SPEAKER_00: We study through books of the Bible here at the Village Chapel, and it's my great joy and pleasure to be leading us through chapter 20 of the Book of Revelation, last book in the 66-book library we call the Bible, and a great book it is, and we're getting to the most exciting parts.
SPEAKER_00: It's been exciting all the way through, but I'm ecstatic about this.
SPEAKER_00: Why do we call our study of uh Revelation the Hope of Glory?
SPEAKER_00: Well, because uh Revelation reminds us that while we live in a broken world, uh, and as such, there will always be a struggle.
SPEAKER_00: Um, revelation doesn't stop with just the struggle, it recognizes it, but doesn't just stop there.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and while there's a fight, there will one day come a feast, and we're headed toward that uh as we turn here into chapter 20.
SPEAKER_00: Some things need to get done before we can get to the feast.
SPEAKER_00: But one day Christ will return, and one day he will set all things right, and we will not only see but experience his glory.
SPEAKER_00: So we have this hope of glory as we study the book of Revelation, which uh also that word could be translated apocalypse or unveiling, and it's the unveiling of Jesus Christ, gives us a clearer vision of who he is.
SPEAKER_00: Here is our outline as we've been doing it.
SPEAKER_00: We've sort of broken it up into the seven visions, and um they are chapters one through three, the seven churches, chapter four through chapter eight, verse one, the seven seals, the seven trumpets of chapter eight, uh, verse two through chapter 11.
SPEAKER_00: And uh in the fourth vision, we had the great battle against Satan in uh chapters 12 through 14.
SPEAKER_00: Chapters 15 and 16 gave us the seven bowls or the seven cups or goblets, however you want to call it, the the cups or bowls of God's wrath being poured out.
SPEAKER_00: And chapters 17 through 19, we've just come through the downfall of Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Babylon sort of uh portraying uh the world as it sets itself against God.
SPEAKER_00: Uh so Babylon is the ancient city name, goes all the way back, and Babylon is portrayed here as that ancient city, portrayed as the great prostitute here in the book of Revelation, and really the world system that sets itself apart from God.
SPEAKER_00: So now we're in chapter 20, and we're turning toward the new heavens and the new earth, and I'm excited.
SPEAKER_00: 20, 21, and 22 are last three chapters together in this amazing book.
SPEAKER_00: As you can see, it's an action-packed book.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, it reaches even the most spiritually ADD among us.
SPEAKER_00: The images are vivid, some of the uh symbols are shocking, uh, the events are epic, and the outcome is brilliant.
SPEAKER_00: So uh I hope you have your Bible with you today.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't, uh hope you can maybe swipe on your device and find one of those Bibles you can uh read along with us as we look at chapter 20.
SPEAKER_00: Most of us recognize that the problems in the world are not uh merely veneer problems.
SPEAKER_00: Humanity has been confused by the chaos of its own misguided thoughts, its mixed motives, its misdirected affections.
SPEAKER_00: We become intellectually confused and morally bankrupt.
SPEAKER_00: We need outside help if we are to ever find inside hope.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the great news about the book of Revelation.
SPEAKER_00: It brings it all to us.
SPEAKER_00: This quote from Eugene Peterson by setting Armageddon before us, and we read about that in chapter 16, by setting Armageddon before us as a vision of salvation, the pastor, meaning John, prevents us from thoughtlessly reducing salvation to good behavior, supposing that the consequence of salvation is to make us nice, to install good manners in everyone, and make us all docile consumers.
SPEAKER_00: It's difficult to see how people who read scripture for very long can come up with such a tame view of salvation.
SPEAKER_00: And he is so right there.
SPEAKER_00: This salvation of God is an utter transformation of heart, mind, and it results in a transformation of behavior.
SPEAKER_00: As we'll see, these things are all connected.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, whenever the uh whenever seized by the great affection of God, it begins to change every bit of who we are.
SPEAKER_00: Well, let me tell you before I read it, chapter 20 is perhaps the most controversial chapter uh in the whole book, if not the whole Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Churches have split over it, entire denominations have been formed over it, uh, a library full of commentaries have been written on chapter 20, all because humans have become obsessed with being able to predict the sequence of events in the last times or the end times, as it's called.
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 20 talks about uh the millennium, and that's been at the center of much of the speculation.
SPEAKER_00: Most of us have heard the term millennial in our day and time, which refers to all of those who uh reached young adulthood in the first part of the 21st century.
SPEAKER_00: Millennium simply means 1,000 years or an anniversary designating another 1,000 years.
SPEAKER_00: So it might be 2,000-year or 5,000-year anniversary.
SPEAKER_00: But the millennium or 1,000-year period mentioned six times here in Revelation is not unimportant.
SPEAKER_00: Um, however, the last thing that I want to be caught doing whenever it is that Jesus does return is uh spending a lot of time arguing and dividing up his church over the issue of when he's going to, um, precisely when he's going to return and when this millennium period is uh is supposed to take place.
SPEAKER_00: When Christ returns, you won't have time to turn to anybody uh you disagreed with about the end times and say, see, I told you so, because you won't even get to the word, the end of the word see uh before this will all happen in the twinkling of an eye.
SPEAKER_00: Uh what we do know about the second coming of Christ is that it will be unpredictable, undeniable, unavoidable, surprising, personal, and powerful.
SPEAKER_00: Um, we just don't know exactly when that's going to be.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus is the one who reminded us of that.
SPEAKER_00: In chapter 20 of Revelation, we will hear about the millennium.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, we'll talk, we'll read about the ultimate defeat of Satan and sort of the doing away with Satan, his destiny, if you will.
SPEAKER_00: We've been reading about that along the way, and the cycles of seven, the seven seals, the seven trumpets, the seven bowls, have all, I think, taken a look at the same kinds of things from different perspectives, as opposed to just a linear sequence, and it's sort of ramping up and comes to this climactic, you know, singular line of events.
SPEAKER_00: I think we've been sort of ascending in a spiral staircase, and we keep coming back around and getting another look at some of these things.
SPEAKER_00: Um, we'll see here in this chapter, the Great White Throne Judgment.
SPEAKER_00: Um, we'll read about the lake of fire and we'll read about a book called The Book of Life.
SPEAKER_00: And so these this is all in 15 verses, you guys.
SPEAKER_00: This is a pretty amazing chapter, actually.
SPEAKER_00: So uh let's take a let's take a look then at chapter 20 of Revelation.
SPEAKER_00: I've got my Bible here.
SPEAKER_00: I hope you've got yours there.
SPEAKER_00: I saw is how it begins.
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, uh John says that throughout this book about 50 times.
SPEAKER_00: So he's uh he's telling us that these are things that he actually saw in these visions that the Lord is giving him while he's in prison.
SPEAKER_00: His his his life, his sort of creature comforts at the time all of this is given to him, his creature comforts aren't so great.
SPEAKER_00: Um and uh he's in prison for his faith on the Isle of Patmos.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what, when he gets these visions, this is what becomes the book of Revelation that gets handed out to these seven churches around the region that we call uh Turkey today.
SPEAKER_00: It was called Asia Minor back then.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but they would have read all of this in a certain way back then.
SPEAKER_00: And it's also very helpful for us, I think, as we study it, to take a look at it and try to imagine how they might read it.
SPEAKER_00: Well, he saw an angel coming down, and by the way, we read about angels here in the book of Revelation, probably 65, 70 different times.
SPEAKER_00: They're not the point, but they're pointing us to the point, the one who is the point, the Lamb before the throne of God, the Lamb who sits upon the throne of God, Jesus Himself.
SPEAKER_00: Uh John says, I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand.
SPEAKER_00: Now that's vivid, that's visual.
SPEAKER_00: He's got a long, big, gigantic chain in his hands, and he's got a key.
SPEAKER_00: The key is the power to unlock or to lock.
SPEAKER_00: And the chain is something he could use to lock something up.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so here's what here's what happens.
SPEAKER_00: He laid hold of the dragon, the serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan, and he bound him for a thousand years.
SPEAKER_00: And so there's the millennium, there's the idea of a thousand years here.
SPEAKER_00: He threw him into the abyss and he shut it and he sealed it over him, so that he should not dis that he should not deceive the nations any longer until the thousand years were completed.
SPEAKER_00: After these things, he must be released for a short time.
SPEAKER_00: And then John goes on in verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: I saw thrones, and thrones are mentioned about 37, almost 40 times throughout the book of Revelation, and certainly they represent some kind of authority, um, um, some kind of uh power and authority, uh some kind of uh ruling authority, if you will.
SPEAKER_00: I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and the judgment and judgment was given to them.
SPEAKER_00: And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded uh because of the testimony of Jesus and because of the word of God, and those who had not worshipped the beast or his image, and had not received the mark upon their forehead and upon their hand, and they came to life and they reigned with Christ for a thousand years.
SPEAKER_00: And so here's this idea of those folks who had died under the persecution of the dragon, the beast, the great prostitute, all of those forces that set themselves against God down through history, and yet they're brought back to life.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't receive the mark of the beast, uh a symbol or a sign that they would have belonged to the beast and the way that the beast thinks and sets itself against God.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't belong to that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't have that disposition of heart, you see.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's all about our disposition of heart toward God.
SPEAKER_00: And this mark is just a symbol or a sign of the fact that these folks had not surrendered to the beast or the message of the beast or the thinking of the beast and the world system as it sets itself apart from God.
SPEAKER_00: The rest of the dead, and that would seem to indicate those who had caved into the beast, they did not come to life until the thousand years were completed.
SPEAKER_00: This is the first resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed and holy is the one who has a part in the first resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: Over these, the second death has no power.
SPEAKER_00: But they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him for a thousand years.
SPEAKER_00: And so, there again, we have the idea of the thousand-year period, the millennium.
SPEAKER_00: This is really an amazing chapter, as I said.
SPEAKER_00: Now let's see what happens with Satan as he is going to be released for just a short period of time here.
SPEAKER_00: It says, When the thousand years are completed, Satan will be released from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog.
SPEAKER_00: And these are names of uh nation names, I'd say representing all of the nations from the four corners of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: And I know there have been folks who have tried to say, well, Gog is this country and Magog is that country, and that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00: But that's not what's being said here.
SPEAKER_00: I think the idea is that from the four corners of the earth, um, Satan has come out to deceive the people who are living in the world.
SPEAKER_00: And this may be flashing back, too, as well.
SPEAKER_00: And he wants to gather them together for the war.
SPEAKER_00: The number of them is like the sand of the seashore.
SPEAKER_00: And so this harkens back to the image that we were given even in uh chapter 16, the Battle of Armageddon.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and that indeed could be what this is a reference to, because as I say, it's like an ascending circular staircase, and you're getting to see things from different angles.
SPEAKER_00: Well, they came up on the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city.
SPEAKER_00: Certainly got to be a reference to Jerusalem, which would be sort of the opposite of Babylon in throughout the book of Revelation.
SPEAKER_00: Babylon, the city that represents the people who are at odds with God, and Jerusalem representing the city of God, or the people who belong to the city of God.
SPEAKER_00: And so they uh surrounded the camp and the saints in the beloved city, and fire came down from heaven and devoured them, and the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are also, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: You see how absolute that is.
SPEAKER_00: You see how the sovereignty of God is at work there.
SPEAKER_00: And even as all of the forces that set themselves against God have mustered themselves together in this great open plain, just like we read about with Armageddon, the Valley of Jezreel, the Valley of Megiddo, it's called a lot of different things throughout the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: But it's just almost nothing to God to simply rain down fire on those who are his enemies and brimstones, and to literally, you know, take the devil and literally toss him into the lake of fire, and he'll be tormented forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: Well, verse 11 is another sort of change of scene, and we go on to verse 15 from there.
SPEAKER_00: I saw a great white throne, and him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so true that uh the power of God, the all-seeing eye of God, the omnipresent God, um there is no place to run and hide from God.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I'll tell you why I think that's good news in just a minute.
SPEAKER_00: But he says, I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and the books were opened, and another book was opened, which is the book of life, and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books according to their deeds.
SPEAKER_00: And there are several different books that are mentioned in Revelation, and it's not always easy to figure out which book's being talked about.
SPEAKER_00: In the next chapter, we'll read about the Lamb's book of life.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and whether one of these is the same as that or not, I'm not a hundred percent certain, even though there'll be a lot of Bible teachers and commentators that'll say they know that.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, myself, I find myself a little hesitant to put everything in cement and lock it all up and say, I've got it all figured out, because we start to get so focused on the signs and symbols that we forget or uh take our eyes off of what they are supposed to point us to, or should I say, who they are supposed to point us to.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Well, anyway, he saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, talked about these books, and um, and that the dead which uh the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books according to their deeds.
SPEAKER_00: The sea gave up the dead, which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead, which were in them, and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds.
SPEAKER_00: Now death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.
SPEAKER_00: This is the second death, the lake of fire.
SPEAKER_00: That's pretty clear there, right?
SPEAKER_00: And verse 15, we'll wrap up there.
SPEAKER_00: If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
SPEAKER_00: Wow, this is really, really dramatic, really powerful, and there's just so much here.
SPEAKER_00: Um is the millennium mentioned here uh literal or is it uh figurative in some way?
SPEAKER_00: Uh is it earthly or is it something that's already going on?
SPEAKER_00: And there's lots of different questions that you might be able to ask about this.
SPEAKER_00: If it's not literal and it's figurative, what is it figurative of?
SPEAKER_00: Um numbers play an important role in the book of Revelation, but at the same time, they're largely symbolic.
SPEAKER_00: So you see the number three over and over again, or the number four, four corners of the earth, four living beasts.
SPEAKER_00: Uh the number seven is just all over the place in the book of Revelation.
SPEAKER_00: Uh we read of twelve, you know, we we we especially when we read about the 144,000 uh and the number 1,000 itself here in this particular chapter.
SPEAKER_00: So why would the mention of 1,000 here be any different from the symbolic use of the numbers 3, 4, 7, 12, uh, or 144,000 elsewhere?
SPEAKER_00: It seems that seven is the number of perfection, and one thousand appears to be ten, and multiples of ten appear to be the number of completion, if you will.
SPEAKER_00: And so it could easily be that the 1,000 years is a complete unit of time, as opposed to if it were to go a day past a thousand years, it would be a thousand years and one day.
SPEAKER_00: So you see what happens, I think, when you study a fascinating book like this is if you get too caught up in a literal translation of everything, you have got a lot of management, a lot of problems, and a lot, a lot of juggling to do.
SPEAKER_00: Four views of interpretation of biblical prophecy.
SPEAKER_00: We put these up there on the screen for you before.
SPEAKER_00: I'll do it again.
SPEAKER_00: Um, there's the preterist view, the futurist view, the historical view, and the idealist or parallel view.
SPEAKER_00: The preterist uh view of revelation as you interpret revelation based on uh you see everything as things that have already transpired um before the time of John or in John's recent past.
SPEAKER_00: Um so it's all sort of um been taken care of.
SPEAKER_00: And everything you see, all these symbols, all that, you can read that into the past.
SPEAKER_00: The futurist view is sort of the opposite of that.
SPEAKER_00: It's to say everything is way in the far distant future.
SPEAKER_00: And therefore, you know, um, every little symbol that we see here is about something in the future.
SPEAKER_00: And then the burdens on us to try and figure out, well, this means that, and that means this, and this number means that, and these images and these creatures and all that mean all these different things.
SPEAKER_00: And you can see real quick how either one of those could become quite frustrating.
SPEAKER_00: The historical view is to suggest that all of this is happening strictly within the um uh the history of the church itself.
SPEAKER_00: And then the idealist view is to say that um there are some of these things that have been fulfilled in the past, some of these things are being fulfilled, and some of these things will be fulfilled ultimately in the future.
SPEAKER_00: You may or may not uh have been able to tell that I tend to be in uh embracing the idealist view.
SPEAKER_00: Um so the key to unlocking the secrets and images and symbols of revelation or the sequence of the end times and all that sort of thing is to be somewhat humble and somewhat modest about what we can actually figure out ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: And to remind ourselves, as we go all the way back to chapter one, that this book is not about us um being able to put together the prophecy jigsaw puzzle or decode the numerical code that is, you know, some kind of an amazing secret cipher that God is trying to keep us stumped and keep us busy doing that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what God's interest is in at all.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: From the beginning of this book, we have seen that the idea is that Jesus would be unveiled, Jesus would be revealed to us.
SPEAKER_00: And so, as regards the millennium itself that we read about here uh several times in this particular chapter, and that we have heard so much about that, so much ink has been spilled over, people writing about and speculating about, um, and that some churches have divided themselves up over.
SPEAKER_00: Um you know there are several systems of looking at the millennium and how it fits into the end time sequence as well.
SPEAKER_00: The pre-millennial, uh pre-millennialist view, the postmillennialist view, the a millennialist view, and the dispensationalist view.
SPEAKER_00: And you'll see all those up on the screen.
SPEAKER_00: And you can hold to any number of views on the millennium and still be a Christian.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to know that.
SPEAKER_00: Um, there are Bible believing um uh great thinkers.
SPEAKER_00: That will look into these scriptures and as they interpret what they read there, they'll begin to see it fall a certain way.
SPEAKER_00: But I would say watch over and guard your hearts and your minds so that we don't focus again so much on the signs that we miss who they point to.
SPEAKER_00: We don't want to drown in the despair or the pessimism of thinking that it's all happened already and that this is the best it's ever going to be.
SPEAKER_00: And because when you look around the world today and you see how broken it is and how frustrated you are with your own self and your own selfishness and all that sort of thing, you we all know we need some hope and we need to be able to look forward to more transformation and to the kind of outside help that God intends to give us.
SPEAKER_00: At the same time, you don't want to adopt an unrealistic optimism uh uh simply because of what's going on right now, thinking that, oh, uh, the way for things are in the world right now is going just swimmingly well.
SPEAKER_00: This is the way I would like it.
SPEAKER_00: And uh my team is winning, and therefore everything's peachy keen, and and read that into uh the events of the book of Revelation.
SPEAKER_00: We need um we need to look higher than all of that.
SPEAKER_00: And that's one of the reasons we chose to study this book at this time.
SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad that we have done this.
SPEAKER_00: We actually decided to study Revelation before the pandemic, before we knew there was going to be a pandemic, before the tornado itself that preceded that here in Nashville, Tennessee.
SPEAKER_00: And so the Lord in his providence led us to study this book that sets our sights much higher than this little slice of time that we live in, much higher to what the Lord has been doing throughout human history and what he intends to do as he wraps up human history and brings about the new heavens and the new earth.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, this millennium period, followed here by a brief period that Satan's released, and at least illustrates the fact that one more time, you know, uh until Christ returns to restore and renew all things, even though humankind has been offered this thousand-year environment with a with a fresh start, sin and temptation are still crouching at the door, if you will, or lurking at the door, uh just around the corner.
SPEAKER_00: Evil must be dealt with decisively.
SPEAKER_00: And only God can do that.
SPEAKER_00: And chapter 20 certainly reminds us of that.
SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, I think we're reminded that God will have the final say here.
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
SPEAKER_00: And the battle is over before it begins.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the devil is literally tossed about like a, you know, one of the angels coming down and just literally grabs a dragon and throws him.
SPEAKER_00: And it's hardly, it hardly could be described as a battle when heaven gets involved.
SPEAKER_00: Um, maybe a struggle down here quite a bit, that's true.
SPEAKER_00: But when God, when Christ, when his angels are involved, there's no struggle at all.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's it's like somebody taking a misbehaving puppy or misbehaving cat litter scruff of the neck and just putting them right in their place.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what happens with this dragon here.
SPEAKER_00: Before God ushers in the new heavens and the new earth, though, he intends to deal once and for all with the problem of evil.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and that happens before this great white throne judgment that we're reading about, as best as I can tell.
SPEAKER_00: Osgenis and Carpe Diem Redeemed says, from the beginning to the end of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, there is the enduring truth of God's sovereignty and providence.
SPEAKER_00: Evil may run rampant, accidents will happen, disappointments, disappointments, and setbacks may dismay the best of us, and at times there may seem to be no meaning to it at all.
SPEAKER_00: Uh but there is always the relief of the recurring words, but God and the tirelessly repeated reassurance that is backed by a thousand reasons, have no fear.
SPEAKER_00: And we talk about that all the time here at the village chapel.
SPEAKER_00: You see, because of God, um, we have no reason to be afraid of anything else.
SPEAKER_00: When we have a healthy fear of the Lord, it's the beginning of wisdom, it's the be it leads to life, as the book of Proverbs tells us.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and Jesus, who's the author of courage, Jesus who even gives us the faith that we need to trust in Him and believe in Him, is the one we want to turn to.
SPEAKER_00: We don't want to turn to these signs, we don't turn to these symbols, we certainly don't want to turn to the dark side, we certainly don't want to move to Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: We certainly don't want to become a part of the way the world thinks and acts apart from God.
SPEAKER_00: We want to turn to the Lamb who was slain, who's risen again, and who will reign forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: Couple things I want to point out here today.
SPEAKER_00: Um, four things to be precise.
SPEAKER_00: What, first of all, what is clear.
SPEAKER_00: Number one, God is sovereign over all things.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I never get tired of hearing that.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know about you.
SPEAKER_00: It ends up being a sermon point often, not only the book of Revelation, but often when we study the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: And the reason that we keep getting reminded of it, I think, is because we keep forgetting it.
SPEAKER_00: How do you say?
SPEAKER_00: How's that happen?
SPEAKER_00: We keep forgetting it because we're not filling our minds and hearts with the Word of God.
SPEAKER_00: We keep forgetting it because we keep trying to take the reins back from God and be sovereign ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: We keep forgetting it because we get anxious about the outcome of the election, or we get worried about the way things are gonna go or what the next report we're gonna hear is gonna be.
SPEAKER_00: And we just need to be reminded over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: Not only has he got the whole world in his hands, he's got you, he's got me, he's got us in his hands as well.
SPEAKER_00: He's sovereign.
SPEAKER_00: And what we mean by that is not a hair falls from our head that he doesn't know about it.
SPEAKER_00: When we say he is omnipotent, we're saying he is all powerful.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, when we're saying he is infinite, we're saying he doesn't miss anything.
SPEAKER_00: He hasn't misplaced one atom or molecule in his universe.
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
SPEAKER_00: As John Stott says, history is not a random series of meaningless events.
SPEAKER_00: It is rather a succession of periods and happenings which are under the sovereign rule of God.
SPEAKER_00: This is the God of history.
SPEAKER_00: And so remember, folks, God is sovereign over all things.
SPEAKER_00: Number two, God's judgment is certain, imminent, righteous, and ultimate.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is good news.
SPEAKER_00: I know it doesn't, might not some of you on the surface level might not think that's good news, but I think it's good news.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because I love justice.
SPEAKER_00: And if I love justice the way God loves justice, I'll want him to set things right.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we call this.
SPEAKER_00: He's his judgment and his wrath are God's settled opposition against all that is evil and all that sets itself apart from or against God in his creation.
SPEAKER_00: And we should love God for that, and we can rejoice in God.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because his judgment is righteous.
SPEAKER_00: Um his judgment is righteous, and he intends to bring about justice one day.
SPEAKER_00: So if you love justice, if you if you love things to be set right in this world, no more sickness, no more dying, no more disease, no more depression, no more despair, no more corruption, no more racism.
SPEAKER_00: No more human trafficking.
SPEAKER_00: You if you want all of that done away, join with the book of Revelation, rejoicing that God one day intends to set things right.
SPEAKER_00: Number three, whatever the precise sequence of the end time events, Christ is returning personally, visibly, gloriously.
SPEAKER_00: So we should all stand fast, remain watchful, get busy, and stay hopeful.
SPEAKER_00: All right?
SPEAKER_00: I need to read that again.
SPEAKER_00: I need to see it again.
SPEAKER_00: All right, you read it aloud with me in your own homes, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Whatever the precise sequence of the end times events, Christ is returning personally, visibly, gloriously.
SPEAKER_00: So we should all stand fast, remain watchful, get busy, and stay hopeful.
SPEAKER_00: Ah, I love that.
SPEAKER_00: That's just amazing advice for us as we as we look at a book like this that does indeed draw our eyes up into the face of Jesus to look at him, to trust in him, to turn our eyes upon him, to hope in him.
SPEAKER_00: And uh I love the way Hampton Keefley IV said this.
SPEAKER_00: Prophecy is not designed just so you can build, so we can build our timelines and figure out what is going to happen.
SPEAKER_00: Prophecy is designed to show us the character of God, his justice, mercy, sovereignty, and to cause us to turn to him.
SPEAKER_00: That's what prophecy is great at.
SPEAKER_00: And the book of Revelation, of course, as we've talked about before, is at least three different literary genres: apocalyptic literature, prophetic literature, and epistolary literature.
SPEAKER_00: It's a letter, if you will.
SPEAKER_00: And so here we have this amazing combination of literature that God's preserved for us.
SPEAKER_00: And he wants to, he doesn't want us to worry about the future and the unfolding events of the future.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't want you to worry at all.
SPEAKER_00: He wants to drive us to our knees in wonder and worship before Jesus because we're getting a clearer vision of who he is and how amazing God's sovereignty is.
SPEAKER_00: Fourthly, we should be more focused on preparing than predicting.
SPEAKER_00: Ah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: In Revelation 20, we've seen these three things: a limited activity of Satan.
SPEAKER_00: He's literally, I mean, again, you see the angel grab him by the scruff of the neck, throw him into the abyss, lock it, chain it up, and then and then uh when God determines so, releases him for a little while, and then once again throws him back down into the lake of fire, and that's it forever and ever final word.
SPEAKER_00: God wins, you see.
SPEAKER_00: And so this is the limited activity of Satan.
SPEAKER_00: Anything Satan does, he's on a leash.
SPEAKER_00: So anybody that exalts the demons and the devils and Satan, all that stuff, and you know, we we don't need to be afraid.
SPEAKER_00: Are they powerful?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, they have some power, but it's all limited.
SPEAKER_00: See?
SPEAKER_00: It's all regulated by God.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and if for some limited amount of time, um God allows the dragon a limited amount of leash, then he's just got that lizard on a leash, and he's literally God's still ultimately in charge.
SPEAKER_00: And so we trust in God, which is the second point.
SPEAKER_00: We've seen the absolute sovereignty of God over and over again as we study through our Bibles, but certainly here in the book of Revelation.
SPEAKER_00: And then here we also see, too, this eternal security of the believers.
SPEAKER_00: Um, that our names are written in a book is just mind-blowing to me.
SPEAKER_00: He knows your name.
SPEAKER_00: He knows my name.
SPEAKER_00: And I I know some somebody out there might be thinking to themselves, oh wow, how do I get my name written in that?
SPEAKER_00: How do I get my name written in that book of life?
SPEAKER_00: And and the the Lamb's book of life that we'll read about in chapter 21, if that's a different, how do I get my name in both of those books, you know?
SPEAKER_00: Um, well, this is the beautiful thing about the salvation of God.
SPEAKER_00: It's on offer to you by grace, through faith in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: It's not something you can purchase.
SPEAKER_00: It's not something you can earn.
SPEAKER_00: And the great news about that is because you can't buy it and you didn't earn it, you can't lose it.
SPEAKER_00: So if you if you are interested in God's grace and God's salvation, all you need is need.
SPEAKER_00: All you need is to open your heart and receive what you can't buy.
SPEAKER_00: Receive it as a gift based on the finished work of Christ on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: Ah, well, let me close with a thought here from Chuck Swindol.
SPEAKER_00: I thought this was really brilliant.
SPEAKER_00: I hope beyond the culture.
SPEAKER_00: If you live in the light of Christ's return each day of your life, it does wonders for your perspective.
SPEAKER_00: And that's that's so true, man.
SPEAKER_00: We have to, and I hope our study of Revelation is doing that for you, and we'll continue to do that.
SPEAKER_00: That you'll gain an eternal perspective, that you won't be so, you know, blinded by all of the images of this moment in time, and and that you're all of the voice, the cacophony of voices that are speaking at you, telling, oh no, if this doesn't happen, your life's gonna come to an end.
SPEAKER_00: If this does happen, your life's gonna come to an end, whatever.
SPEAKER_00: All of those voices that would seek to influence you, to form you.
SPEAKER_00: All of those Babylon voices, apart from God, as if God doesn't matter, voices.
SPEAKER_00: We want to turn away from those.
SPEAKER_00: We want to turn toward the Lamb who was slain, who has risen again, and who will be reigning forever and ever, and who wants to give you and wants to give me eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you will say, Yeah, thank you so much, Jim, for that study, Pastor.
SPEAKER_00: Appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00: I'd like to know more about some of these things that Revelation 20 and the rest of the book of Revelation mention.
SPEAKER_00: So let me throw a couple books.
SPEAKER_00: I've been wanting to do this for a couple weeks anyway.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, here's some other books you could certainly study from the Bible, further study of the scriptures in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Joel, Amos, Zechariah in your New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: Look at Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21.
SPEAKER_00: Man.
SPEAKER_00: Acts 1 talks about the return of Christ as he goes, as he ascends up into heaven and how he will come back.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, 1 Thessalonians 4, 2 Thessalonians 2, 2 Peter 3, and of course the rest of the book of you can't do better than reading through the scriptures and seeing all these parallel passages.
SPEAKER_00: And and some of the some of the Bible commentators suggest that in the throughout the book of Revelation, what you really get is you get some allusion to or reference to all virtually every all the other 65 books of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: It's amazing how John knew his Bible so well.
SPEAKER_00: And as the Lord revealed himself to John, it what it points out to us is that all of the scriptures point to Jesus and find their fulfillment in him.
SPEAKER_00: If you'd like some additional works, I also would recommend these three books: The Bible and the Future by Anthony Hokema, uh, The Last Days According to Jesus by RC Sprohl, and Contemporary Options in Eschatology by Millard Erickson.
SPEAKER_00: There are many others.
SPEAKER_00: Those are just three.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, if you've already got these and read them all and figured out what they all have to say and you still want more, shoot me an email.
SPEAKER_00: I'll try to help you out.
SPEAKER_00: And um there's some websites you could visit as well, gospelcoalition and bible.org.
SPEAKER_00: So amazingly.
SPEAKER_00: In Revelation 20, we have seen the limited activity of Satan.
SPEAKER_00: We've seen the absolute sovereignty of God, and we have seen the eternal security of the believers, our names written in God's book.
SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible, friends, has an overarching narrative.
SPEAKER_00: It's the story of redemption through faith in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You and I are invited into God's throne room of grace, based upon the finished work of Christ on the cross and his brilliant resurrection, and his promise to return one day and set all things right.
SPEAKER_00: Who is Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: He's the king we've always wanted, he's the king we've always needed, and he's the king who's coming again soon to reign forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.