08-05-12 The Communication Tools Of God

We are going to return to our study

of the book of Revelation this morning.

We left our study at a major turning point in the book

at the end of Rev. 3.

I have mentioned this before,

but there is a mistaken idea

about the book of Revelation

that it is the central book of biblical prophecy

and that it provides us with

a broad, unified Biblical prophetic statement.

The truth is

the Book of Revelation

is simply the final few paragraphs filling in a handful of missing pieces

in a prophetic message that

begins in the first chapters of Genesis

and runs throughout the entire Bible.

The two final pieces Revelation offers

are found in the two major sections of the book.

That first major section is the one we have just completed,

found in Revelation chapters 2 and 3.

It gives us a powerful statement

of Christ's relationship with

and expectations of His Church

during the time when He has chosen the Church

as the means by which He reveals

Himself to the world.

The 2^nd major chunk

is found in Rev. 4-22.

It gives us a remarkably detailed account

of the final 7 years of this world as we currently know it,

and then a glimpse into the future beyond.

Now, I know what we do here on Sunday mornings

is not an academic classroom,

and it certainly does not lend itself

to intricate and detailed Bible study.

We have about 30 minutes of teaching time together once a week,

and the amount of content I can communicate in that time

is extremely limited.

At the same time, I do want to do what I can

to provide you with some mental handles

to help you better understand

where we are in the flow of human history from a Biblical perspective.

And to help with that

and also to prepare us for what happens

at the beginning of Revelation chapter 4

I want to show you something about human history

that you may not have noticed before.

We'll begin with a quick course in the basics of life.

Genesis 1:1 says, In the beginning God...

In the beginning that's all there was,

just GOD.

God chose to create us,

not because He needed us,

not because He was lonely,

but apparently simply because

He chose to create us.

When He created us

He gave us real free will - the freedom to make choices

that He would then honor

and abide by

even if He did not agree with them.

Shortly after our creation

Adam and Eve both chose

to use that free will

to rebel against God

and in so doing

they broke off their union and communication with Him.

The history of the human race

is the history of God's efforts

to reestablish that shattered union

between Himself and His creation.

Now, for a brief period of time

prior to man's rebellion against God,

God and man lived in direct face-to-face

(or Being-to-being)

communication with one another.

...and Adam and Eve heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day...

Following man's rebellion, however,

all such direct communication ended forever.

In its place God established

a number of other tools

through which He continued His communication with us,

and ultimately revealed

and carried out His plan of redemption

for His rebellious creation.

And let me just line those tools up for us

in a rough chronological order.

Immediately following Adam and Eve's rebellion

God continued to communicate Himself

through Prophets like Enoch,

Job,

and Noah.

Then, through Abraham,

God selected a special nation, the Nation of Israel,

to whom He would reveal Himself,

and through whom He would communicate Himself to world.

From Abraham up to the birth of Christ

Israel was the tool through which

God communicated Himself to this world.

Then, in the fullness of time,

through the Person of Jesus Christ,

a major change took place.

The first 2 verses of the book of Hebrews says it well:

Heb. 1:1 God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, Heb. 1:2 in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world.

For a brief period of time

through the Person of Christ

God in human form

once again communicated face-to-face

with His creation.

After Christ's departure

and up to seven years just prior to His return

Christ then established the 4^th major means

by which He would communicate Himself to the world.. .The CHURCH.

This is the period in which we live right now.

There is a whole section of the Bible

written exclusively to the Church,

describing what it is

and how it operates.

That section begins with the book of Acts

and runs through the 3^rd chapter of Revelation.

And please understand that the Church

I’m talking about here

is not the same thing

as the organized religious groups

that we call "churches" throughout the world.

Those groups, including Peninsula Bible Fellowship,

are human organizations.

Some of them are made up mostly of people

who are also part of the true universal Church,

seeking to function as closely as possible

to the pattern outlined in the New Testament for such groups,

while others are actually satanic in their goals and activities.

Perhaps the easiest way to define

the true universal church established by Christ

is to say that it is made up of all people on the earth at any given time

who have entered into a Father-child relationship with God

through faith in the death of Christ

as payment for their sins.

We are told that the true Church

will include people whom Christ has purchased with His blood

from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.

Sometime we'll take a break from our other studies

long enough to look at how God expresses Himself through the Church

and what makes the Church unique in human history.

For now I'll just remind you

of that one statement Paul makes in Ephesians 3:10 where,

after describing how God formed the Church

from people of every background,

and how He united all of us

into what He calls “one new man”,

he tells us that God did this...

Eph. 3:10 so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.

Now, the church will continue to fulfill its role

of revealing God to this world

right up until it is instantly

and supernaturally removed by God at

some point in the future

as the kick-off event

for the final seven years of history

just prior to the return of Christ.

In the book of Revelation

that event takes place

between the end of chapter 3

and the beginning of chapter 4.

The last time the Church is ever mentioned in Scripture

is in Revelation 3:14 where Christ speaks to the Church at Laodicea.

From that point on,

throughout a remarkably detailed record

of the events of the final seven years, the church is never mentioned again

because it’s not there.

We spent several weeks on this

earlier in this series

and if you'd like to review those notes

you can find them on our Web site.

And just to complete the picture

and to prepare you for what we'll find

in the remainder of the book of Revelation,

the last means by which God

communicates Himself to the world

is through what we will call

the Tribulation Communication Tool Kit.

There are a number of powerful communication tools

contained in this tool kit.

I'll mention several of them.

The first is a sort of union between

the 2^nd and 4^th tools I mentioned earlier- the nation of Israel and the Church.

Following the removal of the universal Church

there will be a massive turning of the nation of Israel

to Jesus Christ as their Savior and Messiah.

Their activities are described for us in Rev. 14.

From the nation of Israel will come 144,000 celibate Jewish evangelists

preaching Christ throughout the world.

It might help if you picture

144,000 Billy Grahams

all preaching at once.

Another part of this Tribulation Communication Tool Box

will involve supernatural judgements

brought onto the world -

violent earthquakes,

famine,

diseases,

changes in the sun, moon, and stars,

and wild animals turning on the human race.

Another pair of tools

in the Tribulation Communication Tool Box

will be two supernaturally gifted prophets

who will powerfully confront the world

with its rebellion against God.

We are told about them in Rev. 11:5-6.

Rev. 11:5 And if anyone wants to harm them, fire flows out of their mouth and devours their enemies; so if anyone wants to harm them, he must be killed in this way.

Rev. 11:6 These have the power to shut up the sky, so that rain will not fall during the days of their prophesying; and they have power over the waters to turn them into blood, and to strike the earth with every plague, as often as they desire.

As I understand it

they don't get a lot of converts,

but they do get a lot of respect.

A third set of tools in the Tribulation Communication Tool Box

involves apparently visible angels

flying in the sky

calling people to repentance

and warning them of coming judgement.

Now I know,

when we start talking about communication tools like this

the question comes up as to how anyone

could go through such things

and not drop to their knees before God.

But, you see,

it is not the validity of the message

or the power of the messenger

that determines our response to God.

It is our heart attitude.

There was a time in human history

not so very long ago

when people watched

as a Man brought sight to the blind,

and restored crippled limbs,

and cured every known disease,

and publicly raised corpses that had been dead for days.

We are told in Mark 6:56,

Wherever He entered villages, or cities, or countryside, they were laying the sick in the market places, and imploring Him that they might just touch the fringe of His cloak; and as many as touched it were being cured.

And most of those who watched

turned away from Him in unbelief.

They said He was empowered by Satan.

Or they chose to believe it was just a trick.

When man does not want to submit to God

he will always find some other way

to explain what's going on.

I find it fascinating that we currently

have so many movies coming out

about alien invasions.

If man takes those angels circling the glob

or those two witnesses with fire coming out of their mouth,

and, rather than calling them messengers from God,

declares them to be alien invaders from another world (which they actually are),

our world can unite to war against them

and convince themselves

they are fighting for the good of mankind.

Now, I've gone over these 5 unique phases of God's communication to us

in order to help us get back into the prophecy mode,

and also to help prepare us

for what will now happen

as we move into Revelation chapter 4.

As you know,

most of the rest of this book

is John's record of a vision

he was permitted to see by God.

I've already mentioned

that the time period covered by the bulk of the vision

was about 7 years.

That does not mean, however,

that it took 7 years

for John to receive the vision.

John really did see glimpses of future history.

But apparently this vision was given to him

a little bit like we would see a stage play,

except that he was not watching actors on a stage,

he was seeing the actual events.

He was watching a combination of an edited version

of future history,

interwoven with several visions

of both past and future events.

He then recorded it for us

just the way it was given to him.

He didn't try to explain it

or interpret it,

he just recorded it.

Now, just as we would go to a theater to see a play,

so John was invited to God's theater.

But God's theater

was actually the throne room of God Himself.

So here's what's going to happen -

in Revelation chapter 4

John describes the theater in which he sees

this presentation of future events.

Then, in Revelation 5

the drama actually begins.

I want us to finish this morning

by reading John's description of that theater.

What we're going to read here

will sound strange to us.

There is a majesty

and a pageantry to it that we are not accustomed to.

We are accustomed to living

in a world that denies

even the existence of God.

To suddenly be plunged into

the very presence of God

and to see everything

and everyone in that presence

behaving in perfect harmony

with the true nature and character of God

seems really weird to us.

But, as I read this

please keep in mind that WE are the weird ones

who live our lives day after day

blinded to the incredible majesty

and glory of the Creator God.

And the time will come

when the human race will no longer

be permitted to hide

and all the world will be flooded

with the reality of what we see pictured

here in these 11 verses.

And just one other comment that may help -

there is nothing "symbolic" in what John has written here.

He is simply describing

creatures and settings exactly as he saw them.

Rev. 4:1-11 After these things I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven, and the first voice which I had heard, like the sound of a trumpet speaking with me, said, "Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after these things." Immediately I was in the Spirit; and behold, a throne was standing in heaven, and One sitting on the throne. And He who was sitting was like a jasper stone and a sardius in appearance; and there was a rainbow around the throne, like an emerald in appearance. Around the throne were twenty-four thrones; and upon the thrones I saw twenty-four elders sitting, clothed in white garments, and golden crowns on their heads. Out from the throne come flashes of lightning and sounds and peals of thunder. And there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God; and before the throne there was something like a sea of glass, like crystal; and in the center and around the throne, four living creatures full of eyes in front and behind. The first creature was like a lion, and the second creature like a calf, and the third creature had a face like that of a man, and the fourth creature was like a flying eagle. And the four living creatures, each one of them having six wings, are full of eyes around and within; and day and night they do not cease to say, " Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come." And when the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to Him who sits on the throne, to Him who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders will fall down before Him who sits on the throne, and will worship Him who lives forever and ever, and will cast their crowns before the throne, saying, "Worthy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for You created all things, and because of Your will they existed, and were created."

That is the entire fourth chapter of Revelation.

It is also the beginning

of the Christ’s revelation to John

of the events that will ultimately conclude God’s purposes for this earth.

Certainly, as we might expect,

there are both strange and magnificent creatures and events taking place in the presence of God.

But what we might not expect

are those 24 thrones and the ones who are sitting on them.

You know how it is

when we see the scenes in our science fiction movies

of the ruling galactic councils.

There are representatives

from all of the different imagined species throughout the galaxies,

each one equal in power and importance.

But not so in the real center of the universe.

There are 24 thrones in the presence of God,

but the only ones seated on them

are from the human race,

and when we get to the next chapter

we’ll see them describing themselves

as those who were... purchased for God with the blood of Christ...those from every tribe and tongue and people and nation... and Christ made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God; and they will reign upon the earth."

I mention this as we close this morning

simply because what we see here in the throne room of God

is in every way consistent with everything else we’ve seen throughout the Biblical record.

There is simply no way to overstate

the value we have to our Creator.

All that He has done

He has done for us,

and with all that He has created,

there is only one type of being

to whom He has declared, “I have loved you with an everlasting love.”

And there is only one being

for whom He chose to offer His own death

as payment for their sins.

It’s us - you and me,

created by God for friendship with God,

to rule with Him forever,

because He loves us.

I just thought you should know that

in case anything should happen this next week

that would ever suggest to you

that your existence doesn’t really matter.

There simply could be no greater lie.