Good morning. How are you all doing today?
Awesome. I am doing great. Thank you so much.
We like to start every Sunday when we gather together first by saying welcome to
all of you who might be joining us here on our room for
the first time or if you're joining us online, welcome.
We're so glad you're here to worship with us today.
I am Pastor Nathan and we will be taking communion today as a body.
So if you did not get your communion cups as you came in the door,
we are going to have the elders come in and give them to you.
If anybody not get their communion cup,
did everybody get one? We're good?
All right. All right. We got it covered.
Cool. But if you're online,
we want to encourage you guys to get your communion albums ready.
We will be taking communion together at the end of service today.
But this morning, we are going to be looking at the final judgment of the earth,
pictured as a great harvest,
a great reaping of the world.
Some of you may have heard the word Armageddon from time to time in life.
It's a good theme to make movies off of some feel.
Armageddon, it's a word that is broadly used in our society to
refer to any cataclysmic ending of the world,
the end of life as we know it.
But biblically, Armageddon is a word used to describe where
the final battle will take place between the armies of
Satan and the armies of God at the very tail end of the tribulation period.
The word Armageddon, incidentally,
means the mountain of Megiddo.
Megiddo is a place in Israel you can actually visit the ruins of today.
It's less of a mountain as we think of a mountain and more of
a hill that a city is built on top of.
But this area of Megiddo is what this word Armageddon means,
the mountain of Megiddo.
It's also used to refer to the great valley that is next to this city of
Megiddo where this battle at the end of time will take place.
It's in this place where God's judgments will finally and fully be poured out on
sin and a sinful world and it effectively ends that era of Earth's history.
So yeah, the battle of Armageddon can be considered to be the end of the world.
Now the word Armageddon, incidentally,
is only found one single time in all of scripture.
And it's found in Revelation 16, 16 as part of the sixth bowl judgment.
And we will deal with that when we get there.
But the event, the battle of Armageddon,
is something that is spoken of scripturally very frequently and
referred to often prophetically.
But what takes place at Armageddon?
Judgment is a word that does appear frequently in scripture.
The word judgment and all its variations, the word judge, plurals, judgments,
all of the different variations of the word judgment appear about 450 times
throughout scripture.
And so when we've been looking at and studying through Revelation,
we saw in the first part of Revelation 14, we saw a look ahead to the final
redemption of the 144,000 Jewish evangelists at the end of tribulation.
The second part of Revelation 14, we took a look ahead at God's final
invitation to salvation to all the inhabitants of the earth.
And then today as we look at the third part of Revelation 14,
we're gonna look ahead to the final judgment of God on those who reject
the offer of salvation.
Now I do wanna say this real quickly, if it's your first time joining us here at
Hosanna, whether you're a Christian or
if you don't know the Lord as your personal savior, but
you're here just to join us and investigate and hear.
This isn't all we preach about, okay?
It's not all about the judgment and wrath of God.
And I would hate for anybody to leave here today thinking,
there they go again, those Christians talking about hell, fire, and brimstone.
But as a church, we do teach from cover to cover, Genesis to Revelation,
verse by verse, chapter by chapter, book by book, so that we study and
learn the entire wisdom of God, the entire word of God,
and everything he has to say about everything.
What that means is sometimes we're teaching the really fun, good stuff, and
sometimes we're teaching the very difficult things of God's judgment.
And we happen to be here as a church in the book of Revelation,
which is the Revelation of Jesus Christ.
Specifically, it's the Revelation of Jesus Christ in His ascended glory.
And a look at the end of time when God will finally judge sin and wickedness.
But I want you to know today, we still live in the age of grace.
The age where God is waiting patiently for
all to come to know Him as Lord and Savior.
And so if you don't know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior today,
I pray that you would come to know Him and give your life to Him.
But as we study this particular section of scripture today,
that is a very difficult picture of the wrath of God pouring out on sin and sinners.
I do pray that you would understand how God feels about sin.
Because I make no apology for what the word of God teaches.
It is truth.
It will always be truth.
And we need every part of it, amen?
First, we're gonna worship God though and
spend some time just praising His name because He is glorious.
He is worth it.
He is almighty.
He is our Lord and Savior, the one who has saved us from sin,
saved us from the wrath to come on sin.
And that is so worth praising Him for, right?
Let's pray.
God, we love you so much.
We thank you, Lord, for your word.
God, it is your word that reveals to us truth.
It is your word that reveals to us everything we need to find you,
to reconnect with you, Lord, to be saved from the power of sin,
to be saved from the penalty of sin, God,
that we would know that we have salvation and hope in you.
And so God, today, as we continue to study your word, Lord,
we look at something that's very difficult.
Lord, a picture of the final judgment at the end of tribulation.
Lord, I pray, God, that as we study this picture, Lord,
we would see more of who you are, Lord,
as we study this revelation of Jesus Christ.
That we would learn how serious sin is to you.
We would see your heart towards sin, Lord,
that it is not something to be tolerated.
It is not something to be ignored.
It is not something to be justified.
But God, it is something that destroys,
and it destroys your creation, and you hate sin.
God, we do know that today we live in this time
where you are patiently waiting, Lord.
As wickedness abounds, you are still patiently waiting
for people to come to know you as Savior.
But God, we know there is a time coming
where that patience will come to an end.
Lord, we may be reminded, not just at the serious of sin,
but reminded, Lord, that time is short,
and that there is an urgency to go out and tell people
about the hope that is in you.
But Lord, we wanna start this morning by worshiping you,
praising your holy name, because God, you are God.
You are holy, and we love you so much.
God, receive our praise this morning.
Speak to us in your word.
We love you.
It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.
We are in Revelation chapter 14,
and we have quite a bit of territory to cover here,
so if I talk fast, I do apologize in advance,
but the picture that we are looking at today
here at the end of Revelation 14
is a picture of a harvest and harvest time.
It's verses 14 through 20 that we're looking at,
and what we see here today is Jesus
with a sickle, an angel with a sickle.
We see a call to reap, for the harvest is ripe.
We see a harvest of grain and a harvest of grapes,
and the imagery of this section in this Revelation
as this is being given to John the Apostle
is very common imagery to people who lived at that time
and the people who received this letter,
especially those in ancient Israel,
because most of the society at that time was agrarian.
They were agricultural in vocation.
They were farmers and people who worked the land,
and so the pictures here would be very, very common to them.
The vision that we're reading about
really is something that plays into
what was very familiar to the readers,
just as Jesus often did with his parables.
If you read through the gospels
and you read through the parables that Jesus gave,
he often spoke in terms that the people would understand.
He spoke of sowing and reaping.
He spoke of wheat and weeds.
He spoke of grapes and wine presses.
He spoke of all this agricultural stuff,
because that's what was the primary characteristics
of how people lived life then, you know?
If Jesus gave this vision today,
he might use different language.
He might speak in terms of the Internet
and social media and technology
and likes and subscriptions.
But then it was about harvest time and the related concepts,
such things that people were used to.
And so for us, we have to kind of look into those things
because we don't necessarily connect to the idea of harvest time,
especially from a vocational concept,
because we don't, especially here in Southern California,
really live according to the seasons, do we?
Like in California, the four seasons are hot.
Kind of hot.
Maybe not so hot.
Yeah, it's a little hot.
Those are the four seasons we get here, right?
The leaves don't change colors.
You know, it's just, it's different.
But there are parts of the world where the seasons are very,
very defined by what happens in nature around us.
And then for some people, farmers today even,
they still follow the seasons in their jobs.
But many of us, we don't connect that way to this type of language.
And even when we do think of harvest time,
I think most Christians today think of harvest time,
we think of fall.
We think of leaves falling.
We think of the onset of Christmas time.
Maybe what we think of is Thanksgiving or pumpkin spice lattes.
Right? That's harvest time. That's fall.
And so for many Christians,
we don't necessarily connect to the agricultural side of it.
And then specifically, when we think of the term harvest,
it might bring thoughts of evangelism and outreach, right?
Because we have things here like harvest crusade
that Greg Laurie puts on every year, Pastor Greg.
And then we have verses like Matthew 9 verse 37,
where Jesus says to his disciples,
the harvest is abundant, but the workers are few.
Therefore, pray to the Lord of the harvest
to send out workers into his harvest.
And so we think outreach.
We think the reaping of those that are ready to come to know the Lord.
But here in Revelation 14 that we're looking at today,
and interestingly enough in most places in the Bible,
the concept of harvest is connected to the concept of judgment.
Harvest and judgment are connected together.
So you might be familiar with biblical terms like you sow what you reap.
Right? And that's a concept of if you reap into bad things,
you're going to sow bad things.
And so this idea biblically is often that harvest time is a time of judgment.
In Jeremiah 51, 33, we see this where it says,
for this is what the Lord of armies, the God of Israel says,
daughter Babylon is like a threshing floor at the time it is trampled.
In just a little while, her harvest time will come.
Which is very interesting because last week in the middle of Revelation 14,
we just got done looking at the angel declaring the fall of Babylon the Great during the end times.
In the book of Joel, which is an entire prophecy in the Old Testament all about the end times,
he speaks of the time of judgment as a time of reaping and a time of harvesting.
We know that John the Baptist, when he was speaking of Jesus, the Messiah to come in Matthew chapter three, verse 12,
he said, his winnowing shovel is in his hand and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn.
But the chaff he will burn with fire that never goes out.
And that word winnowing, when he said his winnowing shovel,
winnowing is the act of separating the wheat from the chaff in grain harvesting.
And so we see this idea of judgment connected to harvest a lot.
Jesus once told a parable about the wheat and the weeds, or in the more traditional translations, the wheat and the tares.
We're going to look at that in more detail later because I think it is an explanation for what we're seeing here in Revelation 14.
But in that parable in Matthew 13, Jesus told us that the harvest is the end of the age.
And so we're going to see how that parable, Jesus told, really gives us an understanding
that here in Revelation 14, verses 14 through 20, it's a picture of the final harvest time that will take place here on earth,
what the final bold judgments will culminate in at the end of tribulation.
So read with me in Revelation 14, starting in verse 14.
It says, Then I looked and there was a white cloud and one like the son of man was seated on the cloud with a golden crown on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand.
Another angel came out of the temple crying out in a loud voice to the one who was seated on the cloud.
Use your sickle and reap for the time to reap has come since the harvest of the earth is ripe.
So the one seated on the cloud swung his sickle over the earth and the earth was harvested.
Now, the first thing to notice here in the first question you might have is who is the reaper?
It tells us it's one like the son of man seated on the cloud with a golden crown on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand.
This is Jesus Christ, the Savior, the Messiah.
Jesus is often called the son of man.
It is a title attributed to him very often in scripture, both in Daniel, which is very, very heavy prophetically about the end times and the Gospels as well.
In fact, 82 times in the New Testament, Jesus is given the title the son of man, which is a title of humanity,
speaking of how Jesus is God in the flesh, how Jesus is fully human while also being fully God at the same time.
That's what this title son of man refers to.
And it really speaks to the idea that Jesus Christ is the supreme example of everything that God intended mankind to be.
That Jesus, as a as that example, is the embodiment, the perfect embodiment of truth and grace, which is what God created us to be.
But you might ask the question, why does it then say one like the son of man?
Oftentimes throughout Revelation, I've pointed out that we can tell that things are being spoken of metaphorically or being spoken of symbolically,
because John will often say there was something like something else.
Well, here, when it says like the son of man, John is referencing not something different,
but he is referencing what he has already seen in this vision, this vision of Jesus Christ.
If you remember back in Revelation, Chapter one, verse thirteen,
John said he saw among the lampstands one like the son of man.
But it was Jesus. We know it was Jesus, right?
Daniel, Chapter seven, verse thirteen, it says one like a son of man was given an everlasting dominion and glory and a kingdom.
And we know contextually that whole prophecy is speaking of the Messiah.
And then in Luke 21, twenty seven, Jesus, speaking of himself at the end time, said this,
then they will see the son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.
And so John here, as you see in this vision, he's saying, I'm seeing someone that looks just like Jesus.
I'm seeing someone that looks just like him.
The son of man, like the one I saw in the beginning, the one we've talked about prophetically, it's Jesus.
And so what this tells us is that this harvest at the end of time is personally supervised and oversaw by Jesus Christ.
This shouldn't surprise some of us.
But some will go, oh, Jesus, I've seen the pictures of Jesus.
He's like he's like a big cuddly blanket.
He's like a warm hug.
Jesus would never judge anybody.
And that's a struggle for some people.
That's not all Jesus is, but he is judge.
We do know that scripture tells us Jesus is love.
Jesus is God in the flesh.
As God, Jesus is light.
Jesus himself said, I am the way, the truth and the life.
Jesus is the good shepherd.
Jesus is the great healer.
Jesus is all of these things, but we can't just pick the ones that make us feel good and reject the ones that challenge us.
And so here we see that Jesus is overseeing this great harvest of judgment.
In fact, in John, chapter five, verse twenty two, Jesus said this.
The father, in fact, judges no one, but has given all judgment to the son so that all people may honor the son just as they honor the father.
Anyone who does not honor the son does not honor the father who sent him.
And I fully acknowledge that this may shatter the meek, mild baby Jesus picture that some of us might want to hold on to.
The Jesus that is never angry with us would never say you're doing wrong.
But Jesus, although he is meek and mild, he is gentle and loving, and that is all true.
One day he will sit as judge of the entire earth.
And that's what we see here today in Revelation 14.
Notice that he is not carrying an olive branch of peace.
He is not carrying a cross that he carried to Calvary.
But instead, it says he comes with a sickle.
You guys have seen the sickle, right?
You've all seen the picture of a grim reaper, right?
The big staff with the blade on it.
It was used to harvest the wheat.
That's what the sickle is.
It's a reaping and harvesting instrument.
And again, as we look at this revelation of Jesus Christ that the book of Revelation is, we have to understand some things that the first time Jesus came to the earth, he came as a servant.
He came to to seek and save the loss.
He was coming to be the propitiation.
The atonement for the sin of all mankind.
But the second time he's going to come as sovereign king with the authority to pass judgment.
The first time Jesus came, he came as the one obeying.
That he was submitting himself to the Father's will here on earth.
But the second time he's going to come as the one commanding.
The first time he came alone to live with an obscure Jewish couple in a nothing town.
The second time he's going to come with all the angels of heaven, seen by all to rule over the entire earth.
First time he came in humility, second time in glorious majesty.
First time, as I said, he came to seek and save the lost.
The second time it's going to be to judge and sentence the lost.
And so the first time as he came as a sower to sow the seeds of the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the second time he comes as the reaper.
Now notice why.
The angel says use your sickle and reap for the time to reap has come since the harvest of the earth is ripe.
Now I said earlier that we see two harvests here.
We see a harvest of grain and a harvest of grapes as a part of this final collective picture of the harvest.
And although the word grain is not specifically mentioned here in verse 16 when it says,
so the one seated on the cloud swung his sickle over the earth and the earth was harvested.
It's the picture of how grain was harvested with a sickle.
And so that's where we get the idea of this being a grain harvest.
But in a broader sense, a harvest is where something is separated from something, where a distinction is made.
We see the parable of the wheat and the weeds.
We talk about the wheat being separated from the chaff.
And the word ripe there when it says the harvest of the earth is ripe.
That word ripe that is used there is typically used to refer to a grain type of harvest.
And so some people look at this first harvest in Revelation 14 and they go, no, this is this is a harvest of saved souls.
They see that it's the saved being saved.
And they'll point to things like, you know, it's Jesus doing the harvesting, right.
And the next one with the grapes, it's an angel doing the harvesting.
They say here there's no mention of the harvest being thrown into God's wrath, like we see in the grape harvest next.
And then, of course, they'll point to earlier in the chapter, it said, look at the 144,000 who were sealed and saved.
They are the first fruits of a greater harvest to come.
And so they'll go, this harvest is a is a harvest of salvation.
And I will concede that is a possible interpretation of this first harvest.
However, I do see it as a harvest of judgment for a few reasons.
Verse 15, it says the angel said, since the harvest of the earth is ripe, the Greek word used there for ripe is most often used in a negative sense, not a positive sense.
The Greek word for ripe there means to be dry, withered, overripe or rotten.
That's what the word ripe means there.
It's not a word used to describe something good, as in what might be our common understanding, like, oh, the harvest is ripe.
People are ready to get saved.
That's not how this word is typically used.
The idea that the angel is saying, look, the harvest is withered.
The harvest is dried out, rotten.
It needs to be cold.
And that is the perfect picture of the unsaved during this time.
At the end of tribulation, as wickedness has reached its crescendo, as sin has just dominated the world, as the world is under the control of the Antichrist and the false prophet, this one world religion and this one world government.
And it's just it's abounded, this wickedness.
And what the angel is saying is that the harvest of humanity is dried out.
It's withered.
It's rotten.
And so he calls the one, the son of man with the sickle, to come and harvest.
That's really a condition of the world in general, isn't it?
We look around and we see so much that we might consider rotten, overripe, if you will, so much that we would look around and call withered or dry.
And that will be the condition that marks the world at the end of time.
And, you know, when it comes to the rottenness and the wickedness, that at the end of all things, if you say no to Jesus,
no to Jesus, no to Jesus, all the way to the very end, the only response that God could have would put the sickle of judgment to that withered stalk.
But then you might go, well, what about the saved?
Right. If he's going to swing the sickle across the harvest, what about the saved?
What about the ones who aren't withered, who aren't rotten?
Well, this is where I believe Jesus already explained this in Matthew, chapter 13, verses 24 through 30,
where Jesus is explaining the harvest in this section where he is again using agricultural parables.
And this is what Jesus said.
He presented another parable to them.
He said, The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field.
But while people were sleeping, his enemy came, sowed weeds among the wheat and left.
When the plants sprouted and produced grain, then the weeds also appeared.
The landowner's servant came to him and said, Master, didn't you sow good seed in your field?
Then where did the weeds come from?
An enemy did this, he told them.
So do you want us to go out and pull them up?
The servants asked him.
No, he said.
Lest when you pull up the weeds, you may also uproot the wheat with them.
What is he telling the servants?
You can't tell the difference.
So don't go out and try and determine who is and who isn't wheat.
But then what does he go on to say?
Let both grow together until the harvest.
At harvest time, I'll tell the reapers.
The ones who can tell the difference gather the weeds first and tie them into bundles
and burn them, but collect the wheat in my barn.
Now later on in Matthew 13, down in verse 37, the disciples are like, hey, Jesus, we
didn't understand that.
Can you explain it to us?
And so in verse 37 of Matthew 13, Jesus replied, he said, the one who sows the good seed is
the son of man.
Interestingly, the same exact title he has here in Revelation 14.
The field is the world.
It's God's field.
God is creator.
And the good seed, these are the children of the kingdom.
The weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sold them is the devil.
The harvest is the end of the age.
And the harvesters are angels, which we're going to see in the next, the grape harvest.
Therefore, just as the weeds are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the
end of the age, speaking of judgment.
So the son of man will send out his angels, and they will gather from his kingdom all
who cause sin and those guilty of lawlessness.
Who are they gathering for the reaping?
It's the sinners.
They will throw them into the blazing furnace where they'll be weeping and gnashing of
teeth, speaking of hell.
Then the righteous will shine like the sun in their father's kingdom.
Let anyone who has ears listen.
So when I see this parable of Matthew 13, to me, it's Jesus, and I believe it's Jesus
explaining the first harvest that we're reading about here in verse 14, the harvest of the
dry and the withered and the overripe and the rotten grain.
This first harvest, it's not a harvest of like, look, Jesus is saving all the souls.
It's a harvest of separation is what's taking place here.
Just as those that were harvesting grape would swing the sickle to separate the wheat from
the chaff.
That's what we're looking at in Revelation 14.
Matthew 13, Jesus says the harvest of the parable is the end of the age.
That's what we're looking at in Revelation 14.
He says the field, his field is the world.
And we know that in the world, some will follow God, some will follow Satan.
And at the end of the age, this parable is teaching us that there will be a separation.
There will be a distinction.
And so in Revelation 14, we see the picture of this distinction, a picture at the very
end of Revelation where the angels have gathered together, right?
It's the angels are the one coming out and going, the harvest is ready, swing the sickle.
But they have gathered the withered and the rotten ready to be harvested to be thrown
into the blazing service, furnace.
But I think it's interesting because in the parable in Matthew 13, it specifically says
the servants of the master are not the ones who determine who is and who isn't saved.
And that lines up with other teaching throughout scripture.
We don't know the heart of anybody.
Do you know my heart?
No.
Do I know your heart ultimately?
No.
So here we can evaluate and we can look at behaviors and words, but at the end of the
day, nobody knows the heart of man, but God.
Sometimes we get far too eager.
Some of us think I have the ministry of distinction.
I am called to determine you are not saved even though you call yourself a Christian.
You be very careful trying to enter into that because that is not the call of us, the servants.
Only God knows the heart and God's angels are going to be part of that distinction.
But our job here and now is to get the word of God into the hands of people and to preach
the gospel of Jesus Christ that they would be saved.
That's our job.
Yes, we exercise wisdom.
Yes, we exercise discernment, but don't get too caught up in being the one to determine
whether people are and aren't saved.
If you think they might not be, pray for them.
Pray for them.
If you think their theology is off, kindly and lovingly have conversation with them and
do Bible study together so that you can come to understand those things that might be off.
But don't be the one to point the finger because that is God's job.
If it were up to us, we'd mess it up anyways.
So what does he say to the servants here?
He goes, look, be patient.
They're going to grow together until the end of the age, wait till the end and then I will
handle it.
Up to the end of the age, the wheat and the weeds are both allowed to grow together in
the field that is the world.
The wicked and the saved grow, live together in this field that is the planet earth.
And during this age of grace that we're in now, God has not yet stepped in to wipe out
all the centers.
He has not yet stepped in to cast final judgment and destroy the wicked.
And for some of us that are believers now, we wrestle with that, don't we?
We hear about some of the things that take place in the world and we're like, God, how
can you, how can you let that continue?
And we don't understand and we wrestle with this sometimes.
And I'll admit that there's times where there's no answer outside of God is still waiting
for even that person to get saved.
And God is doing work in that person's life that they would come to know him.
And we have to be okay with that.
But God hasn't stepped in yet and the glorious truth of why he hasn't yet is because in this
age any weed can become wheat.
Any weed can become wheat if they put their faith in Jesus Christ.
And so he is still patiently waiting for all who will be saved to be saved.
But revelation we see the time is coming.
The time is coming when he will separate the wheat from the weeds and the weeds will be
harvested and cast into the blazing furnace.
So this whole wheat and weeds thing, it's not just for end times.
We see it in the church today too.
In churches across the world, in congregations, in fellowships, possibly even here at Hosanna.
The reality is both God's wheat and Satan's weeds exist side by side.
I've said it a lot that the devil is a master counterfeiter and there's nothing that is
too sacred for him to try and counterfeit.
There is no place so sacred that he won't try and infiltrate.
We've already seen him in revelation at the end times where he's going to try and counterfeit
the Holy Trinity.
We've got the Father, Son and the Spirit and the devil is going to try and set himself
as the devil, the Father, the Antichrist, the false Messiah and the false prophet as
the spirit pointing to the Messiah.
He counterfeits Christ.
He counterfeits the mark of God with the mark of the beast.
He also has counterfeit Christians.
The devil has counterfeit Christians.
He sows his weeds among the wheat.
Like the weeds, in those days these tears that would grow up amongst the wheat, even
experts had a hard time telling the difference between what was a weed and what was actually
wheat.
It was hard to tell the difference and just like that there are people in our churches
today that look so much like the wheat.
You can't tell the difference.
They look so good as Christians and yet something might happen and you may be tempted to try
and wait a second and yank them out.
What does God say in the parable?
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
That's my job.
I'll handle that.
Pray for them.
Keep preaching Jesus, stand on truth, extend grace and mercy, but don't try to be the one
to yank them out.
Now yes, again, there are times when sin is very obvious and prevalent and we have to
deal with things and as churches we have to deal with things.
I'm not saying we just turn a blind eye, but when it comes to the wheat and tears we just
have to be careful and err on the side of letting God do his work.
The disciples had this mindset of wanting to root things out, separation now, right?
They wanted judgment and harvest right away.
You guys remember the story when Jesus and the disciples were in Samaria?
It reads that Jesus and his disciples, they were looking for a place to stay.
They wanted a place to lodge and they were denied because their destination was Jerusalem.
You see there were some racial tensions between the Jews and the Samaritans at this time and
so if you were going to Jerusalem during harvest time or during Passover time or during festival
time, Samaritans knew that, oh you're probably a Jew, we don't like you, we have no place
for you, right?
There was these tensions going on and James and John in that story says, Jesus, would
you like us to call down fire from heaven and smite them all?
Now I've felt that way at times where I can't find a hotel to stay at or something.
How dare you be close?
I'm tired.
They were ready to have judgment now.
They were ready for harvest now but Jesus rebuked them.
You guys don't know what spirit you're of.
That's not how we roll.
We don't call down fire from heaven and smite them just because they created an inconvenience
for us.
He said, look, let's go to another village and they did so.
Even the church has been guilty of this throughout church history.
In the fourth century when Emperor Constantine made Christianity the religion of the empire,
it really turned into follow Christ or you'll be killed.
Many true believers were killed during this time.
Then we had the Middle Ages, you had the Crusades, you had the Spanish Inquisition and all of
these.
Many true believers were killed because somebody decided to take it upon themselves to make
the distinction between the wheat and the chaff.
Jesus' point is, look, now is not the age of the sickle judgment but the wide net of
evangelism.
We're not harvesting today.
We're fishing today.
We bring people in now.
We tell them the gospel of grace.
We want the harvest now in that sense to be a wide net full of fish, people coming to
know Jesus Christ.
Not the sickle of judgment.
Today is a time of sowing, not reaping.
Reaping will come at the end of the age.
And at that time it'll be God the one making the distinction because God is the only one
who knows the heart.
He knows who is really His and who is not His.
He will separate when He is ready.
That's what I believe we're looking at in the first harvest parable of Revelation 14.
But now we come to the second one.
Then another angel who also had a sharp sickle came out of the temple of heaven, verse 17.
But another angel who had authority over fire came from the altar and he called with a loud
voice to the one who had the sharp sickle.
Use your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of grapes from the vineyard of the earth because
its grapes have ripened.
So the angel swung a sickle at the earth and gathered the grapes from the vineyard of the
earth.
And he threw them into the great winepress of God's wrath.
Then the press was trampled outside of the city and the blood flowed up to the press
or flowed out of the press up to the horse's bridles for 180 miles.
So this picture of the harvest at the end of things is not about the harvest of separation
but a harvest of utter destruction.
First we had this harvest of grain.
This one is a harvest of grapes.
Now if you go back to times, ancient times when this was written and even in places today,
the harvest of grapes was a harvest that took place during the summer months of the year.
It was like July to September.
What you would see at that time is you would travel through the land, you would look out
and you'd see people from all over out in the fields picking grapes, putting them into
baskets and taking them into the winepress.
In the grape harvest, there's no picture of separation.
There's no idea even going back to another parable of good grapes, bad grapes in that
sense, the way Jesus spoke of the grain harvest in Matthew.
It was just there was this gathering of grapes and they were thrown into the winepress.
Now a winepress at that time was a cistern that was cut out of the rock.
It was kind of like a big bowl that was cut out of the rock and they would throw the grapes
into this thing and then at the bottom of the cistern there was a channel and a hole
so the juice from the grapes as they were squashed could flow out of the cistern and
then collected in vats and all that.
So what would happen is that the juice would be gotten out of these grapes or you would
throw them into the vat and the people would climb into the vat and you guys have seen
pictures of people stomping grapes, right?
Well in the time, they would stand in these cisterns and they would not just stomp but
they would jump, they would dance, they were just having a grand old time smashing these
grapes to get the juice out of the grapes and because it was this deep cistern, the
juice would splatter up all over the walls of the cistern.
The juice would splatter up all over their clothing.
I mean it was a pretty dirty job, right, in that sense.
Don't wear your nice clothes if you're going to go smash the grapes, okay?
Because the grape juice is going to get everywhere and that's the idea of this particular vision.
This one's not about a separation of wheat and the harvest for that.
It's just simply about the wholesale destruction, the total threshing of the wicked at the end
of the tribulation period.
You'll notice here that the one doing the harvesting is an angel with a sickle and then
there's another angel with authority over fire that is called to make the call to harvest.
Now I want you to notice that second angel.
The one that specifically says had authority over fire, where did that angel come from?
It says he came from the altar.
Altar.
That word should be familiar to you as we've been studying Revelation because we saw the
altar back in Revelation chapter 6 where there was a whole bunch of people under that altar.
I'll read it for you.
Revelation 6 verse 9, when he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those
who had been slaughtered because of the word of God and the testimony they had given.
Then they cried out with a loud voice, Lord, the one who is holy and true, how long until
you judge those who live on the earth and avenge our blood?
So they were each given a white robe and they were told to rest a little while longer until
the number would be completed of their fellow servants and their brothers and sisters who
were going to be killed just as they had been.
There had been a cry from under this altar in heaven from those who were slaughtered
for their faith.
I believe these were people slaughtered for their faith during the tribulation period
because the church is already gone.
I know people have different opinions on that.
I get it.
All right.
But I believe the church is raptured at the beginning of tribulation.
And then during tribulation, there is this worldwide evangelism that takes place.
People get saved and they don't just lose their business for their faith.
They aren't just told that they can't sell flowers or make cakes for their faith.
They're killed.
They're slaughtered for their faith, which is happening today, but will be rampant around
the world during the tribulation period.
And so they're saying, Jesus, when are you going to go judge them?
Guess what he gives them, a white robe.
If it was the believer's job to go smash the grapes, it wouldn't make sense to give you
a white robe.
So he gives them a white robe.
He goes, you are here.
You are saved.
You are clean.
Hold on.
The time is coming.
And so then we move up to Revelation chapter eight and we see this angel that comes from
the altar.
And in Revelation eight, this angel has an incense burner.
And it tells us that the angel took the incense, mixed it with the prayers of the saints, and
the smoke went up to God as a picture of God hearing the prayers of his people.
But in verse five of Revelation eight, it says, then the angel filled it with fire from
the altar and hurled it down to the earth.
So I believe contextually those prayers that we see in Revelation eight are specifically
these prayers of the martyrs during the tribulation period because he grabs those prayers and
he grabs the incense and then he grabs the fire, possibly the very same angel who has
authority over fire and hurls this down to the earth in judgment.
I believe that because from that point forward, what we read is escalating judgment upon the
earth.
And so this angel who has authority over fire calls out to the angel with the sickle and
says it is time.
It is time.
Do it.
Reap.
It is time for final judgment.
And the detail of that judgment is what we're going to be looking at in the subsequent
chapters as we move through Revelation.
But he says use your sharp sickle and gather the cluster of grapes from the vineyard of
the earth because its grapes have ripened.
Now that word ripened, it's a different word than the one used previously.
The one used previously was a word that was specifically used to reference a grain harvest.
But this word here just simply means something is ready to bloom.
Something is ready to burst.
The idea is that these grapes are so full of juice they're ready to pop.
And then he says it's from the vineyard of the earth.
This idea of the vineyard or in other translations it says the vine, it simply refers to the
plant that produces grapes.
The plant that produces grapes.
And so you go throughout scripture, you see the picture of the vine many different times.
In the Old Testament, the vine is Israel.
In the New Testament the vine is Jesus Christ.
He says I am the vine, you are the branches in John 15.
Here in Revelation 14 the vine or the vineyard is the vine of the earth.
So the idea is what we're seeing here is a picture of the fruit that the earth has produced.
And what the earth has produced through the end times is great wickedness and great sin.
And so the fruit of wickedness that has come from the earth for centuries is finally about
to be judged.
He uses this language about the wine press being trampled.
Remember what I was just talking about?
How the people would stomp and dance and jump and smash in the cisterns and that juice would
splatter everywhere?
Well, it's a picture of the bloodbath of the final battle that is going to take place on
earth.
It's a picture of the bloodbath that final judgment is going to be when God finally says,
hey look I have waited centuries for mankind to get saved.
I had done this and I sent 144,000 witnesses.
I sent two witnesses in Jerusalem.
I had an angel fly through the sky and preach the gospel.
You still want to cling to your sin?
You still want to stay in that?
Then okay.
But I am a holy and a just God.
And I will have to judge sin.
When it says the city there that's likely the city of Jerusalem and biblically really
Jerusalem is kind of the center of everything.
Right in the Bible when you said north what you meant was north of Jerusalem.
When you said south you meant south of Jerusalem.
Jerusalem is kind of the center point of everything scripturally.
And so Jewish readers reading this revelation would read the city and likely think of the
city of Jerusalem which we have already seen again will be one of the world's focal points
during the end time.
Revelation 16 and Revelation 19 when it talks about the battle of Armageddon it talks about
Jerusalem and the nation of Israel being surrounded by the nations of the world that will come
and surround Jerusalem and try and destroy it.
But God preserves it and protects it and the Jews that live there.
And then it gives us a picture of this bloodbath where it says the blood that is spilt from
this wine press of God's wrath will go up to the horses bridles for about 180 miles.
That's a gruesome picture.
Interestingly enough 180 miles is roughly the measurement of the entire nation of Israel
north to south.
What this is hinting at is that those nations will gather in Israel at the end of tribulation
for a battle.
But I think battle is a generous word.
It's not going to be a battle.
It's not even going to be a fight.
I don't think Jesus is even going to break a sweat because he is God Almighty.
He is God Almighty, all powerful.
And so it won't be a fight.
There will be no struggle for Jesus.
There will be no call for reinforcements.
None of that.
When he comes standing on Mount Zion he will stomp all over those who stand against him.
And those who in their arrogance would dare come against him and his people thinking that
they may be the ones to wipe out everything that is God and is of God they will all be
obliterated.
And this battle thought to be in the valley outside of Megiddo which is north of the city
of Jerusalem, this great valley that can host millions upon millions of combatants, a whole
world standing against God and his people will be the final judgment on sin and a sinful
humanity.
And it will be that final judgment as God's full wrath is finally poured out.
It's a graphic picture.
It's a gruesome picture.
And we get this glimpse that the blood shed in that battle will be so prevalent, the wicked
will be so smashed and stomped that the blood will be splattered all over the wine press
and be so thick that it will go all the way up to the horses' bridles throughout the entire
nation of Israel.
Frightening picture.
God in His holiness because He is holy.
It's His creation mankind that has spat in His face for centuries.
Mankind has desecrated His holiness, desecrated His name and yet today He is still patient.
He is still waiting.
He still waits for the lost to be saved and that's wonderful.
But a part of the message that we share in the gospel is not just that God loves you
and has a wonderful plan for your life but that judgment awaits those who refuse Jesus
Christ.
That judgment is coming and many don't even know it.
But Christian you and I do.
We know what's coming down the pipe.
We know what's in the future here.
We have critical information that the world needs and they need to know that there is
a God who loves them, who sent His Son to save them from their destiny of destruction
that their sinful ways are leading to.
They need to know that.
That is why He came the first time to die once and for all for the sins of all mankind.
To be the once and all, once for all atonement for the breaking of God's holy law.
To be the once for all payment for the penalty due for the breaking of God's law to all who
would call on the name of Jesus Christ.
That's the gospel now and always.
And that is why Jesus came the first time.
That is why we are still living in the age of grace because He is patient and long-suffering.
But not forever.
Not forever.
There is a time coming when all of that will be ended.
Where from His throne of glory He will have a sickle in His hand.
And the angel will announce it's time to reap the dry, the withered, the rotten.
God you can see the difference between them and your people.
It is time to make that separation.
And another angel will come with a sickle of well and the grapes will be so full of
wickedness and so full of sin and depravity that they are just ready to burst and the
reaping will commence.
And God in His holy just perfect righteousness will finally shed the blood of all those who
rejected the shed blood of His Son.
Why for the wages of sin is death.
Hebrews 1031 says it's a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
To face His wrath, His judgment, His infinite power and strength.
Unless you have been washed clean by the shed blood of Jesus Christ.
God loved you so much that He came to this earth to die the death that you and I deserve.
We're the ones who sinned against God.
We're the ones who broke God's law.
But in His infinite grace and mercy He said before I wipe it all out and end it all.
I'm going to come do a thing you could never do on your own.
And I want you to believe in it.
Put your faith in it.
Trust in me.
Because I love you so much.
I want you to be with me.
I don't want to pour judgment out on you.
I want to save you.
That free gift of salvation is eternal life.
Salvation, forgiveness, mercy and grace.
It all comes from Him and that's incidentally what we remember in communion.
That's why we as the church celebrate communion.
That's why here at Hosanna the first Sunday of every month we take communion.
The only time we really interrupt that is when we have our baptism services or there's
just extreme logistical challenges.
But we regularly come together to celebrate communion because we want to remember this
free gift of salvation that we have in Jesus Christ and all that it means.
So if you're in the room here you should all have one of the communion cups.
If you've never been with us these cups have two plastic tabs on the front.
There's a thick tab and a very thin tab.
If you will pull back the very thin tab right now it will reveal the bread, the cracker
piece here on the top.
We read in the gospels that when Jesus was there at that last supper with His disciples
it says He took the bread and He broke it and He gave it to them and He said this is
my body which is for you.
Do this in remembrance of me.
What we are seeing fall upon the world in tribulation time as we're studying through
revelation is the full wrath of God Almighty on sin.
That's what we're watching.
But the wonderful truth is that full wrath already fell on Jesus Christ on the cross.
And as you read through the story of what Jesus went through in the cross and the torture
and the beatings and everything it's gruesome.
It's horrific.
And then being nailed to that cross and hanging there bleeding out and then dying.
He did that to be the sacrifice paid for our sin.
His body was given.
God poured out His full wrath on His own son because sin had to be judged.
God's just as well as all the other attributes He has.
He couldn't turn a blind eye to sin.
He couldn't ignore it.
He couldn't pretend it didn't happen.
He's holy.
He's just and He would not be who He is if He just pretended sin didn't happen.
He did all that so His justice could be satisfied while giving you and me the actual sinners
a way to be reconciled to our Creator.
A way to be forgiven.
God in His infinite grace made a way for us to be saved from the penalty and the power
of sin.
And even today He waits in His infinite patience for every single person to come to know Him.
For God's wrath is terrible and we know that.
Facing God's wrath, the wrath of God the Father from heaven, it caused Jesus to sweat great
drops of blood in the garden.
The agony was so intense but although God's wrath is terrible, God's grace is wonderful
and freely available to all who would call on the name of Jesus.
This is what we remember in celebrating communion with the bread is that His body was given
for us.
If you want to know Jesus Christ today as you were Lord and Savior and you never have,
you can do so in the act of participating in communion with us.
By partaking of this bread is saying, God I believe that you are who you say you are.
You are everything you said you are.
Jesus I believe that you are God in the flesh.
I believe you lived a perfect life on this earth.
I believe you died for my sins on the cross.
And I believe you when you said that if I put my faith in you, your payment will be
attributed to my ledger.
If you want to do that this morning, partake with us.
This bread represents everything that Jesus did for us, that He took that full wrath of
God on sin for us in our place that we would be forgiven, that we would be set free, that
we would be saved from the wrath to come and He did it because He loved us so much.
Let's pray.
Father God, we are so grateful that you gave yourself as the payment for our sin.
God, we are so grateful that when a perfect and holy and just God contemplated having
to judge sin because it is evil and wicked, and He knew that that judgment was going to
destroy the very creation He loved so much.
God we are so grateful that then you came up with the plan to satisfy your justice while
allowing us to be forgiven.
That was your son Jesus Christ being nailed to the cross.
A man who committed no crime, a man who committed no sin, and yet was judged most brutally for
it.
Even God we remember that because we know it is through that moment, that act God, that
we are able to be forgiven of our sin.
That Lord you could then look at us when we put our faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord
and Savior, Lord you would be able to look at us not as those who judgment should fall
upon or who deserve that judgment and those things are all true, but those who have been
washed clean and forgiven.
God your word tells us that when we put our faith in you that our sin is as far from your
mind as the east is from the west.
We don't deserve that Lord but we say thank you.
We appreciate the giving of your body for us.
We remember.
Let's partake together.
You have the cup here in the room, just very carefully pull back the thicker tab and it
will rub you the juice here in the cup.
When Jesus was at that same meal with the disciples it tells us that he took the cup
and he said this is the new covenant in my blood.
Do this in remembrance of me.
This is the new covenant.
You see the old covenant was a process of animal sacrifice and blood was shed over and
over and over because without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin.
It was the payment.
That sinning against God required death.
And so there was a system in place in the old covenant where God said okay if you bring
these animals, these spotless animals, these animals that represented sinlessness and they
died in your place your sin would be covered.
That was the old covenant.
Problem was is that never changed the heart of man and man had to keep coming back every
year with more and more sacrifice.
But when Jesus came he said this is the new covenant in my blood.
That his sacrifice on the cross, his shed blood for you and me wouldn't just cover our sin
it would wash it away completely.
It wouldn't just cause our still wicked hearts to just be kind of covered momentarily but
that he would give us a brand new heart, change us from the inside out totally and completely.
To make us brand new people.
Sadly during the end times mankind will get the opportunity to pay its own price for sin.
And that will be a shedding of its own blood.
And that's sad because the blood of mankind is imperfect.
It is stained by sin.
It is marred.
It cannot and will not ever be pure enough to atone for sin against an almighty holy
and just God and that is why Jesus shed his blood.
That it was perfect.
Him being the only sinless person that has ever lived the son of man fully identified
with us in our humanity.
But perfect without sin, spot or blemish.
When he shed his blood on the cross it established a brand new covenant between him and us.
It established a brand new covenant between our creator and us his creation.
It established one that said Jesus I can trust in you.
It was a covenant where God said look just trust in me and what I've done for you.
Trust in my sacrifice alone for your salvation.
Move your life to me.
Walk in obedience.
Be all that I intended you to be through my life, through the power of my spirit and I
will apply my perfect blood as payment for the penalty that you owe.
This is what we remember and celebrate with the Jews in communion.
That we have a brand new covenant with God.
That his blood flowed freely.
Not up to the horse's bridle but over all of mankind.
That all who would call upon the name of Jesus Christ would be saved.
Forgiven and because we have put our faith in him and his work.
We've put our faith in the fact that he shed his blood.
We won't ever have to.
We won't ever have to shed our own blood because judgment has been satisfied.
Hallelujah.
Let's pray.
Father God we thank you Lord.
We thank you for your shed blood on the cross and how it washes us clean of all sin.
Lord we trust in your work.
That you were the perfect sacrifice.
You were the one without spot, without blemish laid on the altar.
But your blood was shed to pay for our sin God.
And Lord through faith in that act, faith in you and who you are and what you did Lord.
We are forgiven and we say thank you for that Lord.
I pray God that we would live in the power of being cleansed by the blood of Christ.
That we would live in the power of knowing that judgment has been satisfied.
That we are free to live in obedience to God and move forward proclaiming the good news
of Jesus Christ to all who would hear it.
So Lord we thank you for your blood.
We thank you for dying on the cross for us.
Thank you for loving us to such an unimaginable degree.
Let's partake together.
I pray that God will bless your life.
We are studying through these difficult passages of revelation.
It's possibly easy to get caught up in the details of judgment and forget the grace.
Let us be people who share both sides of the story of the gospel.
That God has saved you, wants to save you, he died to save you from the judgment to come.
People don't want to hear that story.
Nobody wants to be told how you're living, what you're doing.
It's an affront to God and it will be judged.
But it is the truth that we are called to preach.
And as we get through revelation we're still seeing a picture of who Jesus is, his heart,
his character.
And God takes sin very, very seriously.
But let us not forget that he took it so seriously that he went and paid the price that we would
be saved.
Amen.
Let's go out and proclaim the gospel.
Let's keep being people who tell others about the hope that is found in Jesus Christ.
Let's keep being people who study the word of God, distribute the word of God, see that
people would come to know and read the word of God because that is where they are introduced
to the God who loves them, who died for them.
God bless you guys.
Have a great week.
Let's worship the Lord.