Revelation 4:1-2 Series

Revelation 4:1-2

They letters have been sent and the church has much to account for. True Christianity is so much more than going to church every Sunday and doing what you think are good deeds here and there and I think Jesus has made that clear in His letters. The gate is as narrow for the church as it is outside the church.

Let's see what Jesus has in store next.

After this I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven! And the first voice, which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.”

John hears a voice and he recognizes it right away, it is Jesus speaking to him once again. Can you imagine what is going through John's mind during this, John is being summoned to Jesus, a door in the sky opens and Jesus is calling.

Let's take the opportunity at this point to think about a something. Here is a question for us to think about. This question can be applied in almost all of scripture. Does John have freewill? Can John resist Jesus' calling? Let's see.

2 At once I was in the Spirit, and behold, a throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne.

John isn't even asked by Jesus if he wants to come to Jesus. Matter of fact Lazarus wasn't asked if he wanted to come to life when Jesus called him to life. What about Saul of Tarsus? Well he wasn't asked either.

I had been teaching at a local church recently and this church believed in freewill so I thought what better book to teach through than Jonah. Jonah resisted and resisted God every step of the way, that was Jonah's freewill at work.

Then we see God's will at work in which God never asks Jonah if he wants to do anything, God's will just make it happen. When Jonah resisted and refused God at every step God insured His will came to fruition not even giving Jonah a choice.

Choice is a word that most who believe in freewill use as proof that it exists but this is far from true. The determining factor of freewill is not if there is a choice before us but rather that we have the ability or will to make that choice and follow through with it without anything influencing us internally or externally.

Lets think about this biblically. We know that since sin fell onto Adam and eve that scripture says we are all now spiritually dead (Eph 2:1 ESV) and that we are born with a sin nature (Rom 7:18 ESV). So what does our nature do would be our next question. Everything that is alive has a nature and that nature is what tells that living thing how to act and controls their complete being. Here is an example, a vulture is sitting on a mountain top looking down into the valley for a meal. On one side the vulture sees a head of cabbage and on the other side it sees a dead rabbit and this is where we see its nature control the response of the Vulture. See even though the Vulture has a choice it will 100% of the time fly to the rabbit. Why? It's nature is controlling its response to the choice, the Vulture is enslaved to it, motivated by it and compelled by it.

Again every human is born with a sin nature thus it is driven and compelled to sin. Humans have a choice not to sin but our nature drives us away from righteousness and to the sin. So we have choice but we also have a will that isn't free but rather is bound to sin until or if we are saved.

Now as we look at the sin nature and the unsaved person, we may say that they are good people and do good things but are they, and do they? God doesn't think so, God knows everything the unbeliever does is contaminated by sin and the things they do are like dirty rags.

Another example is the Jew, God gave them thousands of years to live righteous lives to gain salvation but not one achieved it, at least not by anything they did, God's grace still existed in the Old Testament but He used it sparingly.

The reason God sent Jesus is because God knew we could not live the righteous life required for salvation, but Jesus could live that life for us and everyone who believes in Jesus as their Lord and Savior will be saved because of the perfect life of Jesus and not by our life. Jesus' perfect life was imputed to us the believer so that God would see us as He sees Jesus, perfect and holy.