Well, if you haven't done it, please have your Bibles open to the very, very back of your Bible, to the book of Revelation. The book of Revelation, we're going through this actually at a somewhat rapid pace, unlike some of my other books that I take you through. trying to keep the big picture in front of you and deal with the issues as they come. However, today, what I thought was going to be a single sermon is going to be two sermons, Lord willing, because by the time I finished my introduction and was writing out my introduction, I realized I had my sermon done. I was out of room and time, and I thought, well, this will be good for us to hear these things and understand. What we are going to do is spend the bulk of the time, therefore, giving background material to this very important chapter, chapter 10 of Revelation. Let me read Revelation 10 first. And if you don't have a Bible, there should be one right in front of you. It's the black one. Looks just like this. If you guys need one, I'll throw it to you even. Revelation 10. And it may be a different translation than the one that you have, but you should be able to follow along easily. Scripture says, and I saw another strong angel coming down out of heaven, clothed with a cloud, and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was like the sun, and his feet was like pillars of fire, and he had in his hand a little book, which was open. And he placed his right foot on the sea and his left on the land. Verse three. And he cried out with a loud voice as when a lion roars. And when he had cried out, the seven peals of thunder uttered their voices. And when the seven peals of thunder had spoken, I was about to write. And I heard a voice from heaven saying, seal up the things which the seven peals of thunder have spoken and do not write them. And the angel whom I saw standing on the sea and on the land lifted up his right hand to heaven and swore by him who lives forever and ever who created heaven and the things in it and the earth and the things in it and the sea and the things in it. that there shall be delay no longer. But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he is about to sound, then the mystery of God is finished as he preached to his servants, the prophets. And the voice, which I heard from heaven, I heard again speaking with me and saying, go, take the book which is open in the hand of the angel who stands on the sea and on the land. And I went to the angel telling him to give me the little book. And he said to me, take it and eat it. And it will make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth it will be sweet as honey. And I took the little book out of the angel's hand and ate it. And it was in my mouth, sweet as honey. And when I had eaten it, my stomach was made bitter. And they said to me, you must prophesy again concerning many peoples and nations and tongues and kings. May the Lord bless his word. Now, as I said, I want to spend the bulk of my time giving the background of what we just read. Remember, Revelation is a strange book to most Americans' ears. We do not read this kind of literature. We're not used to symbolic language. We're not used to, it's called apocalyptic type of literature. And so we tend to trip over some of the ways that words are used and images are given to us, but they're not that difficult. And so I've labored over the last several weeks as we've gone through this book to explain those. And for any of you that are not clear on that, I would encourage you to go back to the first couple of sermons in Revelation. You can find them at our website, missiodefellowship.org. And you can find those and you can either download my notes or you can actually listen to them online. But what we want to understand is that there are a series of events that are taking place. At the very beginning of Revelation, he is simply stating what John is experiencing at that moment. And then he tells John, I want you to give these words of prophecy and warning to these specific churches. And so he gave these small letters that we looked at to seven different churches. And then at the end of that, he entered into what is yet to come, the future. And in it, we start to have these visions of the throne room of God, and how God is high and lifted up. He is over all of creation. And in that, there is this scroll, this scroll that is written. It has seven seals, and those seven seals kept it shut. The question was given in heaven, who is worthy to open this? Now this scroll was important because it contained God's final judgments. It contained the words and therefore once those words are spoken, these things will come to pass, the activities of God that will sum up the ages where all things are taken care of, all things are dealt with. In other words, the end. And no one in all of heaven or earth was capable of breaking those seals. They were not worthy, except for one, and that was Jesus Christ, who, because He had been slain on the cross, because He died, Because he rose again, he had the only authority to break these seals. And from there, Revelation began to deal with these seals. And each one was broken, and as it would be broken, you could unroll the scroll a certain level and read it, and as it did, it was describing what was to come. And what you saw was the beginnings of God's wrath, or as one of my sermon titles said it, the beginning of the end. And one of the things that we've been dealing with is the idea of the wrath of God and how the wrath of God is not just a vague concept. The wrath of God is a reality, a terrifying reality, so much so that we are called in the Bible to flee from the wrath of God. And of course, the Bible also says the only way you can flee from his wrath is to flee to God and come and believe in him. So we've been unfolding those scrolls, or the seals, and the seventh seal was finally undone, and from there, seven trumpets came forth. And these trumpets were worse judgments than the seven seals. And we were watching the seven trumpets be blown and each one was happening. Death and misery and horror was occurring on creation as those who were in rebellion continued to fight against God and resist Him. One of the things that stood out in our sermons over the last several weeks is that as God put His pressure and His judgment upon humanity, instead of it softening them, instead of them saying, I give, all they did was become more bitter, more hateful, all the more showing that they were worthy of the judgment that was theirs. We ended with the sixth trumpet, and then we came now to chapters 10 and 11, and this is a time that's another interlude. We had one earlier, just before the seventh seal was broken. Now we're waiting for the seventh trumpet. And after that you'll see seven bowls, and these bowls will be God's wrath being poured out, and they will come in very quick succession. We'll get to them when we get to them. But understand that right now we're between the blowing of the sixth trumpet and the seventh, and in that we have this break in the action, if you will, this interlude, this pause for two chapters in which some information is given to us. And I might add that this information is both intriguing but also encouraging. It does get depressing reading Revelation at times. It seems relentless because, in fact, it is relentless. And you see what it looks like to be in the hands of the living God without the salvation offered by Jesus Christ. Many people talk like they're tough, they're brave, they're this, they're that, but that is only because they have never faced that which is infinite and eternal, their creator. Now in this passage, we have two verses, verses 6 and 7, that are key. So in all of the stuff about a cloud and a rainbow and the strong angel and a little book and stuff, actually the core information that will be in this chapter is in verses 6 and 7 where the angel lifted up his right hand to heaven and he made an oath. And he swore an oath, a classic oath, to God. And so it says, "...and swore by Him who lives forever and ever, who created heaven and the things in it, and the earth and the things in it, and the seas and the things in it." He's simply making an oath, a promise, to the one thing that cannot be broken or changed, and that's God Himself. And what he swore is that there shall be delay. Now notice this, because we get into time, no longer, no longer any day delay. But rather, he says, in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he is about to sound, meaning sound the trumpet, then, so again, we have time again, then the mystery of God is finished, as he preached to his servants, the prophets. So what he is saying here is now we're coming, we're on the cusp, we're right on the edge of everything being folded up and finished. All the things that he had promised and prophesied and told the prophets, who in turn had written down and told to the people of God, told to us, we have it contained in the Bible, and we read it and we hear it, and some of it we've seen come to pass already, and others we wonder or wait to see to come to pass. And it's been so long in our sense of time that we wonder, will it happen? Or we forget about it and we don't think about it happening. But what's actually being said here is that right now, at this moment that he is speaking, that is not yet to come, but then it is about ready to take place. Now, chapter 10 itself doesn't tell us much about those two verses. They're just statements, but they have key phrases that mean a whole lot. The mystery of God is the key one. In other words, chapter 10 informs you a lot by making these little statements that then, if you know your Bible well, cause your mind to go back to other passages and other situations in the Bible that informs you a lot. And that's how I got my sermon the way it is, because as I began to enlarge and explain what is being meant here, I realized what I needed to do today was just to tell you the story of the Bible. Now all of creation, meaning you, right now, you sitting in this room, whether you knew it or not, you, your friends, your family, the political scene, the governments, everything and all of creation is hurtling toward one event. And that is the summation, the finishing of all things that God has ordained to come to pass. He's calling it here the mystery. Now you're going to see in chapter 11, so just turn your eyes over there, chapter 11 and verses 16 and 17, where the seventh angel does sound the trumpet. It happens in verse 15. And there's this loud voices in heaven saying, the kingdom of the world, now this is important again, the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ. So there's a radical change that happens. There's a different kingdom now. And He, Christ, Jesus Christ, He will reign forever and ever. And the end result of that is that the 24 elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God. And they said, we give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, who art and who was and that thou hast taken thy great power and have begun to reign. We'll deal with all of that when we get there. So that is what he's talking about in verses six and seven, is when the angel blows his trumpet and he announces that the kingdom of Jesus Christ has begun. And the result of that is cacophony in heaven. Everyone is excited. There's joy and worshiping and praise. Remember when the first or the seventh seal was broken. And it was going to usher in the trumpets that all of heaven was silent. Remember that? For about a half hour, where they were just silent because of the awareness of the seriousness of what was to take place. There was just this holy silence as they waited for the hand of God to begin to drop and to deal with those who had rebelled. Here now we have the announcement that the King is coming, that the King's reign has begun, and heaven cannot be silent. All heaven can do is rejoice. Now, when we talk then about this mystery, and we'll deal with it more, Lord willing, next week, but when we deal with all of this, he is describing in verses 6 and 7 the idea that this world, this realm that we live in, this age, this kingdom, if you wish, the kingdom of the God of this age, Satan himself, that's all moving somewhere. So the only way that I can really describe that for you is to just simply give you the story And the way to call it is this the story of ruin and redemption Now for those of you that are old Christians who have been raised up within the church. This is a story you have heard so many times, but I pray that it will be a blessing as you hear it again. For those of you that are younger in the faith, I hope I will remind you of things that perhaps you've overlooked or forgotten. And for those of you who are new and do not know Jesus Christ or you're new to the faith, this hopefully will give you a wonderful foundation of the totality of what the Bible in its whole is telling us. It all starts in the beginning, because that's where everyone must start with any story. You have to start in the beginning. And in the beginning, the Bible says there was God, and only God, completely content with Himself. He had no beginning. He has no end. He just simply is. And so He is the one who defines when there would become something that is a beginning, because it has no issue with Him, for He is timeless. But the Bible says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. That was how it all began. And it was God who created all things. With the power of his word, he brought these things into existence. Now, I know that there's competing views on all of that. I know that science current science as it is in our political realm would beg to differ, and I'm not here to discuss that at this point. We can talk about that another day. I'm merely here to tell you that that is what the Scripture says, and for a Christian, you are compelled to give that heavy, heavy weight. He spoke into existence through the power of His Word everything. So out of nothing came something, and from that we have our creation. It was much different at that point, but nonetheless it was creation. And in that he made a man, and he made man in a unique way. He made man in his image. And from the man he made a woman, and he made her also in his image, so that they are special, unique. In fact, they are the crown jewel, if you will, of creation. And so humanity is at the end of his creation, and humanity sits there as his crown jewel. And he established them to be his, if you will, vice regents or ambassadors to this creation. Their task was to bring this world and creation under their dominion and to reign over it. They were to be reflections of him and his holiness and his character. Now in all of this, God said in the Bible that he saw all that he made and behold, it was very good. And then there was an evening and a morning, the sixth day. Now he could have made this world any way he wanted. It was his and still is his. And so the things that you and I take for granted and the things that you and I say are always the way they're supposed to be are only that way because God holds all things together. Now in there, he had made one rule, one standard. He said, in this garden, this garden in which he placed the man and woman, this garden that was to be, if you will, the blueprint for what the entire world was to be like, he told them, go in here, stay here, cultivate it, I will give you every good thing to eat. And from there, as they were multiplying, they were having babies and spreading out over the world, they were to simply duplicate that reality in the garden. But in there, one tree was forbidden. They said, you cannot eat of this. The day that you eat of this tree, you will die. So don't eat it. No big deal. They have the entire garden of every good fruit to eat. But there is also the reality of Satan. People say, well, Satan is the opposite. Satan is somehow this opposing power, and it's kind of like a yin-yang, Eastern mysticism kind of idea. But that's not how the Bible describes it. Satan is a servant, a servant of God, an enemy of God, but nonetheless his servant. He is under God, he is under his authority, he is restricted by God in every way, and he cannot accomplish anything without the ultimate permission of God. This is made clear from the beginning to the end. But he comes as a serpent, and he speaks to the woman, and he does what he always does, and that is he challenged the truthfulness of God's word. He looked at the woman, and he said, has God really said you shall not eat from any of the tree of the garden? In other words, one of his simplest tricks is to get you into an argument. Simplest tricks is to get you to debate with him and to argue, rather than just simply to ignore him and refuse to get into a discussion. The woman then began to speak. She spoke and showed a lack of wisdom. There was no sin in her life, but she was not perfect. She was innocent, but not perfect. Ultimately, what it said is that the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was desirable to make one wise. So you see this trifold step of her thinking. Well, it is good looking to eat. It is a pleasure to look at and man, it will make me wise because that's its purpose. And so she took from its fruit and ate. And at that point, Many people say sin entered the world, but that's not how the Bible describes it. With this very simple cavalier throwaway line, it says, And she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. And then the eyes of both of them were opened. Now this is important because it was not her, but the man, Adam, that brought sin and death into the world. The Bible makes that clear. And this is very important later on, because he, as a representative of all of humanity, now becomes a representative for all of humanity in their sinfulness, in their fallenness. And at that moment, everything twisted and broke. All of creation now was no longer as it was, no longer was as it ought to be. Everything broke. And that's why you deal with the stuff you deal with. That's why you and I look around in this world and you wonder why it is the way it is. And you can take every kind of vitamin under the sun. You can visit every doctor you know. You can do all the treatment, run the miles, do the laps in the pool. You can do whatever you want to do. But the harsh reality is every one of you in this room will die. The harsh reality is all of us are literally born into death. Every one of us don't even know how to function in a world that is not broken. We are used to the fact that our dryer breaks and we have to get a new one. We're used to the fact that we open the refrigerator and we're looking for that food and we find it and that it's gone bad. We find out and discover early in life the very painful realities that people lie to you, that people are unfaithful to you. that people will cheat you and that people will even murder you. You will discover very quickly that accidents happen and that little babies who are so sweet and so cute will be born with an incurable illness and they'll die. And you'll say, why? Why does my grandma need to die? I love my grandma. I don't want her to die. Why does my newborn need to be not newborn but stillborn? I do not understand. Beloved, it is because of what happened at that point when all things broke and sin and death entered the world. Now, you want to oppose that, you want to say, I reject that, fine. You come up with a better answer. You explain why within the recesses of your own heart, amazing, shocking, and even frightening thoughts will come unbidden. And I tell you that there is nothing out there, no other answer that explains the human condition better than that. And so in that moment, they were ashamed. They became self-aware, they hid as if they could hide from God. He finds them, He speaks to them, He confronts them, and then He judges them, and He brings certain judgments upon the woman. They're unique to being a woman, to the man, and things are unique to him, but to the serpent He spoke, and He condemned him. And in that, He also made a statement that out of the woman would come one, one specific person who would be bruised, harmed, injured by the serpent, but that he, that one who would be bruised, would then crush the head of the serpent. And right there at the very beginning, after everything's broken and everything is crushed and destroyed and nothing will ever be the same again, there's hope. And from that point on, in the Bible, all you do is you witness the travesty of sin, and you witness the expansion of humanity, but not in righteousness, but in rebellion. And that leads itself all the way to Genesis 6, where finally God judges the world, and he brings a great flood in which he destroys humanity except for one family. And so even there in the midst of the wrath of God and the judgment of God, we see the grace of God as He saves one family. And at the end of that, they are brought and they're said, once again, just like He told Adam and Eve, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. And again we see, instead of that, immediately, because their hearts were sinful, foolish, evil, sick things began to take place. Until finally we end up in Genesis 11 with God scattering the people of the earth throughout the world with different languages. And from there, the big picture kind of goes away and now we zoom in. We zoom into one man, his name was Abram, later to be called Abraham. And we find him introduced in Genesis 12, and there we find that he is a man that's approached by God. He doesn't come to God, God comes to him as it always is. And he comes to Abraham and he says that he will make him a great nation. In fact, I'll read it this way. He says, go forth from your country, and from your relatives, and from your house, or father's house, into the land that I will show you, and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, and so you shall be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And then here's a real key part, and in you, all the families of the earth will be blessed. And so all of a sudden, from this broad statement of this one who will crush the head of Satan, we now are coming on to this one man and somehow through him, all of the nations, all of the people who are now spread throughout the world shall be blessed. And so that word of hope that was done in the early part of Genesis is defined a bit more. from Abraham through all sorts of, again, betrayals and folly and sin and evil. Nonetheless, God working in the midst of that, so that as evil is abounding and occurring, God's goodness and God's wisdom is right there at the same time. Not working differently, but literally taking the very evil that mankind does, and God uses that for His good. It's an amazing thing about God. He's not out there trying to resist evil. He literally uses evil for His own purposes. For He's sovereign over all. And in all of that, out comes a nation, just a tiny little nation, a worthless nation, not one that you would pay attention to. And this nation had to go and hide in a nation called Egypt. And this little nation was called Israel. But they were the offspring of Abraham and his child, Isaac, and his child, Jacob. Hundreds of years later, they're large. A pharaoh who doesn't remember them coming in is in power. He begins to oppress them, even that being God's goodness, as he prepares Israel to leave the safety of Egypt. And out of that, he rescues his people, people that's now become a large nation. And God brings them out with Moses. They travel. And once again, sin enters into the picture. And they whine, they grumble, they complain, they rebel. But worst of all, they do not believe him, even though he wonderfully saves them out of Egypt and their oppression. And he wonderfully saves them in multiple ways, through the Red Sea, I'll just call it magical, the magical ability to eat and to receive water and care all the way up to the very land that he promised them to have and they're afraid they will not enter. And so God then causes them to wander for 40 years, that entire generation of people who would not believe die. Literally thousands upon thousands of people every single day for 40 years were dying. All day long, every day, they're just burying people. because they did not believe the promise of God. Finally, at the end of that, that generation is gone because they would not believe, and they enter into the promised land. We call it Israel to this day. And from there, they do their thing, sin enters into the whole picture. And so, in the Old Testament, the book is called Judges, and you have these various individuals, male and female, who are raised up to judge or to help oversee this scattered group of people who are a ragtag nation. They keep doing foolish things, God raises a judge, they defeat their enemies, and then after they're safe again and they're no longer scared, they go right back into the same sin that you guys do, right? If you do not know Jesus Christ, some of you perhaps have sought religion as a way to fix your life, but the moment your life gets quote-unquote fixed, you go back to the way. Until you have completely turned from yourself and you're resting in Jesus Christ, that's just the way all of us are. certainly as a nation Israel did so that it was summed up at the end of that book that everyone did what was right in their what their own eyes they just did it and we still see it to this day finally there was a king raised up we won't worry about him after him a second king the key one his name was David was raised And in all of that, we have more promises. Now it's going to be coming through the line of David, this one who will bruise the head. It is going to be through this line that there will be the king. the king, the Lion of Judah, he's described as, and that he will reign with righteousness, and he will sit on the throne of David, and he will reign not over just Israel, but he will reign over the nations, that he will bring all that is broken in this world to end. In fact, he will destroy the enemies that you and I fight, and we cannot battle and win. The three great enemies that every one of us have is Satan and sin and death. You will die, you will sin, and your God is Satan, whether you like it or not, whether you acknowledge him or not. These are our enemies. How can we stand forth against them? How do you say no to death when you must die? How do you say no to sin when sin reigns in your very heart? This is the harsh reality. This is what you are and I am. This is the world we live in. You wonder, what's going on in Charlotte? Oh, this happens and this happens. No, what's happening is just sin. It's just sin. It's sin in North Korea. It's sin in the White House. And it's sin in your house. Sin reigns. But the promise is through this man, the lineage of David, there will rise up one. In Israel, we're given the priesthood, and the priesthood is an image of, is a way in which the people of God, Israel, are able to deal with their sins before a righteous God, and they can have a priest come, and they can make their proper offering to him, and their sin is forgiven. But there's a promise of a priest who will come who is different than this kind of priest, who must live and die himself because he's a sinner. There's looking to the day that there will be a priest who has no sin, who will resolve their sin forevermore. All of this comes as the Bible in the Old Testament moves towards its end with these prophecies as people are in sin and God is judging the nation and all kinds of difficulties are happening. There's these constant, incessant statements of hope of a day coming when all things will be made right. And so there's word images that many of you may be familiar with. Things like the lion will lie down with the lamb. where righteousness will reign finally forevermore. At the end of the Old Testament, there's silence. No more speaking from God. 400 years goes by. The people of God, Israel, in their disobedience, in God's judgment, they continue to tell their children and their children's children and their children's children's children's children the same stories of the Old Testament. We're doing it right now in the rooms over there. We're still telling them the same stories. We're telling them of the goodness and the mercy of God and the righteousness of God and the perfections of God and that God will make all things right. And in that time of 400 years of silence, the Word of God was still read, the Word of God was still proclaimed, and the Word of God was heard, though most did not believe. And on one day, the promise of that one person who would destroy Satan was born. The Bible describes him to be Immanuel, God with us. That God, the second person of the Trinity, the Son, took on flesh and became a man. And in the likeness of sin, he dwelt among us. The Bible says that not only did he live, but ultimately he died. But as he lived, you can read in the Gospels and Matthew and Mark and Luke and John, the accounts of each of these people of his time. You will see where He walks. Creation rejoices. You will see that as He interacts with His creation, because it is He who made the heavens and the earth, so He's not just a fellow creature like you and I, trying to work with creation, and yet creation rebels back because of sin. No, you find Him, and He just does what He wants, and creation is so happy to cooperate. So you have hungry people, thousands of hungry people, and they need to be fed. You don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. He just says, give me some bread. Starts breaking it. And because he's the maker of bread, and he is a creator of atoms themselves, he just keeps creating it until he feeds them all. He needs to get to the other side of a lake. If he needs to get to the other side of the lake, then he needs to get to the other side of the lake. He can choose the boat, but if he wants to walk on the water, by golly, you know what he's going to do to the water? He's going to say, obey. And then guess what the water does? It obeys. Why? This is their king. Demons torment these people. And he comes around the corner and they're not laughing at him. They're saying, why are you here? Oh son of God. And when he commands them, there is no debate, there is no discussion, they flee. Sickness has no power, he simply touches, commands, speaks and death flees. So a man dead in his tomb for three days comes out with simply the command, Lazarus come out. Now you can look at those and you can say, yeah, whatever, fine. I mean, really fine, if you wanna say, I don't agree with that, I don't think those things happen, that's certainly your choice. But the scripture says that's what's happened. The scripture declares itself to be true and we proclaim it as true. And Jesus over and over and over again with many, many witnesses watched and he did these things and they were recorded. But all of that was just, if you will, icing on the cake because what was really important was that he kept telling his men, why must come to die? I am here to die. And on that day, when it was time that God had ordained his death, he was arrested, he was falsely accused, he was sentenced, and he was put on the cross and he died. And people think about the physical nature of that death and the horror of that death, but the reality, the Bible says, is that what happened on that day is that he became that perfect priest that the Old Testament looked forward to. He became that perfect sacrifice that the Old Testament spoke about. He proclaimed Himself to be the King of the Jews, that perfect King that the Scripture spoke about. And the Bible says that He took our sin upon Him. As that perfect sacrifice, willingly taking our guilt, our sin, and in our place, He suffered and died. He did what you and I could not do. Beloved, you say, well, I'll fix it. The Bible says without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin. God will not be pleased. You say, well, I'll shed my own blood. Girl, you can't even do it without sin. Every one of you, each one of you are sinners. So even your death is a sinful death. You can't even die well. And yet God, in his infinite grace and mercy and mystery, sent his son as that perfect sacrifice for sin. On the third day, he rose again. Why was that so important? Well, it's one thing if I'm going to tell you I'm going to die for your sin, that I am that one who is God himself in flesh, that I am the one that was promised the Christ or the anointed one in the Old Testament. That's really easy. Anybody can say that. And it's not even that hard to die. People do it every day. But what happens when you then say, and I'm going to rise again on the third day, and you do? Somebody's got to stand up and take notice of this. Somebody has to recognize there's something more going on that, in fact, his father did accept the sacrifice, that God, the father, did say it is finished, that the sin is resolved in Jesus Christ. And it was there that then he spoke to his disciples, they became his apostles, and he set forth the rest of the plan. He said that he will raise up his church, which we are part of. These are people who are followers of Jesus Christ. He says that whoever believes on him shall not perish but have everlasting life. They shall be forgiven and they shall live. And so he commissions his followers to go out from Jerusalem. with good news that Jesus, through his death and resurrection, that these enemies that we cannot defeat are defeated. And that's what they did. And many people believed, and many people were baptized just like we did today, and many people lived, and many people have died. And over the last couple millennia, countless have believed and lived and died. But beloved, and I need this to be heard, they lived and died not in futility, but in hope. They do not lie on the deathbed saying, oh, it didn't work. But as each Christian lies on the deathbed or is taken to the gallows or whatever might be happening around this world even right now, that is not a word of futility, it is a word of hope for the promises that if you die before he comes again, you are brought straight into his presence. So I just spent 40 minutes telling you what Revelation 10 is talking about. Then the mystery of God is finished as he preached to his servants, the prophets. Now I want you to take your Bibles and turn, if you will, to Colossians 3. And I want to talk about a different aspect of that mystery. I'm going to read verses 1 through 11. I want you to notice what's going on. We'll only look briefly at verses 8 through 11. Paul says, if then you have been raised up with Christ, he's talking to the Christians. And he is assuming these are true because they are true. Okay, so he's not actually asking. If then you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above and not on the things on the earth, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory. Therefore, consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry. Why? For it is on account of these things that the wrath of God will come. And in them you also once walked when you were living in them, but now you also put them all aside. Anger and wrath and malice and slander and abusive speech from your mouth. Do not lie to one another. Why? Since you laid aside the old self, I'm going to use a different word, the old man, with its evil practices and have put on the new man who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the one who created him, a renewal in which there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian and Scythian, slave and free man, but Christ is all and in all. Now having just said that he has said in Revelation 10 that the summing up of the mystery that was given to the prophets is at hand and in one more chapter that trumpet will sound and then things will rapidly come to a close. All of that with the story that I told you from the very beginning of Genesis all the way now to the end of the Bible in the last 40 minutes, I want to speak a little bit more In verses 1 through 11, this whole thing is, I'm going to use a $10 word, every bit of it is eschatological. Every bit of it is looking to the end. It's looking not to the here and now, but to what is to come and how what is to come affects the here and now. And so he talks about the wrath of God. He's not just saying that God's angry, but that future judgment we've been looking at in Revelation is what he's talking about. That our life is hidden with Christ. And when He is revealed, that's the second coming. We will be revealed. All of this is looking to the day of the end. And in verses 8 through 11, I want you to see how Paul gives ultimate reasons for everything he just said. So just look at them again. Ultimate reasons. He doesn't say don't lie to each other because it hurts them. It's mean, it's not kind. Everything has an ultimate reason for it. He says, but you also put them all aside. Anger, wrath, malice, slander, abuse of speech from your mouth. Don't lie to one another. Why? Because you laid aside and the right way to understand that word is the old man. What's he talking about? Well, he gives it in a negative and a positive. You laid aside the old man. And in verse 10, you put on the new man. Who is he talking about? Now go all the way back to where I started. Remember Adam and Eve and Eve ate the fruit. And I said, that's not where the problem started. It was where she gave to her husband and he took it and he ate. And I said, in that everything broke. He's the first man. He's a representative, all of us are his offspring, and none of us can escape his guilt. But what happens when we have faith in Jesus Christ? What you were witnessing in that water were four people who are now in a different man. They're not in the old man, Adam, anymore. It's simply a fact of being, it's a reality of what every Christian has already done. So you have to understand that in this world, all of you belong to one of two men. You belong to Adam in sin and death, or you belong to Jesus in life. That's it. And you can, again, you can complain about that, resist that, disagree with that, or ignore it, but it doesn't make anything different. That's like trying to say that I know my heritage. I know I'm Norwegian, I'm English, and I'm German. And that's like me trying to call myself an Indian. No, I'm not Norwegian. Well, okay. You go ahead and call yourself Chickawa all you want, I guess, whatever. What's that mean? I cannot deny my essence. I can argue with it, get annoyed at it, but I am what I am. And that is the reality of every human being. They are children of Adam. And as children of Adam, on this corporate group level, they share in his being. And his being was one of sin. And so this idea of this one man, Adam, and this one man, Jesus Christ, is picked up over and over again in the New Testament especially. In Romans 5, we won't go there, but Romans 5, he says, all in Adam die, and all in Jesus Christ have salvation. And so you have this corporate identity, and I've got passages that you can look. We won't spend the time looking at them, but you'll see this idea in 1 Corinthians 3 and 1 Corinthians 6, where he describes the Christians as one temple, the temple of God, the temple of the Holy Spirit. It's not Grayson's a temple, and I'm a temple, and Lauren's a temple. That's not what he's saying. He says that we, as a group, are one temple of God, one temple of the Holy Spirit, this corporate reality that God looks at us as one. He looks at all of humanity outside of Jesus Christ as one. They are those who are in Adam. And he looks at all who have believed in Jesus Christ as one. They are in Christ. This passage states in Colossians that the old man is no longer part of us. So right now, let me encourage every one of you here as a Christian, if you are, it's done. The moment you believe, the moment your heart was changed, it's done. You're no longer in Adam. It's abolished forevermore. One of the pernicious and weak doctrines that's taught today too often is a vagary about what happened at our salvation. And in some way, we think we have two natures, that we still have our sin nature and we have the not-sin nature. We don't have two natures. You, beloved, you have one nature. You are now in Christ. The Bible describes this thing called the flesh or the sin nature. The bad words, the term sin nature, because it confuses things. It's called the flesh. It's this lingering effects of having lived in sin and then born in sin. I call it a sin hangover. It's like being drunk. You're not drunk. You just have the lingering effects of it. Well, in the same way, having come to Jesus Christ, you still dwell in a fallen world, surrounded by sin. In all of this, there are the lingering effects that grab a hold of you, hold on to you. But they are defeated. They cannot win. It's not like you have to live in fear, thinking, if I don't do good enough, maybe this nature will overwhelm me. I grew up in church at one point always being told, you need to starve the old man and feed the new man. And you always wondered if you were feeding the new man good enough so that you could make it to heaven and you were in this constant state of terror. Beloved, the old man died. It was killed. You have laid aside, he said, it's not that you've weakened, you've laid aside the old man. So we don't have these competing natures in us. It's not us trying to hang on and hope the nature of Christ wins. He already has. And so I can say to you with absolute confidence that if you are in Jesus Christ, if your hope is in Jesus Christ, I don't care what else comes, you are safe. You are free, you're forgiven, you're redeemed, you're adopted, and you are loved. So all you're experiencing now in the way of sin is the fact that you live in a broken realm. You still live here in this realm that belongs to Adam, if you will. We have one new nature, but we live in two different realms. So important for you to grasp. One nature, a nature that's bent and desires and ought to be in the presence of God, and yet God in his wisdom says, not yet. You will straddle two realities. And every true Christian knows what that feels like. Every true Christian knows what it's like to feel this sense of unease because you're in this world and then you start to get tempted to be like this world, but you're never really happy with this world because it's not your world, but you live in it. And then you go back the other way and you yearn for that, but it's not yet. And so you yearn for it and you get these glimpses of what is to come, and yet the battle is there because you have not yet fully experienced it. That is the norm, beloved, for the Christian life. The Bible says that the new man is still being realized, meaning it's being formed in us. That's why Paul is telling us in chapter three to focus on Christ and heaven. That's where we need to fixate our minds. This is why I rant at times about certain things that might capture your mind. And why would you fill up your mind with those things that are so antithetical to the new heaven and earth? The Bible here tells us to strip away the garments. clothing, if you will, the appearances of the old man. Why would you still wear the clothing of something that's dead? And then he says in a positive way in verses 10 and 11, we have, not we need to, but we have put on the new man. It's a fact of being again. It's who you are. But here's where you're like, okay, what's your point? Well, I got a lot of points, but here's my point. I want you to notice a word, verse 10, and having put on the what? The new, the new. Remember, John says that the angel told him that the mystery is almost ready to be fulfilled. What is the mystery? Well, we'll talk about that next week. But that mystery that is to be fulfilled involves making all things what? new. That's the plan. This idea of the new man then is, here's that $10 word again, eschatological. For those of you that don't know what it means, it just means last things, end times. So it's the things in the end when all things are summed up. At the coming of Christ, When he came as a baby and he took on flesh, the beginning of the end started at that point. When he died and was raised again, we entered in, the Bible says, into what's called the last days in prophetic literature. And now we're looking to the end in which the last days will be culminated in the second coming of Christ. But I want you to see how this idea of new is not new. In the Old and New Testament, it's spoken of, and I'll just shoot through these very, very quickly. The prophets look forward to the day when God would do a new thing, they say, in Isaiah 43. In Jeremiah 31, God will make a new covenant with his people. In Ezekiel chapter 11, God will implant a new heart and a new spirit within them. In Isaiah 62, God will call them by a new name. In Psalm 96, He will give them a new song. And in Isaiah 65, He will create the new heavens and earth. And then in the New Testament, it goes on that this concept goes on. God will create the new heavens and new earth in Revelation chapter 21. There will be a new Jerusalem in Revelation 21. Jesus talks about having a new wine in the kingdom of God in Mark 14. That God will give his people a new name in Revelation 2 and a new song in Revelation 5. And in fact, he will make all things new in Revelation 21 again. What we do right now is we live within that time period, that time where Christ died and rose again, where he ushered the new in. That's why it says this in the Bible, and again, we misuse this verse, and we try to make it all about me, when it's something much better than just me. In 2 Corinthians 5, 17, it says, Therefore, if any man is in Christ, remember, not in Adam anymore, but in Jesus Christ. They're now, he's their new man. He is who represents them. Just as Adam represented sin and death, Jesus is life and forgiveness. And if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature. And then I'm going to translate it better than how it is because they add the word things and it shouldn't be there. If you haven't already, those of you who have heard this, just scratch out those words because they're not, it's not right. He is a new creature. Now listen, the old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. You see, the moment you move into that relationship that you're in Jesus Christ, you now participate in the new, the new that will ultimately culminate in the new heavens and new earth, where sin and Satan and death will be hurled away forevermore, where everything will be as it ought to be, where you won't know what it's like to have something break. You won't know what it means to be defrauded and you won't know what it means to be shocked at the evil of your own mind because all things have been made new. And so in the second part of chapter or verse 10, he says that this new is being perpetually renewed every day. It's being renewed and growing into a true knowledge according to the image of the one created him." In other words, we're being made into likeness of our Lord and Savior. This is the idea of what God is doing now in this in-between time. And he also reminds us, therefore, this new has this corporate reality in verse 11, that because we are belonging to the new and we are now in this new man, it changes how we relate to one another. He breaks down racial, religious, cultural, and social issues. In the church there can be no racism. In the church there cannot be a chauvinism. There cannot be a looking down upon those of a lower caste or class. In Christ, we are all one. In Christ, we all now belong to the new. In Christ, we are all children of God. We belong to the same household. In Christ, we all come to the same throne and we worship the same God who is our Father in heaven. Beloved, all of that is what's found in those two little verses and there's even more. We just don't have the time to talk about it. So when we think about revelation, we think about the wrath of God and we think about the coming of the Lord and the future judgment and everything else, one of the things we have to also encourage one another is the grand story of redemption that God has given to us. And the story in which we are part of it because we believed, because somebody was kind enough and faithful to share with us. We had a mom and a dad like I did, who told us about Jesus Christ, who took us to Sunday school, who made us memorize the Bible, who had us read the Bible, who challenged us and provoked us to think about our faith. So many of you parents remember that's your number one call. Nothing else matters but to call your children to repentance, to call them to enter into the new. But it goes beyond that. You have been sovereignly placed in the workplace and in the neighborhoods, and you are called to tell these people of the one who was promised. And you are called to call these people to repent and to come and to hear and believe. That's our calling. That's why we're here. We all have to learn to speak to one another in truth. And as a Christian, we need to stop seeing ourselves and others in the light of this world. We need to remind ourselves that ultimately there is only Jesus Christ, that he is everything, that we have died with him, that we were buried with him, that we were raised with him, and that we are glorified with him. Christ permeates everything, beloved, that is the vision of chapter 10. And that, by God's grace, we will be able to look at next week. So keep that vision in your heart and mind. You've got to go to work with that vision or you're not going to do it. You're going to lie and cheat and steal and you're going to fall into all the garbage of this world because you don't have that vision while you're working. You have to buy and save with that vision in your mind or you're just going to be just like everybody else in America doing what you want to do with your money because you don't have a vision of what is. You have to parent with that vision. That it's not just a cute little child who needs his nap or this or that. It's not. There's something far grander and more important than that. And you parent with that vision in mind. And you live in this world with that vision. This world that's marked with sin and death, where it lies and it lulls the whole of unredeemed humanity into anything but Jesus Christ. We will see every day when you get up and walk out of here, you're gonna look at the power and the rebellion that's going on. When you look through your Twitter feed or go onto Facebook or read the news, whatever it is, all you're gonna see is the expression of this age. You're gonna see its pleasures. You're gonna see its riches. And the message is very simple for it's just like the one that Satan said to Jesus on the day that he was tempted. It says, all these things I will give to you if you fall down and worship me. And that's what he's saying every day, fall down and worship me. What the world does, because they're in Adam, is they fall down and worship him every day. And what you come with them is to look to the better man, the true man. And you say, go and follow him. And then you show what that looks like. J.C. Ryle said it well. When you look at the power of the kingdoms of this world, he says, one single soul saved shall outlive and outweigh all the kingdoms of the world. And that is true.