Lord, this evening we thank you for forgiveness of sins, that all of our sins and all of our wrongs are under your blood, and we truly are new, we truly are whole, we truly are fixed heavenward, because you have claimed us and you have redeemed us, God. So help us, Lord, to rejoice in that. Even when we don’t feel sometimes forgiven, or we feel dirty, or we feel like one thing, remind us of the truth that we are. Thank you for your word. It’s true and it’s eternal and it’s reliable. So we want to build our lives on your word, knowing it is the only rock upon which a house can really stand.

Lord, bless our tithe, bless our offering.

Let us faithfully, sacrificially give to your church that your kingdom may be advanced and disciples may be made, Lord. We love you. It’s in Jesus’ name. Amen. Amen.

Well, good evening.

I’m going to do maybe a weird thing tonight. And it’s a thing a good preacher should never do. And that good thing a good preacher should never do is preach a sermon he’s preached before at the same church. So I don’t mind sneaking a different sermon at a different church if I’m invited, but you never want to preach the same sermon, at the same church. But I’m doing it. Here’s why I’m doing it. I’m going to preach the same passage I preached two weeks ago. So Elder Chris preached last week for us. Chase and I were gone in Dallas. And so he was preparing and he did a great job. But I want to preach that same passage in Revelation to you that I preached two weeks ago, Revelation chapter 6, for two reasons. One, it was Family Worship Sunday. And I think all of our children got a hold of caffeine or some stronger drug before they came in that Sunday. And usually they’re good. And I’m not, my kids were not so fantastic that Sunday. So I’m not pointing anyone out. I don’t feel like, was it me? But that was tough. I had several folks come up and say, have you considered preaching something more lighthearted on a Family Worship Sunday? Yes, it never was an issue before. I don’t know what was going on that Sunday. So. I want to walk back through it because I think it would just benefit us.

Secondly, chapter 6 is a lot of information. And I think by the time I got to that, I feel like I tried to cover too much ground too quick. So I’m going to, I’m going to do half of it. And surely it’s not bad to hear the word of God twice. So there I spoke my piece. I’m doing a homiletical faux pas by preaching it twice. But such, such is the case. We’re going to do it again. So we’re going to preach or be in. I’m going to preach Revelation chapter 6. Verses 1 through 8. So if you want to turn with me. Revelation chapter 6.

Verses 1 through 8.

And John writes, Now I watched when the Lamb opened one of the seven seals. I heard one of the four living. Creatures say with a voice like thunder, Come. And I looked and behold a white horse and its rider had a bow and a crown was given to him and he came out conquering and to conquer. When he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, Come. And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth so that people should slay one another. And he was given a great sword. When he opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, Come. And I looked and behold a black horse and its rider had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of four living creatures saying, A quart of wheat for a denarius and three quarts of barley for denarius and do not harm the oil and the wine. When he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, Come. And I looked and behold a pale horse and its rider’s name was Death. And Hades followed him and they were given authority over a fourth of the earth to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth.

So Darcy, my oldest daughter, she turned 10 last week. Double digits. It’s weird, you know, when you’re a dad, but it’s weird when you have, you have a child that jumps into double digits. That, I don’t know, that one made me feel old. How could I have a 10-year-old and Dawson just turned 7 and Josie will be, you know, she’ll be 3 and everyone’s getting older quicker and you realize nobody can slow time down. It’s like I want to slow it down. What I say to my kids at every birthday is, Promise me you won’t get another year older. Can you just tell me you’ll stay at this age forever? And of course they say, I can’t, I can’t help it. You know, I can’t help it.

In Acts chapter 17,

it says, The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent

because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has not judged. He has appointed. And of this, he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead. That word fixed, it’s a brick wall. You can’t get through it. We’re all on the exact same timeline, every single person, and we cannot slow down time. This fixed day, it’s not changeable. God says it’s this day that my son will come back. And you will judge the world. It’s fixed. It’s fixed.

It’s like an hourglass. And you see the sand fall and it keeps falling. And it looks like there’s so much on top. But then you can see, oh, the bottom’s so much heavier. And there’s just a few grains left at the top. And you can’t flip it back over. It’s happening. It’s final. It is inescapable. It’s inescapable. I want to ask you, I want to ask you that question this morning. Christ returned. When he comes back to judge the living and the dead, that day is inescapable. It’s inescapable. Are you ready for that day? Are you ready for the day, in the words of Johnny Cash, when the man comes around? When the man comes around? Because he’s coming.

In the beginning of chapter 6, we see these seals open. Now again, what are these seals? Seals. Remember, John is weeping because it seems that no one can open these seals. And that’s a problem because the scroll contains the end of human history. It contains the final chapter, the final era of what God is going to do to vanquish the enemy, save his people, bring himself glory. So it’s this really good ending. And we can’t have it. We can’t have that really good ending if nobody can break these seals. But Jesus shows up. And the elder tells John, stop weeping. Somebody can break these seals. What these seals are then are not moving us closer to the end. They are the end. When the seals start to break, that is the very end. It’s coming. It’s the beginning of the end, if you will, when these seals start to break. So I want us to see how the inescapable Christ on the verge of his coming, what will first be unleashed is one great deception. Great deception.

Now I watched when the lamb opened one of the seven seals and I heard one of the four living creatures say with a voice like thunder, come. And I looked and behold a white horse and its rider had a bow. And a crown was given to him and he came out conquering and to conquer. Now when you first read that, our minds immediately think about Jesus because when we go to chapter 19, we see Jesus on a horse and that’s when he comes back finally and he destroys evil. It’s like, oh, this is Jesus in the beginning. And I don’t think that it is. Good reasons why we could think it was Jesus because this horse is, white, so white 14 times in Revelation is used, it means righteousness in those other places. Okay, so well, if there’s white going on, that must mean it’s a good thing. In Mark chapter 13, Matthew 24, Jesus tells us the gospel of the kingdom must be proclaimed before the end. And we’re told elsewhere that Jesus conquers in the book of Revelation. And different from the other three apocalyptic writers, there’s no apparent, apparent negative consequence. So when we see these other seals pop, something really bad happens after the apocalyptic writer comes. That would seem like the case. But what I think is going on here is this is actually a false Christ. This is someone appearing, seeming to be Jesus. Let me read to you what G.K. Bill says. He says, the first writer represents a satanic force. Attempting to defeat and oppress believers spiritually through deception, persecution, or both. The image of the writer may include reference to the Antichrist, governments that persecute Christians, or devil’s servants in general. The portrayal is intended by John as a parody of Christ’s righteousness and victory in chapter 19, verse 11 through 16, when I referenced a second ago. Satan’s attempts to be victorious are but feeble imitations of Christ, worthy only for ridicule. Such attempts are doomed to failure from the beginning because they are ultimately decreed by God to contribute to the establishment of his kingdom and glory. So this is something, if you will, of a satanic parody. And you say, well, are you sure? What we see at other times in the book of Revelation, Satan, quote unquote, conquering. So just because we see the word conquering doesn’t mean it has the sort of finitude to it that Jesus has in his conquering. White is actually, the only similarity between this rider and the white rider at the end. This says that this rider has a victor’s wreath, but what Jesus has on his head in the end is actually a crown of many diadems, much more different, much more majestic and kingly.

When we see the phrase, there was given, and we see it with the other riders, there was given, that is in reference to divine permission for bad things to happen. So we see that when the other rider pulls out his sword, we see it when God tells the slain martyrs, wait, more people have to be slain. So if we’re going to be consistent with the four riders, they’re all negative and bring about a negative consequence. So it would seem grouped in, that makes sense with the there was given phraseology. Okay? So with that in mind, we also can think about, when we go back to Matthew chapter 24, Jesus says what? For many will come in my name. So this is not something, this is not some strange novel idea. Jesus said in Matthew 24, for many will come in my name saying, I am the Christ. They will lead many astray. So Jesus tells us there will be someone that shows up and dupes everyone into thinking, that’s the guy. We also, when we look at second Corinthians, we see Paul say, and watch out for false, false apostles, false teachers. He says, Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So the biblical witness seems to be clear. Satan can deceive many into thinking he is on the good and right side. When you think about any given ethical issue today, how much people come down on unbiblical side, they don’t go, I know it’s wrong, but I just want to be wrong. They’re deceived into thinking it’s good. They’re deceived. They’re deceived into thinking it’s right. We’ll see in Revelation chapter 12 and verse 13, Satan and his agents deceiving through imitation. If we think about it on a grander scale, this is what’s been going on all the way back to ancient times. You think about ancient paganism’s allure, right? Recall when Elijah up on the mountain finally challenges the Baals. He challenges these false gods. The Israelites, like God’s own people, y’all want to worship these false gods. Y’all are being duped by these satanic forces behind these false gods. And of course, Elijah calls down the fire and proves that these prophets and these pagan gods are false. In the time of Jesus, when Jesus is doing his ministry, the Pharisees, the religious leaders, they are vehemently against Jesus. And you cannot say, you cannot say, well, they mean well. They’re just, you know, they’re just seeing it wrong. Like, they mean well. No, because Jesus tells them what in John 8? He says, you’re doing the works of your father, the devil. So Jesus doesn’t mince words that those who stand against him aren’t just mistaken. He says, even to the very religious leaders of his time, the spirit of Satan is upon you. He is your father. He is your father. When you come to, to Rome, when the church is spreading, Rome is both a military muscle coupled with spiritual authority. They’re the ones that get to tell people what their spirituality can look like. Now, namely, anything, as long as you also say Caesar is God, right? So the time of Rome, there was a lot of, you know, looseness in terms of what you could do, as long as you did additionally what we told you. And so that was, that was the early church’s problem. Largely, is they weren’t willing to say Jesus plus Caesar is God. And so you have, again, Satan working through Rome to be both a military muscle because the church won’t submit to their spiritual demands. Okay? Go to Catholicism in the Middle Ages.

Catholicism, similar to Rome as it moved on, Catholicism had both the power of, of brute force and the power of spiritual authority, right? You’re going to believe what we believe, or guess what? We can enforce the muscle on you. You, you will do this. You will believe this. You won’t believe that, or you’ll be burned at the stake. You’ll be on the run for your life. So we see it in the time of, of the Protestant Reformation. We see it in present day culture, present day government. You, you, you can read the news and you see the government’s allowances for what you can believe about gender and ethics and what’s right and what’s wrong, getting closer to their willingness to use their muscle to enforce that. You, you see that even overseas in England. You know, we talked about the lady who was just silently praying outside of the abortion clinic. She was arrested for that. So, so it’s becoming in our own time where the government, the government is saying unwittingly to them because of the work of satanic forces. We know what you should spiritually do. And we’re going to enforce that with our muscle. If you don’t, of course, we could talk about the persecuted church in India, China, elsewhere, where both government and spirituality are intermingled. And this reminds us of what the apostle John says. He says, children, it is the last hour. And as you have heard that, the Antichrist is coming. So now many Antichrists have come. So John doesn’t imagine just this one big bad guy coming at the end. I think he will. But John says that anyone who stands against the gospel, anyone who stands against Jesus, his people, that is very, very real sense and Antichrist. He says, and that’s how you know that it’s the last hour. Again, John says elsewhere in his first epistle, by this, you know, the spirit of God, every spirit that can, confesses Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you heard was coming. And now John’s saying is in the world already. Already. What does Jesus tell us himself at the end of his life in ministry? He tells us that it’s only going to intensify as human history comes to a close. It’s only going to manifest itself in a way like it never has before. Jesus says in Matthew 24, false prophets will arise, perform great signs and wonders. So as to lead astray, this is so severe, if possible, Jesus says, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand. He’s like a big duh, like, hey, I’m telling you beforehand. So if they say to you, look, he’s in the wilderness, don’t go out. If they say, look, he’s in the inner rooms, don’t believe that. For as lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. Jesus is saying, when I come, it will be unmistakable. Do not be deceived by anything that isn’t absolutely me. Those are Jesus’s words to us.

Friends, if Jesus is speaking to us in such plain terms, not just here in Revelation, but that seems to be the case for God’s people all throughout history, Old and New Testament, it means you and I must take the utmost pains and care to be faithful. To be faithful. Because some work of the enemy somewhere around you certainly is doing all it can do to deceive you. You must believe. The Christian life, if it is to arrive safe in the end with God in eternity, it is done through active, painful, purposeful perseverance in loving God’s truth. It doesn’t just happen. I was just saved back then. I said yes to Jesus. But you’re quite unconscious. You’re unthinking about your life every day. In the ways that the enemy is trying to get his tentacles in your heart and in your mind. Jude, I love the book of Jude. Maybe it’s my favorite book in the New Testament. Not because it’s only one page long. I just think it’s really good. I’m not lazy. I mean, I might be a little lazy, but not. I like to read, but it’s really short to the point. It’s really short to the point. And what Jude says at the very beginning of that book is I was going to write you about all this stuff, like a good, happy yay letter. But now I have to write you. Jude says to contend for the faith which was once delivered to you. So Jude is writing these first century believers saying you must actively, you must consciously, you must purposefully set yourself to fight. To fight. Why does Paul have to say in Ephesians chapter 6, put on a helmet of salvation and have a sword of the Spirit and a belt of truth and a breastplate of righteousness. And a shield of faith and a feet ready to do gospel work. Because if you don’t, you will be slain. It’s a holy war. It is a holy war. So friends, I want this verse to awaken you to the mandate on every Christian to live careful. To be an approved. To be an approved workman who’s not ashamed. You don’t think much of that. You know, when you’re a kid, I don’t know if you grew up in church, you know, my church, they had awanas plastered on the wall for the kids ministry, right? It’s awanas. And then even, I don’t know, they even tell you what that stands for, but it stands for what Paul said to Timothy. Timothy, be an approved workman who’s not ashamed. Know the truth of the gospel so you can both obey it, but secondly, so you can defend it. How can you defend what you don’t know and obey yourself, your helpless sheep at that point? When Jesus goes out to the wilderness and Satan comes against him, Jesus does not shoot lightning bolts. He doesn’t go, I’m the son of God. I’m going to turn you to dust. Bang. He doesn’t do that. What is Jesus’ ultimate weapon to be kept from evil? Well, he quotes the scriptures of all things. So Jesus, if you are using the Bible as a weapon, a weapon to be kept from deception and falling away, how much more me, a fallible, weak, sinful creature, do I need to cling on to the gospel and these fragments of truth here in the Bible?

Friends, there’s no ifs, ands, and buts about it. We must be word-saturated people of the text. The Bible is not, you know, it’s a source of truth. It has a purpose. It has some good things to speak into your life. But what we need to do is interpret the Bible through the lens of our culture and through the lens of our time. And as I’ve heard one person say, that’s what’s so wonderful about the Bible is it can kind of change and morph with the cultures and times to be what people need it to be at that time.

That’s the day and age in which you and I live.

Friends, know and love the truth.

Come listen to sermons every Sunday. Then go home with your Bible and think deeper on those and question them. Not because you think, you know, I’m a hack, but because we don’t want a repeat of Catholicism, right? If it comes to, I know, and so y’all come here and I will tell you, surely there’s a level of trust that this guy’s studying. But the beauty of it is, is you have the word of God and you can say, oh, I can see what he’s saying is plain here in the Bible. And, you know, the spirit validates in me that that’s true. And it’s true for you as you love God’s word on your own and you love God’s word in the context of discipling relationships. It happens. The stuff of heaven happens over a cup of coffee at seven o’clock in the morning. It does.

So I want you to see that if we’re to be kept from deception, you’ve got to love fidelity. Second thing, though, you’ve got to have courage. You’ve got to have courage. And this goes back to the first lesson we learned in Colossians. Several weeks ago, it’s one thing to know what’s right. It’s quite another thing to have the courage to do what’s right. And you find Paul himself saying, pray for me to have courage or I won’t be able to do what I need to do. So you and I cannot, you know, whimper and shudder when we see the great forces of the Antichrist, whether we’re just talking about the spirit of Antichrist working in culture and culture, government or whether we’re in the end times and it’s the Antichrist himself. We can’t, we can’t, we can’t be in this fragile state of, oh no, what are we going to do? Why not? Because as great as Satan’s power is, he is a wannabe king. You know, Satan is a wannabe God and his power, as terrible as it may seem from our perspective, it’s totally harnessed by God. It’s totally happening under God’s thumb. And God says that he’s with us, right? The psalmist, God is with me. Whom shall I fear? Paul in Romans 8, I’m a conqueror in Christ and nothing, Paul says, can separate me from God’s love. So, so all that Satan does, friends, all of his, his conquering, conquering, it’s limited, it’s temporal. Jesus is king. And Jesus said he’s with us to the end. And Jesus says he will be revealed at the very last and it’s going to be authentic and it’s going to be indisputable and it’s going to be the greatest movement. It’s going to be the greatest revival. It’s going to be a government that never shuts down. It’s never going to be a government that corrupts. It’s going to be true religion when Jesus finally comes. So see, see King Jesus on his throne in the midst of your greatest fears. You know, you’ve got to see Jesus through your greatest fears. You’ve got to believe that Jesus is king and in the end he wins. And because I’m on team Jesus. I get to win. I get to share in Christ’s victory. There’s no place for fear. What does Jesus say? Jesus, if you’re going to fear somebody, here’s who you should fear. Not the person that can throw, you know, kill your body. You should fear the one who can throw your body and your soul into hell, which is Jesus. So friends, let’s not fear the wrong thing. Fear the wrong person. Let’s have courage to be Jesus’ people. Like you got to, I mean, you got to have courage to say, no, I think little boys are little boys.

I think little girls are little girls.

I think people should only have sex if they’re married.

I think that, I think that your feelings aren’t as important as truth.

There’s a lot of things that, that maybe once ago, long ago, not too long ago. Yeah, everybody believe that. But the privilege of living, living in Christendom, you know, it’s pretty well gone, friends. And you’ve got to put your feet down deep. Deep in the soil of God’s word or find yourself gone with the wind. Put on God’s armor. Trust in God’s promises. Fear God. And believe, believe in the end, we’re going to win. We’re going to win.

Here’s the second thing. When this inescapable Christ returns, there will be great deception. Second thing I want you to see. There’s going to be great destruction, great deception, great destruction. OK, verse three. When he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, come. And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth so that people should slay one another. And he was given a great sword. So this bright red color, the best guess is here or what we could connect it with. It’s blood because we know that we’re talking about mass slaughter, mass war. Why is this horse red? It comes to kind of, I think, embody war.

If you and I could, I think, more readily dwell on what’s called common grace. There’s been common grace and special grace. Common grace is the rain is going to fall on my lawn as much as it’s going to fall on my. Neighbor, my atheist neighbor’s lawn, right? Like I get to eat dinner tonight. So does someone who’s not a believer. Common grace is it’s just it’s the good things in this life. It’s what it is. Common grace is you and I probably take for granted that those are from the Lord to us. And even their bits of God’s benevolence, even to our non-believing neighbors, our non-believing friends, our non-believing countrymen. Um, obviously there’s always world war happening, but there’s largely peace still the same time for societies. Um, you can read about someone getting killed in the news, but that’s not like every day. And it’s happening over and over and it’s just overwhelming the news. I mean, you guys aren’t like walking out to your car, like looking if somebody’s like got a gun going to shoot. Like we know what it means at the same time, you know, to live in peace.

Um, but. But, but we, we get a picture here from John and that picture helps us remember that those common graces, um, they’re, they’re fleeting and they’re very much so superficial because they’re there only in so far as God lets them remain, lets them remain. Um, when, when the end times come, the spirit will pull back and let evil be as evil as it is. God will not restrain a non-believer’s and unregenerate person’s, uh, uh, heart. It will be as bad as it can be. I think you’re going to have the absence of God. We look in second Thessalonians two, it says, and you know, is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time for the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way. So Paul’s telling us that. Evil is being pushed back. It’s being held off by the Lord until the Lord kind of for the first time in human history, pulls back and lets evil really show its nasty, ugly face.

And what peace you and I have now will vanish. He describes, um, a very, uh, gloomy, but I think apocalyptic scene. You know. People surely join the army and they go off to war, but we get a picture here of probably our sons in mass being sent off. We’re getting the picture here, not of some hate crimes, but hate crimes all around you. You’re getting a picture of nations, um, on the inside and on the outside, absolutely ravaged by war and by hate and by murder. It’s, it’s, it’s becoming a darker and darker scene. These seals continue to break. Because we go into verse five and six. When he opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, come. And I looked and behold a black horse and its rider had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the four living creatures say, a quart of wheat for a denarius and three quarts of barley for denarius. And do not harm the oil and the wine.

So John describes that food, even the basic necessities, um, are scarce and prices are greatly inflated. So a denarius would have been in that time, like one day’s, uh, wages. So that’s one day’s wages. And a quart of, of, of wheat would have been enough to feed one man. Okay. So John is describing a time in which you’re working your fingers to the bone and all you’re going to get is just enough food for one person. In one day, or for, for that day’s wage, you can get barley, three quarts of barley, and that would have been really low nutrition for you and your family.

This doesn’t seem like a very pleasant place at all, does it? It’s, it’s people without work. It’s people living in the midst of war. It’s people in great poverty. It’s people who are paying what would have been, what will be 10 to 12 times, um, inflation. So we, you know, we know that. We know the price of eggs and all that’s going up and inflation is unfun. So, you know, miserable to your bank account. This is 10 to 12 times inflation for the basic necessities of life. And when you see, it says oil and cheap wine, where the Lord says, don’t touch those, or the creature says, don’t touch those. Oil and wine in Bible times were staples of poor people. So we think about wine as some luxury to drink. That would have been like maybe what someone would have drunk if they had no food. Is this a cheap wine for some kind of sustenance for their boss? So that’s what you’re seeing there. That’s not, leave the good stuff alone. That’s not what the creature is saying. That’s the basic staples, um, of a very poor person in biblical times.

And then we come to verse seven and verse eight. It says he opened the fourth seal. And it says, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, come and I looked and behold a pale horse. And its rider’s name was death. And Hades followed him. And they were given. They were given authority over a fourth of the earth to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth. So what, what is a pale horse? What is not an albino horse? Um, this, the Greek word rendering is actually like a yellowish green. What he’s describing is the color of like a dead body. He’s saying effectively the horses that is the color of a corpse, a rotting body.

So as these seals progress, things are getting worse to the point where a fourth of the population of earth is wiped out by increasing war. And then obviously famine and then pestilence become such a problem that I imagine eat food and terrorize people. And then even he says, um, wild beasts will start to kill people. So you, you imagine like the, the, the worst, I don’t know why we tend to, and there’s a lot of movies, whether it’s like aliens or the weather or war. Like we, we love like Hollywood apocalyptic movies, you know, and like the sidewalks are all cracked and there was weeds growing up and no one’s lawns kept. And all the buildings in town are dilapidated and everyone’s dressed in like, you know, burlap sacks. And they’re just trying to survive. This is very much so what John’s describing, but there’s no off button. This is not, this is not, this is not a movie you can turn off where neighborhoods in the wild are kind of one in the same. And apparently wild animals are so hungry. They’re trying to pick off people. This is in every way, a very real reality to come. It’s not a movie.

Hebrews chapter 13. The writer says, for here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come. Friends, if there’s any passage in all the scriptures that’s to make you go, man, this place is not my home. It’s this one. It’s this one. Jesus is telling us this so that we would not set our hopes, our dreams in this place that will surely dilapidate, that will surely be blown up, that will surely rot, that will surely be overrun. Jesus is calling us to be faithful to him, because in the end, in the end, he will bring to us a city everlasting. A city everlasting. What does a Hebrew writer say also about our father Abraham? He says, Abraham, his time in Canaan, he could have gone back to that land from which he had left. He could have gone back to Ur. But the writer says, Abraham, he sought after a land that wasn’t made by human hands. Whose building, whose foundation, was made by God.

Friends, can we set our eyes on the city that’s to come? Can we see this place as Bunyan would say is the great city of destruction? Can we do what Bunyan did and cry out to any and all? Flee the wrath to come. Can we awake from spiritual slumber that keeps us numb to eternal, realities of heaven and hell, of ultimate joy or misery or life or death? Friends, let war.

Let that war in Russia and Ukraine.

Let the inflation, that little inflation you and I are experiencing right now. Let the next cold you get, you’re sneezing. Let all these little negative things remind you. This is not how it’s going to be forever. I’ve got to take my heart, my mind off of this place and live for the kingdom. Live for the city that is to come. Isn’t that the gospel? Isn’t that the good news of Jesus? Isn’t it just he’s just saved my soul and I get to live in a miserable world with a saved soul? Like, no, the beauty of the gospel is Jesus said he went to prepare a place for me and he’s going to take me there. And he’s going to come back and he’s going to marry heaven with earth. And the dwelling place of God will be with his people. Are we wasting our days or are we leveraging our time and our opportunity to share with others? God wants you to be a part of his everlasting, joy filled kingdom. How will you spend your days until these days come? And I think you have to ask, you don’t really believe this stuff. Don’t really believe this stuff. It’s like if you saw a man drowning in a lake. You’re like, that man’s drowning. And you turn around and walk away like you didn’t really care. You didn’t believe that. If you cared, you would have jumped in and saved that man. As the same way, I can’t go around saying I’m a Christian and I’m a sinner and I was saved by God’s grace. And I believe that a new heaven and a new earth are coming. And God deeply desires for the lost to receive Christ. And I say nothing ever. Like, you can’t tell me you believe that. Why? Because, hear me say this to you, obedience reveals faith. Obedience reveals faith or the lack of obedience reveals the absence of faith. And I think there’s a certain cruelty to it when we don’t have love for sinners the way that Christ had love for us sinners. There’s a certain selflessness that comes when I’m actually gripped by the gospel and I’m gripped by the fleetingness of time. And the certainty of that fixed day on which Christ will return. So, friends, don’t let the enemy have a foothold in your life. And that foothold is called complacency. Complacency. We all deal with that, don’t we? I don’t want to be complacent for Christ. I’m a conqueror in Christ. I want to live for Christ. I want to preach the anthem of Christ crucified for sinners. Christ returning. Christ victorious. Christ victorious. Christ the true rider on the true white horse. And his crown has many diadems. I want that for you and your life. I want that for us as a church.

So Jesus’ return, friends, it’s inescapable. It’s inescapable. Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? And are you readying yourself?

Because if I’m ready, I’m readying. I can’t just say, oh, I’m ready. I got my fire insurance. I’m good. I’ve placed faith in Jesus. Okay, if that’s true, you’re going to be readying yourself. You’re going to be preaching the gospel to any and all. You’re going to be keeping yourself from sin. You’re going to be keeping your eyes on the truth of God’s word. You’re going to be careful not to be deceived. You’re going to be careful not to be led away by every interest. You’re going to be careful not to be led away by every interesting teaching and the moves and the fads of society. Are you ready? Have you surrendered to Christ? And are you readying yourself? Are you living for Christ?

And you say, that’s a lot to do. Well, friends, Jesus said he’s with us. Jesus said he’s with us. Jesus supplies our every need to live for him. Jesus in his spirit, he gives us all wisdom to be kept from deception. And Jesus gives us all strength and perseverance so that we’re kept from destruction. So, friends, if God is for us, who can be against us? Jesus gives us a peace. Jesus gives us his truth. Jesus is with us until the end. Are you ready? And are you readying yourself? Let’s pray.

Father, the weight of your word can only, when read truly and honestly, it can only rest heavy on us. Because, Lord, we see our shortcomings. We see our inabilities. We see our frailty. We see our sin. We see, in your word, our unwillingness to obey.

But, God, thank you that you’ve given us your spirit. Amen. Amen. Amen. So that we can obey.

So that we can believe. So that we can act. So that we can hope. So that we can believe.

So, Jesus, every corner of our heart, every place of our mind where our allegiance is split,

where we’re careless, where we’re complacent,

Lord, let us thank you that you’ve readied us. By your grace. By your grace. Jesus, help us to live in the power of that cross. That we would be living for, working towards that day. And we would be helping others to do the same. Lord, help us just to realize the shortness of time. Let us live for the day in which Jesus, you return. That it would be a day of great joy and celebration. As we see our Lord who saved us and called us to a higher calling.

I pray that, Father, in Your Son’s name.

Amen.