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Well, we're going to go ahead
and get started. I want to congratulate you all
for being here this morning. You set your clocks ahead and
you're not late. I have a history here in church. I got a bad rap because of one
year I forgot to set my clock forward or we got mixed up somehow. I'm in the shower, and Nancy
tells me there's a phone call, and it's from our associate pastor,
and he says, are you teaching today? I says, sure I am. I says,
I'll be there. He says, well, we're all waiting
for you. They made it a prayer meeting
for the adult Sunday school class. I tell you, I get nervous at
this time of year when it's spring forward or fall backwards. I'll
be honest with you, I did set our clocks ahead, and I even
went to bed an hour early last night. And I got up, I woke up
an hour and a half before I wanted to, and I couldn't go back to
sleep. So I laid there and prayed. So anyways, we're here, we're
thankful. It's a beautiful, sunny day.
We're getting close to springtime. But let's go ahead and open a
word of prayer and we'll get started this morning. Our gracious
Heavenly Father, Lord, we are humbly bowed before your presence.
And we thank you, Lord, for this time that we could come together.
Lord, every Sunday, Lord, it's a joy to join our hearts together
as your church, to greet one another in love and to join our
hearts together worship and praise to you. Lord, what a special
relationship you've given each one of us to be part of the Bride
of Christ, Church of Christ. And Lord, we come this morning
because we love you. We come for an opportunity, Lord,
to join our hearts together to hear from you today. And Lord,
even as we, during a sunny school hour, we call this our teaching
time, And so, Lord, if we're gonna learn anything, we need
your Holy Spirit's help, Lord, because He is the Spirit of truth. Lord, we need His counsel. We need His wisdom and discernment.
I need His help. And He's the one who gives us
understanding, Lord, speaks to our hearts. So we thank you,
Lord, for giving us your Holy Spirit to be with us. What a
wonderful privilege that we have as believers. that the Spirit
of God dwells with us and comforts us and walks with us, encourages
us. So we pray for that even right
now, Lord, as we open up your word here. And then, Lord, this
is a day in our church, Lord, where we're anticipating Nathan
coming forward to preach for us and just to get to know him
more. But morning else, Lord, we are praying for your help
in these matters. Lord, we recognize that this
is your church, you are a great shepherd, but Lord, you are calling
under shepherds to help your church to be edified, to be built
up. And so, Father, I pray, Lord,
for this day that it would be a day that we come with expected
hearts, Lord, that we come with anticipation of what you are
gonna do, And more than anything else, Lord, we want your will
in these matters. Lord, for Nathan and Janelle,
we want your will for them. We want your will for us as a
church. And so, Lord, we're praying that over today and over this
coming week, as we commit ourselves to prayer, that you would reveal
to us and confirm to us, Lord, and give us your peace in these
matters. So I pray for Nathan this morning. I pray, Lord, that
you would anoint him for the word that you've laid on his
heart. And that word is for us today. And so I pray, Lord, you
give him great liberty. Lord, take the fear out of his
heart or anxiety, whatever that may be. And Lord, for us, that
we would be attentive. And even, Lord, for later when
we have our question and answer time, that, Lord, that we would
do it in love with regards to the fact that we are trusting
you as our God to guide our paths today. We just want to tell you
we love you, Lord. And in the next hour, Lord, the
most important thing is to worship you in truth and in spirit, to
have our dear Savior Jesus exalted. And even now, Lord, as we're
studying the very fact of him coming back soon, I pray, Lord,
that you would be exalted. even in our study, and I pray
and ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Okay, if you'll again turn to
chapter 19. Now, let me just say this. In
chapter 19, we know that as we start out looking at this, we
saw all the, you know, the the beatitudes, the praise the Lord
for these things that God is doing. And we are looking at
anticipation of Christ coming back and looking at the details
of that. And last week we spent quite
a bit of time just kind of confirming again as to what this looks like
as far as our marriage to the Lamb and that we are the bride
of Christ. We believe that by the time that
we get to this section of Scripture, we the bride, the church, is
already up in heaven with Christ. And then what I want to do is
just finish up just what I thought here this morning, because I
thought this was so important. When you look at verse 8 right
here, it says, it was granted her to clothe herself with fine
linen, bright and pure. for the fine linen is the righteous
deeds of the saints. Now last week, I had told you
and I promised to you that I would speak and talk much about the
Bema Seat of Christ and how this really speaks here about this
passage of the bride making herself ready for this marriage supper. Remember, I just want you to
understand. Remember, the day you came to
faith in Jesus Christ, you were born again. You were married
to Christ. He is your bridegroom, and we
are the bride of Christ. That's a position that was secured
for us as we talked about the Holy Spirit given to us as an,
sort of speak as an engagement ring to show that we are his. It's a beautiful picture when
we look at the Jewish tradition or the customs of the marriage
betrothal, the marriage itself, the consummation of the marriage.
And remember, we said what's so important is that in that
seven days of a traditional Jewish wedding is that when the groom
went and got his bride, when the rooms were ready, the room
that they would be together for seven days, and then the final
house that he had built on his father's property for his bride. When that was ready, the father
went ahead and said, go get your bride. And then he does that.
He goes and he calls his bride to himself. And he brings her
back to his father's house. And they went into that bridal
chamber. And they locked the door. And
they had enough provisions in there for seven days. And we
believe that's a picture of the seven years of the Tribulation,
when we're raptured, taken out of this world, and while God
is pouring out His wrath upon this world, we're in that chamber
with our dear Savior, and that's where we talked about the Bema
Seat last week. We went through a time of examination. And in that examination, remember
we said this, it's not a judgment for any sin. We are already forgiven
of all of our sins, our past, present, and future. So our position
is secure. What we are doing then, the abimacy
was really Getting to the point here where we said that it was
granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure,
for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of Christ. And I want to
talk about that before we move on to the next. I just have these
things I want to share with you. When you and I were saved, we
were given the righteousness of Christ. It's his righteousness
that even covers you today, and so that when the Father in heaven
looks down on you as His children, He doesn't see all of the sin
that's in our lives, because we are covered Remember, it's
the blood of Christ that paid for our sins, and so it's his
righteousness that was imputed to us. I mean, in other words,
it was given to us as a covering so that we then could have this
right relationship with God, okay? So I just want you to know
that when we first came to Christ, we are clothed with Christ's
righteousness that was imputed to us. But now when we see right
here, in this section here that she was made herself ready, once
we go through that bema seat, remember when we left this world
in the time of the rapture, we are shredded of this old nature,
we are shredded this old flesh, and we are given a new resurrected
body just like Jesus, okay? So we were raised with incorruptible
new bodies, and we were joined with Christ in our flesh, our
new flesh, body, soul, and spirit. That's the bride of Christ. What
we see then is that when we come into that bema seat is that when
we are examined, and all of what you did in your life on this
earth, will determine the types of rewards, the types of linen
garments that you're gonna wear as the bride of Christ, okay? And so that's why we say it's
so important for us is that we want to live for the glory of
Christ. We want, when our dear Savior
comes back for his bride, we want, and when we're taken up,
we want to be clothed in such beauty for him. That's why we
live the way we do, because we love our Savior, and we want
Him to say that, yes, she has made herself ready, and she's
beautiful. That's what He died for, for
us as His bride. So this is what the bride is
going to look like. She's glorified now. How does
she get glorified? Well, we've been saved by the
righteousness of Christ. We have his nature that's been
imputed to us, the righteousness of Christ. But now we are being
presented to him. And so what I wanted to say to
you that that now we have a righteousness of our own, okay? It's not just
we're clothed over with Christ's righteousness, it's that now
we have a righteousness of our own. We've been born again, we've
been saved, we've been transported up into heaven as we've been
raptured in our new glorified bodies, and now we're clothed
with, it says here, the righteous deeds of the saints. And so what
I want you to see right here is that it's not just a garment
of righteousness put over her, okay, but it's her, she is no
longer has any sin. It's her righteous acts that
characterizes her as the bride. And this is, as I mentioned early
in verse eight, is depicted in the fine linen, bright and pure. It's an idea of holiness. It's
an idea of purity and spotlessness. So what I'm saying, see, at the
beam of seat of Christ, all that that distracted from her beauty
has been burnt up. Remember we said there was gold,
silver, and precious stones. Those are the things that last.
So in the character of what you became in Christ when you were
born again, and all those things that you did for the honor of
God, for His glory and to please Him, those motives have been
judged, and only those things that were done for His glory,
not for your own. You know what I'm saying? Sometimes
as believers, we do things just to please our brothers and sisters,
or sometimes we do it just to please ourselves, that make us
look good. God is the one with those piercing
eyes that looks into the heart and determines. as to what the
MOVAs were. And so this is what the rewards
were given. So now, based on that, I just
want you to see, when we come to this point, when Jesus is
ready to come back with all of us, and remember I said, once
that Bema Seat is finished, and that seven years is done, and
the time of the consummation of the marriage, remember, just
like the Jewish custom, For seven days, they're locked together.
And then when the doors open, the bridegroom comes out, and
he says, man, I want to present my bride to you. Look how beautiful
she is. She is everything that she has been ready, she has prepared
herself, and look how gorgeous she is. And we are then presented
to the glory of the host of heaven first. That's where we're at
when we come out of this seven-year room with Jesus, our bridegroom,
so to speak. But now we're gonna be presented
to those who are here in the kingdom of God, and I wanna show
you that, okay? So the bride has made herself
perfect. This is the glory that was promised.
Remember 1 John chapter three. Why don't we turn there just
a little bit to the left? 1 John chapter three. And let's pick it up here at, Well, let me start at chapter
2, verse 28. And now, little children, abide
in him, so that when he appears... And here's the thing I want you
to understand. It's so important that we live
our lives for our Lord, so when he appears, we may have confidence
You understand that? We'll have confidence and we
won't shrink from him in shame at his coming. See, a bride waiting
for her bridegroom, he says, be ready. He told his bride,
I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go to prepare a place
for you, I'm going to come again. So when he comes, we don't want
to be ashamed at his coming. We want to be a bride who says,
Lord, we've been waiting for you. I'm ready. I got oil in
my lamps. Come take me to be with you. for the place that you prepared
for me. So he says here, he says, we don't wanna shrink from him
and shame at his coming, and if you know that he is righteous,
you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has
been born of him. And that's what I'm saying. These
righteousness, we're gonna be judged on, and that's the kind
of clothing that this bride is gonna be clothed with, the fine
linen, pure, just as we've just seen here. Now, look at chapter
3, verse 1. See what kind of love the Father
has given to us, that we should be called children of God, and
so we are. The reason why the world does
not know us is that it did not know Him. Beloved, we are God's
children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared. But,
I love the little buts in the Bible, but! We know that when
he appears, we shall be like him, because we shall see him
as he is. So as this bride, as we have
been raptured out of this world, as we have been spent the seven
years with our bridegroom in examination at the Bema seat,
and now we've been, what it says right here is that she has made
herself ready for the fine linen is the righteous deeds. of the
saints. We shall be like him, but we
shall see him as he is. Now, I asked the question last
week as we finished up, I was kind of rushing through that,
but it was just a charge to us. What kind of linen are you going
to be wearing? And all of us should always be
examining ourselves. It tells us in scripture to examine
ourselves. to make sure that we're in the
right relationship with him. But more than anything else,
this should be a motive for us for godly living. The one who
gave himself for us, the one who on the cross gave us the
greatest illustration of love, somebody who knew no sin took
my sin. upon him and paid the debt. And
we owe so much to him. And I know it's in every Christian's
heart, we want for the Lord someday, when we come to that consummation
of that marriage, we want him to be pleased with his bride.
Don't we? He's gonna show us off. So let's
be the best that we can, all right? My brothers and sisters,
Now let's move on then to the, I just thought we needed to really
go through that just to finish that one more time, to understand
about your clothing that you're going to wear in heaven when
we take on to be his beautiful bride. And I just wanted to challenge
with that. Let's continue to work and live
for His honor and His glory so that you would be the one. I just can't, it's emphasis enough. He's going to show you off for
eternity. He's gonna say, look, this is
my bride. This is why I died. Look at her,
how beautiful she is. And I really want all of us not
to be ashamed, but to be pleased to Him, amen? All right, let's
look at verse 9 now. He says, And the angel said to
me, Write this, Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage
supper of the Lamb. And he said to me, These are
the true words of God. You know, it's interesting that
this is the fourth of seven times that we see this beatitude, meaning
that it's a praise to the Lord. This is the fourth time in Revelation
that we see this type of beatitude, this blessing. And I just want
to just kind of remind you, the first one was when we first started
this whole series, chapter one. You remember that? Blessed are
the ones who read Blessed are the ones who listen and those
who obey that which, so he gave us right off the bat, as we start
to look at what it means when we look at the glory of Christ,
because that's what revelation is, it's really a revealing of
who Christ really is in all of his glory. And so we spent much
time in the beginning, chapter one, just looking at all those
things that when we see Christ in his exalted being, What a
bridegroom we have, what a savior, what a God that we have. And
it was a picture then, and it was a blessing. And he said,
it would be a blessing for you to read these things and to hear
these things and understand that. And then the second one was where
he gave a blessed are the ones who are dead, who will die in
the Lord. That was in chapter 14, verse
13. And if you recall that, that was those who at that time, when it was, well, let me turn over
there, chapter 14 to 13. I wanna make sure. And I heard a voice from heaven
saying, write this, blessed are the dead who die in the Lord
from now on. And as we talked about then,
these are the ones that after the church is gone, For the first three and a half
years, even through the times of judgment, God brings judgment
to wake us up. Judgment should bring us to repentance.
And for those who are left behind, God in his mercy and his grace,
even when he's gonna pour out judgment, there's gonna be an
opportunity for them to hear the same gospel message that
you and I. It's not a different message,
it's the same message. Christ died for our sins, and
those during the time of tribulation are gonna have to repent of their
sins and come to faith in a true God, in a time when there's much
judgment coming upon this earth. So he says, blessed are those,
because we learn is that many of those, because of what's happening
at that time, when Antichrist rises and takes control and he
wants people to honor him and to worship him, is that they
are going to be martyred for their testimony. Now, it's not
being a martyr that gains them salvation. Like I said, it's
always the same, Same message, they come to faith just like
you and I did, repenting of sin, and come to faith in Jesus Christ.
But for these saints, I call them tribulation saints, they
are going to eventually be martyred, most of them, a lot of them. But he says, blessed are you
who die in the Lord, because they then will live with Christ's
eternity, just like you and I will. And then the third time we see
that, it happened when he says, blessed are those who stay awake.
Remember in chapter 16, we're going through the bold judgments?
And the bold judgments, I believe, are a little bit different than
the first set of judgments. This is the wrath of God being
poured out, okay? As I said before, I really believe
is that once, just like in the day of Noah, For 120 years they
were preaching. He was a preacher of righteousness.
Helen warning people of this coming judgment. And then finally
what happened? Ark was finished. God called
them into the ark. After 120 years of building it,
and God shut the door. Did he not? And then wrath came. Judgment came. And right here
in these bold judgments, And it's really something where Jesus
is kind of right in the middle between the sixth bow and the
seventh bow, and all of a sudden you see Jesus saying right here,
okay? Let me go back to it, let me
turn to that, okay? Look at 14, I mean 16, 15. Behold, I'm coming like a thief.
Blessed is the one who stays awake. Keep his garments on,
and he may go about naked and be seen. He may not go about
naked. So right in the middle between
the sixth bowl of wrath and the seventh, it's almost like God
is saying, for those right now, Those who may be studying, those
who may be wondering what's going on, okay, as they read it, God
is saying, it's almost like we said, it's a proliptic prophecy. It's already done. He is going
to bring wrath, but he's saying, wake up, people. And blessed
are the ones who wake up before these wraths come upon the earth. So he's given, blessed are those
who are awake. And then as we see, the one that
we're looking at, the fourth one, is what we're saying, who
are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb, and we'll get into
that. And then the next one, it says, blessed are those who
share in the first resurrection, and that comes out of chapter
20, verse six, meaning that Once he comes back, the general resurrection
of the righteous are all those who have died in Christ during
the tribulation. We believe it's probably gonna
be some of the Old Testament saints, but this is the first
resurrection of the just. And because then he says, these
will then go in with him to the millennial reign for the thousand
years. So he says, blessed are those And then we see then the
last two is he talks about those who keep the words of this prophecy. And then finally the last one
is in 2214 where he says, those who have washed, blessed are
those who have washed their robes. They have a right to the tree
of life. So we see these seven beatitudes
or these seven blessings. And it really is, This means
those who have the joy, those who are satisfied, fulfilled,
happy, that's what he's saying. If you are obedient to Christ,
and you're listening, and you're obeying him, and you've come
to him, you're going to be blessed in these ways. You're gonna have
a wonderful blessing. Now, let's talk about this statement,
who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb, okay? This verse discloses the fact
that there is going to be this wonderful marriage supper. And
so it's assuming then when it says, because I want you to understand
this, you and I are not the guest, are we? You look at, again, I
want to get back to the Jewish custom of a wedding. The bride
and the groom, they're not the guest. They're the honored ones. The guests come to participate
in their joy. And so he's talking here then,
it's given us that there is going to be a reception, and many guests
are invited, not the bride, not the groom. They're never the
guests, they're the ones who the ceremony is performed for,
and these are the honored ones. The guests will include all believers
up to Pentecost, as well as the tribulation saints who were saved
during the tribulation time. The Jews and the Gentiles remember
what we learned from Zechariah, that during the tribulation time,
part of what the tribulation is for is to wake the Jewish
nation up. And we learned in Zechariah is
that one third of the Jewish nation during that time will
come to faith. They will be the ones who are
saved. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. We learned
that when we went through the book of Zechariah a little bit.
So a third of the nation will be part of the guest. All those
who are saved during the tribulation, and remember when we looked at
that in Revelation chapter 7, let's turn over there for a second. And I want to pick up at this
verse right here, verse nine. After this I looked, and behold,
a great multitude that no one could number from every nation,
from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the
throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes. And remember,
He was asked, or the angel asked, well, who are these? John says,
I don't know. Tell me. He said, these are those
who come through the great tribulation. So as we mentioned earlier, these
are the multitudes of people who come to faith during the
tribulation time who are actually, most of them will be martyred.
They will be there as the guests. So what is this assuming? This
is assuming this wedding supper happens here on earth. Because
it says, as I told you in chapter 20, when the first resurrection
happens, Jesus then will come and reign with him and be with
him during the millennial reign, 1,000 years of Christ. Okay, so that's what we see right
here, okay? We'll probably see all of the
Old Testament saints, the tribulation believers who are part of this
earthly group. They will all participate in
this marriage supper that's honoring Christ and we, his bride. Make sense? Well, let me show
you a verse. I want you to turn with me over
to Isaiah chapter 25 because The Jews are expecting this,
all right? We should be expecting this.
Isaiah chapter 25. I want to pick up verse six.
Now listen to this. He says, on the mountain the
Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food. I'm in Isaiah 25, okay, verse
six. On this mountain, the Lord of
hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast
of well-aged wine, of rich food, full of marrow, of aged wine,
well refined. And he will swallow up the mountain,
the covering that is cast over the people, the veil that is
spread over the nations. He will swallow up death forever,
And the Lord will wipe away tears from all faces. You see that? This could only happen during
a time of Christ reigning, and a time when we will reign with
him here. This is a picture of the millennial
kingdom, and most of all, what we're learning here is a marriage
supper where God is putting on this wonderful feast for everyone
to celebrate together. He says here in verse nine, it
will be said on that day, behold, this is our God. We have waited
for him that he might save us. This is the Lord. We have waited
for him. Let us be glad and rejoice in
his salvation. Do you remember even Jesus himself
when at the time when he was given the last supper? Remember
when he took the drink? He said, I'll never drink this
again until I'm with you in my kingdom. I believe this is part
of what's, when this will happen, is at the marriage supper of
the lamb. Here, on this earth, in the millennial kingdom, reigning
with our Christ when he comes back. And then he said the same
thing when he said he took up the bread. He says, I will not
eat of it until it's fulfilled in the kingdom of God. Now let's
go back to our text. Back over here to verse 10 again. Then I, meaning John, fell down
at his feet to worship him. But he said to me, you must not
do that. I am a fellow servant, just as
you are. See, John had done a foolish
thing. He allowed himself to get so
enamored with the angel delivering this message that he began to
worship a created being. And that's something that we
have to really be careful about in our relationship with our
Lord. He's the only one that we should
ever bow down and worship. I don't care what we may ever
come across in another person, how good they may be, You know,
we may even see a miracle happen. And particularly in this case,
John is looking at this angel, this powerful angel, and he gets
down and he worships. And we know from scripture, God
is a jealous God. He is the only one deserving
of our worship. And we learned in Hebrews that
that when he speaks of angels, it says in 114, are they not
all ministering spirits to serve those who inherit salvation? So they are ministering spirits,
and to us, the body of Christ. They're only there to protect
us, assist us, anyway. but they are never, ever to be
worshiped. Anybody who would ever, even
Paul had to go ahead in Colossians 2.18, and he warns against worshiping
angels. You'd be surprised. People got
the wrong idea about angels, or even about other people that
they would call saints. They even worship them and they
pray to them. That's not right, that's against
God's law. God is the only one that we should
ever worship. Now then he speaks here in that
same verse here, you must not do that with you and your brothers
who hold to the testimony of Jesus. And he says, worship God,
for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. Now, the spirit of prophecy is
really, it refers to the preaching, the proclaiming, the speaking
forth. Literally, it means to stand
before and speak. And the very heart and soul of
our breath of preaching should always be the testimony of Jesus. So the angel is saying to John,
John, I'm sent to help preachers, apostles, prophets, to give testimony
and witness to Jesus. all these angels that we have
covered in this book of Revelation. And remember, we said that some
of them, it almost looks like, boy, they're discussing Jesus.
You know, it's a picture of Jesus. I mean, the things that it gives
you, you know, we see some of the same things in the beginning
when we went over the character of Christ being exalted in heaven. But as I said before, you'll
never find anywhere in the book of Revelation where Jesus is
referred to as an angel. Now there are many powerful angels
that, it's like Moses when he was with God so long and he's
shown and people, he came down and people, something's going
on with this guy. The glory of God was shown him.
There are certain powerful angels that exhibit some of the power
and majesty that Christ was, but Christ is never ever referred
to as an angel in the book of Revelation. So if a preacher isn't preaching
the gospel and preaching Jesus, He's not gonna get the affirmation
from heaven or the support that God would want to give those.
So it's very important that all of us, even in our sharing with
others, whether we're a teacher or not, we are always to give
the testimony of Jesus as being the very heart of our preaching
and teaching. Remember this, okay? Even Jesus,
speaks about the fact when he was being challenged on some
of his authority. And he made a statement. Search
the scriptures, and then you think you have life, but it's
they that testify me. You remember the two individuals
that, after the resurrection, and these two are going to road
to Emmaus, these disciples are downtrodden, they've been hurt. They're confused, fearful, and
then who comes up to them? Jesus. I would love to be on that road
to Emmaus and listen to our dear Savior. Because what he did,
starting from the prophets of old and everything else, he shared
with them all these scriptures that were pointing to him. And
he said, was not this to happen? Was not, I'm paraphrasing a little
bit, but he was saying, Was what happened to Jesus, was that not
predicted? You know, he says that, beginning
with Moses and all the prophets, interpret them, all the scriptures,
the things concerning himself. Well, let me go on to verse 11. Then I saw heaven opened, and
behold, a white horse The one sitting on is called fateful
and true, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. Brother and sister, we've come
to the point now, heaven is open. Now, it's not open for John to
be taken up like it was before. Chapter 4, verse 1, that's what
it says. Heaven was open. And then he hears this voice,
come up hither. No, this is heaven open for Jesus to come back. I mean, this is the culmination
of ages. This is what you and I are waiting
for. This is what we should be waiting for. We should have great
expectation. We should be looking forward
to this. We should be joyous. And so here's the consummation
of ages. Jesus, who basically said he's
coming back again, is fulfilling what he said he would do. And
heaven is being opened. See, now it's going to determine who will rule this world. For these years since Adam and
Eve have fallen, they gave up their authority to rule as God
had asked them to, to manage. and they gave it up. Satan took
it over. Jesus referred to him as the
prince of this world. Now, no more. Finished. No more. No more waiting. It's time. Then we studied that,
and you know, part of what we learned in Revelation already
is that no more waiting. Jesus has the deed. He is the rightful owner. He
paid the price. And now he's taken back what
is rightfully his. And we say, well, why didn't
he do that in the beginning? Well, because, remember, we talked
about the purposes. I believe it's all these tribulation
saints who come to faith. One of the things we knew about
is God wasn't done with Israel. no matter what some people would
teach and preach today. God is a promise keeper. He made
covenants with Abraham that were not covenants depending on their
faithfulness. It was a one-sided covenant that
God made with Abraham. In fact, Abraham was asleep when
God confirmed that covenant when he walked down between those
sacrifices. And he made a promise to them.
And that's what part of the tribulation time of the judgment is to wake
and shake them up. And now we're gonna see he's
coming back. And he's going to reign. So we should be anticipating
this place. Remember, even Paul makes this
statement. He defines our lives as those
who love Christ appearing. For a century, the world has
scoffed at this. In Peter, it says, where is the
promise of his coming? And people scoff at the fact.
But here now, we see that heaven is open to us. And we see the
white horse, and on the white horse we see the rider. So the reason heaven is open
is not to let us in, but to let him out. It's time. Father has
determined. It's time. Well, I'm out of time. So let me just kind of just in
closing right here, I just want to give you, I'm going to be
gone for the next two Sundays after. I'm going to, Nancy and
I, we're finally going to get some vacation time. We're heading
down to Florida and brother Joe is going to share the next couple
of weeks. He'll be, you want to, what's
your title or what are you going to be subject? OK, he's going to go over the
Statement of Faith, Living Hope Bible Church. We feel that's
important. So he'll fill in for me in the
next two weeks. What I'm going to be sharing
with you in the future is I'm going to get into some depth
here because we're going to go over the different battles leading
up to this point. There's some misconceptions about,
I want you to understand, one of the things we see Jesus on
his white horse coming, we see that his robe is dipped in blood.
Well, when did that happen? When does he go and save the
third of the Jews who are over in, we believe, down over in
Petra, down in Jordan? Because remember when we went
over the earlier chapters where the, The one was giving birth
was Israel. And then, remember, Satan was
gonna come against and wanted to devour her. And God miraculously
saves her. Well, we believe that when the
abomination of desolation happens, that's why Jesus said, you just
go. Don't even go for your coat,
just get out of here. He said that to the ones in Judah. He
says, go, and he's got a place for them. And so we're going
to talk about those Jews who escaped out of Judah, who are
being cared for over the next three and a half years by the
Lord in this place called Petra. And we're going to see how God
then brings them back out of there and protects them and fights
for them. And I just wanted to show you
some of the battles. Some believe that the Ezekiel
38-39 happens during this time. Well, I'm going to show you that
it's not. That's going to happen sometime.
It happened today. It happened before the tribulation,
before the rapture. It happened after the rapture.
But the Ezekiel 38-39 war, we're talking about Russia coming down
into Israel. we're going to see that that's
a separate war. This is not Armageddon. This
is not the end time when Christ comes back and he battles all
of the nations of the world, not just the ones from the north.
So I'm going to spend some time going over with you so that you
have a better understanding, uh, cause it could be a little
confusing. There's a, there's a lot going
on. And so what I, I think it's important for us, is that we'll
learn what that is. We'll see how these nations come
together. Because at one point, they're
fighting amongst each other. And at some point, out of what
we call deception from the evil one, demonic forces, they finally
join forces. Because it says when he comes,
he comes to battle the nations of the whole world, not just
Russia coming down. So I'm going to spend some time,
when I get back, up from this point, because I think this is
the time to really go through that. So I'm going to take a
little bit of a break from going verse to verse, and I'm going
to spend some time with you to show you all the sequences that
are happening during this time around the world. Make sense?
Any comments, questions? Let's pray. Father, we do want
to thank you, Lord, for Just for the very fact, Lord, that
we are your church, we are your bride. You died for us. You call this right now in your
righteousness. So that when you see us, Lord,
you see us clean, forgiven. You don't see us in our sin.
Now you do deal with us, Lord, when we become disobedient, and
we're thankful for that. Lord, you want a pure bride.
And my prayer, Lord, is that we, till the time you call us,
home. Lord, some of us may not live
to see the day when you call us, when we're all raptured together,
Lord, as we just seen in our own dear sister Joyce as she
went to be with you on March 3rd, she's in your presence today.
What a wonderful, he was so ready for seeing you. For us who are
left behind, Lord, I pray, Lord, that we will continually to live
our lives to please you, to honor you. Lord, we truly want for
you to come back. Lord, we're expecting that. Help us, Lord, that we would
be a bride who's ready, that has oil in her lamps. Help us, Lord, that we would
keep ourselves pure and holy. We look forward to that day,
Lord. But until we do, Lord, we are your church, you are our
shepherd, and we need your care. And Lord, even for today, Lord,
I pray as we go in this next hour, Lord, we come together
as a church, uniting our hearts, and I pray more than anything
else, Lord, we would worship you in truth and in spirit. Lord, we want Christ to be exalted
in this place. And I do, Lord, pray for our
brother Nathan, Lord, as he will come and share the word with
us. Lord, you've laid a message on
his heart for us, And I pray, Lord, you would grant him great
freedom and liberty, an unction of your spirit. Lord, that you would speak to
your church today. We would hear what you have to
say to us. Lord, I pray for our worship
time together. I pray for the worship team who
will be ministering to us today. Lord, I pray you would continually
put joy in their hearts. Lord, that when we gather here
in this room together, Lord, you would hear one heart praise
and worship that you are God. So bless this time together,
Lord. I want to pray for Nathan and Janelle, Lord, even afterwards
when we have a question and answer time, Lord. Father, we are asking
for your Holy Spirit to confirm and give us peace, Lord, about
how we are to go forward. with this brother and for us
as a church. Lord, we are trusting you for
that answer. So Lord, as we finish this time
with Nathan and Janelle, Lord, and we have question and answer,
and Lord, as we spend this next few days this week praying, praying,
Lord, that you would confirm in our hearts what your desire
is. We want to please you. So blessed
now we pray in Jesus' name, amen.
Revelation
Series Revelation
| Sermon ID | 39251329113169 |
| Duration | 52:31 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday School |
| Bible Text | Revelation 19 |
| Language | English |
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