Well, good morning, saints. With all these new children’s classes, there’s hardly anyone left to speak to. But the Lord knows. Praise the Lord.
Let’s just begin with a word of prayer.
Lord, as we come to You this morning and look into this Word, we have one passion in our hearts, and that is to see Jesus. Lord, that You might reveal Yourself more and more, that You might reveal Your purposes and Your ways to our hearts; that we not be tossed about on the waves with every wind and every push of the enemy, but that we might be those who are able to stand fast in Christ Jesus because we have seen Him.
Oh, Lord Jesus, we come. Open our hearts and ears to Thee this morning, and to Thee alone. Lord Jesus, we ask that You eliminate all the other stray thoughts, and that we might truly have our ears and eyes opened this morning.
Lord, we ask that You might bless Your Word and anoint both speaking and hearing. Lord, may man not be the initiator of this time, but indeed the Lord through the Holy Spirit. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Okay, guess what? We’re going to be sharing out of the book of Revelation. Turn to Revelation 1, King James Version.
Revelation 1, beginning with verse 1; then we will go to verses 8, 12, 13, 18, and 19.
The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave.
I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.
And I turned to see the voice that spake with me.
And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks;
And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle.
Now, Revelation 3:21:
To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with Me in My throne,
Even as I also overcame, and am set down with My Father in His throne.
Now, Hebrews 1:1-2:
God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets,
Hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son,
Whom He hath appointed heir of all things,
By whom also He made the worlds.
In these last days, He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things.
As we have been sharing out of the book of Revelation, we need to understand that this book, though it has many events—and many of them are still in the future, but in the near future, I have to add—that is not what the book is about.
The book is very clear on its purpose. It is the apocalypse; it is the unveiling of Jesus Christ. That is the purpose of the book. It is declared right from the beginning: the apocalypse, the unveiling of Jesus Christ.
As we have already shared, we have seen the King of glory. Our Lord Jesus Christ came as a Lamb and died at Calvary’s cross for your sake and mine, but He has risen and returned to the throne.
John, who before had beheld the Lamb, had leaned on the Lamb’s breast, and had seen the Lamb arise from the Mount of Olives, was given a vision. What he saw was the Lord Jesus Christ, King of glory. He had risen, He had been rewarded, and He is now King of glory.
We looked at this King of glory, this risen Lord—the One who is victor over both hell and death, the One who triumphed over all the works of evil. He is both Son of God and Son of man, reigning on the throne of God. He reigns over heaven and earth and all of creation.
This is the One John tries to show us a picture of in the book of Revelation.
This One, as we have already seen, is full of love, with a golden girdle about His chest. He is full of righteousness. In fact, we have come into His righteousness, as He has put that golden robe of righteousness upon us, so that when we appear before the Father, all He can see is Christ, because that is what the golden robe is.
But we also know that there are the righteousnesses of the saints: that woven needlework of linen. It is the outworking of the righteousness of Christ in your life, the practical reality of righteousness. At the wedding feast, both will be required.
We saw Him as the Head of the body. He is in the midst of the churches. He is the inspector. He has the measuring line. He is checking everything: Is it adding up? Is it adding up to what He expected? Has the church come to the place that He has desired her to be, that she might be a true helpmate to Him?
We know He found flaws, but we also know He did not give up. He stood in their midst. He was not outside their midst; He was in their midst. He was with them to bring them as a spotless bride before Him, to wash her of every spot or wrinkle. That is His work as the Head of His body, the church.
Brothers and sisters, this is the One whom God has made responsible to carry out His purpose on this earth. In the book of Revelation, we see the fulfilment of God’s purpose.
It says, “Blessed is he who reads this book.” The time is at hand. Oh, the consummation of the ages is at hand. The kingdom age is just around the corner, brothers and sisters, and we need to be ready. To be ready, we need to see this King of glory. We need this revelation of who He is to be a part of our everyday life.
He has been called to carry out God’s eternal purpose. Many of you know that we went through the book of Genesis. In Genesis is the beginning of everything; Revelation is the end.
In Genesis, we see the beginning of God’s purpose being initiated, and in the book of Revelation, we see the final fulfilment of His purpose: His purpose for His creation in the first place, and His purpose for creating man.
What was His purpose? He said that He created all things for His pleasure. It was a joy for Him to bring this universe into being, and He did it with the breath of His mouth. Praise the Lord.
But there was something in His purpose that was most precious: His Son. His whole heart is toward His Son. He created it all for His Son—all of His creation—and He was to give all things that He created to His Son. That is why Hebrews says that He is the heir of all things.
Man was something special in His creation, brothers and sisters. For the rest of creation, He simply spoke a word and it came into being. But when He considered man, He said, “Now, with man, I want to make him in My image and after My likeness.”
There is a certain uniqueness to man that the rest of creation does not have. As a matter of fact, if you look into Scripture, you begin to realize that man has something none of the other animals have, and that is spirit.
Man consists of spirit, soul, and body. Animals have soul and body, but we also have a spirit designed to communicate with God, to receive the life of God, and to have the life of God resident within us.
So man was special. How special was he? God did not merely speak a word, brothers and sisters. He took the dust of the earth and formed it into the shape He desired. What does it say? He breathed His own breath of life into man.
Man is a unique and special part of God’s creation, created after His image and His likeness. Christ is going to be heir of all mankind and all of God’s creation—something special for His Son.
We know that something special is a helpmate for His Son. We do not know what eternity carries, but we know His helpmate will be with Him in eternity, doing all of God’s will and God’s purpose for eternity.
But we also remember that, even before He created man, something happened in the heavens that changed and altered everything. That was Lucifer.
As far as we know, he was the number-one angel in the order of angels. He had the top position, apparently the one closest to the throne.
Something happened to Lucifer, and he began to become conscious of himself instead of God. Self-consciousness—beware of it. Instead of being conscious of God and the Son, he became self-conscious.
Brothers and sisters, he became jealous—jealous of Christ, jealous of His position, jealous of His place before God, jealous of His inheritance. Oh, how evil jealousy can be. Now, God is jealous too, so it depends on what you are jealous about.
Lucifer became so jealous that he rebelled against God. He said, “I’m going to take the throne. I’m going to take Christ’s place.” He had a third of the angels committed to him to do this, and God, with just the sweep of His hand, I am sure, swept him out of heaven.
Apparently, he has taken up residence in the air around this earth and has affected this universe in which we live, because there is evidence of chaos and violence before man came.
So he rebelled. He took his residence here. There was a great disturbance in God’s creation, and this was the creation God wanted to give to His Son. It was greatly marred because there was rebellion.
The Scripture is very clear: the earth became chaotic, void, and in darkness. Brothers and sisters, we cannot see that as being the handiwork of God, because God is light. He creates things for beauty and harmony, but here there was chaos and destruction. It was the work of our adversary.
God began to move in a very strange way: to recover what the enemy had tried to take and to restore the inheritance He had for His Son. He moved on this earth and began to restore it, making it habitable for the man whom He had in His heart to bring into being.
He created Adam in His image and after His likeness, but He had a purpose for man.
It is interesting, the charge that He gave to Adam. I will not read it all, but in Genesis 1:28 He charged Adam: “I want you to multiply and fill the earth, and subdue it.”
Why was there a need to subdue it? Because there was an enemy here, brothers and sisters. He said, “Subdue it and have dominion over everything. Take back the earth for God. Take it from the dominion of Satan and return it to God’s direct dominion.”
Now, I use the phrase direct dominion because God has never lost control. Satan is more like a squatter. He just moved in because it was a convenient place for him, but it is not his. It is still God’s.
But we see that there is this squatter here. He has moved in.
The Lord creates man and gives him this charge. What is He doing? He is securing the inheritance for His Son, and He intends to use man to do it. Amazing. He could have just swept Satan away, but He did not do that. He had this marvellous plan that includes us.
Psalm 8:2 sheds, I think, some light on man’s purpose:
Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast Thou established strength,
Because of Thine enemies,
That Thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.
Brothers and sisters, as far as the universe is concerned, as far as God’s creation is concerned, we are the babes and suckling children.
The angels were created far, far long ago. We do not know how long ago, because that was in eternity past. So, in God’s economy of time, when man came into being and time came into being, this period between the eternities contains man.
It says that He is bringing forth praise because of His adversaries, to still the enemy. In other words, He is using the babes and sucklings to take down the enemy, to recover the inheritance for His Son. This is a tremendous responsibility: to bring all things into subjection. This is the work that God called Adam to do.
But God also did something else very unique. He took something from the side of Adam and built the woman—his helpmate.
God, in His eternal purpose, decided that Adam needed a helpmate, not only to help multiply the earth, but to assist in bringing the enemy to the feet of Christ. What a purpose. What a high calling.
But we know that Adam did not do too good a job. He did not guard the garden too well, because the serpent came into the garden.
When God created Adam and then built Eve, He gave them the tree of life. They would not be able to overcome the enemy unless they were spiritually strong, and that required eating of the tree of life.
Lucifer, who had become Satan, was aware of this. He was aware of the two trees: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the tree in the middle, the tree of life, which God had told them to eat of.
The tree of life is the life of Christ. You now have the life of Christ in you because you ate of the tree of life, which is Christ. You took Him as your Lord and Saviour, and in so doing, you ate of the tree of life. You have that life dwelling in your spirit.
That was the picture of what God wanted for Adam and Eve. He said, “You need to eat of the tree of life.” Now, the enemy knew this, apparently better than Adam and Eve. He knew that if they ate of the tree of life, his end was near.
So the first thing he did was deal with the tree. He went to Eve to reverse the governmental order in the kingdom that was there at the time.
We know his temptation. He said, “If you will eat of this tree, of the knowledge of good and evil, then you will be like God.” He said that it was good to look at, that tree.
We call it an apple tree, but we do not know what it really was. It does not say. But apples really do look good, do they not? Actually, they look more attractive than oranges. I love oranges, but anyway, it was attractive.
This thought of being like God: “If I am like God, then I can make my own decisions.” Now, brothers and sisters, I do not want to get sidetracked this morning, but that is humanism.
When we pray on Wednesday night about standing against the spirit of humanism that has invaded the United States and already taken over Europe, there is a spirit behind it. It is that spirit saying, “You do not need God. You are god yourself. You can control your own destiny. You can figure it out. Man is the highest order of things.”
That is humanism. Of course, humanism carries a lot of other sinful and evil things with it, but on the surface it appears very good, as it did to Eve.
They fell. Satan got them to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They were on their own, so to speak. But God did not give up. He met them in the garden and provided skins to cover their nakedness.
Their nakedness was not merely the physical nakedness that we know today. It may have been physical, but the issue was this: they were exposed. The enemy had brought them into a new order of things. They were different, and they needed to be covered.
The Lord provided a sacrifice, most likely a lamb, and gave them those skins to wear. It looked forward to the future, when Christ would die as the Lamb of God and, through the provision of Christ, sinful man could be dealt with and restored to God.
A lot happened in that Garden of Eden. But God’s plan was being sidetracked by Satan. What a tragedy.
I think most of us would probably have given up at that point and said, “Look, I am doing away with everything—the creation, Satan, man—it is all over.” But He did not do that.
God sent the second Man. Now, the Bible refers to Christ as the last Adam, but He is God’s second Man.
He is the last Adam because, in God’s eyes, the Adamic race—all the descendants of Adam—were done away with at the cross of Calvary. But He has raised us up in a new creation, and that is the second Man, Jesus Christ.
If you know the Lord and Saviour, you are truly of a new creation, because you are of the second Man whom God sent. God did not give up on man. He sent His Son, and the Son of God became the Son of man.
Brothers and sisters, at Calvary’s cross, He defeated the adversary. He went into hell and took the keys of hell and death. He robbed the enemy of his final and ultimate weapon: death.
This victory was the ground on which man could be recovered and could overthrow the enemy. Be very clear: Christ has won the victory.
Christians do not fight to win the victory. Christians fight to stand in the victory that has already been won, that it might be applied to the particular situation at hand.
But now we see not yet all things put under him.
But we see Jesus.
He is the victor. Because He is victor, we can bring His victory in to deal with the adversary. He is a defeated enemy.
I tried to think of something that would help us understand where we are today as Christians in dealing with our adversary, and I could not help but think of World War II.
The Japanese had taken over most of the islands in the Pacific, and they had troops on all those islands. I remember my uncle had fought over there. As a little boy, he would not tell me anything. He said it was too awful even to describe what happened on those islands, particularly to the American soldiers who were captured.
It was a horrific thing. But, interestingly enough, when the bombs were dropped and Japan surrendered, there was victory. We celebrated that victory all over the United States.
But there were thousands of Japanese soldiers still on those islands who refused to surrender, even though the victory had been won. They were occupying, even though the victory had been won. So the soldiers had to go back in and clean it all up.
It took them almost three years to do it. Interestingly enough, there was a Japanese man called Hiroo Onoda. They were not able to capture him for twenty-nine years. The victory had been won twenty-nine years before, but soldiers had to come in and say, “We have won the victory, and in view of that, you are now a captured soldier.”
That is basically what Stephen Kaung refers to as the mopping-up work that we have been called to on this earth. In order to bring all those islands back into the realm of freedom, it required that mopping-up work.
Now, in order for Christ to have His inheritance unmarred, the church is involved in this work. Our Head is in heaven. He has won the victory, but there is a work to do on earth, and that is where His helpmate comes in.
His helpmate is still on earth, and she is to enforce the victory that the Lord has already won. Do you see? We have to enforce the victory that Christ has won at Calvary.
Brothers and sisters, the Head made preparation for His helpmate. John was very clear: blood and water flowed out of the side of Christ when He was pierced with the spear.
Christ was already dead. He had already uttered those words, “It is finished.” But John makes a point of bringing to our attention that, after He died, a soldier thrust a spear into His side. He did not just leave it there; he said, “No, blood and water came.”
Brothers and sisters, the church is built on the blood of Christ. Without the blood, there is no remission of sin. Water is for the life of Christ that flowed out, that we might have life. They were the seed elements, if you want to say, of the church.
Then, interestingly enough, on the day of Pentecost, the church—or the one hundred and twenty believers—were praying as the Lord had asked them to. They were praying, and what happened?
From Acts 2, we know they were anointed. Tongues of fire came down, and there was a great mighty rushing wind.
Two things: tongues of fire and a rushing mighty wind. These tongues of fire were tongues of testimony. They were given the ability to speak in all manner of languages. What were they speaking? They were speaking about this risen Christ. It was a testimony.
Brothers and sisters, you have the tongue of fire in your life. You have Christ, and He has anointed you. You have a testimony to share.
But not only that: it said a rushing mighty wind. I looked all three of those words up in Greek, and the sense you get is that it was like heavy breathing. The sound of this rushing wind came like heavy breathing, like a woman in travail.
What was going on? The church was being birthed through travail, through travailing prayer. The church came into being.
In other words, the church, brothers and sisters, was not organized by these one hundred and twenty. It was born—born on the day of Pentecost. It is a living, breathing organism: the body of Jesus Christ.
The Head is in heaven and the body is on earth, but it is Christ.
In Ephesians, it says that in the fullness of times, He is going to sum up all things in Christ. We are in this summing-up work today, brothers and sisters. All mankind is to be brought into subjection to Jesus Christ. It is to be His inheritance.
As you look at the book of Revelation, mankind is divided into three parts:
These are the three parts of Christ’s inheritance: the church, the Jews, and the nations.
Christ will inherit the church as His bride. Christ, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, will inherit the Jews and Israel. Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords, will inherit the nations.
We know that the bride is the New Jerusalem, which will come down out of heaven. We know that when the Lion of the tribe of Judah puts His feet on the Mount of Olives, and the Jews see the Christ, they will weep. Then they will believe that Jesus indeed is the Messiah.
We were sharing on this Friday night in our study. They are like Thomas—doubting Thomas. That poor fellow always has the name “doubting Thomas.” But Thomas, in order to believe, had to actually see.
That is what is going to happen when the Lord Jesus comes down on the Mount of Olives. The Jews will turn to Christ, and they will believe who He is. They will be the leading nation on earth, carrying the gospel of Christ throughout all the nations.
Then we have the nations. If you read Matthew 25, He speaks about the end, after everything is completed. He is going to judge the nations. He speaks about the sheep and the goats.
The sheep nations are those that were friendly and helpful to Christians and to Israel, to the Jews. Some say it is only meant for the Jews, and some say it is only meant for Christians in the church. I happen to be one who believes it is really both.
The Lord says to those who gave Him a drink of water and bound up His wounds that they will be rewarded. These ones are unbelievers, but they will say, “When did all of this happen?”
He says:
Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren,
Ye have done it unto Me.
These were the ones who were friendly and helpful to Christians and Jews, even though they were not believers. They will go into the millennial kingdom as a nation of people, and many, of course, will come to the Lord Jesus Christ. We know that at the end of that millennium there is a great rebellion, so not all will.
I say that because Christ is in this summing-up work right now, today. We see everything going on in the Middle East, and in our nation as well, working toward this summing up that Christ is doing: getting ready to inherit His church, getting ready to inherit the Jews, getting ready to inherit the nations.
Brothers and sisters, we live in a tremendously vibrant time, but it is also a tremendous time of upheaval and disturbance because the enemy knows what is happening, and he is resisting at every point.
That is why you see the Arab Spring and all the turmoil that is going on. The enemy is behind all this resistance.
Finally, praise the Lord, the man of sin will be dealt with and thrown into the lake of fire. There will be a New Jerusalem. Christ will reign and rule over everything, and eventually there will be a new heaven and a new earth. All will come under Christ’s rule, and He will have inherited all things.
Quite a bit to go on, is it not?
Now, recently we shared on this Christ in glory from Revelation 1, this vision of Christ. Kenny followed that up with the need to overcome, because of the great concern Christ has for His church. He calls for overcomers because the church is not what she ought to be.
She is not healthy and strong. She is not the helpmate that He needs. The Lord calls for those within the church to overcome—not to leave it, but to stay in it and overcome.
It is a passion that we see the Lord has for this future bride of His. When John shared this revelation, I got to thinking about it.
We see that revelation of Christ: He is standing there in glory, with the breastplate on, the robes of righteousness, the two-edged sword coming out of His mouth, the fiery eyes, and the brass feet. We shared on all that, and we see the glory of Christ.
I began wondering, “Lord, why did we not see You on the throne instead of in the midst of the seven churches in the beginning? Why did You reveal it this way? There must be a reason.”
Surely the first revelation we would see would be the King of glory sitting on the throne, reigning and ruling over everything. That would seem to be the correct way to do it. But that is not the way it is.
I think, brothers and sisters, what we see in that opening scene is Christ in glory in the midst of the seven churches, not on the throne. We do not actually see the throne until Revelation 4, after He deals with His churches.
This is amazing. It shows Christ’s concern for His church and how much He loves her. It says in Ephesians that He gave Himself and died for the church, and gave His blood for the church—not only for you as an individual, but for the church.
I think there are two reasons that the Lord has us see Him in the midst of the churches first, before we see Him on the throne.
First, if Christ is going to inherit all things, and He is using the church to do it, then we need to have a full revelation of Christ in glory, of this glorious One.
When we look at Christ, as we already have, we see the glorious Christ. But there He is, Head of the church. If you want to see a full revelation of Christ, you have to see both the Head and the body.
Just like if you were looking at me, and all you saw up here was the head, you would feel a little awkward, I think, because that is not all of me.
We know that all the fullness of the Godhead is in Christ. He is in the Head, but He expresses Himself through the body. So, in order to see the fullness of Christ, you would have to see Christ the Head and Christ the body—both.
First Corinthians 12:12 clarifies this:
For as the body is one, and hath many members,
And all the members of that one body, being many, are one body:
So also is Christ.
That is not the way we tend to think it reads. We would expect it to say, “So also is the church,” because it is talking about the church. But the Holy Spirit did not say it that way.
He says there are many members, and all the members of the one body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ. What a difference. He is saying the church and Christ are one. They are not two separate beings; they are one. The Head and the body are joined as one.
So, first of all, I think one reason we see Christ in the midst of the churches is that, in order to have a full revelation of Jesus Christ, you need to see both the Head and the body. You need to see the full Christ.
I am not off on a strange path here, because the Word of God is very clear. It says all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ bodily, and then it goes on to say that He is Head of the church, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. That is how connected they are.
I think there is a second reason that we see the King of glory in the midst of the churches first. This book is a summing up. It is bringing all things into subjection to Christ. Christ receiving His inheritance is in view.
Just as we saw God’s purpose in the beginning with Adam and Eve in Genesis, where He wanted man to have dominion, the vessel He chose to use was not just Adam, but Adam and Eve. The helpmate was essential in dealing with the enemy on this earth.
They were to be the instrument God would use. The picture we have is Christ and His church. Christ the Head has won the victory, but it is the church’s place on earth to respond to the Head and enforce His victory upon the earth.
She is to be actively involved in summing up all things in this age. She is to obey the Head. She has to be watching and praying, cooperating with the Head, taking the victory of the Head and applying it on the earth.
The church is not yet what she needs to be. But Christ said He was going to wash her and clean her of her spots and take away the wrinkles. Everything would be pure. We need to stand for that.
That is our place. We are to overcome even within the church and say, “Lord, we are not what we need to be, but Lord, have Your way among us. Bring us to that place without spot or wrinkle.”
We need to be taking that victory of the Head and applying it to the Jews and the Jewish nation, standing and saying, “Lord, Your will be done concerning this nation.”
If there has ever been a sign to the nations, it is the nation of Israel. I do not have time to go into all the history, but basically, after Nebuchadnezzar took over Jerusalem and Israel, it was never a nation again until 1948—thousands of years later.
It was God’s miracle, God’s doing. Brothers and sisters, He used that awful tragedy—the enemy’s work through Hitler. It was obvious he had the spirit of Satan. He tried to destroy the Jews, God’s chosen people. He tried to obliterate them. He tried to kill everyone he could find, and he succeeded in killing over six million.
But in 1948, out of the tragedy of World War II, the nations—particularly the United States—were friendly toward Israel and said, “Yes, this ought to be a nation. They ought to have their homeland.” That is what happened in 1948.
So, brothers and sisters, this nation of Israel is a sign. I remember telling my children ten years ago, “If you want to know what is going on, keep your eyes on that nation.”
Now, for us as Christians, we need to keep our eyes on the Lord. Do not get me wrong. But Israel is a sign to the nations. That is why there is such upheaval.
This matter of applying the victory also extends to the nations. The nations are in upheaval. I mentioned the Arab Spring. It is Islam and the spirit behind Islam. We are to be dealing with that spirit.
The victory has been won. The Head has won the victory, but the enemy refuses. He is hiding. He is holding out. We have been called to apply the Lord’s victory to these nations, that they might come under the control and headship of Christ totally and serve God’s purpose rather than their own.
The nations are casting off restraint. They do not want to acknowledge God. Even in our own nation, there are many who do not want to acknowledge God.
I think this is why, when Peter was given that revelation of Christ, Christ asked him, “Who am I, Peter?” He said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
The Lord said, “Peter, the Father has revealed this to you, not man. You did not read it in a book. You did not get it out of the Old Testament. You got it from the Father. He revealed it to you in your heart and spirit.”
Then He said, “Peter, I am going to give you a further revelation. I am going to have a church. I am going to have a helpmate. The gates of Hades will not prevail against her.”
It does not mean that Hades will not try, but Hades will not prevail. That means she is in a battle. She is in war. But the victory has been secured in Christ.
The Lord goes on to say, not merely to Peter but to the church:
Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven:
And whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
There is this responsibility of binding and loosing. Does that not sound very much like taking dominion—the dominion Adam was charged with in the beginning? It is the charge to the church.
So how is this done? Let’s look at Revelation 5:1.
And I saw in the right hand of Him that sat on the throne a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals.
Then let’s go to verse 8. Christ has come forward as the worthy One to take the book:
And when He had taken the book, the four beasts and four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb,
Having every one of them harps, and golden vials full of odours,
Which are the prayers of saints.
Now, Revelation 6:1:
And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals,
And I heard, as it were the noise of thunder,
One of the four beasts saying, Come and see.
Behold, we see the white horse and the red horse, the four horsemen of the apocalypse—death, destruction, and pestilence.
Brothers and sisters, the seal was opened and the enemy responded. You see, Christ is bringing the enemy under His feet.
But before He opens that seal, what is so very important that we take note of is that, first of all, the prayers of the saints are poured out. Then the seals are opened. Then there is this tremendous upheaval. It is the work of the enemy resisting the opening of the seal. He knows his end is near.
I share this that we might see how important the prayer of the church is in this age in which we are involved and living.
With each seal, the age comes a little closer to being consummated, a little closer to the full inheritance coming back to Christ. With every seal, there is great turmoil and resistance, and the church is in the middle of it.
She is to be the one to stand for God’s will in the midst of all the turmoil. She is to be praying, “Lord, is it time to open this next seal? Thy will be done, Lord, on earth as it is in heaven.”
Do you see what God is doing? Do you see how He is doing it?
Before Christ opens the seal, He waits for His helpmate. He waits for the prayer of His helpmate. That is God’s way. It did not have to be that way. He did not have to have a helpmate. Brothers and sisters, if He had chosen not to have a helpmate, we would not be here.
But that is what His sovereign will is. We are in His sovereign will and a part of His sovereign government. We should be taking up this responsibility of standing in prayer, that the seals might be opened and the resistance of the enemy held in check, that the Lord’s will might be fully done.
This is why, I think, brothers and sisters, when we see this opening vision of the Lord in glory, we see Him in the midst of the churches. He is in the midst of His helpmate. He needs His helpmate to finish the book, to be a part of opening these seals.
Now, we do see the throne. The throne is in control. We will see that next. But I think He is trying to share with John and with us the absolute importance of the church in this age in which we live: to be the helpmate He has called us to be.
Though in general the church has failed, He calls us to overcome in the midst of that failure and stand for the Lord’s will in His church, to stand for the Lord’s will among the Jews and the Jewish nation, and to stand for the Lord’s will among the nations.
We may say, “God is God, and He really does not need me. He does not need me to pray.” Well, there is a sense in which I think that is true, but that is not the way He has chosen to operate. It is not His way. That is what He has called us to.
Brothers and sisters, this is why we come together on Wednesday nights. This is the importance of Wednesday night. We come together to execute God’s will on this earth through prayer.
The victory is His, and the ultimate action is His, but in between are our prayers. And He waits for prayer.
I remember that verse in the Old Testament: God looked for an intercessor, and He could not find one. That is what the church is supposed to be: an intercessor.
Brothers and sisters, I want you to realize this: Wednesday night prayer is not a meeting. It is our ministry. It is not a duty that we carry out because we feel that we owe it to the Lord. It is a privilege to serve as a soldier in the Lord’s army.
It is not optional. It is essential.
May the Lord open our eyes, not only to see the King of glory and to see His church, but to open our eyes to His great purpose: that His Son might inherit all things, and that we have a great part in all of that.
It is not a light thing. May the Lord give us grace, brothers and sisters. We are not even up to just praying, are we? It takes God’s grace, God’s mercy, to move on us; God’s mercy to get us here; God’s mercy to open our mouths; God’s mercy to stand in His faithfulness and pray. It is really all His work still.
Lord, we come to this day in history. Lord, when I look at this book of Revelation, I see so much that lies ahead, but obviously it all occurs in, frankly, a very short period of time. We are in the beginning of the throes of this thing, Lord, and we do not want to be found asleep.
We need to be awakened to the hour in which we live.
Lord, we want to be the intercessor that You need for this hour. Lord, we confess our weakness. We really do, Lord. We have been snared just like the enemy snared Eve. But Lord, be merciful.
You provided a way for Adam and Eve. Provide a way for Your people. Provide a way that You might have those who can overcome in this hour and stand fast for You, Lord.
We cannot overcome; only You can overcome in us. Lord, we stand with You today. Open our hearts and open our eyes, Lord. This is not a fairy tale. This is reality that we are dealing with.
In Jesus’ name. Amen.