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Turn in your Bibles to Revelation
chapter 13. I want to read the whole chapter,
but our text will actually be verses 11 through 18. It's very good that we are here
this morning to hear the Word of God. It's good every Sunday
morning as we gather together. It's needful for our spiritual
health. As we just sang, Yea, blessed is he who makes God's
law. We could say for us in the New
Testament era, God's word. Blessed is he who makes God's
word his portion and delight and meditates upon that word
with gladness day and night. And it's this word that feeds
us and nourishes us and helps us to grow and abide and bear
fruit. It's so important that we gather
together and hear the word of God. So let's look to the Word
of God now with expectation that the Lord would indeed feed us.
Starting at Revelation chapter 13, verse 1. on the sand of the sea, and I
saw a beast rising up out of the sea, having seven heads and
ten horns, and on his horns ten crowns, and on his heads a blasphemous
name. Now the beast, which I saw, was
like a leopard, his feet were like the feet of a bear, and
his mouth like the mouth of a lion. The dragon gave him his power,
his throne, and great authority. And I saw one of his heads as
if it had been mortally wounded. And his deadly wound was healed.
And all the world marveled and followed the beast. So they worshipped
the dragon who gave authority to the beast. And they worshipped
the beast, saying, Who is like the beast? Who is able to make
war with him? And he was given a mouth, speaking
great things and blasphemies. and he was given authority to
continue for 42 months. Then he opened his mouth in blasphemy
against God, to blaspheme his name, his tabernacle, and those
who dwell in heaven. It was granted to him to make
war with the saints and to overcome them, and authority was given
him over every tribe, tongue, and nation. and all who dwell
on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written
in the Book of Life of the Lamb, slain from the foundation of
the world. If anyone has an ear, let him hear. He who leads into
captivity shall go into captivity. He who kills with the sword must
be killed with the sword. He is the patience and the faith,
or here is the patience and the faith of the saints. And here's
our text. Then I saw another beast coming
up out of the earth, and he had two horns like a lamb and spoke
like a dragon. And he exercises all the authority
of the first beast in his presence and causes the earth and those
who dwell in it to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound
was healed. He performs great signs so that
he even makes fire come down from heaven and on the earth
in the sight of men. And he deceives those who dwell
on the earth by those signs which he was granted to do in the sight
of the beast, telling those who dwell on the earth to make an
image to the beast who was wounded by the sword and lived. he was
granted power to give breath to the image of the beast, that
the image of the beast should both speak and cause as many
as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed. He
causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave,
to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and
that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name
of the beast or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding
calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man.
His number is 666. Let us pray. O God of heaven, we have read
your holy and your inspired word, a word which does not err. Help
us to read this word as coming from you, knowing that it does
indeed come from you. Help us to see that this word
has supreme authority over our lives. And help us, O Lord, to
take warning from this passage, that we would take seriously
the words that John has written for us here. And help us to be
diligent to want to understand it and apply it to our lives.
It's in the name of Christ we ask. Amen. Well, in the last weeks there's
been some changes in the seasons, hasn't there? We've seen the
last of the snow melt away. We've seen the grass get greener. We've been able to go outside
and we've been able to just breathe in that spring air. And you can
smell that spring is here even. Oh sure, it's not in full bloom
yet. We can tell that the seasons have changed. We can tell, we
can see it. Just as surely as the seasons
change, just as surely as the temperature changes, and just
as surely as it went from spring to summer. Summer will eventually
turn to fall, and fall will surely turn to winter. Things change. Just as surely as that happens,
so do cultural climates, if you will. Think about our own culture
right now. Where are we? If we're honest,
if we look at our culture here in the U.S., it's fractured. There's a lot of hate. There's
a lot of anti-Christian feeling. Our culture has very quickly
changed its beliefs on a host of issues. You think about the
matters of homosexuality, you think about the issues of transgender
issues, you think about the rampant drug abuse, you think about the
racial tensions that exist out there. Our culture has changed a lot
in the last, even the last ten years. Ten years ago, I was 17, and
things were so different than how they are now. And we have to ask the question,
how is there so much change? How is there this fundamental
shift in our culture? How does that happen? Because,
for instance, there was a time where if the church came out
and unanimously agreed on something, You know, if the Baptists, and
the Methodists, and the Reformed, and the Presbyterians, if they
all came out and said something, like the scriptures say that
homosexuality is a sin, or abortion is a sin, the culture would at
least take it seriously. They would acknowledge it. They
might not agree with it, but they would acknowledge it. But
today, anything the church says, it's almost like the church is
automatically a bigot. It's contrary to where this culture
wants to go, and anything that disagrees with this culture,
it's automatically considered backwards and foolish. How? How does this change? Well, there's a lot of different
ways in which cultures change and shift like this. There's
a lot of different ways how a culture will go from being okay with
Christianity in the church and being entirely against Christ. And some of the most key tactics
that Satan uses in warring against the church are the tactics of
the beasts here, the first and the second beast. And this morning,
I want us to focus more specifically on this second beast, verses
11 through 18, because I feel that this beast is a bit more
of an issue in our own time, in our own culture. I want us
to look at this second beast's description. his actions, and
his mission. Those are our three points this
morning. His description, his actions, and his mission, so
that we would be vigilant, so that we'd be able to look at
our own hearts and see how we are marked, if we are marked.
So first, let's look at our text again. Let's look at the beast's
description. Verses 11 and 12, Then I saw
another beast coming up out of the earth, and he had two horns
like a lamb, and spoke like a dragon. And he exercises all the authority
of the first beast in his presence, and causes the earth and those
who dwell in it to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound
was healed. Now, before we can even really
get into this text, we have to ask ourselves, how are we supposed
to read these words? Are these words about the past? Did these words already come
to fulfillment? Or are they all future still?
You know, you have some people that say that Revelation is a
book all about the past. Everything was fulfilled in the
first century. It was a prophecy that John wrote,
talking about the incoming siege and sacking of Jerusalem when
the Romans came. Now, I think that there's some
problems with this. I won't bore you with all the
details, but Revelation, for one thing, seems to have been
written 20 years after that event. And furthermore, if all of this
was fulfilled in the first century, Well, it would seem that the
book of Revelation has relatively little value to the church since
then. But you have people on the other
side, and this is more common in our culture, you have people
on the other extreme that say, no, no, no, no, the book of Revelation
is all about the future. It's all about this future tribulation
where the church will endure supreme and great persecution. And these people tend to look
at this book rather literally and chronologically. You know,
the events of chapter 14 happened before the events of chapter
15, and so on and so forth. But this has its problems too.
In the first place, the chronology doesn't fit perfectly. You know,
at one point in the book, it says that the stars of heaven,
all the stars are darkened, there's no more stars. But you go two
chapters later, and says that a third of the stars fall from
heaven. Well, what stars? They've already gone. So, I don't
think that works. And this also has the issue of,
well, what value is the book to us, then, if this is all about
the future? Why would God give us this book? Why would God give
this book to the first century believers? So, that doesn't really
fit either. So, what is this book all about? How do we read
this book? I think if we grasp this, it
will be immensely helpful for the church. See, the way that
it's been described in most of our Reformed circles is that
the book of Revelation is a series of visions that symbolically
describe the things that happen between Christ's first coming
and his second coming. Let me put it to you like this.
It's like you're watching a football game. or a basketball game, or
whatever game. Football works best though. You
know, they run a play, and before they get to the next play, what
do they do? They play all these instant replays, don't they? And they
play it from different angles. Now, if you were new to watching
football, you'd never watched football before in your life,
and you were watching all these instant replays, you would say,
well, all these instant replays must be different plays, because
they look so different. But they're really just different angles
on the same span of time. So you have one vision in here
that talks about the beasts. It talks about how Satan's going
to war against the church. But then you have another vision,
Revelation 20 for instance, that talks about how the saints reign
with Christ in heaven. It talks about how the church
is really victorious. These are different angles, all
things that really happen in this age. That is how we should
read the book of Revelation. So let's just give this a test
case. How should we look at, for instance,
the first beast? The people who read this book
in the past say that the first beast is the Roman Empire. And then the people that say
that this is for the future, they say it's some sort of future government
that will persecute Christians, which is right. Well, if we read
the book of Revelation as I've just described it, they're both
right. If you are a Christian living
in first century Asia Minor, then yeah, the Roman Empire is
the beast, because it's persecuting Christians, it's killing Christians,
and it's trying to destroy the faith. But if you're living in
the future in some other place that's trying to do the same
thing, well, the beast is there too. If you're a North Korean
Christian living in an underground church, then the government of
North Korea is the beast in your context, in your time. That is
how it works. It's a symbolic description of
the things that the church is going to face in this age. So that's the first beast. But
like I said, I want us to focus on the second beast because the
second beast, he's more subtle. He's more crafty. He's more insidious. The first beast just goes at
you with a club and he tries to beat down Christians. Not
so with the second beast. Look at his appearance. He comes
out of the earth and he has two horns. Now, normally we would
look at these horns and say, well, these two horns must refer
to two different symbolic people or symbolic things. But John
helps us. He has two horns like a lamb. Now, who is the lamb? Well, the
lamb in the Gospel of John, for instance. Who is the lamb? John
the Baptist sees Jesus coming to be baptized, and what does
he say? Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the
world. Or you have here in the book
of Revelation, who is the one seated on the throne? It's the
lamb. It's Jesus Christ. So this second
beast looks like a lamb. He's trying to look like Jesus. He's trying to copy him. But
though he looks like Jesus, he doesn't speak like Jesus. He
looks like a lamb and speaks like a dragon. Now, you children,
when you read books and you read about dragons, you see they're
just these great winged creatures and they look like dinosaurs
with wings, really. And these dragons are normally
described as roaring and breathing fire. It may be that this second beast
on occasion speaks like that, with hate and with just vigor. But I don't think that's normally
the case. Who is the dragon? Who is the
dragon in the book of Revelation? It's Satan. And while Satan may
on occasion speak hatefully, more often than not we find that
he is a liar. He is the father of lies, as
John says. So he won't normally speak hate. He'll normally go to people and
say, did God really say such and such? Did God really say
this in His Word? We're beginning to see what this
second beast looks like. He looks like Jesus, but he subtly and craftily tries
to lead people away from the truth of God, to exchange the
truth of God for a lie. It's like in John's day. You
see, like I said, there was the first beast. There was Nero,
there was Domitian, and they were trying to beat down Christians
and destroy the church and imprison and torture and kill Christians.
But Nero thought of another way to test his subjects. He thought
of this thing called the imperial cult. And it was this imperial
cult where people were required to go and burn incense to Caesar,
and to give sacrifices to Caesar, and to say, Caesar is Lord. It was a religion. It looked
good. It looked like Christianity in
some ways. But it spoke like a dragon. It
taught like a dragon. Or you look at China today. The
state of China does not like Christianity. They might have
loosened up a bit in the last few years, but at their core,
if they're honest and if they're consistent, it doesn't mesh well. Christianity does not mesh well
with the communist state. And so they have persecuted Christians.
That's the first beast. But what about the second beast?
There's this state church in China, isn't there? And it looks
like a church. It looks like Christianity. It
looks like a lamb. But it speaks like a dragon.
It doesn't teach the doctrines of Christ. It teaches the doctrines
of communism. That's really what the second
beast is like. What about in our own culture,
in our own nation? You know, it may be that Our
government, our society, our state will progressively become
more like the Roman Empire. It may become more pre-Constantine-like. It may end up becoming more like
China and despises Christianity and Jesus Christ. If we look
at our society, if we look at our government, there's this
growing tendency to call evil good and good evil. It's a problem. And there may come a day where
the state takes away the church's tax-exempt status. And there
may come a day where the state comes into our churches and,
because of what we believe, arrests Christians. There may be consequences
from the law for being Christians someday. A lot of people have
said they see this in seed form right now. But the second beast
The second beast is much more present, much more active in
our society today. There's all sorts of churches
out there, isn't there? All sorts of churches that look
like they follow Christ, that claim to teach the doctrines
of Christ, but what they teach is contrary to the Word of God. They don't teach people to repent
of sin and to believe in Christ and come to Christ for salvation. They don't teach people that
they're soulless and the only place that they can have freedom
is being in Christ. They don't teach that. They teach,
rather, that people should be comfortable with their sins.
There's churches out there that are okay and supportive of abortion. There's churches out there that
are okay with and supportive of homosexuality. They don't
teach people that they need help. They don't teach people that
they need to turn away from these things and turn to Christ. They try to claim the love of
Christ and look like Christ and say everything's all right, when
it's not. They might look at the issues
of pornography and lust and say, you know, it's probably not a
great thing, but it's victimless. They're okay with immorality.
And anyone who says otherwise is identified as a bigot, is
identified as backwards. And they'll come to people that
try to live consistently according to a biblical worldview. They'll
come to people and they'll say, did God really teach that? Did
God really say that? It's not really clear, is it?
Can't you just change your view on this? Can't you just give
up your belief on this? These people don't need loving
counsel to be changed and to convert and to believe in Jesus
Christ. You just need to accept them as they are and leave them
alone. Give up your biblical beliefs. Conform to society. That is the voice of the second
beast that calls Christians to exchange the truth of God for
a lie. So that's what he looks like.
Now, what does he do? What does he do to try to persuade people
of this? Look again at our text, verses 13 through 15. He performs
great signs so that he even makes fire come down from heaven on
the earth in the sight of men. And he deceives those who dwell
on the earth by those signs which he was granted to do in the sight
of the beast, telling those who dwell on the earth to make an
image to the beast who was wounded by the sword and lived. He was
granted power to give breath to the image of the beast, that
the image of the beast should both speak and cause as many
as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed. So
what does he do to try to lead people astray, to try to convince
people that to be on his side is to be on the right side of
history? He calls down fire from heaven. He commits all these
signs. Again, we find that Satan is
taking a page from God's book here. Who is it in the Gospel
of John that performed all the signs and all the miracles to
substantiate and prove his ministry? It's Jesus Christ. Or you go
back to the Old Testament. You go to Elijah. Do you remember
Elijah facing off with the Baal worshippers? That there were
these sacrifices on these two altars. And the Baal worshippers
cried out, Oh Baal, please consume this sacrifice that we've laid
out for you. And try as they may, nothing happened. And then
Elijah comes and he douses, he calls for the people to douse
the sacrifice with water. And the Lord God, the God of
Israel, consumed the sacrifice. It wasn't something done. The
fire didn't come down to consume the Baal worshipers. It was done
in their sights. It was done before them to impress
them, to show that the Lord God alone is God. We find that Satan's just trying
to copy God here. He's trying to imitate. He's
trying to impress the earth, impress the world, saying that,
look, God isn't God. He isn't doing anything. But
here we go. Here's something that Satan,
the dragon, is able to do. He really has power. He's trying
to imitate God. Now, when I say imitate, let
me say something here. This is not a good imitation. You know, we as Christians are
called to imitate Christ, aren't we? And I've been saying that
the second beast has been imitating Christ. But this imitation is
a wrong imitation, a bad imitation. Let me illustrate it for you.
See, I grew up in the state of Wisconsin. And one of the things
that we're known for is we're the dairy state. We have a lot
of milk, and as a result, we have a lot of cheese. I actually
worked in a cheese factory for a time, but that's a story for
another time. So I grew up, and I grew up knowing what good cheese
tasted like, what it looked like, what it felt like. And then I
graduated high school, and I went down to Kansas City to study
in college. And being a poor college kid,
you can't afford cheese. It's kind of expensive, you realize
that when you leave the house. And we were getting together
for dorm divos, and somebody had to bring the food together
to make quesadillas, and so what he brought wasn't real cheese
to make the quesadillas, he brought Velveeta. Now, I had never had
Velveeta before in my life. And I'm putting this quesadilla
together, and I'm taking it out of the package, and I'm looking
at it, and it looks like cheese. It's got the right hue. It's
got the right texture. It smells kind of like cheese.
You put it on there, and you microwave it, and you take the
first bite. And man, oh man, I was surprised. I was deceived. The imitation
deceived me into thinking it would be something good. into
me thinking that would be something delicious, but it wasn't. That
is the second beast here. He does these wonders. He does
these things, and he tries to impress people, showing that,
look, this is the real deal. But it's a deception. You know,
in the imperial cult back in John's day, they would have these
images. You know, the idea of the image coming to life that
John's writing about here? these imperial temples, they
would have these images of Caesar. And they would have their little
ventriloquism. The priests would kind of move
the mouth of the Caesar and speak. And the people were supposed
to be like, this really is divine. This really is for real. This
Caesar really is something special. And so I must trust Caesar, not
Christ. They lead people astray. They
lead people to believe in the Emperor and not in Christ. That's what he does to try to
fool people. What about in our own day? That's what happened
in John's day. How does the second beast work
in our own day? Well, the state, the society,
our culture is all about man, isn't it? All about believing
in ourselves, believe in man with a capital M. Man can achieve
anything because man is divine. It's not just one man. It's not just the emperor. It's
not just a Caesar that's divine. Our state, our culture tells
us that we're all special. We're all divine. And what will they say to try
to convince us of this? They'll say that you don't need
God. Look at what we're able to do
today as human beings. Consider the advances we've made
just in raising up crops. If you brought a farmer from
a hundred years ago to today and he saw what we did, they
would think it's nothing short of a miracle. They would say
it's amazing. It's miraculous. if you brought
a doctor from a hundred years ago to today and they saw the
medical advances that we've made they would say oh that that's
nothing short of divine that's a miracle that we're able to
perform this sort of medical procedure you see we don't need God We
are gods. Believe in yourself. And whatever
you believe is okay must really be okay because you are divine. You are something special. Now
just as a side note, I'm not saying that the advances we made
in crops or medicine or anything like that are bad. In and of
themselves, they're not bad. But if we use them as evidence,
as signs to say we don't need God, then we got it all wrong. So we see that back in the time
of John, that the Roman Empire was trying to persecute the church
and try to draw people away from Christ. And it's the same today. We have all sorts of groups today
that are drawing people away from Christ, trying to point
to all these things that man is able to do, saying that we
don't need Christ. Exchange the truth of God for
a lie. You don't need God. The tactics are the same. Oh
sure, the names and the faces have changed, but the tactics
remain the same. And what about for those that
don't believe, that don't conform, that don't give in and worship
the image of the beast? What about those that stay true
and stay faithful to Christ? Our text is as blunt as it can
be. It calls for their death. Look at history. We see this
all the time. You open a history book. What did the Roman Empire
do to those Christians that refused to worship the gods? It killed
them. What about when Islam was on
the rise and you had people that refused to give in to Islam? It killed them. What about when
China started to go communist, and there were Christians in
the country, and the Christians refused to give in to the state's
ideals? It killed them. The second beast kills if you
refuse to give up Christ. And we're not there. Our nation
is not there. Our culture is not there. And
I don't know, but it could be that we see that in our lifetime.
Regardless of whether we see it or not, this text calls us
to count the cost. Are you ready? Are you prepared
to give all for Christ? Are you prepared to be imprisoned
for Christ? Are you prepared to suffer for
Christ? Are you prepared to die for Christ? Consider it. Count the cost. So that's what he does. We've
seen the beast's description. We've seen his actions. Now,
what's his mission? Let's look at the last few verses
of our text, verses 16 through 18. And he causes all, both small
and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark
on their right hand or on their foreheads. And that no one may
buy or sell except the one who has the mark or the name of the
beast or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him who has
understanding calculate the number of the beast. For it is the number
of a man. His number is six, six, six. This is one of the most well-known
passages in our Bible. This is one of the most debated
passages in our Bible. This is one of those passages
that a lot of people have some leftover superstition about.
I have a lot of unbelieving friends and acquaintances, and they've
told me that there's this huge list of bands that have names
related to this number, or have made songs related to this number.
Even unbelievers, to some degree, know something about this text.
They know something at least about the number, that this number
is not a good number. As far as what it actually is,
there's a lot of confusion, a lot of uncertainty. But let's just
look at this piece by piece. First, let's ask the question,
who receives this mark? Well, we find that the beast
is not discriminatory, is he? He is wanting everyone to take
this mark. Of course, he wants the great.
He wants the rich. He wants the popular. He wants
the powerful. He wants the free. He wants the
one in authority, the supervisor, if you will. Of course, he wants
these people to take the mark. But at the same time, he desires
that the small, the poor, the slave, the lowest rung employee,
he would desire that these take
the mark also. And so whatever this mark is about, which we
will get into, it isn't just a warning to this side of the
congregation or this side of the congregation. This issue
is not something where I just warn the young or the old. It
isn't something where I just warn the men or the women. This
is something that everyone needs to pay attention to. You older
folk who have run the race with Christ in endurance, you who
have believed in Jesus Christ, you who are in your 60s, 70s,
80s, 90s, the beast would love to see you recant Christ and
take this mark. You children, you children who
are 5, 10, you teenagers, you 20-somethings, just beginning
life. We'd love to see you take this
mark as well. It's something that all of us
need to take heed of. So who takes this mark? All.
He wants all to take this mark. And so we must all be vigilant.
But why the mark? What's the purpose of the mark?
He gives the mark so that no one may buy or sell without it. That's what the text says. Essentially,
if you don't have this mark, you can't function, you can't
fit in. You know, back in John's day,
and a little later than that, it was required that you go and
you give sacrifices at the imperial cult. And you couldn't buy or
sell until you'd done so. In fact, this eventually progressed
to where the imperial cult would write up a certificate saying
that you had given the sacrifice, and therefore you were licensed
to buy or sell, and you couldn't buy or sell without that certificate. And we see similar things throughout
history. Those Christians that lived in the caliphate, in the
Muslim empire in the Middle Ages, those that refused to submit
to Islam, they were called dhimmis. They were second-class citizens.
They couldn't hold more important roles in the government. They had to pay higher taxes.
Often they lived in the slums. They couldn't fit in. What about
our own day? What do we see happening? You
look at the businesses that exist across the country. Cake businesses
are an easy one. The Christian cake business,
if you want to run a wedding cake business and you want to
govern it according to Christian principles, it's going to be
difficult. There are some people that are being fined and losing
their business because they're trying to work according to a
biblical worldview. They can't fit in. Because they
don't fit in, they can't buy or sell. What about if you want
to be an academic, if you want to become a professor in a university? Unless you're going to a Christian
university, you can hardly become a Christian professor anymore.
You don't fit in, you can't buy or sell, you can't teach, because
you don't teach what society wants you to teach. And we see similar things even
in the lives of children. Your children, you have friends
who invite you out to maybe play on Sundays. But because it's
Sunday, you're instructed that you shouldn't. It's a day of
rest. It's a day of reflecting on Christ
and the rest that he gives us. Or your friends invite you to
celebrate Halloween with them, and you won't. Because you feel
it's inconsistent with your Christian calling and your Christian faith. They notice that you don't swear,
you don't take the name of the Lord your God in vain. There's
something different about you. You don't fit in. And so, as
a result, you're kind of almost a second-class citizen. We can see this all throughout
history, all throughout our own lives. Christians tend not to
fit in. But what is the mark itself?
What is it? 666, what is it? Well, there've been
a number of different names that have been taken from this number.
Some people say that 666 refers to Nero, it refers to Vespasian,
Domitian, Hitler, Stalin, Reagan, Obama, so on and so forth. But if we look at the text, it
says that this requires wisdom, not just mathematical calculating
ability. It requires that we look at the
Scriptures, the Old Testament, and it will assist us in understanding
what this number is all about. If you'll remember, back in Deuteronomy,
God had commanded that the Jews bind the law on their hands and
that it would be on their eyelids. Now, some Jews took that very
literally. They made a little box and they put the law in the
box and they bound it to their wrists and to their forehead. But it wasn't meant to be taken
literally, was it? It was supposed to be something where the Lord
told them that the law should be present in how you act with
your hands, or in how you think with your minds. That's sort of what's going on
here. It's not a literal 666 on the hand or on the forehead.
It has to do with how you act and how you think. Okay, why
666 then? Numbers are important in the
scriptures. You see, the number 7 is the number of divine holiness
and perfection. You know, the Lord is called
Holy, Holy, Holy in Isaiah chapter 6, and rightly we could say that's
777. The number of God could be called
777, but what's 666? It's the number of man. It's
not just the number of a man, it's the number of man. Six is this number that's always
falling short, trying to get to seven, but never making it. If seven is the number of holiness,
six is the number of unholiness, unholiness, unholiness. And so
the one that has this mark on their hands and on their foreheads,
their minds and their actions will be marked with unholiness,
with being contrary to the commands in the Word of God. That's what
this number is. That's what it's all about. Now,
why do I bring this up? I don't bring this up to say
it's an us versus them sort of thing. We don't have the number,
and they do. I bring this up so that we would
watch out, that we would be vigilant and careful, making sure that
we don't conform to the image of this world. I also want to bring this up
to encourage those that may be discouraged in the faith. You
know, there are people in the church that are so discouraged,
and they think that they have this number when they are really
saints in Jesus Christ. And there are people that think
that they are in Christ, but really are presumptuous in assuming
so. And to both of these groups, I can tell you the same thing.
Look at your heart. How is it that you live and act
when no one is around and watching? Do you desire and thirst, hunger
and thirst after righteousness? Do you mourn for sin? Or do you
just not care and live according to the world? If so, then be careful. Because it may be that you have
exchanged the truth of God for a lie. And if that's the case,
I would call you, just as Peter did, to repent. Because there
is still time. Jesus Christ has not returned
yet, and he hasn't called you home. There is still time to
exchange the lie for the truth of God. To exchange your unrighteousness
for the righteousness of Christ. And for those of you that look
at your hearts, and you do so with a great amount of trembling,
fearing that you might find the number on your hand or on your
forehead, look carefully. Do you see the marks of faith?
Do you love Christ in your heart of hearts, desiring to conform
to His image? Is your trust entirely upon Him? Do you desire to live a life
that gives Him glory for Him? If so, then be encouraged and
know that you too are marked. Notice that the text or the sermon
title wasn't, are you marked? It's, how are you marked? Because
every single one of us is marked somehow. We can be marked with
the number 666, but there is an alternative. Look at Revelation
14. 14 verse 1. Then I looked, and behold, a
lamb standing, the real lamb, standing on Mount Zion, and with
him 144,000, having his father's name written on their foreheads.
If you are in Christ, you have that name. You are marked also. And be encouraged. Not only are
you marked, but the Lord God says that he inscribes your name
on his palms, in Isaiah 49. Be encouraged. Watch out. Hold fast to the truth, though
our society, though our culture may call us to exchange it for
a lie. Amen. Let us pray. Great God of heaven, we thank
you for your word, and we ask that you would apply it to our
hearts. O Lord, help us to be diligent to meditate upon this
word. Help us to be diligent, to be
vigilant that we would not conform to this world, but that we would
be transformed by the renewing of our mind in Jesus Christ.
And Lord, should there be any here this morning that do not
know Christ, that have not repented and believed in him, O Lord,
we ask that you would draw them to yourself. that you would prick
their hearts, that they would be horrified at the possibility
that they have been marked with this wretched number. And for those of us that are
in Christ, help us to be encouraged, knowing that we are marked, but
not with this wretched number, but with your name. Lord, we thank you. We ask that
we would have a good, restful afternoon, and that you would
bring us again this evening. It's in the name of Christ we
ask. Amen.
How Are You Marked?
| Sermon ID | 324171051501 |
| Duration | 45:49 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - AM |
| Bible Text | Revelation 13 |
| Language | English |
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