the fallen angels that God locked up into the abyss.  They are saved for a particular day.  And you have to factor in to your theology here again a God who uses evil.  He reaches down into the abyss and releases these evil spirits at a time that is consistent with the day, the hour, the year, the appointed time for which they had been locked up.  And He uses evil for His own righteous purposes without compromising His own righteousness and His own holiness.  That’ll do some wonders to your theology and your understanding of who God is.  But this is what John is picturing for us here.

0:27:44.4

If that isn’t enough, just hold onto your seatbelts just a little bit longer here.  Verse 12, “The first woe has passed; behold, two woes are still to come.”  No wonder the eagle flew across heaven and said, “Woe, woe, woe.”  Be aware of what’s happening here.  John goes on in verse 13 and says, “Then the sixth angel blew his trumpet, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar before God, saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, ‘Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.’  So the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour, the day, the month, and the year, were released to kill a third of mankind.  The number of mounted troops was twice ten thousand times ten thousand; I heard their number,” John says.  “And this is how I saw the horses in my vision and those who rode them: they wore breastplates the color of fire and of sapphire and of sulfur, and the heads of the horses were like lions’ heads, and fire and smoke and sulfur came out of their mouths.  By these three plagues a third of mankind was killed, by the fire and smoke and sulfur coming out of their mouths.  For the power of the horses is in their mouths and in their tails, for their tails are like serpents with heads, and by means of them they wound.”  Again, an awesome description of the devastation that these evil spirits bring.  And John pictures four more demons that have been locked up there in the abyss that are released almost like terrorists released from Guantanamo Bay.  They’ve been locked up in this prison for all this time.  They’re angry.  They’re mad.  They want to get out there and wreak havoc on the earth.  And they’re given a time to do this.  And John says, interestingly enough, that these four demons have been locked up hear the River Euphrates.  Now, we have a decision to make a Bible interpreters here.  Does the River Euphrates mean the River Euphrates, you know the one you learn about in geography class and that’s on the maps?  The one that you can travel to today?  Is it that River Euphrates?  Or do we spiritualize and allegorize this in some way?  Well, when the plain sense make the best sense, that’s the sense to go with.  And the River Euphrates here means the River Euphrates.  And, again, John is giving us a picture of unseen spiritual realities.  Things that we don’t see with the human eye but are just as real as anything else that we might experience in the physical realm.  And apparently, in addition to all the other demons and to this one, there were four that were locked up in the abyss near the River Euphrates.  A Bible prophecy expert named Tim LaHaye explains why the reference to Euphrates.  He says, “These four evil angels are today bound in that area of the world.  And it’s no accident, for it seems that some of the world’s greatest events took place near the River Euphrates.  Since it was the boundary for the Garden of Eden near this river man’s first sin was committed.  It was evidently near here that the first murder was committed, the first war fought, and the Tower of Babel erected in defiance against God.”  He says, “It was near the River Euphrates that Nimrod built the city of Babylon, where idolatry received its origin and surged through the world.  It was to Babylon that the children of Israel were taken captive.  And it will be in this area of the world that the final sin of man will culminate.”  LaHaye goes on to say, “According to Revelation 18, the city of Babylon will be rebuilt and become the headquarters for the commercial, religious, and military activities of the world under the Antichrist’s rule.”  It’s not hard to imagine the last part and the role that the ancient city of Babylon plays.  Because even Saddam Hussein when he was in power was rebuilding the city of Babylon.  That’s changed some.  But the book of Revelation puts the city of Babylon at the center piece of much of what’s happening during the Tribulation period.

0:31:53.6

These four demons that are found at the River Euphrates lead an army of demonic soldiers who are released from the abyss.  Here is where another math lesson comes in.  John says, “I saw ten thousand times ten thousand of them.”  Two hundred million demons released from the abyss for one purpose—to kill one third of mankind on planet earth.  Now, the last time we read about such devastation, such human carnage on the planet was when the fourth horseman of the apocalypse released.  Remember the seven seals?  The four horsemen were the first four seals.  And the fourth one produced such devastation on planet earth that the Bible says one fourth of the population died during that time.  Again, this is future Bible prophecy.  And if you just think about the world’s population now, 7.2 billion, and growth projections, you could easily imagine 8 billion on planet earth.  Two billion people dead as a result of the fourth horseman of the apocalypse.  Six billion left.  Now, as a result of the sixth trumpet, one third of the remaining population, another two billion people…are you following the math here?  Because at the end of the first three and a half years of the Tribulation, one half of the world’s population is dead.  And we’ve seen big numbers of human carnage in past history.  World War II 50 million people died in both World War I and World War II.  I just heard on the news this weekend—it’s happening as we live—400,000 people have died in Syria because of the bloodshed enacted by the dictator there.  It’s happening in our lifetime.  But when we get into the Tribulation period, those kinds of numbers and the human carnage that results escalates to numbers that…it’s just beyond our wildest comprehension.  One half of the world’s population dead by the middle of the Tribulation period.  And you’ve got to ask yourself, whatever happened to that good, good Father? Whatever ever happened to “God so loved the world”?  Well, you’ve got to be careful just having, you know, one kind of lopsided understanding of how God has revealed Himself.  It’s easy to talk about the love of God and the mercy of God and His grace.  And we are certainly living in a time—we call it the age of grace, the Church age—where the rain falls on the just and the unjust.  Where a beautiful, sunny day in Virginia Beach falls on the believer and the unbeliever at the same time.  Just a picture of God’s grace.  And it’s during that time when the scripture says today is the day of salvation. Because there is coming a day…and God is gracious enough to give us a little glimpse into the future and to tell us a little bit about that race toward the end of the age and the last days of planet earth prior to the second coming of Jesus Christ.  He’s gracious enough and kind enough to give us a forewarning.  But there is coming a day where we see the other side of Him.  The other side that is righteous and holy and 100% just in unleashing His wrath upon this earth.  And I’m just here to tell you, friends, you don’t want to be here during that time, and neither do I.  As we’ve said in weeks past, the Church, the true Church made up of believers in Jesus Christ are not here on this earth during the Tribulation period.  You can escape the coming night, the coming darkness, and all the seal judgments and trumpet judgments.

0:36:05.5

But if you were here or you know somebody who is…you know, you would think that all this devastation would turn the remaining population to repent and run toward the God of heaven and earth.  But that’s not what happens.  Listen to what John says at the end of chapter 9 verse 20.  “The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk, nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.”  It’s a sobering picture.  It’s a sobering reminder of what we need to understand about the human heart.  It easily hardens and calcifies.  It easily gets us to a point where we curl up our five fingers into a fist and shake it in the face of almighty God.  And that’s a dangerous place to be.  That’s why oftentimes in the Old Testament when God was speaking of His chosen people He says, “I want to give you a heart of flesh, not of stone.”  Because the Bible says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.  Who can understand it?”  It calcifies.  It hardens.  It doesn’t soften naturally in the face of God.  Oh, God can woo us by His love and by His grace.  Or He can get our attention with untold calamity and catastrophe and judgment.  And He does both.  You says, “Well, I don’t like a God like that.  I don’t like a God who is full of anger and wrath.”  Okay.  Well, of the five sins listed in verses 20 and 21, the first one is idolatry.  You know, they would not give up worshipping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood.  And don’t think that idolatry is just a thing of the past.  We have our modern idols, our materialism or, you know, that shiny, new car that we drive or anything that replaces the place of prominence and priority that God deserves in our lives.  That’s idolatry.  And idolatry is anytime we fashion in our minds an image of God that is inconsistent with the way He has revealed Himself.  And so fair warning to all of us today just to guard our hearts.  Even as believers in Jesus Christ doing battle with the world, the flesh, and the devil, we have this daily responsibility to walk in the Spirit, to be filled with the Holy Spirit, to say no to the world, the flesh, and the devil and say yes to the Spirit of God.  That’s how we do battle in the Christian life, right?  But every time we say yes to the world, the flesh, and the devil and no to Jesus, our heart just drifts further and further away.  Like the old hymn writer says, “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it.  Prone to leave the God I love.”  Do you feel that struggle in your heart?  It’s that old sin nature trying to…though redeemed, that old sin nature trying to pull you back in.  Well, imagine an unbelieving world, that after all this calamity the heart is so hardened.  It is so calcified that not even great devastation on planet earth turns the heart to repent in the face of God.  

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And what I want to just conclude with this morning is just a passionate appeal to you and to me to make today a day of salvation.  If you’ve never trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior, this is fair warning.  This is God graciously giving you a glimpse into the future.  And there’s more to come.  And an opportunity to escape this through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.  Remember, this Jesus of Revelation, He’s the lamb who looks like a lion.  He’s the lion who looks like a lamb.  He came as the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world.  That’s what the cross was all about and the resurrection that followed.  But He promised, “I’m coming again.”  And this time He comes like a conquering lion.  The wrath of the Lamb is spoken us several times in Revelation.  You don’t want to be on the receiving end of that.  And the good news is you don’t have to be.  You don’t have to be if you come like every other humble and repentant sinner to kneel at the foot of the cross and say, “God, I’m exactly what You said I am.  I’m a sinner who needs a savior.  And today by faith, I reach out and say yes to Jesus.  Give me that free gift of eternal life that comes with the forgiveness of my sins and a home in heaven and, yes, one day the privilege of escaping the coming wrath on planet earth.”  And for believers in Jesus Christ, we need to guard our hearts, right?  Lest we drift away from the Lord.  Not to lose our salvation, but that our heart would calcify and harden in some way and we would not fulfill all the plans and purposes that God has for us in this life.  We need to be about the business of telling the story, the full story, the whole counsel of God, including the hard parts, and telling people the good news.  That Jesus came as the Lamb of God to shed His blood for your sins and for my sins.  Because God does love us, and He is a good, good Father who gives good gifts to His kids, to His children.  You say, “I’m a child of God.  Well, the Bible says in John 1:0, “To as many as received him,”—that is Jesus—“and believed in his name, to those he gave the right to become children of God.”  The ones that the good, good Father calls children are those that have received His son and believed in His name.  Just because you are a child of God by creation doesn’t mean you are the good, good Father’s child.  That comes through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.  And I want to encourage you to do that this morning.  To receive Him.  To believe on His name.  Not to put your faith in faith, but to put your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ who died on the cross for your sins and was buried and who rose from the dead and who promised He’s coming again.  Let’s pray together.

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Father, thank You so much for Your Word.  Thank You for giving us all of it.  And we don’t want to sit here and cherry-pick the parts that are easy to talk about and easy to understand.  Father, we want the whole enchilada, as it were.  We want You to tell us straight up so we can make the right spiritual decisions this morning.  I pray for every one of us in the room this on this wonderful day when we celebrate good, good fathers.  That You, the good Father of heaven and earth, the one who taught us to pray, “Our Father who art in heaven,” that He would become the heavenly Father to those today who have yet to receive Jesus as their Savior.  That today would be a day of salvation.  Right now, Father, give them the faith to believe, even as You did others in the previous service who You gloriously delivered from darkness and gave them entrance into the light and the truth of Jesus Christ.  Father, bless our time of response as we do business with You this holy moment.  Give us the courage and the faith to make the decisions we should make.  In Jesus’ name, amen.

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