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Okay, we're going to study Revelation
chapter 9. And again, I guess I feel like
it's good to remind ourselves that the book of the Revelation
is a very complicated seeming book on the surface when we read
it. There's so many obscure things said in it. And so we're moving
kind of slowly through here. our efforts to get something
of a handle on it. And so I'm trying to throw in
some thoughts that I think the answers to these thoughts are
really answers to questions that I have had over the years as
I have sought to understand the Bible. And if it's been a help
to me, I think we're all pretty much alike. And so if it's been
a help to me, why shouldn't it be to you? All of us are very similar. Well, we're not similar. We are alike in nature. We're self-centered to the core. We like to believe that our view
is the only view that's right. And when we're presented with
thoughts that are questionable, as far as our believing them
or not, we rely heavily upon reasons, heavily upon evidence
before we're going to accept it. And what I have learned over
the years is that this nature that is in us in our relationship
to one another when it comes to believing people, trusting
people, or having faith in people is no different from our relationship
to God and how that these elements are necessary for us to have
a right relationship with God. And so we're not supposed to
have a faith in God that is void of reasons, void of evidence,
void of factuality. As a matter of fact, what I have
discovered is that our relationship with God is based upon these
things, these very things. When I grew to understand that,
It changed everything. And all of a sudden, this was no longer a struggle
on my part to just believe it without a reason, which is how
I was trying to do it before I really got saved. I was trying
to believe it without a reason. I was just trying to believe
it, but without a reason. And part of the reason I had
no reason is because No one ever taught me that it's reasonable. In the churches I'd ever attended,
I never had teachers that talked about the fact that this book is written with proofs to convince the readers that what
is being said is absolutely true. And I didn't know that. Never
heard that before. And so, what I have learned is
that God proves himself. We cannot prove God. We don't
have to. Because the truths related to
God are self-evident truths, which do not need to be proven
by man Because the truths related to God are self-evident truths.
The proofs and the evidence comes toward us. And God never expects
us to believe Him without reasons and without facts. So, this is
how we're trying to approach our study of the book of the
Revelation. We're not supposed to just believe these things
without any understanding associated with it at all based upon what
can be known these things that are written here can be understood
got intended for him to be understood. But that is not to say that I
understand. All of what's here because I
did not I'm learning I'm learning and I'm sharing with you some
of the things I am learning. Now, as we get into this ninth
chapter, once again, I want to go back to something that occurred
in the very beginning of time. Because in order to understand
what's going on in this chapter, you have to. You have to go back
to the beginning. And as we learned in previous
messages, you can't really understand the book of the revelation without
having a pretty good handle on what the Bible teaches from the
beginning as you progress through it. Because here you come to
the final chapter, what you might say, or the final book of this revelation that God has composed
for us. And so I want to mention something
to you that I want you to think about. And it's a question. Why
was Satan cast down to earth rather than being confined to
the lake of fire from the beginning? Why wasn't he? Well, a good question. That's a good question. Why wasn't
he? Why was he allowed to be loose? Why was he allowed to
tempt Adam and Eve? Well, I think that it ultimately
has to do with the entire message of this Bible. What is your actual
perception of God? That was the reason that God left Satan in the world
to tempt Adam and Eve. What is, right now today, what
is your actual perception of God? How do you think about Him? Do you think of Him as being
a good person? Do you have little things that
pop into your mind every once in a while that tries to convince
you that He's not a good person? Do you find a nature within yourself
to find fault with God? I think you do, because I have. I've done it many times. I've done it since I've been
saved. Because I've got a nature in me that's bent that way. I've
got a nature in me that's the same as in you. So there's no
need for us to be here in this room and deny that we have terrible
thoughts about God every once in a while, because I know better.
I know that I'm no different than you. And I know a lot of
times when I read the Bible, my mind goes to work trying to
figure out, why would God, you know, say it like this? Why didn't
He say it this way, as though somehow or other I'm a better
revelator than God? Or when I read about His commanding
the children of Israel to go into certain territories there
in Cana, when the children of Israel were led out of Egypt.
I had to go possess the promised land. He told them to kill everything
that was there, living, everything. Men, women, and children. And
the animals. Kill them all. Don't tell me
that you haven't read the Bible and began to question God because
He would say stuff like that. Yes, we have. We've had questions
about him. So let's deal with it. Let's
deal with it. Let's go to the hard issues,
where the rubber meets the road in terms of our relationship
with God and why it is that we have such a struggle believing
God and trusting God and having faith in God. And I can tell
you that the reason is because we do not believe He is as He
has revealed Himself to be. That He's a loving God. That He's a just God. That He
is eternally innocent. Eternally innocent. That He is
never tempted man. That He cannot be tempted. The
Bible tells us that. God cannot be tempted, neither
tempteth He any man. Everything that God has ever
done for man has been out of love, because there's no one
that could ever love you like Jesus Christ. No one. No one
has ever cared for you like Him. And any evil thought that comes
out of this evil mind of ours, and evil deceitful heart of ours,
which we have by nature, will never undo God's revelation of
Himself. And so here is something I learned
years ago, and I've been enjoying this ever since it dawned on
me. And that is, anytime I'm ever reading the Bible, And I
run across something that just doesn't rub me the right way.
I have this tendency to question God as to why. The first thing
I do is I remember that God is good. God is love. God is just. God is righteous. God is pure. God is eternally
innocent. And any thought that I have that
conflicts with that revelation is sin on my part. Because I'm seeking to malign
his character as he has revealed himself to be. That's tremendously
important to understand that. And so, rather than projecting
the fault upon God, the first thing that we should
do is own the fault as being our own. Folks, we're so profoundly
ignorant. We're so small, so weak, so puny. We see the same characteristics
in small children and teenagers that's in ourselves as adults.
We have teenagers, you know, 14, 15, 16 years old in school
right now. They think they know everything,
and they've been in the world all of 15 years. Boy, that's
smart. Why aren't they in school if
they're so smart? Well, none of us are so smart. We're so profoundly dumb. And
yet, with this condition, we're going to sit in judgment upon
God? And so what then was the fall really all about?
And I'm telling you that the entire Bible can be better understood if you
understood the issue at the beginning. And the issue at the beginning
was, is God really good? Or is God evil? Is He a deceiver? Yea, hath God said? That was
the temptation. God knows that in the day ye
thereof, you're going to be as wise as He is, and He doesn't
want that. Because He's proud. He wants to be on top. He wants
you to worship Him because of His ego. And so here we go. And Eve bought
it. She bought the temptation. She believed it. And invested
her confidence in her own ability to make choices in life. And
the choice she made resulted in her death and her influence,
the death of her husband. They both died. They destroyed
themselves because of a wrong view of God. Now think about
something. There were no preachers. There
were no missionaries in the Garden of Eden. There was no one but
Jesus Christ. And He was there physically.
He was there. Call it an Old Testament theophany.
He was there. And so after the fall, what did
He do? What did He do? I'll tell you what he did. He
did the same thing that we're doing today. If there happened
to be somebody in this room right now that has a wrong view of
God, we're here to get that straightened
out. That's what this is all about. That's what coming to
church is all about. It's about learning the truth
about God. Learning how to believe Him have faith in him and trust him
with our eternal soul. That's why we're in here. And
so, because there were no churches, there were no preachers, there
were no missionaries, no tract society, no written Bible of
any kind, nothing written, how did Adam and Eve get saved? because this loving God went
to him himself and gave him the gospel, the
good news. And the good news was, even though
they had sinned and thought all these evil things against him,
he was willing to forgive them. And he was willing to assume
their penalty of death upon himself. If they would just believe him.
Believe what? That he's a good God. A loving
God. And that there's no love that
would ever compare to his love. There's none like me. He said
that over and over in the book of Isaiah. Who is like me? There's
none like me. My attributes are incomparable.
There's nothing to compare with me in the universe. He wasn't
saying that because he's egotistical. He was saying that because it
was the truth. God is love. God is good. God is just. All these things are true. So
he goes to Adam and Eve, and he preaches to them the gospel.
And he tells them what he's going to do. And that is, he's going
to go to the Cross of Calvary, and he's going to die in their
place as death they deserved. And he symbolized it by going
and killing the sheep. And he took the coats of skins.
You can't get coats of skins without shedding blood. It was
all pre-figure of the death of Christ upon the cross. And he
covered their shame, the shame of what they had done, because
it was a shameful thing. That's why the Bible uses shame.
That's why it uses nakedness as a representation of shame,
because there they were. clearly open to the eyes of God. He could see everything. There
was nothing hidden. They tried to hide it, but were
not successful, because he sees. And so, what happened in the Garden of
Eden was, Adam and Eve got reversed in their view of God. It happened. He got completely... They were
broken because they saw that they had seen him wrong. They
had seen him all wrong. And now they saw him as he really
is. And their hearts were broken
because they had imagined these horrible things about him. And they saw it as a crime against
God, worthy of eternal damnation. Because it was. Because the truth
is, when they made that decision, they killed God in their mind. They killed Him. This was not some little sin
of taking a cookie out of the cookie jar. kind of thing. This was serious beyond imagination. In their mind, they destroyed
him and manifest their lack of need for him altogether. We don't
need you. We don't need your life. We don't
need you anywhere around for anything. We're all sufficient
just like we are. We do not need you. And all of that got reversed.
It's called conversion. And I think the question for
us this morning is what is our view of God? How do we see God? This Bible is not about learning
ever so many verses or coming to church or getting baptized
and turning over a new leaf, starting out with new resolutions
to be better, to stop doing bad things and
start doing good things. This book is not about that. They're what you might call byproducts,
as Parris Reedhead would speak of it. They're byproducts of
the prime product. The prime product is coming to
see Him as He is. He's good. He's a good God. A loving God. And if we could just sit at the foot
of the cross and just look up there and see what he has done
in view of what we are and the arrogance of our pride to think
that we're big enough for this life and what happens beyond
death to think that he would die for us when we were enemies is an amazing thing. He's so
good. And Adam and Eve believed it.
They believed every bit of it. They were converted. Their whole
view of God was reversed. And then Adam and Eve go on to
have a child. The Lord had told them to be
fruitful and multiply. And the first child that was
born to them became a cold-blooded killer
that went to hell forever. I'll tell you why. He didn't believe the gospel
message of Adam and Eve. He didn't believe it. He chose to do like a lot of
people choose to do every day. I don't need God. I've got my own
notion of what's gonna make me happy. And as Frank Sinatra sang,
I did it my way. You come to the end of your life,
and you look back over it, and that's your signature song, I
did it my way. When Jesus Christ said, I am
the way, and the truth, and the life. And here we are at Calvary
Memorial Church. And why are we here? What in the world are we doing?
I can tell you this, if we come to a meeting like this or any
that are held here in this amazing place, it's amazing to me, amazing
to many. And we fail to receive what Adam and Eve received and that was a genuine loving
personal relationship with the loving God Brother Steve Johnson, the pastor
in Sanford, gave me a book about five years ago. It's called The
Secret of His Presence. I read it, and like many things,
after I read something, I read so many different kinds of books.
After a while, they all run together, and I forget that I even read
a certain book, and sometimes even buy it two or three times
because I haven't realized that I've already got it in the library.
Maybe you're not like that, but I'm that way. But the book was the secret of
his presence. I lost it, and it finally turned
up after five years. And when I picked it up, he questioned
whether I had read the book. And I told him, I said, I can't
remember. I can't remember. I can't even
find the book. And finally, it just turned up. And when I opened it up, I could
see where I had underlined different things in it, all through the
book. And those things became so much a part of my life. It's written
by G.H. Knight. K-N-I-G-H-T. And he was a preacher back at
the turn of the century, about 1905 or something like that is
when the book was copyrighted. And one of the things that I
would never forget, and I've mentioned it oftentimes in teaching,
But never really gave credit to who I heard it from because
I couldn't even remember. It just became a part of me.
And here's what he said. The most important thing you
will ever do in your life as a professing Christian is to
get alone with God. Alone with God. He said, when I say alone with
God, he said, I mean without any distractions from anywhere. And having this discipline in
your life that you're going to do this every day. And you're
going to have a place where this is going to happen. A place. And you're going to be alone
with God. and you're not going to just
read your chapter so that you can feel good about yourself
and say, well, I read my chapter for the day. He says, that's not what I'm talking
about. He says, I'm talking about having
a relationship with a person that is really there, that loves
us, that has feelings, that has done so much for us. And this
is his passion. This is his passion, is to have
fellowship with you. And the problem is, you don't
really want to have it with him. Because he's not that important.
He's not that important. What's important is getting that
cup of coffee and taking off to work and the business of the
day and the money we've got to make and all of this stuff, which
is an absolute waste. Death is coming like a freight
train toward every one of us. And in our blindness, we think
that somehow or other having that job and and getting that
energy thrust or whatever that coffee
gives us and going to work and doing our thing that somehow
that's going to equip us for what's coming, because we're
going to die. If there's anything that we need
to learn, we need to learn that without him, We can't do anything
right on this side of the grave, and we certainly will be without
hope on the other side of the grave forever, according to the
messages of the book. We need him. And his yearning, his plea to
us is to spend time with him. Why? Not because he's an egomaniac
that needs our worship, no. He wants our adoration for the
same reason parents want their children to adore them. It's
because we love them. And if they'll look to us and
love us and appreciate our words and our counsel, then they might
survive in this world. Because without that information
that we want to give them, they don't know how to survive. And
that's why God wants us to love Him. It's why He wants us to
worship Him. It's not because He needs anything.
He wouldn't be God if He needed anything. And so then we come to the book
of Job. Bible scholars say it's the oldest book, really, in the
Bible. It predates the writing of Genesis,
which is regarded as the Pentateuch written by Moses. Genesis, Exodus,
Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Well, Job supposedly predated that. And if you turn to the book of
Job, you needn't do, I'll just read you this. Job chapter 1,
verses 8 through 11, here's what we find. And the Lord said unto
Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there's none
like him in the earth? A perfect and an upright man,
one that feareth God, and escheweth, that is, turns away from evil.
Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, Doth Job fear God for
naught? Hast not thou made an hedge about
him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every
side? Thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance
is increased in the land. But put forth thine hand now,
and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face." In other words, Job doesn't love
you for who you are any more than Adam and Eve did. He loves you for selfish reasons,
for what he can get out of you. Did you know that that's the
nature of most of the preaching that goes on in the world today? What can we get out of God? What's the benefit for me if
I go to church? If I give to the church, That little seed of faith that
we throw out from time to time, if I put a little money in a
collection plate, then God will reward me. He'll reward me. He'll bless me with riches. That's a total failure to understand
the message of the cross. The message of the cross is we
deserve to be cast into hell forever and forgotten by God,
never to be remembered again. That's exactly what's going to
happen to people who never get saved, who live this life despising
God. The practical atheists, those
who profess to be saved, profess to be Christians, but in practicality,
they deny Him every day. They're practical atheists. In
other words, God doesn't soon not exist, for what part he has in our life.
And the thought of getting up every day and having that discipline
to meet with him and to fall at his feet and worship him because
we see the need to do it is not in most people's thoughts,
I can tell you that. So the devil comes, and this
is the challenge, and it hadn't changed. It hasn't changed in the mind
of Satan this view he has of God. And the view that Lucifer
had of God was that he's just an egomaniac. He's not the truth. He's a liar.
Yea, hath God said, in the day ye eat thereof ye shall surely
die. Ye shall not surely die. He lied to you. And Satan is trying the same
thing as it relates to Job. Why does Job love you, God? He
loves you because of what you've given him. He doesn't really
love you. But God used Job as a showcase
example of how wrong Lucifer was. How wrong Satan was. when it comes to the genuine
believer. He tells him, okay, you test
it. You test it. And I'll prove to
you that Job loves me for who I am. And that's the question
for us today. Do we love him for who he is?
Now you may wonder, what in the world does that have to do with
Revelation chapter 9? It's because this key that was given to him
to the bottomless pit is about Lucifer. And if we don't have
this background information, how are we going to understand
what's going on here? I'm telling you, we're not. We've
got to have this background. We've got to understand what
the long war is against God, not only by Satan and the fallen
angels, but by man. Man, by nature, hates the truth.
He wants his own truth. And we've become very artful
at inventing a God. that is merely a projection of
ourselves and how we think about things. And that's how deceitful
and twisted the human mind is in heart. But you see, we've got to understand
that the preaching of another Jesus, another gospel, another
spirit, is just an example of how determined
we are to worship ourselves and not God. And so all through
the Bible, this is what the Bible is about. What do we love most? Do we love God? Is He worthy of that time that
He wants to have with us every day? where we acknowledge not
only the need for that time that we're going to spend with Him,
but that His presence will go with us, that He will be in us and with
us all day long. Because finally at last we realize
that every thought of the mind of man by nature is only evil
continually and because of this we're just a thought away from
disaster. We've heard that before. It's
the truth. We need the presence of God not
to be spiritual. We need the presence of God as an acknowledgement of the
fact that we're the furthest thing from spiritual. And we so desperately need the
presence of God that without his presence we'll destroy ourselves
just like that. Just like that. Takes only a
moment of time. Takes only one decision and you're
gone. There are things that I could
do this week where I would never be able to stand in this pulpit
again. There are things that you can do that will destroy
you and your testimony the rest of your life. And we're very vulnerable to
those things happening all the time, continuously. It will not
go away, because the old nature does not go away. But anyway, back to Job. Job... The Lord allowed the devil to
destroy everything he had. Everything. But his wife. As Pastor Kelly said one time,
the only thing that was left with was a nagging wife. That encouraged him to curse
God and die. That's what his wife did. After
he lost everything that he had, and he was wealthy. He was a
very wealthy man. He lost everything he had and
his children. He had all sons and daughters. They all were killed. He lost
everything. And Job came through with flying
colors. He says, the Lord gives, the
Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. And so the devil was up against
the wall. He says, well, he still loves you for a reason,
because I know he's selfish. And so if you touch his life,
not the things that he had, but him, himself, if you touch him
and take away his health, if you strike him with sickness,
he'll curse you. because he doesn't love you for
who you are. He'll curse you. And so all of the rest of the
book of Job deals with trial number two. The first trial ends
in the first chapter. The second trial goes to the
end of the book. Why? Because that's the toughest trial. The toughest trial is do you
really see yourself as you really are in the eyes of God? And do you really see God as
he really is? Do you really? Well, God said at the beginning
that Job was righteous and there was none like him, and he was. But the one thing that a lot
of times is not presented in teaching is the fact that even
though the Lord saves us, He doesn't take away the old nature.
Conversion does not involve the old nature. The old nature that
you were born with, that loves the world and the things that
are in the world, the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh,
the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, which is not of
God, but is of the world, is going to continue with you until
the day you die. And there's a reason for it.
The Lord wants you to be able to prove every day that you understand
the message of this book. that you and me are the problem
and not Him. That's the reason for it. That's
the whole reason for it. And are we going to demonstrate
every day by dying daily that we are the problem and not God
because God is good, God is loving? Or Are we gonna turn it around
and exalt ourselves and diminish God? Bring Him down
to our level to make Him the evil one, the one that's really
at fault. This is what the whole Bible is about. And if we don't
understand these things, we're not ready to go into Revelation
and really get a handle on what's going on here. I'm telling you,
this has got to be understood. We've got an old nature that
is deserving of hell. It's deserving of death, and
not just death as the world thinks of it. You put somebody in a
box, put them in the ground, that's the end of them. No. The
death the Bible speaks about is everlasting death, is eternal
death. It's eternal consciousness. and
internal state of destruction god calls the second day so like
a fire there's a man so including Billy
Graham there for a time tried to mitigate or soften the
language of the Bible when it comes to the like a fire he was
ash is hail literal fire. Is it a little far. And he sort
of stumbled over that. Brother Jim spoke about these
things the other night excellent message. And a lot of people Peter LeBret.
He used to be the son of school teacher right here. In this church
and He's the one that made the mistake of asking me to be the
Sunday school teacher after he felt like he couldn't remember
stuff anymore. He got old. He lived to be over
100. But he told me in his own home
that he struggled continually with what the Bible says about
hell. And he had bad thoughts about God because of it. And
he wrestled with it. I went to see him 10 years later,
15 years later, he was still struggling with it. He struggled
with it until he died. He's not struggling with it anymore. And I believe Pete LeBret was
a saved man. I believe he's with the Lord
right now, enjoying his goodness for all eternity. I believe that. Don Boyes. Yeah, I saw that. Well, see, here's the thing that
a lot of people need to understand. You need to get this now. You
will make people mad if you go out here and you're not careful
about who you're talking to and you say something critical about
Billy Graham. Because he has been exalted to a level where
it has actually become politically incorrect in the churches to
be critical of him. But listen to me. I think it was Nehemiah. It was
either Ezra or Nehemiah, one or the other. Spoke about Solomon. there was none so glorious as
Solomon in his reign. There was none that would ever
live on the face of the earth that had the wisdom of Solomon. But those men, those prophets,
and I'm sorry, I can't remember which one it was, Ezra or Nehemiah,
said, in warning the people about marrying unbelievers in Cana. Women that were not of their
own family. He said, this is what Solomon
did and how in his wisdom he was led away by silly women into
adultery. And the worship of Molech Now folks, listen to me. We can't exalt man. No man. I don't care who he is. Anything
that we are, any good that we have ever done, all glory to
God. Not to a man. And I don't care what man it
is and how glorious his life. No man is exempt from falling
and making colossal mistakes. And when the Lord has elevated
you to a place where you can reach hundreds of thousands of
people around the world, it's a foolish thing to not think
that Satan is at the door seeking through that influence, because
it's massive, to destroy many. And he does. And so, I tell you something,
when I come in here and I teach from the Bible, I'm not up here
to make friends. I don't care what people think
about me. The thing that I'm concerned about is what people
think about the Lord. That's the only thing that matters. I can be wrong. Certainly can. Wrong about many things. But
the Lord is never wrong. And I can say things that are
wrong. But you have the opportunity to go to the Scriptures, like
the Bereans, and search the Scriptures to see whether these things I'm
telling you are so. And then take the Bible as your
measure, as your guide, for judging all things. We're supposed to
judge all things. And so, I think we ought to be
very thankful for one thing of Brother Jim's message the other
night. Because it takes a measure of boldness to go out here and
say things that conflict with the way the world generally thinks
about things. And the world's view of what
it means to be a Christian I would remind you to go back
and read Matthew 23, and how unchrist-like, if I could say
that the way I... and convey what I'm really trying
to say, the way he spoke was so unchrist-like by the world's
understanding of Christ. But he rebuked the Pharisees,
called them blind guides, whited sepulchers, Vipers, snakes, he
called them. He said, you go out and make
one proselyte, and when you do, you make him two-fold more the
child of hell than yourself. And so, you know, well, our time
is gone. I just noticed here our time
is gone. We've got to stop. So, next week we're going to
come back to Revelation chapter 9, and hopefully if we can remember
these things, we're preparing ourselves for what we're fixing
to look into here. So, let's pray. Father, thank
you for this time we've had. Spare us from a misunderstanding
of things that are of human origin. Help us, Lord, to see you as
you are. And to spend that time with you
that you deserve to have every day. That time is spent alone with
you. To the end we might know you.
We pray in Jesus name, amen.
Let's Deal With the Hard Issues
| Sermon ID | 225181337524 |
| Duration | 53:31 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday School |
| Bible Text | Revelation 9:1-6 |
| Language | English |
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