Well, we will be looking at one of the most powerful tools to accomplish exactly what that hymn was talking about. And if you want to follow along in the majority text, it's on page 25 of your bulletins. Revelation 10, 1-11. I saw a mighty angel descending out of heaven, clothed with a cloud and the rainbow on his head. His face was like the sun and his feet like pillars of fire, and he had a little book open in his hand. He placed his right foot on the sea and his left on the land, and he cried out with a loud voice just like a lion roars. And when he cried out, the seven thunders uttered their voices. Now when the seven thunders spoke, I was about to write, but I heard a voice out of heaven saying, seal up the things that the seven thunders said, and you write after these things. And the angel whom I saw standing on the sea and on the land raised his right hand to the heaven and swore by him who lives forever and ever, who created the heaven and the things in it and the earth and the things in it and the sea and the things in it, that there would be no further delay. But in the days of the blast of the seventh angel when he is about to trumpet, the mystery of God that he declared to his slaves the prophets would be finished. Now the voice that I heard out of heaven was speaking to me again and saying, go, take the little book that is open in the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land. So I went to the angel and said to him, give me the little book. And he says to me, take and eat it up. It will make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth it will be as sweet as honey. So I took the little book out of the angel's hand and ate it up. And it was as sweet as honey in my mouth. But when I had eaten it, my stomach was made bitter. And he said to me, you must prophesy again over many peoples, even over ethnic nations and languages and kings. Amen. Father, we thank you for your word. And I pray that as we dig into it, that our hearts would be drawn by your Holy Spirit to be more and more conformed to your image. that you would guard my mouth from saying anything that would lead your people astray, that you would help each of these people to be Bereans, to see whether these things truly are scriptural that I bring. Help me to be a faithful steward of the mysteries of God, and I pray this in Jesus' name, amen. You may be seated. My friend Vishal Mangalwadi used to be a Hindu, And he lived in India where he had been researching why the West seemed to produce the best technologies and music and liberties and women's rights and science and literature and the list went on and on. And he was curious, why is it that Islamic culture cannot produce the same kinds of things? In fact, why is it that Islamic culture has hardly produced anything useful? And why is it that Hindu and Buddhist country was even worse? And why is it that communism, atheistic communism, has dehumanized and butchered so many people in their population? And their only technologies seem to be technologies that are stolen from the West. His conclusion was that Christianity is unique and that it is onto something. But as he kept researching, he realized that Christianity alone could not be the answer because there were times when Christianity fluctuated and produced bad results. And you could see that in the hundred years before the time of the Reformation. But wherever And whenever Christianity was radically committed to the word of God and sought to apply it to every area of life, civilization flourished. He could see that. It was just crystal clear in his research of the West. His research led him to become a Christian, but he was saddened at how Christians, he's excited about the Bible, but Christians in the West no longer had such confidence in the Bible. So he wrote a book called The Book That Made Your World, How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization. He's in the process of making a TV series titled Must the Sun Set on the West, where he pleads with people in the West to go back to the root of scripture or you're going to start to lose the fruit that has flowed from a commitment to that Christian worldview. One book review said this, the examples of so many other areas turned upside down by the Bible and those who have been transformed by it would fill hundreds, nay thousands of volumes, but Mungle Wadi here does a superb job of demonstrating how in one area after another, the impact of scripture has been overwhelming and overwhelmingly a force for good. And our chapter, Revelation chapter 10, tells us exactly why. God's word has the divine characteristics of God himself. It is powerful and wise and penetrating and sanctifying and purifying and judging and life-giving and all of the other characteristics that we see symbolized in this chapter. And I hope that this chapter helps to make you so blown away by the characteristics of the scriptures and what the scriptures can produce that is gonna motivate you to start memorizing it more and reading it more and asking an expectation for more blessings to flow from the scriptures. If I can accomplish that, that one thing, I will have accomplished my goal in preaching this sermon. Now I'm assuming that you heard the sermon last week. It'd be way too long to try to prove what I was trying to demonstrate on who the angel was and what the little book was. I'll just give a very, very brief summary here. I pointed out how Jesus, as the Word of God, communicates the Father's revelation to us, but he does so through his personal angel, Gabriel, his messenger. and through his prophet John. And I think I demonstrated beyond any shadow of a doubt that this angel is not Jesus. This angel was the angel Gabriel. And I think I demonstrated just as clearly why there has been confusion, at least in the older commentaries on this, because all of these symbols do indeed point to Jesus. They are divine symbols that show forth Christ's divinity. And the reason Christ's symbols surround this angel is because he is carrying the revelation of Christ. There is an unbroken chain from father to son to angel to John to us through the scriptures. And the remarkable symbols surrounding this angel showcase the remarkable nature of the revelation held in his hand. Revelation that's gonna be eaten by John and written down. Roy Gingrich says of this angel, he as Christ's representative is clothed in Christ's official uniform, a cloud, a rainbow, a shining face, and shining feet. So these symbols are perfect descriptions of the revelation that becomes the Bible. First of all, The book of Revelation, by implication all of scripture, is a prophecy. And the reason that this is so important to understand is that Wayne Grudem's thesis falls to the ground if it is true. The first two words of this chapter, I saw, are words that are just scattered all throughout the Old Testament to describe what the prophets of the Old Testament saw as they're receiving revelation. It's describing their visions of the inspired revelation that they got. That's why they're called seers. They are enabled to see revelation through visions. The word mystery in verse 7 is a word frequently connected with prophecy. It is hidden, apart from God's revelation. And of course, the contents of that book are commanded to be prophesied in verse 11. And verse 7 explicitly says that this revelation of mystery is something given to prophets. And even the imagery of the little book being given by a mighty angel, being eaten and becoming sweet in the mouth, becoming bitter in the belly, oh, that points explicitly to Ezekiel's message, Ezekiel's kind of prophetic revelation. Every word that I've given in point one shows that scripture is prophetic, and that all stands in contradiction to Wayne Grudem's thesis that New Testament prophecy is utterly different from Old Testament prophecy. He admits that the Old Testament scriptures are called prophecy, But he claims that the New Testament scriptures are not called prophecies. He says that they are inspired, they're inerrant, but they're inspired and inerrant, not because they're prophetic, but because they are apostolic. He says the apostles stand in the place of Old Testament prophets, and New Testament prophets, no, they do something quite different. But that is patently false. I am absolutely dogmatic that it is patently false. Let me give you some examples. Luke was not an apostle. Mark was not an apostle. Jude was not an apostle. James was not an apostle. So how could they give inspired revelation? Well, on that theory, Wingrudem's theory, they were inspired because when they wrote something down, the apostles read it over and put their imprimatur upon it. That is not how inspiration works, and we'll look at that next week. How does inspiration work in the scriptures? But the scriptures are called a prophecy over and over again in this book. Not simply that it contained prophecy, as Grudem would have you believe, but that every word of it is prophecy. For example, Revelation 1 verse 3 calls John's revelation the words of this prophecy. Revelation 22 verse 7 says, blessed is he who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book. And he's referring to the whole canon there, the Biblion, the big book. Revelation 22 verse 10 says, do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book for the time is at hand. It's a prophetic book. Revelation 22 18 pronounces curses upon anyone who adds to the words of the prophecy of this Biblion. Wayne Grudem claims that John is using the word prophecy in a non-standard way here, but that the rest of the New Testament uses the term prophecy to refer to non-inspired, sometimes mistaken, and I think so, types of guidance from the Lord. But that is to demean the nature of prophecy as a whole. We saw last week that Romans 16, 25 through 26 applies the term prophetic scriptures to the brand new scriptural revelations being given by the apostles. The Book of Acts uses the term prophecy, prophet, and prophesied to refer to both Old Testament prophets and New Testament prophets, sometimes in the same verse, as if the word must mean the same thing, which it does. But he says, no, they're different. Now, why do I bring this up? Because we're gonna be seeing that prophecy, whether oral or written, is inspired, inerrant, powerful, divine, God's very voice, and expresses all of the other characteristics of God in this chapter. When the two prophets of chapter 11 command the rain to stop, instantly it stops. Why? Because the power of God is in their words, in their very words. The prophecies are not different from the prophecies of Elijah who had the power to stop uprain. Just as Elijah's words were God's words, these prophets' words in chapter 11 are God's words. But Grudem would have you believe that New Testament prophecy is quite different from Old Testament prophecy. When those two prophets in chapter 11 spoke a judgment of fire, the words that came out of their mouth brought down fire from God just as surely as Elijah's prophecies brought down fire and consumed his enemies in the Old Testament. And certainly, the prophetic scriptures can be trusted as much as God can be trusted because they come from God. And that's the second characteristic. These scriptures descend from heaven. I saw a mighty angel descending out of heaven. And of course he has this spiritual book in his hand that contains every word that the paper book that John will later write has. Every word. He tells them not to write yet, but to write later. So it doesn't descend from heaven the way that Islam claims that the Koran descends from heaven. But it is the very word of God being communicated on this little scroll, being carried by the angel, being symbolically eaten by John, then being written word for word by John. And we're going to get to man's portion of inspiration process next week. But even though John later writes it down, it very literally is God's letter to the church. There is no difference between what John writes on the paper scroll and what was already written on the invisible scroll. Paul words his own prophetic revelations this way. For this reason, we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe. So even though we're going to be seeing next week that it is mediated through the angels, mediated through John, it remains the same Word of God. So when you hear the Word of Scripture being read here, you are hearing the very voice of God speaking through these scriptures. And I have read in the scriptures and had my soul lifted up to heaven and other times had my soul humbled into the dust. I've been at times on my knees reading through the scriptures and been so overwhelmed. One time in Leviticus, so overwhelmed with God speaking to me through the scriptures and manifesting his holiness. I felt I had to back away and other times He has drawn me into his loving kindness in such powerful ways as if I am being drawn into the ocean of his heart and his love for me. It was not a dead letter. It was powerful. It was overwhelming in my soul. Hebrews 4 tells us, though, that we cannot experience the reality of God's gaze into our soul through these scriptures if we do not approach them in faith. Rodney earlier said, let, let the word dwell in your hearts. It's an automatic force that will impact us, will sanctify us, but we can resist it. So that let is so, so important. Hebrews 4 says that the scriptures are powerful, they are living, They are penetrating, they leave us feeling as if God is gazing right into our soul. And I'm gonna read that scripture later point, but let me quote from John Piper because he's given a caution to those of us who have had visions or dreams or have experienced a word of knowledge or other forms of guidance, I have, and Piper does not discount those experiences, okay? He does not discount them, but he cautions us that they are nothing in comparison to the divine character of God's Bible. And I'll only read a portion from his letter. It's a long portion, but I think you'll understand where I'm coming from. Too many people approach the scripture without faith, and they receive nothing. For them, it's a dead letter. Piper said this. Let me tell you about a most wonderful experience I had early Monday morning, March 19, 2007, a little after six o'clock. God actually spoke to me. There is no doubt that it was God. I heard the words in my head just as clearly as when a memory of a conversation passes across your consciousness. The words were in English, but they had about them an absolutely self-authenticating ring of truth. I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that God still speaks today. As I prayed and mused, suddenly it happened. God said, come and see what I have done. There was not the slightest doubt in my mind that these were the very words of God. In this very moment, at this very place in the 21st century, 2007, God was speaking to me with absolute authority and self-evidencing reality. I paused to let this sink in. There was a sweetness about it. Time seemed to matter little. God was near. He had me in his sights. He had something to say to me. When God draws near, hurry ceases. Time slows down. I wondered what he meant by come and see. Would he take me somewhere like he did Paul into heaven to see what can't be spoken? Did see mean that I would have a vision of some great deed of God that no one has seen? I'm not sure how much time elapsed between God's initial word, come and see what I have done, and his next words. It doesn't matter. I was being enveloped in the love of his personal communication. The God of the universe was speaking to me. Then he said, as clearly as any words have ever come into my mind, I am awesome in my deeds toward the children of man. My heart leaped up. Yes, Lord, you are awesome in your deeds. Yes, to all men, whether they see it or not, yes. Now, what will you show me? The words came again, just as clear as before, but increasingly specific. I turned the sea into dry land. They passed through the river on foot. There they rejoiced in me, who rules by my might forever. Suddenly I realized God was taking me back several thousand years to the time when he dried up the Red Sea and the Jordan River. I was being transported by his word back into history to these great deeds. This is what he meant by come and see. He was transporting me back by his words to those two glorious deeds before the children of men. These were the awesome deeds he referred to. God himself was narrating the mighty works of God. He was doing it for me. He was doing it with words that were resounding in my own mind. There settled over me a wonderful reverence, a palpable peace came down. This was a holy moment in a holy corner of the world in northern Minnesota. God Almighty had come down and was giving me the stillness and the openness and the willingness to hear His very voice. As I marveled at His power to drive the sea and the river, He spoke again. I keep watch over the nations. Let not the rebellious exalt themselves. This was breathtaking. It was very serious. It was almost a rebuke, at least a warning. He may as well have taken me by the collar of my shirt, lifted me off the ground with one hand, and said with an incomparable mixture of fierceness and love, never, never, never exalt yourself. Never rebel against me. I sat staring at nothing. My mind was full of the global glory of God. I keep watch over the nations. He had said this to me. It was not just that he had said it. Yes, that is glorious, but he had said this to me. The very words of God were in my head. They were there in my head just as much as the words that I am writing at this moment are in my head. They were heard as clearly as if at this moment I recalled that my wife said, come down for supper whenever you are ready. I know those are the words of my wife. And I know these are the words of God. Think of it. Marvel at this. Stand in awe of this. The God who keeps watch over the nations, like some people keep watch over cattle or stock markets or construction sites, this God still speaks in the 21st century. I heard his very words. He spoke personally to me. What effect did this have upon me? It filled me with a fresh sense of God's reality. It assured me more deeply that He acts in history and in our time. It strengthened my faith that He is for me and cares about me and will use His global power to watch over me. Why else would He come and tell me these things? It has increased my love for the Bible as God's very word, because it was through the Bible that I heard these divine words, and through the Bible I have experiences like this almost every day. The very God of the universe speaks on every page into my mind and your mind. We hear his very words. God himself has multiplied his wondrous deeds and thoughts toward us. None can compare with him. I will proclaim and tell of them. Yet they are more than can be told. Psalm 45. And best of all, they're available to all. If you'd like to hear the very same words I heard on the couch in northern Minnesota, read Psalm 66, five through seven. That's where I heard them. Oh, how precious is the Bible. It is the very word of God. In it, God speaks in the 21st century. This is the very voice of God. By this voice, he speaks with absolute truth and personal force. By this voice, he reveals his all-surpassing beauty. By this voice, he reveals the deepest secrets of our hearts. No voice anywhere, anytime can reach as deep or lift as high or carry as far as the voice of God that we hear in the Bible. It is a great wonder that God still speaks today through the Bible with greater force and greater glory and greater assurance and greater sweetness and greater hope and greater guidance and greater transforming power and greater Christ-exalting truth than can be heard through any voice in any human soul on the planet from outside the Bible. This is why I found the article in this month's Christianity Today, My Conversation with God, so sad. And he relates how excited this guy was that he had gotten a personal word from God, a word of knowledge, basically, from God, that God wanted the royalty from one of his books to be going to the poor. So that was what the Christianity Today article was about. Piper goes on to say, what makes me sad about the article is not that it isn't true or didn't happen. What's sad is that it really gives the impression that extra-biblical communication with God is surpassingly wonderful and faith-deepening, all the while the supremely glorious communication of the living God, which personally and powerfully and transformationally explodes in the receptive heart through the Bible every day, is passed over in silence. I'm sure this professor of theology did not mean it this way, but what he actually said was, for years I've taught that God still speaks, but I couldn't testify to it personally. Surely it does not mean, what he seems to imply, that only when one hears an extra biblical voice like, the money is not yours, can you testify personally that God still speaks. Surely he does not mean to belittle the voice of God in the Bible which speaks this very day with power and truth and wisdom and glory and joy and hope and wonder and helpfulness 10,000 times more decisively than anything we can hear outside the Bible. I grieve at what is being communicated here. The great need of our time is for people to experience the living reality of God by hearing His Word personally and transformingly in Scripture. Something is incredibly wrong when the words we hear outside Scripture, and He doesn't deny that that occurs, But he says something is incredibly wrong when the words we hear outside Scripture are more powerful and more affecting to us than the inspired word of God. Let us cry with the psalmist, incline my heart to your word. Psalm 119, 36, open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of your law. Psalm 119, verse 18. But if what Piper says is true, then the scripture takes on all the attributes of God himself, which is, of course, exactly what John Frame, in his systematic theology, shows so resoundingly, that the scriptures are divine. You cannot separate God from the scriptures. To ignore the scriptures is to ignore God. So let's look at some of these characteristics. If God is sovereign, then his word must be sovereign. So the symbol of sovereignty, the cloud, envelops the messenger of God's word. So John says, I saw a mighty angel descending out of heaven clothed with a cloud. Now we saw last week that the scripture connects the cloud over and over again with the sovereignty of God. He is sovereign over everything, which means that when his word speaks to every area of life, which it does, It is sovereign over every area of life. And yet how many people exclude the sovereignty of scripture from politics or economics or their sexual relations with their wives or how they vote. It grieves me every time we come to election time to see hundreds and hundreds of my Facebook friends who dismiss the Bible and says the Bible's irrelevant to modern politics. What they are doing is they're denying the sovereignty of God because they're denying the sovereignty of the scriptures over that part of life. You see what I'm saying here? The dictionary defines sovereignty as supremacy, being independent of higher authorities, not subject to other authorities, having authority over every jurisdiction. If you hide, Any area of your life from the gaze of Scripture, you are fighting against God's sovereignty. Do not expect a snubbed Holy Spirit to minister anything into your heart, anything, if you are picking and choosing what you want the Scriptures to tell you. You're snubbing the Holy Spirit, who is the giver of this great gift. We are bond slaves. He is the sovereign. Cornelius Van Til said, whatever the Bible speaks to, it speaks with authority and it speaks to everything. This is the crying need of our day, a church that accepts the authority of God's word in politics, science, education, all of life. J.I. Packer said, if biblical teaching and my own thoughts clash, it is my thoughts that are wrong every time. And if the Holy Spirit is right now convicting you that you have insulated some little part of your life from the authority of God's word, I call you to repent. It is only through repentance and faith that we can experience the overflow of his presence and his blessing. His blessing only falls upon those who have signed an unconditional surrender to King Jesus and said, Lord, you have your way in my life. I want the reality of you more than I want these idols. I crucify, I destroy these idols. He goes on to say in the rainbow on his head, we saw that this was the same rainbow that was around the throne of God in chapter four. It speaks of the promises of God's covenant. You remember when God made his covenant with Noah, he gave that rainbow as a testimony for all time that he is good for his promises. Okay, so that's what the rainbow symbolizes. And yet, those promises only give us hope, only punch through into our hearts if we let them, as Rodney preached earlier this morning, as we receive them by faith. Let me just try to illustrate this with a story. Ruth Bell Graham vividly remembered September 2, 1933. She was 13 years old, and her parents, who were missionaries in China, were sending her off to boarding school what is now North Korea. She was devastated at the thought of leaving home, and she sincerely prayed that night, Lord, make me die, take away my life, I do not want to leave my parents. But dawn came, and she hadn't died, and with a very heavy heart, she trudged to the... Trudged to the riverfront, she boarded a boat, went down the Huangpu River into the Yangtze River and off into the East China Sea. And in boarding school, waves after waves of homesickness just continually flooded over her. She could not get past it. She tried to stay busy during the day, and that helped to some degree. But at night, it was just overwhelming depression that she was experiencing. And every night, she cried herself to sleep. Now, I can relate. because I was dropped off at boarding school at age six and only got to see my parents for a week or two at Christmas and for the summer vacation. And I think that whole first year, I cried myself to sleep, cried myself into the Lord's arms during the day. It was really tough. But anyway, she fell ill. And in the infirmary, she read through the Psalms, finding comfort, especially in Psalm 27, verse 10. When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take care of me. But it was still so theoretical. She still just was haunted with the hurt, the fear, and the doubt. And finally, in desperation, she went to her sister Rosa, who was also enrolled at Pyongyang Boarding School. And her sister really didn't know what to do to comfort her. And just on a whim, she says, well, dear, why don't you just take a favorite verse and put your name into it? And so that's what Ruth did. She picked up her Bible, turned to her favorite chapter, Isaiah 53, and put her name in. But he was wounded for Ruth's transgressions. By his stripes, Ruth is healed. And her heart suddenly just leaped, leaped up within her, and she started started experiencing the healing grace of God. So the question is, what happened? She'd been reading scripture before. What happened that made a difference? Well, finally, she was approaching the scriptures with faith, and faith is always rewarded by God. The scriptures came alive. God's promises were no longer just academic. Suddenly, they became her promises. So here's the question. Do you approach the Bible with faith that God himself is making these promises to you personally? If you do, you are drawing near to God. And James 4, 8 gives an ironclad promise, draw near to God and he will draw near to you. It's just an ironclad promise. He will do it. You may remember the story of Pilgrim. and Faithful in Giant Despair's Castle. If you've never read Pilgrim's Progress, you've got to. It's a wonderful classic. But both were suffering terribly in the castle, not because God was unfaithful to them, but because Faithful had forgotten about the key that had been given to him, the key whose name is promise. And God's promises do not automatically come to fulfillment in our lives. They have to be used. They have to be claimed by faith. So one day faithful said, what a fool am I thus to lie in the stinking dungeon when I may as well be at liberty. I have a key in my bosom called promise that will I am persuaded open any lock and doubting castle. And when he used it, it did. God's word always has these characteristics, but we must approach them by faith. He goes on to say, his face was like the sun. Okay, the sun exposes all. Nothing is hidden from its gaze. And the image shows that even with prophecy, it is God himself who searches the heart. Hebrews 4, 12 through 13 starts off talking about the Bible being living and powerful, and without breaking a beat, it says that God is doing those powerful things, including God searching the heart. And the point is that God uses the Bible as if it is His very eyes that are penetrating our hearts. It says, For the word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account. Have you ever had a time when you're reading through the Bible and you come under powerful conviction? That's happened to me many, many times. What do you do? Do you instantly say, oh Lord, thank you for showing that to me. I do repent of that sin and I give that to you. I want to grow in you. Or do you quickly flip the page to something else that's a little bit less disconcerting in your life? To avoid the Bible's searching gaze is like pulling the shutters down on your windows so God can't look into your soul. It's futile anyway. He's going to keep pressing and pressing. But if you want the Bible to be powerful in your life, you must open your heart to all of its attributes. And by the way, study that verse sometime and you'll see it's not just saying that it powerfully works in your spirit, It says it powerfully works in your body, joints and marrow. I don't think you can explain that one away. Joints and marrow. How many people have found healing in their bodies because they took God's word as a personal promise to them and by faith they claimed it and God brought healing into their lives? Instead of just reading Psalm 103 as an academic exercise about something that happened to David, these people have said, thank you that you are the Lord who forgives all my sins and heals all my diseases. I received that healing today. Or personalizing 1 Peter 2 24, he himself bore my sins in his body on the tree so that I might die to sins and live for righteousness. By his wounds, I have been healed. I think we just need to quit spiritualizing away so many of the promises of Scripture. Take it at face value. Take it at face value. Anyway, the text goes on to say, his feet like pillars of fire. Commentators say that this harks back to the theophany of God under Moses where God manifested himself as a fiery pillar of cloud. sometimes called the Shekinah Glory. That fire showed the absolute purity of God. Now it protected against Israel's enemies too, right? It divided between them. But hey, there were times when fire shot out from that pillar and consumed rebels within the church, within Israel itself. It brought discipline to his people. Well, if these very divine attributes accompany the word as it's carried by the angel, as it's communicated to the church in the Bible, then it means that the Bible too has absolute purity. It means that God himself is protecting us and judging us. Moses told Israel, these words the Lord spoke to all your assembly in the mountain from the midst of the fire. The fire symbolizes both purity and the Word of God, and the judgments and purification that it brings. Psalm 126 says that the Word of God is like silver tried in a furnace of fire, purified seven times. We can trust every bit of it, and yet how often is the Old Testament slandered by Christians as if, oh yeah, we wouldn't follow those kind of laws, that's barbaric, that's for another age. And we slander the Bible. No, the Bible is pure, and those who criticize it are in danger of judgment. Jeremiah 23 verse 29 says, is not my word like a fire, says the Lord, like a hammer that breaks the rocks in pieces? Those who approach the Bible with rebellious hearts will find that Bible judging them. You don't believe it? Read 1 Corinthians chapter 11. People had come to the communion table and the sacrament while they were in rebellion to God's word and it says, this is why many of you are weak, many of you are sick, some of you have even died. Yes, there is a miraculous power that comes either positively or negatively, depending on how we approach this awesome Word of God. And so many Christians, rather than going to the Lord and say, Lord, open my eyes to know why I'm sick, Is this a discipline? Not all sickness is a result of sin, okay? There's at least 20 different reasons why God brings sickness and other difficulties into our lives, but one of them is a discipline for our sins. And too infrequently, Christians, too frequently I should say, Christians don't go to the Lord and say, Lord, am I sick because you're trying to remind me of something, something sinful that I need to repent of. Instead, we go instantly to medicine without even praying over the medicine and expect that we're going to have health and wholeness apart from Christ. It's not possible. On the other hand, when we cast off fear and we approach the furnace of God's word as to be purified as silver, God protects us just like he protected Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the furnace in Daniel. No harm came to them. The only thing that burned, right, their clothing didn't burn. The only thing that burned was the ropes that were binding them. They walked at liberty. So when we are willing to approach the fire in faith, God sanctifies us and he adds the riches upon riches of his presence into our lives. Do you want the Bible to be a living letter to you? Then don't hide any area of your life from that word. How can a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to your word. Notice the first phrase in verse two. He had a little book open in his hand. Now, we spent a long time on that little book last week. I'm not gonna delve into it. I just wanna mention one point I didn't mention last week. It's an open book, right? He wants the word of God to be open. It was not intended to be closed to our understanding. This is one of the things that the reformers spoke about when they said, contrary to what Rome taught, that the word is perspicuous. That just means Most of it's easy to understand. Yeah, there are some tough parts, but most of it was intended to be easily understood. In Luke 24, Jesus met with the disciples and opened scriptures to them so that they were able to understand scriptures they had previously not understood. And because he himself was present with the scriptures, it was not a dead letter. Verse 45 says he opened their understanding that they might comprehend the scriptures. We need that when we read the Bible. In fact, every time I read the Bible, I have some kind of a prayer ahead of time. Lord, as David prayed, open thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of your law. I don't want to miss things. Please open my eyes. Notice the next symbol. He placed his right foot on the sea and his left on the land. Now straddling sea and land symbolized the fact that these scriptures were not just intended for Israel, they were for all nations. And God wants an ever-expanding audience to read the scriptures. One of the reasons why from the earliest times in the church the scriptures were translated into other languages. And praise God, It's continuing to be translated into every language of the world. It's a universal book intended for all nations. And yet how many people relegate vast portions of the Bible to Israel? It's a book for all nations. Now you might wonder about the placement of his right and left feet there. Nothing is throwaway language. It just bothers me when commentators just skip over sometimes half a verse and they just say, well, it's just colorful language to communicate. No. Every word we're to live by and every word is placed there for a reason. In a right-footed society, the right foot leads and the left foot follows. And this means that the left foot was where the angel was ministering the word at first, and the right foot is where he's headed. Okay? So since the word for land is geis, and we've seen throughout this book, it's a reference to the land of Israel. The position makes clear that the ministry of the Word started in Israel, moved to the Gentile Empire, which was over the Mediterranean. And of course, this is clearly what the Bible says about itself. Every author of the Bible was a Jew, and God's message was to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. Romans 116, Romans 2.9. But God's judgments also began first with Israel and extended to the Gentiles. And God's salvation also began with the Jews and extended to the Gentiles. Now, if you read the Bible in that way, it is humbling to us Gentiles, but it's also very, very encouraging. It helps us to understand both the unique place that Israel played in redemptive history as well as the universal lordship of his word over all. This is why in verse 11 says that the message will pertain to many peoples even over ethnic nations and languages and kings. Now Beal in his commentary believes that one other possible thought in this symbol is that let me quote him he says this figure Towers above all the church's enemies. This gives comfort to those who thought that the beast was invincible. In other words, the beast is no match for the Word of God. When the church embraces it and spreads it, it powerfully leavens the whole lump of society. The next phrase says, and he cried out with a loud voice, just like a lion roars. And I pointed out last week that God himself roars like a lion in Amos 3 verse 8, Hosea 11 verse 10, and Joel 3 verse 16. But the first passage, Amos 3.8 says that when God roars, the prophet must prophesy what was roared. So the prophet is communicating that roar as well. So Jesus roars like a lion, why? Because he is the word of God, he is the revelation of God. This angel roars like a lion, why? Because he's taking exactly the same roar, the same revelation, and it communicates it to the prophet. And so this reinforces what John Piper mentioned earlier, that the scriptures are the very voice of God, and listening to scripture is listening to God. So the Deuteronomy 13, 18 says, because you have listened to the voice of the Lord, your God, to keep all his commandments, which I commanded you today. You see what's going on there? What Moses commanded, God commanded. Okay, listening to Moses' prophetic utterances was listening to God's utterances. And I've given some other sample verses from Deuteronomy that say the same thing. And this is why Jesus said in Matthew chapter four, verse four, when he's referencing how we're to live by the whole Bible, he says, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. There is too much liberalism in the evangelical church and how they treat the scriptures as if, well, in fact, this limited inerrancy idea that you get at Fuller, well, the Bible contains the Word of God. No, no, no. It is the Word of God. And they say, well, some things are inerrant if it's what eye has not seen and ear has heard. But anything scientific, it's not necessarily inerrant on. I say, no. Every letter, every word of scripture is God's very word. Now we've got to approach the scripture that way. Anyway, verse 3 continues, when he cried out, the seven thunders uttered their voices. There's an antiphonal response of one portion of scripture to another portion of scripture, one interpreting the other. We'll look at the content of what the seven thunders say in the second half of the book. But why does he liken the scripture to thunder? And specifically, why does he liken it to the seven, the seven thunders? I think that Chilton is correct when he says that this is an appeal to Psalm 29. It's the only Old Testament passage that speaks of the seven thunders. And in that passage, the seven thunders showcase the incredible power of God's word. It always accomplishes what God sends it for. When we use the scriptures against Satan, James guarantees Satan has to flee. Has to flay. Why? There is a power in God's word. And I can tell you some stories of how people are actually blown back and they said it's like a force hit them when the scriptures came. These are demon possessed people. Why? Because when you resist demons with the word of God, there is a power that comes behind it. When you take scripture to the court of heaven and you ask God for justice based upon his law and restitution based upon his law, he answers. Why? Because His Word, He cannot deny Himself. His Word is powerful. And so, whether it's healing or whatever it is that is needed, the Scripture slices through. It slices through arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. We've got to quit using carnal weapons. in our culture wars. I look at all of these debates that go on on who you should vote for and who not to vote for, and most of these people never, never bring the Scriptures to bear. Your testimony is not powerful. I don't care how eloquent you are. Your testimony is not powerful. It's the Word of God that is powerful. But the next phrase shows that it is orderly and divinely arranged. Verse 4. Now, when the seven thunders spoke, I was about to write, but I heard a voice out of heaven saying, seal up the things that the seven thunders said, and you write after these things. Now, we dealt with that a fair bit last time, but John was about to write down what was uttered. God says, no, you're going to be writing that later. and gets the whole Revelation first, then God's going to enable him to write it down. But it highlights the fact that it's divinely given and it's also perfectly arranged. Not one word is out of place. John can't reverse the order. Even the order is created by God. By the way, I think one of the best proofs for the inspiration of the book of Revelation is look at the intricate ordering of this book. And I should have printed that off for you again. It's just amazing the intricate weaving together of all of these details. I don't even know how a computer could do that. I don't know how any human could do it on his own. It shows the divine character. Now I'm just gonna deal with one more symbol. Next two verses show the infallibility and surety of scripture. And the angel whom I saw standing on the sea and on the land raised his right hand to the heaven and swore by him who lives forever and ever who created the heaven and the things in it and the earth and the things in it and the sea and the things in it that there would be no further delay. This swearing by heaven shows that God himself is vouching for the authenticity of the message. And I want you to notice how he connects the truthfulness of scripture to the fact that God created and sustains all things in this universe. That is very, very significant. You can trust everything the Bible says about everything because God created everything, sustains everything, and therefore knows everything, right? We can trust the Bible. And yet people doubt what the Bible has to say in so many disciplines of life. I harp on the whole thing of six-day creation versus the evolutionism that other people have because it is a point at which people compromise the scriptures. They doubt what Genesis 1 clearly says because of science falsely so-called. Let me tell you something. God was there. The scientist was not. God knows what he was talking about when he wrote the scriptures describing what he had done. And even if it was, you know, if they're not there, they can't examine with scientific prophets, but even if they could, science itself is constantly changing. God changes not. We can trust everything God says about everything in life because God created and sustains everything in life and therefore knows everything in life. The Bible is the truthful foundation for everything. To quote J.I. Packer again, if biblical teaching and my own thoughts clash, it is my thoughts that are wrong every time. And I love Van Til's quote. He said, whatever the Bible speaks to, it speaks with authority and it speaks to everything. Now we're gonna finish off the divine characteristics of the word of God next week, Lord willing, but let me end with an exhortation to you. Value the Bible. Spend time in it. Approach it as a living and powerful message from God Himself. Approach it with the reverence worthy of the King of the universe. Approach it in faith. Do not try to hide from the gaze of the Scripture because it's futile to hide from the gaze of the God of this universe. Know that God is good, he will never ask you to give up anything, that he does not restore many fold just like he did with Job. When God asks us to make sacrifices, many times it's to test whether we have a steward's heart. So let God's word purify you. Pray that the Holy Spirit would open your eyes to its contents, believing he will indeed do so. See it as sovereign. Sovereign over your thinking, your feeling, your house, your property, over all that you have and all that you are. Be willing to stretch your right foot out and take the word out of our church into the world. They need to hear the word too. That's what the angel was doing. He said, okay, we're gonna go out. We need to go out with our right foot as well. Share the treasure you have found. And when the word roars like a lion, don't run from it. Cast yourself down before the Lord Jesus and say, Lord, if you want to eat me, you can eat me. I come before you. I am yours. Have me if you want me. Repent when your soul hides things from God's spotlight. Treat the word of God as God himself speaking to your soul because that is indeed what he is doing. Do not quench the spirit by despising these prophecies. And may God richly bless you with his presence as you do so, amen. Father God, we thank you, we thank you, we thank you so much for your word. And we ask you to forgive us for the times that we have neglected it. treated it poorly, disbelieved it, shelved portions of it because we just do not want to follow it because of pride or for whatever reasons, maybe the fear of man. Forgive us, Father, for our attitude that we follow the big portions, but we don't have to submit to every jot and tittle. Forgive us, Father, when in any way we hold out on you. And I pray as this your people repents of their attitudes to you, which are reflected in their attitudes to the scripture, that you would open up the scriptures in a whole new way to them and manifest your presence and your power and your love and all of your attributes through these scriptures, that you would sanctify them and bless them and give them joy and peace and faith and hope and the courage to accomplish things for you that perhaps previously they had a fear in. So fill us, Father, with your spirit and be glorified in the responses that we have to your word. In Jesus' name.