Matlock | 04/10/26 | Revelation 14 | Peter William

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For what you've put on his heart this morning.

It's a difficult and a challenging uh passage, Lord, from Revelation.

I just pray that you would just give him your words, Lord, that you would be his strength and that his word your words would flow out of his mouth this morning.

And I pray that we'd have open hearts and open minds to be able to take on what he's going to deliver in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

So who was here last week for Revelation 13?

Fair few of you.

And there may be a few people here who haven't been here for any of the Revelation series.

Sarah, welcome.

It's great to see you.

I suspect you haven't caught any of the rest of that series.

Maybe, maybe down at the beginning.

But anyway, we've been doing this series through Revelation, and we've got to chapter 14.

Last week we were in chapter 13, and Andy bought something, he had a picture.

It looked like it was somewhere out of Hollywood of the beast, and it all looked very horrific, and he was dealing with some really dark stuff.

And then we get to chapter 14, and 14 is kind of a small kind of interlude where it gives us some filling-in details about some of the stuff that we've heard already and sets us up for the next few chapters of Revelation.

And it can all be a bit scary.

Now Andy did his picture, and I didn't want to be kind of outdone by that.

So I asked Google, I know I think he used ChatGPT, I asked Google to do a picture, and there it is.

So you see the level of what I get.

Not very Hollywood, I know, but it does have all the things from this chapter.

Now in this chapter, it talks about uh the music coming um from heaven and uh what it will sound like.

So as I read Revelation 14, I'd love for you to have it open um on your in your Bibles or on your phones uh wherever you access the Bible.

And I'm gonna leave this picture up there because you may be able to kind of relate to um the different parts of this chapter as you look at the picture.

And um I'm gonna play some music that um I co-created this week.

I can't say I created it totally on my own, but um I had a little help from Mr.

Internet, and um so there's some music in the background which hopefully will help us kind of feel where this chapter is at.

So, Revelation 14.

Then I saw the Lamb standing on Mount Zion, and with him were 144,000 who had his name and his father's name written on their foreheads.

And I heard a sound from heaven.

It was like the roar of mighty ocean waves or the rolling of loud thunder, and it was like the sound of many harpists playing together.

This great choir sang a wonderful new song in front of the throne of God, and before the four living creatures and the 24 elders, no one could learn this song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth.

They had kept themselves as pure as virgins, following the Lamb wherever he goes.

They have been purchased from among the people of the earth as a special offering to God and to the Lamb.

And they have told no lies.

They are without blame.

And I saw another angel flying through the sky carrying the eternal good news to proclaim to the people who belong to this world, to every nation, tribe, language, and people.

Fear God, he shouted, give glory to him! For the time has come when he will sit as judge, worship him who made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and all the springs of water.

And then another angel followed him through the sky, shouting, Babylon is fallen, that great city is fallen, because she made all the nations of the world drink the wine of her passionate immorality.

And then a third angel followed them, shouting, anyone who worships the beast and his statue or accepts his mark on their forehead or on the hand must drink the wine of God's anger.

It has been poured full strength into God's cup of wrath, and they will be tormented with fire and burning sulphur in the presence of the holy angels and the Lamb.

The smoke of their torment will rise for ever and ever, and they will have no relief day or night, for they have worshipped the beast and his statue, and they have accepted the mark of his name.

This means that God's holy people must endure persecution patiently, obeying his commands and maintaining their faith in Jesus.

And I heard a voice from heaven saying, Write this down.

Blessed are those who die in the Lord from now on.

Yes, says the Spirit, they are blessed indeed, for they will rest from their hard work, for their good deeds follow them.

And then I saw a white cloud, and seated on the cloud was someone like the Son of Man.

He had a gold crown on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand.

And then another angel came from the temple and shouted to the one sitting on the cloud, swing the sickle, for the time of harvest has come.

The crop on earth is ripe.

And so the one sitting on the cloud swung his sickle over the earth, and the whole earth was harvested.

After that, another angel came from the temple in heaven, and he also had a sharp sickle.

And then another angel had the power to destroy with fire, came from the altar, and he shouted to the angel with the sharp sickle, Swing your sickle now to gather the clusters of grapes from the vines of the earth, for they are ripe for judgment.

And so the angel swung his sickle over the earth, and loaded the grapes into the great wine press of God's wrath.

The grapes were trampled in the winepress outside the city, and blood flowed from the wine press in a stream about a hundred and eighty miles long, and as high as a horse's bridle.

My music was slightly too short, wasn't it?

But um I hope um the visuals and the sound just help you kind of gather the enormity of the things that are being discussed in this chapter.

It's not a chronology, this chapter.

It doesn't fit in kind of time order, and it's this real contrast between the light and the dark of what's going to happen after Jesus has returned to earth.

And um, there are those who follow Christ and are saved, and they are those that follow the beast and are condemned for eternity.

Real contrasts.

Now, in this chapter, there's four misconceptions that I want to talk about this morning.

And I think it's really important that we understand truth and Hollywood.

And actually, we get a lot of information from Hollywood, from books that we read, and actually it shapes our thinking.

And we need our thinking to be shaped by what the word actually says.

So I want to start with Misconception One.

The hundred and forty-four thousand.

Um on my slides I've put the shadows because they are shadows that cast shadow over the light.

So the first one is that there will only be 144,000 people in heaven.

And um, this is something that the Jehovah's Witnesses have been saying for many years, and uh there are sects of Christianity that have said this at different times through the centuries.

And it's not true.

These 144,000, if you remember, there were 12 tribes of Israel, and there was 12,000 from each of those tribes.

But that wasn't the only people who are going to be in heaven.

This is talking about after Jesus returns.

We've been raptured if we're saved, but there are then 144,000 of Jewish descent who are saved and who are faithful to Jesus.

From Revelation 7, we know that this is what's going to happen.

So this is looking right back towards the beginning of the story we've been following.

And they don't fall away despite the persecution they receive.

And this is really important.

In fact, they're not only being persecuted, but they are singing.

It says they are rejoicing despite their persecution.

They're not lamenting that they're suffering, but they're focused on Jesus and worshiping.

Now, to the first century Christians that were receiving uh this vision uh of Jesus from John, this must have been a great comfort because the church was being persecuted very badly.

Paul says this in Romans 8.

I'm convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God's love.

Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today or our worries about tomorrow.

Not even the power of hell can separate us from God's love.

No power in the sky above or in the earth below, indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

God gives us, his people, the grace to enable us to complete the work that He has set out for us.

Paul again in 1 Corinthians 10 said, If you think that you're standing strong, be careful not to fall.

The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience.

And our God is faithful, he will not allow temptation to be more than you can stand.

When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure.

Now I just want to go back to verse 1, if you've still got um Revelation 14 open.

And uh in verse 1 we see that the 144,000 are marked with the name of the Father on their foreheads.

That makes it pretty prominent, especially if you've got a forehead like mine.

And uh everybody you meet, if you had that on your forehead, would know that this is who you are, that this is your identity.

I wonder, as you go around your everyday lives, can people spot that you're a Christian straight away?

It's a challenging question, isn't it?

It marks you out for persecution.

But it also marks you out for purity.

Because people know who you are and therefore what you stand for.

In this verse, I think it also signifies that actually Jesus was at the forefront of these people's minds at all times.

And I think when you're being persecuted and you're focusing instead on Jesus, he is right there with you.

He is at the forefront of your mind.

So when we worry or stress, what is at the forefront of your mind?

Isaiah 26, verse 3 says, You will keep in perfect peace.

Isaiah 26:3

This is God we're talking about.

You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you.

This is a promise of God for us that actually He will keep us.

So we can learn from this that we need to continually remind ourselves of God's promises, of who we are in Him, pure, redeemed, safe for eternity.

The 144,000, um, they were experiencing all the things we'd heard about in chapter 13, all the horrific stuff, and yet they remained strong for Jesus.

So if you struggle, remember you were sealed with the Holy Spirit.

When you were saved, you were sealed, and that means his power is in you no matter what you're going through.

Misconception two or shadow two.

The mark of the beast.

The misconception is actually we've got to be really, really careful not to receive the mark of the beast.

And I wonder what's the mark of the beast like?

I spotted that in the picture Andy did last week, um, on the hand of one of the people, it was obviously really up to date, it had a 3D barcode, not just any barcode, and uh and it was showing that as the person having the sign of the beast on their hand.

And uh barcodes were very much um the sign of the beast in the 1980s, um, and uh maybe it's a 3D barcode at the moment.

But um I just want to debunk the barcode thing.

So in the 1980s, if you bought a tin and you looked at the barcode, in the numbers on the bottom it would have 666.

And the reason was because food was denoted by the 666 um to then give you the what comes next, like it's peeled potatoes.

And um, so other products had other triple numbers.

If I look at these, which I nicked out the food bin just earlier, um this one's got a double but no triple, um, and this one here um has no repeating numbers at all.

Actually, barcodes are just random numbers, they're just like it's just a list of things which have these numbers, and it's just an easy way to read the numbers.

So, are barcodes going to be the thing that is the um sign of the beast on you on people?

I'm not sure that it is.

But some people say it could be um a microchip under your skin.

Some people say it'll be a tattoo.

I'm not really sure what the mark of the beast will be like.

I did a quick Google search.

If you want to know something, you Google it, and um it says there will be uh it said three things about the mark of the beast.

It'll be placed on the person's right hand or forehead.

Well, we know that because it says in Revelation 14.

Um, it says the function, uh, you have to have the mark to participate in economic commerce, i.e., you can't buy or sell anything if you don't have the mark.

That comes from chapter 13, um which Andy was covering last week.

Um the identity, it represents the name of the beast, the number of its name, or the number 666.

And 666 appeared in chapter 13, and actually it's the numeric for Emperor Nero, who at the time I think everybody thought was the Antichrist because he was so bad.

He was murdering Christians left, right, and center.

And so actually, that number 666 had a great meaning at that time.

And now, if you go into a vast hotel, it won't have number 666 as a room because everyone's so scared of it.

The same as most hotels don't have number 13s.

Um, you go along the corridor and the 13's missing because people are scared of number 13.

And uh actually we don't need to fear the number 13 or the number 666.

Um, my father-in-law used to have a mobile number with 666 in the number of the mobile.

It didn't affect him negatively, it was just a mobile number.

Um, it wasn't bad.

And we mustn't fear what the world is telling us to fear.

So we don't need to worry because you don't take the mark of the beast by mistake.

You get the mark of the beast because actually you choose to worship the devil rather than worshiping Jesus.

I think if you're here today, there's a high likelihood you're choosing to worship Jesus.

And if you've got the mark of Jesus in you, the seal of the Holy Spirit, you've got nothing to worry about.

Misconception three.

So this I think is the darkest shadow in this chapter, and one which a lot of people struggle with.

And the misconception is that God is cruel and vindictive, and people ask the question: how can a loving God condemn people to a lifetime and eternity in hell?

How can a loving God allow evil people to prosper and have happy lives?

You look at dictators through the ages, just in many of our lifetimes, if we think about Hitler, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, people who did evil things, there are ones around the earth right now.

How can God allow them to prosper?

If he does, surely he is a cruel God.

That's what people say.

Now Jesus refers to hell twenty two times in Revelation, and he refers to hell eleven times in the Gospels.

Jesus is not shying away from the reality of hell.

I think that's what we often do, because it's awkward.

This is from an atheist philosopher, a guy called Dr.

Ray Bradley.

And it's very perceptive.

To deny the reality of hell would be to suppose that God or Jesus was either mistaken or misreported.

But if Jesus was mistaken, he cannot be divine.

And if Jesus was misreported, the Bible is not the true word of God.

The believer therefore has no option but to accept the doctrine of hellfire in all its obscenities.

And we saw some of what it would be like last week, and some of the end of this chapter.

The picture of people being put in the wine press.

It's horrific.

Absolutely horrific.

But this passage doesn't allow us to say people go to hell for a short time and then are annihilate.

It doesn't allow the option of a later redemption.

You know, people, you might have heard about people going to purgatory and then they work up the levels and end up in heaven.

Going to limbo before they go to heaven.

So just a bit of limbo for a while.

And then I end up in heaven.

Jesus doesn't say any of this is a possibility.

He's very clear.

So I just want to share a couple of things with you just to explain why this doesn't make God cruel.

2 Peter 3 says, The Lord is not slow to fulfil his promise as some count slowness, but is patient towards you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

That's the heart of Jesus.

That there would be no one in that final day who hasn't turned to him and has received his mark instead of the mark of the beast.

That's his heart.

And it's partly our job to make sure that people know.

The tribulation is very scary, but I think we should fear God more than the tribulation.

Matthew 13, Jesus is talking about this.

And he says, The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will remove the kingdom from his kingdom, everything that causes sin and all who do evil.

And the angels will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous, throwing the wicked into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Do you understand all these things?

says Jesus.

Yes, they said, we do.

And I think this is a reality that we have to get our heads around.

It's not that God is being cruel.

All of this should spur us onwards.

Verses twelve and thirteen help give us an assurance.

It says, those saved in the tribulation will also be saved from labor.

And we have this same promise.

It's another glimpse of heaven.

You remember right back at the beginning of the Bible, there's the fall, and actually, man was destined to dig the soil, to work hard, to get food, to have crops, to be able to just live life was going to be a difficult thing.

Women were going to have pain in labor.

And actually there was a turn.

It wasn't God's design.

God's design was Eden.

God's design is heaven.

The reason there's evil is because of the serpent who was in the tree.

It's not God's design.

We have this reassurance, when we get to heaven, all that hard work stops.

No getting up at six in the morning to go to work anymore.

There's a promise that the one thing you take to heaven with you is the works that you do.

So there's a reward for faithfulness.

And the toil that you do is not worth nothing for the Lord.

So I want to encourage you.

God will reward you for what you do when you get to heaven.

The hard work that you've done for the kingdom.

The fourth shadow or misconception that I just want to touch upon is that we need to be scared of Armageddon.

I want to say very plainly today, you do not need to be scared of Armageddon.

Jesus has got you.

And he won't let go.

It's a really grim picture, isn't it?

The end of that chapter that I read with the grapes in the wine press.

You can't harvest grapes with a sickle.

When I harvest my grapes, I pluck them off one bunch at a time and carefully place them in a bucket so they don't get bruised and broken.

But actually, if you use a sickle, you're just hacking bits off the vine.

Just hacking them off.

And actually, the crop is destroyed.

It's a stark warning that at the end of the day we know, as Romans 6 tells us, the wages of sin is death.

Now in the Old Testament, we had the animals being sacrificed for the sins of the people.

The animals paid the price of people's sin.

Which seems a bit weird, doesn't it?

We sin, the animal pays the price.

But we're in a new covenant where actually we don't have to go to the temple and repeatedly offer sacrifices.

Christ has died for us.

And his blood flowed for our freedom, the punishment for sin.

So this picture in Revelation 14 of the blood flowing, where do we see that before in the Bible?

We see it in the sacrifice in the temple.

And we see it from the side of Jesus.

As he's hung on the cross and as he dies, that blood flowed for us.

He paid the price once and for all.

So we don't get crushed.

That's good news.

We don't get crushed.

So we don't need to worry about Armageddon.

We need to make sure that people know.

They need to know the truth of the gospel and what the alternative is.

And I know hellfire damnation is not trendy preaching in the 21st century.

But it's still true.

And people still need to hear it.

He was crushed for our iniquities, as it prophesied in Isaiah.

If we're in Christ, we don't need to be scared.

We can have the assurance of our eternal place in heaven.

So I want to encourage you.

This should spur us on.

Spur us on to good deeds.

It should spur us on to tell our neighbors, our friends, our family of the truth.

The truth that actually Jesus has done it all.

And they need not fear the future if they are in him.

I finish with this verse.

Philippians 3, verse 13 and 14.

Philippians 3:13

Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God through Christ Jesus is calling us.

I'll read that again.

Forgetting the past, and I think a lot of us get caught up in the past, but looking forwards to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize.

That crown which you can cast on the sea before Christ.

The heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.

That's us, his holy bride, spotless white, in our wedding whites, ready to be for King Jesus.