Life's Two Choices Series

Purpose: To describe the glorious reign of Christ.

Aim: I want the listener to understand the consequences of following or not following Christ.

REVIEW:

1:1-20 I. John’s Vision of the Past "the things which you have seen"

2:1-5:14 II. Christ’s Vision of the Present "the things which are"

Ch.6-22 III. John’s Vision of the Future "things which will take places"

6-7; 12-14 A. Satan’s war against God’s creation: the first six seals

8-11; 13:11-18; 15-18 B. The wrath of God: the seventh seal

Ch.19-20 C. The worship of God

19:1 1. A description of worship "salvation...glory...power"

19:2-6 2. Four reasons to worship God "true and righteous"

19:7-10 3. The Believer’s eternal union with Christ "marriage of the Lamb"

19:11-16 4. The King appears "He will rule them"

19:17-20:3 5. The King acts

Vs.17-18 a. The expectation of the King’s victory "great supper of God"

Vs.19 b. The intent of the King’s enemies "war against Him"

Vs.20-21 c. The defeat of the King’s enemies "birds will filled with their flesh"

Vs.1-3 d. The binding of the King’s rival "bound [Satan] for a thousand years"

INTRODUCTION: You haven’t been feeling well for a long time. You finally decide to visit the doctor. He examines you and orders some tests. Two weeks later you arrive for your follow up visit with your doctor. He enters the room and opens a folder with your medical records. He begins by saying that there is good news and bad news. The bad news is that you have a fatal disease. You will soon die. The good news is that there is a cure. There are side effects, but the cure works every time. Now you have a choice to make. Take your chances with the disease or trust the doctor’s cure. Every one of us has to make a similar decision about sin problem and Christ’s cure.

Just before the Jews were to enter the Promised Land, Moses laid out the good news and the bad news for the people.

Deuteronomy 30:15-20 "See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, and death and adversity; in that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His judgments, that you may live and multiply, and that the Lord your God may bless you in the land where you are entering to possess it. But if your heart turns away and you will not obey, but are drawn away and worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall surely perish. You will not prolong your days in the land where you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess it. "I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, by loving the Lord your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding fast to Him; for this is your life and the length of your days ... (NAU)

The Bible is clear that there are only two choices when we are confronted with the one true God. Sadly, those choices have been muddied by modern American Christianity.

For example, does God hate? For the last 80 years or so the theme of much of the preaching about Jesus Christ has shifted away from an emphasis on the holiness of God and the complete sinfulness of man.

Richard Lovelace wrote: "The whole church was...avoiding the biblical portrait of the sovereign and holy God who was angry with the wicked every day and whose anger remains upon those who will not receive His Son. Walling off this image into an unvisited corner of its consciousness, the church substituted a new god who was the projection of grandmotherly kindness mixed with gentleness and winsomeness of a Jesus who hardly needed to die for our sins. Many American congregations were, in effect, paying their ministers to protect them from the real God.... It is partially responsible not only for the general spiritual collapse of the church in this century, but also for a great deal of [evangelistic} weakness; for in a world in which the sovereign and holy God regularly employs plagues, famines, wars, disease, and death as instruments to punish sin and bring mankind to repentance, the idolatrous image of god as pure benevolence (love) cannot really be believed, let alone feared and worshiped in the manner prescribed by both the Old Testament and New Testament." [1]

The book of Revelation, though, clears away the fog that has settled on much of today’s Bible teaching.

The book of Revelation is not as much about the future as it is a book about the One who holds the future. We learn more about the holy nature of Jesus Christ in this book than we do any other book of the Bible. Maybe that is why Revelation is the only book in the Bible that has a promise of blessing for us if we read it. Revelation 1:3 Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy, and heed the things which are written in it; for the time is near. (NAU)