https://c.streamhoster.com/embed/media/WIsdXt/qOJrSOosOcc/mSpb18sZKUu_1
Imagine Pure Religion – Justin Evergarden – July 05, 2026
If you would please turn your Bibles over to James 1 and verse 27.
James 1 and verse 27.
Romeo Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?
These are words from the uh very well known poet Shakespeare.
It was during the balcony scene of Romeo and Juliet.
The same balcony scene where Shakespeare’s immortal words are engrafted on the minds of so
many people, where they say, Ah, a rose called by any other name would smell just as
sweet.
However, I disagree with Shakespeare.
If any of you have ever taken classes on argument, or even basic English classes, as many
of you probably have, we know that words have definitions, and those definitions must be
exact.
In the subject of argument in and of itself, the very first thing you have to do with any
argument that’s going to have any form of foundation is to define your terms.
So every word has a direct meaning.
And the meaning must be very specific.
Few words in modern culture produce as many different reactions as the word religion.
For some, religion may bring to mind faith, hope, and even the meaning of life.
For others, unfortunately, it brings to mind division, hypocrisy, conflict,
disappointment.
And even violence.
These reactions often come from personal experience rather than history or scripture.
And to be fair, not all of those negative reactions are without cause.
Throughout human history, terrible things have been done in the name of religion.
Specifically, false religions have done everything from human sacrifice to oppression to
exploitation.
In our history books, one such example we can see is the Catholic Crusades.
How many millions of people died during the Crusades?
If we look to Scripture, we can see the prophet Jeremiah condemning the worship of Molech,
where children were literally offered as sacrifices.
Back then, the image of Molech was a statue with his hands held out, a fire placed
underneath, and they would take the children and set them on top as sacrifices.
Jeremiah said that never never have such things ever been commanded by God.
Jeremiah in thirty-two, verse thirty-five says, And they built high places unto the places
of Baal, which are in the valley of Hinnum, to cause their sons and daughters to pass
through the fire unto Molech, which I commanded them not, neither it came into my mind
that they should do this abomination.
Because of such horrible things in history, many have concluded wrongly that religion is
the problem.
The idea was probably most famously expressed by one of our musicians, John Lennon.
He wrote a song named Imagine, granted, with a very catchy tune, beautiful melody to it.
But the wording, he imagined a world without heaven.
A world without hell, a world without nations, possessions, and specifically in his song
he says without religion.
His thought was that mankind might finally have peace if these things were removed
entirely from mankind.
Truthfully, I think these are some of the worst song lyrics to have ever been written,
because they are simply not true.
The song may be catchy, but the message is not.
Because his conclusion misses something very, very important.
The problem is not religion itself, the problem stems from man’s corruption of it.
Turn in your Bibles over to Ecclesiastes 7 and verse 29.
To save time tonight, I’ve put all the verses up on a PowerPoint because I’ve got a lot to
go through.
In writing to the Ecclesiastes, he says, Lo, this only have I found that God hath made man
upright, but they have sought out many inventions.
This is exactly what mankind has done with the word religion.
Men have altered it, they have abused it, they have politicized it, they have even in some
cases commercialized it.
But that’s not what it’s about.
They want to reshape it according to human desire.
But the abuse of something good does not prove that the thing itself is evil.
To condemn religion because some have abused it would be like condemning medicine because
some have misused it.
There’s a large difference between taking cough medicine to cure your cough and taking
cough medicine to overdose on it.
It does not make the medicine itself the problem.
And the same is true with religion.
The New Testament does not define true religion by worldly terms like pride or violence or
hypocrisy and specifically not man-made tradition.
God defines true religion by purity, by compassion, by holiness, by definition obedience.
So let’s look at what James says in James 1 and verse 27.
He says, and I quote: Pure religion, and undefiled before God, and the Father is this.
To visit the fatherless and the widows and their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted
from the world.
This one verse brings us back to God’s standard and the correct definition of what
religion is.
So imagine so instead of imagining a world with no religion this evening, we need to ask
ourselves a better question: What would the world look like if people actually practiced
the religion that God approves?
There’s a major shift there.
So we’re going to break down James 129 and we’re going to look at the characteristics of
pure religion.
He uses first off two words, pure and undefiled.
Pure religion, meaning religion that’s free from contamination.
It hasn’t been mixed with human tradition or philosophy or invention or human preference.
It remains what God intended it to be.
And that matters because God has because mankind has always been tempted to improve on
God’s design.
We’ve never been able to do it, but mankind is always tempted to try.
Men often assume human wisdom can make God’s way more appealing, more digestible, more
acceptable.
But Scripture warns us about trusting our own way above God’s way.
Proverbs 14 and verse 12 says, There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end
thereof are the ways of death.
Something may seem right and still be wrong.
It may feel sincere and still be unauthorized.
It can be popular and still be false.
Pure religion asks, what has God said about it?
In Colossians 3:17, we read, And whatsoever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of
the Lord Jesus.
Now in the name of the Lord Jesus means by his authority.
When the police come and knock on your door, they say, Open up in the name of the law.
It’s not just the law named, it’s by the authority that’s given to us by the law of the
land.
This is what this verse means.
So pure religion does not begin with, do I like this?
Do I like this congregation that I’m going to?
It asks and begins with, has Christ authorized this?
This is why purity matters.
If a glass of water had a few drops of motor oil in it, no reasonable person on this
planet would say, well, it’s mostly water, I’ll drink it anyway.
The issue is not the amount of water.
The issue is the contamination of the water.
In the same way, a religious system may contain many elements of truth and yet still be
corrupted by doctrines and practices that God never authorized.
James also says that true religion is undefiled before God.
This is the second one.
This phrase reminds us that God is the judge of religion in and of itself, not culture,
not tradition.
In Japan, they have a problem of family history that defines their religion.
What defines it is God.
A practice may be ancient and may be still unauthorized.
A congregation may be large, but it’s still wrong.
How many times do we read in the Bible, and few there be that find it?
It’s not saying the larger the congregation, the safer you are.
There’s not safety in numbers here.
The standard is not what man accepts, it’s the standard which God approves of.
So Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 1 and verse 10.
Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Again, remember that’s by the authority of that ye all speak different things.
I’m sorry, I read that wrong, didn’t I?
He said, Speak the same thing.
That there be no divisions among you, but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same
mind and in the same judgment.
We can reference this with Ephesians 4, verses 4 through 5, where he says, There’s one
body, one spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith,
one baptism.
That’s not six different things.
I know I’m holding up all the fingers.
It’s just one.
One, one, one.
Six different times.
These verses do not describe religious confusion, they describe unity in truth.
Pure religion requires us to have much more than simply good intentions.
Some of the worst things that have ever happened on this planet have become because of
good intentions, gone about the wrong way.
But James does not stop with doctrine.
Pure religion is not merely something we believe in, it’s something we have to practice.
So we have the practice of pure religion.
James gives us two clear evidences of pure religion.
First, we see that pure religion cares for those who are suffering.
In James 1 27.
Second, he says pure religion remains unstained by the world.
These two pictures that we’re given give us a very good balanced view of what Christianity
should mean.
We must reach outward in compassion while at the same time guarding ourselves inwardly.
Now, for those of you that like to watch uh MMA or like the boxing, you always see them
with their hands up protecting the heads, the most vulnerable part.
When you go out to do the work, one arm is bat out while the other one stays back
protecting.
It’s the same imagery used here.
You have to be doing something while protecting yourself at the same time.
James says pure religion involves visiting the fatherless and the widows in their
affliction.
Now in the ancient world, widows and orphans were among the most vulnerable of the
population.
Many lacked financial support.
Back then they didn’t have legal protection.
they didn’t have very good social standing.
They were easily forgotten and unable to defend themselves.
Back then they did not have welfare, they did not have snap benefits, they did not have
all these things to care for them.
So many times they were simply left to just fend on their own, and they were forgotten.
But Psalm 68 and verse 5 says, A father of the fatherless and a judge of the widows is God
in his holy habitation.
Let’s look further into Psalms 146 and verse 9, where it says, The Lord preserveth the
strangers, he relieveth the fatherless and the widows.
He’s there for them.
And these verses reveal the heart of God, a God that cares, a God who loves the afflicted.
He notices that all the ones the society has forgotten.
Because pure religion is a religion that reflects the character of God, not one that’s
just lip service.
It must produce that same concept in its followers, in its people, in its Christians.
James is not saying widows and orphans are the only people Christians should help.
He’s using the examples of those who are vulnerable.
Those who are in need, those have afflicted by something.
Genuine faith is one that moves beyond words and into action.
First John three, verses seventeen through eighteen.
But whoso hath this world’s good and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his
bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?
How how is it possible?
He’s being facetious here.
It’s not possible.
To shut yourself up from those in need and still claim to have God.
And then he has a kind remark.
He’s he’s appealing to the ones he loves.
He says, My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and
truth.
We read elsewhere in the Bible it says, They shall know you by your works, not by your lip
service.
This is practical Christianity.
Yeah, it’s easy to say we love people.
It’s easy to fly a flag all month long.
It’s easy to speak kindly about compassion.
But pure religion will ask is our love visible?
Is it actionable?
Are we helping?
Are we serving?
Are we noticing?
Are we making time for those that are hurting?
We need to make time.
Look at Galatians 6 and verse 10.
It says, as we have therefore opportunity, when opportunity presents itself, let us do
good unto some men.
No.
The men which we agree with.
No.
The ones we disagree with?
Yes.
Unto all men.
Doesn’t matter what their background is.
Doesn’t matter what their belief system is.
Doesn’t matter what their history is.
It says, do good unto all men, especially unto those that are of the household of faith.
It’s telling us that opportunity matters.
And when God places someone in front of us who’s hurting, who’s lonely, who’s discouraged,
who’s sick, who’s grieving, who’s recovering, who’s struggling, who’s spiritually weak,
who needs prayers.
Who’s broken down on the side of the road?
Who’s broke?
I could keep going on.
He is saying we have an opportunity there to practice pure religion.
The world likes to ask, What can others do for me?
God tells us to ask, What can we do for the world?
Who needs me?
And this is what we see in Christ.
Jesus noticed the people who others ignored.
He spoke with the outcast.
He touched the untouchable.
He comforted the grieving.
He showed compassion to those whose society often rejected.
Think back at the lepers.
Matthew nine and verse thirty-six says, But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with
compassion on them.
This is a Savior who had enough compassion to see hearts and souls in need.
In Luke 10, verses 25 through 37, which I don’t have on the slides, Jesus gives us the
parable of the Good Samaritan.
A man had been beaten, robbed, and left half for dead.
A priest passed by.
A Levite passed by.
Both were religious men, as the world would define religion.
Both knew the law, but neither stopped.
So then the Samaritan came.
He saw the wounded man, he showed him compassion, he treated his wounds, took him to an
inn, and even provided for his care, paid for it.
When we read that, a lesson becomes very clear.
Actions
mean more than words.
Religious activity alone is not the same thing as pure religion.
Attendance matters, yes, worship matters, doctrine absolutely matters, but outward
religion without compassion is not the religion James described.
Just read the all of chapter one.
Charity, love.
There’s multiple different types of love there.
Pure religion helps, it does not harm, and it seeks the good of others rather than
personal advantage.
Wherever people are suffering, Christians have not only the opportunity but
But we have the need to do good unto them.
The second evidence of pure religion we see is personal holiness.
He says, Remain unspotted from the world in James 1:27.
Compassion without holiness is incomplete.
Christians are called to serve the world, yes, but we are not called to become like the
world.
And we have to be very careful there.
Let me ask: if you have a rescue swimmer, you go to most public pools, I try to not go to
those places for other reasons.
But for sake of an illustration, you go to a public pool, they always have a lifeguard on
duty.
Can a lifeguard save someone if he himself does not know how to swim and he jumps in that
water?
No.
He can’t save someone when he himself is being overcome by the same amount of water.
This is the same thing.
Christians face a similar challenge.
We are called to go forth and teach all nations, help the world, love souls in the world.
But we must not adopt the values.
We must not adopt the attitudes.
We must not adopt the desires.
And we absolutely cannot adopt the practices of the world.
Romans 12 and verse 2.
It says, and be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your
mind.
First John two fifteen.
We can cross reference.
He says, Love not the world, neither the things that are in it.
James uses the word unspotted.
It gives the picture of a very clean garment, a wedding dress.
You haven’t spilled ketchup on it yet.
Because you’re you’re not to that point.
You’re not eating at the end.
A small stain would be very easy to see against that clean of a background.
In the same way, sin can stain our souls, and the world is full of it.
It damages our influence and weakens our faith.
But most importantly, sin is what distance and separates us from God the Father.
Even a small sin is enough to distance us.
And the world constantly applies pressure to do just that to sin.
And sometimes, yes, that pressure is obvious.
It comes in the form of immorality, of lies, uh drunkenness, using profanity, greed.
Sometimes it’s even as as blatant as simple rebellion to God.
But sometimes it can be a lot more subtle, can’t it?
Pride?
Bitterness onto that anger?
Materialism.
Being so hooked that you just can’t let go of something.
Laziness is one.
Or it could be just the quiet acceptance of worldly values.
It’s the idea of, well, I’ll do me and you just do you.
That’s not love.
Is it love whenever you see your
We’ll say two or three-year-old child walk up and they’re gonna go put their hand on the
hot stove.
Do you intervene because you care?
Or do you say, you just do you, man?
Hopefully you’ll learn.
I mean they will learn.
But he’s gonna be punished because of it.
It’s gonna hurt, right?
We all know that.
That’s simple.
This is the same thing of why we try to teach the world.
We’re trying to keep them from that ultimate harm because we love them.
Love is not bailing your buddy out of jail.
Love is sitting there next to them saying, Yeah, I know you messed up, man, but I’m here
for you.
I’m gonna help you through this.
Modern technology has made this even more difficult.
Entertainment, social media, streaming platforms, digital content putting the thinking of
the world in front of us every single day.
And you don’t get a reprieve from the program just because the commercials come on.
They’ve infiltrated almost every single commercial out there.
Yes, technology can be used responsibly, but they can also shape our desires and dull our
senses in a spiritual manner.
Holiness does not happen by accident.
No one drifts into holiness.
No one accidentally becomes Christ-like.
We have to pursue that.
How?
Psalms 119 and 11 says, Thy word have I hidden mine heart that I might not sin against
thee.
Psalm 119 11 on the slides.
missing it.
There we go.
Alright, we’re gonna go to the next one.
First Peter 1, 15 through 16.
But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation,
because it is written, Be ye holy, for I am holy.
The world do not need Christians who blend in.
We’ve got to stick out from the world.
It needs Christians who show a different way of living.
As Jesus said in Matthew 5, 16, let your light so shine before men that they may see your
lip service.
Shake your heads like this.
No.
He says that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
They see our light reflected by his light.
Light is noticeable because it’s different from darkness.
If Christians ever became indistinguishable from the world, do you think our influence
would weaken?
Yeah.
When we live lives that are holy like his, our conduct becomes a testimony to the power of
the gospel of Jesus Christ working in us and through us.
Pure religion is not about merely avoiding obvious sins.
It’s cultivating an entire lifestyle for us, that’s why we call ourselves Christians, that
reflect the character of Christ.
When we understand James’ definition of pure religion, we can better understand why so
many people are disillusioned with the word religion.
Much of what they reject is not the religion described in Scripture.
They have not started by defining the terms they are using.
They are rejecting human religion, shaped by ambition.
And all the other things we listed before.
And rightly so, we should absolutely reject all of man’s religions all the time.
In the days of Jesus, many religious leaders elevated human tradition above God’s
commands.
Let’s look at Mark seven and verse seven.
How be it in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
It’s pretty scary statement.
They worshiped, but their worship was in vain.
God does not have to accept every form of worship.
They were religious, but their religion was corrupted.
Yes, the Pharisees prayed, they fasted, they followed many traditions, yet Jesus exposed
the difference between outward religion and genuine submission to God.
Shakespeare likes to say that we’re all just actors playing the part.
We’re all actors on a stage.
Again, I disagree.
You can become something.
You are not merely playing the part.
A Christian is a Christian, not pretending to be one.
We need to define our terms.
The same danger exists today.
A person can be sincere, very much so, and still be wrong.
Look at Saul when he was confronted on the road of Damascus.
He was very sincere in what he was doing, but he was wrong.
A group may be passionate and still be teaching an error.
A practice may be popular, but still be unauthorized.
Jesus said in Matthew 7 and verse 21, Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall
enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of the Father which is in
heaven.
So what is he saying?
He’s saying religious claims are not enough.
You can say you’re spiritual till you’re blue in the face, it doesn’t mean anything.
Your actions are how God is going to judge us.
Jesus continues by describing people who would say, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in
thy names?
And in thy name cast out devils, and in thy name done many wonderful works.
But his response was, I never knew you.
Depart from me, ye that work iniquity.
These people were deeply religious.
But they were rejected because they did not do the will of the Father.
They did their own will.
If we don’t learn anything else tonight, it’s that the answer to false religion is to
return to God’s will.
John 8 and verse 32, Jesus said, And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make
you free.
Truth matters, truth exists, truth can be known.
It is not a spectrum.
We do not get to pick our truth.
You do not get to have your truth.
There is the truth and there is the lie.
It’s that simple.
Jesus did not speak of many conflicting truths.
Contradictory doctrines cannot all be correct at the same time.
It’s simple logic.
Not hard to understand, but that creates a serious problem in a religious world filled
with division.
Many groups claim allegiance to Christ while teaching different doctrines concerning
salvation, concerning worship.
Concerning church organization, concerning morality, and Christian living.
But the New Testament calls us back to unity in truth.
I’ve said this before, once once before, maybe you remember there’s a difference in unity
and union.
Imagine two cats running away from a dog.
You have unity.
They are one in purpose.
Escape the dog.
If you take those two cats and you tie their tails together and you throw them over a
clothesline, they are in union.
I promise they will not be in unity.
They will be fighting each other.
There’s a massive difference.
First Corinthians one and verse ten says it all.
That ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you.
None.
Zero.
If I disagree with you on a topic, we need to open the word of God and see what God says
about it.
Because if he said it, that settles it.
Our opinions do not matter.
Ephesians 4 and verse 4 through 5 again one body, one spirit, one hope, one Lord, one
faith, one baptism, one.
It is either total immersion or it is sprinkling.
What does the word of God say?
Immersion.
Second John 9 says, whoever transgresseth and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ hath
not God.
The solution to religious division is not to ignore doctrine.
This solution is not imagine no religion.
The solution is to return.
To the doctrine of Christ.
So human religion will ask, What do I want?
Pure religion will ask, what does God want?
Human religion seeks convenience.
Pure religion should seek obedience.
Human religion follows the culture.
Pure religion follows Scripture.
Removing religion has never removed any of mankind’s deepest problems.
It hasn’t removed greed, selfishness, hatred, immorality, and many, many others.
People have tried time and time again.
If you Google search, there have been a couple cities where they outlawed religion.
They didn’t last too long.
Problems do not originate with pure religion.
They originate in the human heart.
Jeremiah seventeen and verse nine says, The heart is deceitful above all things and
desperately wicked.
Who can know it?
God can.
So we need to look towards the greatest example of pure religion that we have.
That’s Christ.
It’s not found in a human system, it’s Christ.
Jesus perfectly demonstrated everything James described.
He cared for the vulnerable.
He remained perfectly unspotted from the world.
He lived in complete submission to the will of the Father, even when it came time for him
to die on a cross.
Remember the prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane?
Lord, if there be any other way, however, not my will, but thine.
If there’s not, I will submit.
He was compassionate without compromise.
Hebrews 4 and verse 15 says that Christ was in all points tempted, like as we are, yet
without sin.
Jesus entered the world and faced sorrow.
He faced everything that we had to deal with.
And he remained pure.
There were no motor oil in that water.
Pure water.
John 1 14 says, and the word was made flesh and dwelt among us.
He had the ability to remain distance.
He was God in heaven.
Further on in John chapter 1, you see where he made the world.
But he became just like us.
He understood how it felt to be sick, how it felt to be poor, how it felt to grieve.
One of the first Bible verses our little ones learn to memorize is Jesus wept.
He was definitely an outcast.
Matthew nine and verse thirty six says, But when he saw the multitude he was moved with
compassion on them, because they fainted and were scattered abroad as sheep having no
shepherds.
Where others may have seen interruptions, Christ would have saw souls.
Luke nineteen and verse ten says, For the Son of Man has come to seek and save that which
is lost.
He did not merely talk about love, he lived it.
He came down from heaven to prove it.
The greatest demonstration of pure religion was seen at the cross.
And you’ll never be able to convince me otherwise.
First Peter two, verses twenty one through twenty-two says, Christ also suffered for us,
leaving an example that we should follow in his steps, who did no sin, neither was found
gil f guile found in his mouth.
Tell me, was he reviled on that cross by the people there?
Yeah.
Did he revile them back?
No, he fully submitted himself, and he even said, Forgive them, they know not what they
do.
Romans 5 and verse 8 says, But God commended his love towards us, and that while we were
yet sinners, Christ died for us.
That’s the heart of the gospel, right?
The good news.
So when the world says, Imagine no religion, the Christian must answer.
No.
Imagine pure religion.
Just take a moment and imagine a people who actually followed Christ.
Let’s let’s take John Lennon’s song for a second.
I’m not going to go through all the lyrics.
But let’s just turn that upside down and imagine an entire world of people who care for
those who are suffering.
Not a single person does not care about those who are suffering and willing to put the
work in to stop the suffering.
Because you can care and do nothing about it, right?
Or say you care.
But again, pure religion is one that works.
How about an entire world who defend the helpless?
How about an entire world of people, no one left out, who teaches the truth?
How about an entire world of people who love God enough to obey Him and who love souls
enough to serve them?
This is the religion James described.
This is the religion Jesus lived.
This is the religion that God ordained.
And this is the religion every Christian in the world is called to practice.
The question is not whether or not the s the world has seen false religion.
It absolutely has.
The question is whether the world can see pure religion demonstrated when we leave this
building out those back doors.
Remember that James one verse twenty seven is God’s definition of religion.
So if we want that pure religion, we must come to God on his terms, right?
Yes.
Jesus said in John fourteen, verse six, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
No man cometh unto the Father but by me.
Acts four and verse twelve says, Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is
none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.
Christ has all authority.
Matthew 28:18, all power is given to me in heaven and in earth.
And since Christ has all authority, we have to obey his gospel.
We must believe because Hebrews 11:6 says, But without faith, it is impossible to please
him.
We must repent, because Luke 13:3 says, Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.
We must be willing to confess to Christ, because Romans 10 10 says, For with the man with
the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto
salvation.
And we must be baptized, because Mark 16 and verse 16 says, He that believeth and is
baptized shall be saved.
And finally, we must live faithfully because Revelation 2.10 says, Be thou faithful unto
death, and I will give you a crown of life.
Pure religion should never be something we just discuss.
It has to be something we obey.
It has to be something we practice.
It has to be something to live, and it has to be something that I hope every one of us
loves.
Because there’s no downside to pure religion.
So tonight before we leave, I hope you ask yourself the simple question: Are we practicing
pure religion before God?
If not, now is the time to return to his standard as we stand and
Value Of Christianity – Aaron Cozort – July 05, 2026
Good morning.
It’s good to have each of you with us, especially our visitors, those who’ve been
traveling and they’re back with us.
We’re grateful for your presence.
Take your Bible, if you will, and open it to the book of Matthew, and Matthew chapter 22
is where we’re going to begin our lesson.
The lesson this morning is entitled The Value of Christianity.
If you were to start a
Business or perhaps be interested in a business.
You maybe you would uh visit some investor meetings.
Maybe you would meet with people if you were going to start a real estate business and you
were going to own and manage real estate properties.
You might go to an investor meeting.
And someone might there at that investor meeting present you with this property is
available, this property is available, here’s the value that they return.
You would consider the value because some of the returns are immediate, some of the
returns are way off in the future.
You’d have to evaluate is it worth the cost?
Is it worth the price that you would have to pay to receive the value that would be in the
future?
I want to spend some time discussing the value of Christianity.
The value of what it was that Jesus Christ came here to establish and presented to
mankind.
For Jesus said in Matthew chapter 16 that he came to build his church, and that he would
give to the apostles the keys of the kingdom of God.
And he did exactly what he claimed he would do.
He did what he came for, and as a result, he presented and built that which has value.
So we’re going to examine some of that value, if you will consider the value of
Christianity to the home.
In Matthew chapter twenty two, we read, beginning in verse thirty four, but when the
Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together.
Then one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, testing him and saying, Teacher, what is
the greatest commandment in the law?
And Jesus said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your
soul, with all your mind.
Jesus will quote from Deuteronomy chapter six, where Moses is going to instruct the nation
of Israel concerning what fathers and what parents should do in their home.
That they were to teach their children the laws, the statutes, the judgments in Israel,
that they were to remind them of them when they woke up, when they lied down, when they
were walking by the way, when they were sitting in the house.
They were to bind them before their eyes and have them as a reminder continually, so that
they might never depart from God.
Those were the practical descriptions of what Jesus quoted from.
Moses, when Moses said you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your
soul, with all your mind.
But he continues.
Verse 38 This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like it you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
As Jesus answers the question from this lawyer, now the lawyer in that day and time would
be someone who was schooled in the law.
Someone who was schooled in the
interpretation of the law.
And this individual is asking the question, I need a set of priorities.
I need to know which is the greatest commandment in the law.
Jesus takes the lawyer back to a passage where God tells Moses to tell Israel how to raise
their children.
As we consider the value of Christianity to the home, we should begin to understand that
Jesus, through what he delivers in the Word of God, and how we might know God, and how we
might have a relationship with God, and how we might walk with God, and how we might be
right with God, has presented to us the opportunity to.
to raise a home and a family that is in fellowship with God.
If you turn to First Timothy chapter three.
Paul, as he writes to the young preacher Timothy, will give a series of qualifications.
Qualifications for elders, qualifications for deacons, qualifications for the wives of
elders and deacons, qualifications for other scenarios.
But notice as you examine the qualifications for an elder and for deacons and for their
wives, how many of them revolve around how they have acted.
in relationship to God in their homes.
Consider chapter three, verse one, this is a faithful saying If a man desires the position
of a bishop, he desires a good work.
A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, temperate, sober minded, of good
behavior, hospitable, able to teach, not given to wine, not violent, not greedy for money,
but gentle, not quarrelsome, not covetous.
One who rules his own house well, having his children in submission with all reverence.
For if a man does not know how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the church
of God?
Not a novice, lest being puffed up with pride he fall into the same condemnation as the
devil.
Moreover, he must have a good testimony among those who are outside, lest he fall into
reproach in the snare of the devil.
Likewise, deacons must be reverent.
Not double tongue, not given to much wine, not greedy for money, holding the mystery of
the faith with a pure conscience, but let these also first be tested.
Then let them serve as deacons, being found blameless, likewise their wives must be
reverent, not slanderers, temperate, faithful in all things.
Let deacons be the husbands of one wi uh the husbands of one wife, ruling their children
in their own houses well.
For those who have served well as deacons obtain for themselves a good standing and great
boldness in the faith which is in Christ Jesus.
As you go down the list of qualifications for these two roles within the body of Christ,
these two positions within the body of Christ.
You look at uh item after item after item where God says you go look at their home.
You go measure their actions in raising their children.
You go measure their actions in regard to their spouse.
You go measure whether or not they have taken the word of God and applied it in their home
first.
before you ever hand them any authority in the body of Christ.
Why?
Because the home makes up the nation.
Because the home makes up the community.
Because the home makes up the business.
Because the home makes up the church.
God said, I’ve delivered to you, humanity, the things you need in order to be faithful in
your home.
To make your home something that is in fellowship with me.
If you turn over to 1 Timothy chapter 5, in 1 Timothy chapter 5, as Paul writes concerning
widows, here you have a scenario not concerning widows being in a position of authority,
but rather widows being those who are in a scenario where they are in need of financial
assistance and support.
Ongoing long-term base support from the congregation.
And he will describe in that scenario a widow who has no family, a widow who has no one
who has a God-given responsibility to provide for them, and so their care is going to fall
upon the church.
But notice in 1 Timothy chapter 5 and in verse 3: honor widows who are really widows.
But if any widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show piety at
home, to repay their parents for this good this is good and acceptable before God.
Now she who is really a widow and left alone, trusts in God and continues in supplications
and prayers night and day.
But she lives in pleasure in uh but she who lives in pleasure is dead while she lives.
And these com things command that they may be blameless.
But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his own household,
he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
Before we get into really the discussion of widows, Paul will say, first of all, let me
talk to you about the responsibility of families.
Because you will deny your very faith in God if you have members of your family who are
destitute and in need of the daily provisions, and you
Do nothing.
Christianity.
As that which is delivered by God.
Not talking about cultural Christianity.
I’m not talking about what the world believes Christianity to be.
I’m talking about God’s definition of what it means to be Christ like, to belong to and
wear the name of Christ.
Christianity does not allow.
for someone who has someone of their own family who is destitute and in is of need to lay
that burden upon the church and say, you know what, y’all need to take care of that.
I’m out.
Unless, of course, they’re also freely admitting that in regards to fellowship with God,
they’re also out.
But then consider, he goes on to say, Verse nine, do not let a widow under sixty years of
old be taken into the number, and not unless she has been the wife of one man, well
reported for good works.
If she has brought up children, if she has lodged strangers, if she has washed the s
saints’ feet, if she has relieved the afflicted, she has d diligently followed every good
work.
Paul tells Timothy to tell the church at Ephesus to tell those Christians, if you have a
widow who says that she is in need of daily support, you better be ready to deliver it to
her.
But you get to go evaluate just exactly what kind of person she’s been in her life.
And her reputation and her history and her actions that she has been building up because
of her home, which was directed by God.
will be the standard as to whether or not she is able to be supported by the church.
Are you saying, Aaron, that there’s a list of I gotta check this off, I gotta check this
off?
Kinda like an insurance policy.
Have you done this, have you done this?
Well, sorry, you missed that box, we’re not gonna help you.
No.
What Paul is describing is the minimum viable product, if I could use the the business
term, the minimum viable product of a Christian.
What does a Christian look like?
What does a Christian do on a daily basis?
What does a Christian have in their home?
Well, we’d go back to the text.
A Christian is one who is well reported of good works.
They don’t have a reputation as a swindler.
They don’t have a reputation as a stuck up person who doesn’t care for people.
They don’t have a reputation as someone who could not possibly show any compassion for
someone who is desperate and in need.
They couldn’t possibly be described as someone who is self-centered, self-interested, and
selfish.
For you look at their lives, and their lives are the exemplification of God’s works in the
lives of people.
He says they’re well reported of good works if they brought up children.
If she has lodged strangers, if she has washed the saints’ feet,
She took seriously the responsibility of a wife.
She didn’t say, you know what, I think we just need to hold off on all this children
stuff.
I’ve got a career to focus on.
I’ve got money to make.
I’ve got things to do.
I’ve got things of great importance that I need to be about and I need to be busy with.
And so I don’t have time for children.
Now see, there’s something to point out here.
And this isn’t about whether or not this woman was unfortunately barren and unable to bear
children.
This is about the biblical perspective of the value of the wife in a home.
This is a woman who has brought up children, who sees the value of the next generation,
who has raised the next generation, who has perhaps helped those orphans who have no home.
You remember what James would write in James chapter one?
That true and un pure and undefiled religion before God is the and i is this to support,
to visit the widows and the orphans in need?
Here you might have described a woman who was never able to bear children.
That’s not the qualification.
But she, being unable to bear children, said, you know what?
There’s some children who do not have a mother.
And I can raise them up to follow God.
Not saying that every home that is barren and unable to bear children needs to adopt in a
legal way.
perspective children in order to qualify for this.
What I’m saying is this is a woman who looked at God’s priorities for her life and God’s
priorities for the home and God’s function for what her role in this life is and said, I’m
going to fulfill it one way or another.
As you consider these three texts, what do you see?
You see that God has established Christianity to be of inherent, immense value to the
home.
So many who grow up in a society where their homes are in shambles.
Not just because of poverty.
Some of the people whose homes are in shambles live in the nicest houses in the entire
region.
But they don’t have a home.
They don’t have a home where they have fellowship with God.
They don’t have a home where the actions and the lifestyle and the act
Activities that are established in that home are controlled, established, and ordered
after the steps of Jesus Christ.
They don’t have a home as God would have it.
Oh, the value that they would find if the next generation was raised in a Christian.
But then consider the value of Christianity to society.
In Matthew chapter five, Jesus would confront the Jews.
He would confront the people of his day, of his own culture, of his own time.
He would confront his disciples and those who were present, who were listening to him,
those who had attention to spiritual matters.
And he would speak to them and say, You are the salt of the earth.
But if salt loses its flavour, how shall it be seasoned?
It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.
Jesus makes it clear that God had established Israel in his day and time through the
history that God had given to them from the days of Abraham all the way forward to the
days of Christ as the salt of the earth.
He says, God has made you to be that which is providing seasoning to the world so that
they might see and understand that God exists.
So much of society.
lives in a world where they’re not sure God exists.
They’re not sure that the God of Heaven is real.
And if you look back over their lives, you really probably won’t be surprised.
For their lives have never been touched by the salt that God put in this earth.
That is the body of Christ.
They have no idea what it’s like to be connected to the body of Christ.
When I was doing it yesterday it wasn’t for the point of this illustration and it wasn’t
for the point of this lesson and it’s not a pat on my back.
Yesterday, as I was sitting at the house, I was thinking about all the people that I know.
That I call brother because of their relationship in Christ.
And the interactions that I have had through the years with them and the knowledge that I
have that if there were ever a time where there was a desperate need, where there was a
situation in my life, I would have someone to turn to.
And as I was thinking about that, I thought, you what, let me text a few of these people.
And so I just went through the somewhat long process of going through text messages.
I’m one of these people that doesn’t delete anything.
Drives my wife crazy.
But if I sent you a text in nineteen um twenty twenty one after I started using the
service I’m using now, I still have the text.
I didn’t make it back past twenty twenty four going down the list of people and I thought,
you know what, I need to send him a text.
Some of you got a text.
Those of you who didn’t get a text it wasn’t because I didn’t think it just didn’t it
didn’t get to y that thread.
But I sent text to many people close to sixty.
Just saying thank you.
Happy July fourth.
Glad I can call your brother.
Thank you for what you do.
And it wasn’t because of them.
It was because I was taking the time to think, you know what?
What has God blessed me with?
And the answer is the church and the people in it who by nature of their shared faith
would say, I’m so glad I can call you brothers.
Some of these people are all on the other side of the planet.
Some of these people are right here at home.
And I say that not to declare how many people Aaron knows.
It is kind of a test testament of the fact that unlike what my brothers, physical brothers
think, not everybody hates me.
They have a biased opinion.
They grew up with me.
I was annoying back then.
To some people I still am.
But rather that through the gifts that God has blessed me with in connection to the body
of Christ.
That I have a shared relationship with people all over the world, not because of who I am,
but because of who he is.
And if society understood the value of Christianity, and if their lives had been touched
by the value of the church.
They would begin to understand what Jesus says when He says, You are the salt of the
earth.
But the cautionary statement comes after the declaration, you are the salt of the earth.
The cautionary statement is what happens when the church goes sour?
What happens when the church no longer functions the way it’s supposed to?
What happens to society?
Growing up, I had a disposition concerning vegetables.
That is that they’re horrible by and large.
And all of my life growing up, we had green beans with regularity was one of the things
you could grow in eastern Kentucky.
We had a lot of green beans.
Mom made green beans.
I hated green beans until I was introduced to salt.
Because my mother was one of those people that grew up in a household where her
grandmother oversalted everything.
And she couldn’t stand it.
And she determined when she was going to become an adult, she was just going to let people
add the salt they wanted instead of the abundance of salt someone else thought they
needed.
So she doesn’t really salt food.
Some of you may know that vegetables are horrible without salt.
least in my opinion.
When I was introduced to salt, my perspective concerning vegetables changed.
Hey, you know what?
You put something worthwhile to eat by way of flavor on this, and actually it’s okay.
Can’t do anything for berries, but vegetables you can save.
He says, You are the salt of the earth, but if salt is loathed as its flavor, how shall it
be seasoned?
It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.
You are the light of the world.
A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.
Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand and it gives light
to all who are in the house.
Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your
Father in heaven.
Many in society.
cannot describe the value of Christianity because they live in a world of darkness because
they have no association with the body of Christ and the good works that come as a result
of what Christ has done.
Or the only introdu introduction they’ve ever had to it has been salt that’s lost its
flavor.
And a light that has been shuttered and closed off from the world.
Christianity has value to society when Christianity is done God’s way and not man’s.
Then consider the value of Christianity to the lost.
The value of Christianity to those who are separated from God in Acts chapter two.
In Acts chapter two and in verse thirty six.
Peter is there on the day of Pentecost and he is preaching to a nation that had murdered
the very son of God.
They had for centuries spoken of the promise of the Messiah.
They had spent generation after generation after generation rehearsing the stories and the
words of the prophets and the words of David and the words of the psalmists and the words
of Moses about the one who is going to come in the name of the Lord.
The Savior of
The king, the prophet, the priest, the one who was going to come and they told told their
children about it, and they told the next generation about it, and they rehearsed the
stories.
And they lived in anticipation of the day when he would finally arrive.
Generation after generation after generation of people looking for the Messiah to come,
like Simeon, who was there in the temple when Jesus was born and brought to the temple.
thirty three years later that same nation who had rehearsed those same stories, those same
accounts who they had spoken of for generation after generation after generation had to
hear the words Verse thirty six, therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that
God has made this Jesus whom you crucified.
Both Lord and Christ.
For a millennia and a half.
From the day when Moses said, as we read in Deuteronomy eighteen, that the Lord would
raise up to you a prophet like unto me.
To go back another four hundred years to the day when God would tell Abraham, In your seed
shall all nations of the earth be blessed.
One family had been rehearsing one story of one individual who was to come and this
generation killed him.
How much you describe the nation of Israel at that moment in time.
Well, you might describe them as lost.
Verse thirty seven Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart and said to Peter
and the rest of the apostles, men and brethren, What shall we do?
Sometimes we come to that question and we just imagine they’re saying, I know that I’m a
sinner in need of salvation and I need to know what to do to be saved.
There is so much more than that.
Yes, they were sinners.
Yes, they were in need of salvation.
And yes, Peter was going to give them exactly what Jesus said they had to do in order to
be saved.
But there was so much more than that.
Peter didn’t say you haven’t lived a life of equity and righteousness before God, and that
because of your ongoing life in sin, you need to repent of those things.
There’s certainly passages that talk about that and situations where people were preached
to where that was the situation.
That wasn’t what Peter said.
Peter said, You’ve killed the very Son of God.
They said, what do we do now?
We’ve spent sixteen hundred years saying he was coming.
And you’re saying we killed it?
But notice that Peter didn’t say you killed him and he’s dead and there’s nothing you can
do about it.
That’s not what Peter confronted them with.
Peter confronted them with the same thing that Jesus confronted Saul of Tarsus with on the
road to Damascus.
It’s really, really hard to fight against the will of God.
Who are you, Lord?
I’m Jesus of Nazareth, whom you persecute.
And what was Saul’s question?
What will you have me to do?
Because Peter didn’t proclaim to them, you took the very Son of God, you took the Savior,
you took the Messiah, the priest, the King, the prophet, you took the one who we all hope
for, and you’ve dashed our hope into nothing because you killed him, and now we have no
hope.
No, that’s that wasn’t Peter’s message.
Peter said.
God has taken this very one who you crucified and has made him both Lord and Christ.
And the one who you killed.
is ready to save the one who killed him.
And they said, Men and brethren, what shall we do?
And Peter replied, Repent and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ
for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, for the
promise is to you and to your children and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord
our God shall call.
Peter said, You didn’t intercept the promise of God?
Юдин the plan of God.
Now you have the opportunity to take part in what God has been building all along.
And with many other words he testified and exhorted them, saying, Be saved from this
perverse generation.
Then those who gladly received his word were baptized, and that day about three thousand
souls were added to them, and guess what?
Two thousand years later, God’s message hasn’t changed.
When people realize that they’re lost, that they’ve sinned, that they violated the very
terms of God’s allowance of salvation, that they have to respond and that they have to
deny their sin, deny themselves, deny their interest in this world.
and change to be conformed to the very nature and the very image of God so that they might
have an eternal home when this life is over.
When they realize that God’s message is exactly the same.
When they’ve heard that Jesus Christ is the Savior, the Messiah, the Christ, the one who
God raised from the dead and did not allow him to remain in the tomb and has set him at
the right hand of the throne of God and he is reigning right now.
And they come to that realization and they say, what shall I do?
I now know that I am lost, and I now know that He is the Savior.
What would He have me to do?
Message hasn’t changed.
Repent and be baptized for the remission of your sins.
First John chapter four.
John writes to these Christians.
And he says, Beloved, let us love one another.
For God for love is of God.
And everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
In this, the love of God was manifested toward us.
That God sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might have life, that we might
live through Him.
And this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the
propitiation for our sins.
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
John the Elder, the one who at that night of Jesus’ betrayal had laid his head on the
shoulder of Jesus.
says, I need you to understand the love of God.
А нідістан the very nature of love itself.
The love is demonstrated in what God did for us.
when he sent his only begotten son that we might live.
Buddha didn’t do that.
Muhammad didn’t do that.
None of the world religions in all of human history.
can tell you of a God who did that.
Because they can’t first tell you of a God who exists.
They can’t tell you of a God who spoke.
They can’t tell you of a God who brought forth humanity and created the world and created
the universe and everything that exists and allows it to continue to exist by the word of
his power.
It they can’t tell you.
They’re missing an integral integral piece to the story, God.
And their hope is an earthly one.
It’s hope of a nation, hope of power, hope of might, hope of glory, hope of peace, hope of
being reborn into a some greater form and not some lesser form.
But not hope of salvation.
Not hope of redemption purchased for the very blood of the Son of God.
Romans chapter five.
Paul would write for when we were still without strength.
In due time Christ died for the ungodly.
For scarcely for a righteous man will one die, perhaps for a good man someone would even
dare to die, but God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were still
sinners, Christ died for us.
Much more than.
Having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.
For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, much
more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.
And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom
we have now received the reconciliation.
Paul looks back at his life.
Paul looks back at his circumstance.
And for him, this is more than just theoretical.
More than just doctrinal.
Paul who held the coats of those who stoned the servant of Jesus Christ.
Paul, who was on the road to Damascus, ready to take those Christians that he found in
every house that he entered and bring them in bondage or to death.
Куд Вен Христ Дід.
He didn’t die for good men.
He died for the ungodly.
And he didn’t wait for them to become godly to die.
He died for them when they were yet enemies of God.
Christianity has value to the lost, to God’s enemies, because it provides the alternative
to God’s righteous judgment.
For all those who are willing to hear the Word of God and believe that Jesus Christ is the
Son of God, who are willing to repent of their sins and confess the name of Christ and be
immersed in water for the remission of those sins, rising to walk in newness of life,
being uh immersed, as it were, in the blood of Christ, as Paul describes, that through the
life of Christ they might have reconciliation and hope.
Of eternity with God.
But before we close, consider that the value of Christianity also exists
to the penitent.
To the one who said, In times gone by, I’ll be faithful to Christ.
I’ll be faithful to his name.
I’ll walk that walk.
I’ll establish Christ in my home.
I will establish Christ in my life.
I will give over control of my life to the Messiah who has redeemed me from sin and from
death.
And from judgment and from hell, I’ll give the my life over to him.
I’ll give my family, my decision making, my principles, all of the things that I thought
were of greatest importance that I had always known, my philosophies, my undergirding
value in life.
I’ll give it all over to Christ and I will conform to his name.
And then they turned back.
James chapter five.
James makes it clear
That when God established in Christ his church, his kingdom, and the doctrine and the
pattern and the message of the gospel that we are to preach, that God did not just
consider the lost.
He also considered the wayward, the Christian who has departed from the faith and is
penitent and willing to come home.
James writes in James chapter five, confess your trespasses to one another and pray for
one another that you may be healed.
The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.
Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain,
and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months, and he prayed again, and
the heaven gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit.
Brethren, if any one among you wanders from the truth, and someone turns him back.
Let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from
death and cover a multitude of sins.
value of Christianity.
Unlike many of the things in this world where you miss it, you mess it up.
No bringing it back.
that when you have departed from the faith of Christ, when you agreed to that covenant and
then you broke that covenant and now you say, I want to come home.
That much like that prodigal son who realized I was raised in a home where God was.
I was raised in a home with a father who taught me what I should have been.
And now here I am in a pig sty, and I just want to eat what the pigs are eating just so I
have something.
You know what?
I can’t ask my father to take me back.
Not worthy of it.
I’ll just ask to be a servant in my Father.
And he goes back.
And he goes home.
And his father runs to meet him.
value of Christianity to the penitent.
You don’t come home as someone of no value given maybe one more opportunity to not mess it
up.
You are invited to come back with rejoicing in heaven.
Over one who repents, then over 99 who are saved.
If you have need of the invitation of Christ to take part in the value of Christianity,
you’re invited to do that this morning.
If you say, Aaron, sounds interesting.
You know what?
Might be willing to invest in that.
I might need to learn a little bit more.
So let’s study.
Let’s open the Word of God so we can know the value of Christianity.
Unlike those deals and those investor meetings where maybe the deal’s not quite everything
it’s cracked up to be in the investor summary.
When it comes to Christianity, we’ve only touched the hem of the garment of the value of
the name of Christ.
If you’re outside the body of Christ this morning, why not change that?
If you’re a member of the body of Christ this morning and you need to come home to Christ
to once again wear that name proudly, why not repent today?
If it’s time to open the book and study, let’s start today.
If you have need of the invitation, why not come now as we stand and as we say?
Revelation 15 (Lesson 2) – Aaron Cozort – July 05, 2026
Good morning.
Good to have a few people back from traveling.
Uh we are in the book of Revelation.
We’re in chapter sixteen.
And we are in the section concerning the pouring out of the bowls.
And so ah
This is this is one of those sections where we’re not going to spend an an extreme amount
of time, uh, because if you’ve read the book of Exodus, you’ve read most of the uh the
details that are uh important in the uh the actual playing out of the text, but we’ll
discuss a number of things.
But let’s begin with a word of prayer and then we’ll get into our study.
Gracious Father in heaven, we bow before your throne, grateful for the day that you’ve
blessed us with, grateful for your blessings that you shower upon us, the opportunities
that we have to serve you, and the opportunity we have this morning to come together, to
open your word, to read the visions that you have placed here, that you gave to your
servant John, that he delivered to the church, that we might understand both how you have
continued to deal with nations and how you
have fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament down to the very most intricate of
ones.
Lord, we pray that you will be with us as we grow in confidence and knowledge, both in
understanding your word, but also in confidence that what you have promised, you will
certainly fulfill.
All these things we pray and ask in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
Chapter sixteen opens, and as we close chapter fifteen last week, John looked and behold,
the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven, verse five, was opened.
And out of the temple came seven angels, having seven plagues, clothed in pure bright
linen, and having their chest girded with golden bands.
Then one of the four living creatures gave to the seven angels seven golden bowls full of
the wrath of God who lives forever and ever.
I want to make mention of something before we before we pass too far by it.
Here you have a picture of
Of God preparing to deliver judgment in the form of plagues like the Old Testament
plagues.
And it’s visionary language, and we we appreciate that.
We’ve discussed that many times.
We understand what’s going on.
That we’re not supposed to say, okay, well, there was a point in time where there was an
angel who took one step and then another step and another step as they walked out of the
throne of God and then went to go pour.
That’s not the picture.
The picture is God sends his judgment at the hand of his messengers and his servants.
Now, if we think back to the Old Testament passage and the text of Exodus, where are we
first told concerning the judgment being delivered on Egypt through the hands not of God
directly, but of angels?
Where does the text specifically identify that angels are delivering the judgment?
Say again.
Uh with the Passover and the death of the firstborn.
Because if you remember, what is it that is described concerning the death of the
firstborn and who, the individual, the messenger of God who was doing that action?
We’re told that it is the angel of the Lord or the angel of death.
And what was the angel’s commission when it went out to deliver this judgment?
Everywhere where you didn’t see what?
The blood on the doorpost received the judgment.
But everywhere where you saw the blood on the doorpost, what happened?
Passed over it.
So bear in mind that this idea of God bringing a plague by the hand of an angel on a
nation in judgment, and God’s people who had a mark.
Identifying them being Passover is a picture that Israel as a nation was commanded to
remind themselves of in the Passover feast every single year.
That’s how deep this imagery and this concept that we’ve been looking at in the book of
Revelation would have been for the Jewish Christians, especially, but even for the Gentile
Christians as they had been taught the Old Testament scriptures by the Jewish Christians.
That this idea of the angel of the Lord delivering judgment upon a nation.
And delivering his people through a mark and bringing them through where not a single one
of them was touched by the judgment is something that would have been rehearsed year after
year after year, and they even called the feast Passover.
The reason I’m bringing this up is the moment that we’re introduced to these visionary
elements of the plagues being poured out, being poured out by angels, being handed off by
one of the beasts that’s before the throne, indicating this isn’t God working directly.
This is God working through the systems He’s already established.
He’s used them for millennia.
He’s using his messengers through his uh representatives.
To go deliver this.
God didn’t need to go take a vacation from everything else God was doing in order to bring
the plagues on Egypt.
The reason why I’m rehearsing that
is to demonstrate the true separation between earthly power and God.
that to bring a nation to its knees, God simply needs to send a servant.
Not a million of not a hundred thousand of them.
One.
To bring the nation of Egypt to its knees one.
Angel.
With one job in one night.
We are to understand the separation, the universal size separation between the power and
the authority of a ruler and a government on the earth and God.
Because they’re not even in the same category.
They’re not even in the same arena.
God’s going to send the beast to hand off a plague to seven angels.
And the seven angels are going to go pour out the plague.
Have you ever poured something out of a bowl before?
Like anything?
How much effort did it take?
Spend the whole day doing it?
it’s going to take so long, it’s going to be so much energy involved just to pour out a
bowl.
You see, what the scriptures have done is they have taken something that is a truly menial
task.
Something of i it does not require genius to pour out a bowl.
It does not require great power.
It doesn’t require even a lofty position to pour out a bowl.
I’m pretty sure that the lowliest servant could pour out a bowl.
Now, if you wanted to go fight a war, now in your brain you’re going, okay, well, we need
leaders, we need generals, we need we need soldiers, we need skilled armor, we need we
need people with the right weapons, we need logistics, we need all of that.
If we’re gonna fight a war, we’ve gotta have some impressive things.
You look at the display from yesterday.
What it were all the social media feeds blowing up with?
Wow, look at the American military and what it can do.
For the person in the room who’s flown jets before, he can probably tell you just exactly
how impressive it is for a jet to stop midair, turn around, fly backwards, then take off
and go flying again.
That is a feat.
God’s picture here is not pictured with the impression, we need all of this majestic stuff
to accomplish this.
No, it’s seven servants with seven bowls and they’re just gonna go pour it out.
The lowliest servant in heaven could do it.
It’s one thing to read the text.
It’s another thing to go, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Why?
Why bowls?
Why servants?
Why angels?
Why is it that the Lord opens, that the temple opens and the tabernacle of the temple is
open, the most holy place, the inner sanctuary of God’s presence is opened and judgment is
going to commence, but God doesn’t have to move.
The the the ment God doesn’t have to get up off the throne to bring Rome to its knees.
So who are you serving?
The God who doesn’t even have to get up off the throne to take Rome to its knees, or Rome?
The temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power.
Just even this is an Old Testament picture.
There were times as Moses was in the tabernacle and the people were surrounding the
tabernacle back when they were at Mount Sinai that events would occur and God’s presence
would come in and it would fill the tabernacle.
And when it did, you couldn’t stay in the tabernacle.
Moses couldn’t stay in the tabernacle.
The people who were there, and the priests, the Levites, the others who were attending to
the things that were around the tabernacle, they all had to leave because they could not
stand to be in the presence of God manifested in the tabernacle.
So when you see the picture here in chapter 15 of the doors opening up and smoke coming
forth from the tabernacle, this is a picture, an Old Testament picture of
God’s presence being manifested in what is about to occur.
The smoke filled or the temple was filled with the smoke of the glory of God and from his
power, and no one was able to enter the temple till the seven plagues of the seven angels
were completed.
It is a picture to describe that this judgment is being done at the direct power and
authority of God.
Then I heard a loud voice, chapter 16, verse 1, from the temple, saying to the seven
angels, Go and pour out the bowls of the wrath of God on the earth.
So just like in chapter six, we had the opening of the first seal of the book, and then
the second seal of the book, and then the third seal of the book, and the fourth seal, and
the fifth seal, and the sixth seal, and then in the seventh seal we found seven angels
with seven trumpets.
And so inside the seventh seal, seven angels start to blow, and you read you read
concerning the sounding of the first trumpet and the second trumpet and the third trumpet
and the fourth trumpet.
And then a series of woes in the last three trumpets.
There’s the first woe with the fifth trumpet, the second woe and the sixth trumpet, the
third woe and the seventh trumpet, and inside the seventh trumpet is all this stuff we’ve
been reading.
You’re still in the seventh woe, in the seventh trumpet, in the seventh seal of the
revelation that the Lamb took.
From the throne of God.
God’s telling you, all the way back, beginning in chapter six, here’s what’s coming.
That’s John’s message to the church.
It’s gonna happen.
I’m gonna tell you what’s gonna happen.
I’m gonna tell you there’s gonna be partial judgment that you’re going to see as an
identification that it’s happening.
Then there’s going to be a point when my long suffering runs out, and then I’m gonna deal
with this nation, and I’m gonna deal with it completely.
And it’s not going to be with a lot of pomp and circumstance.
It’s just going to be done.
Isaiah, go ahead and move to the next slide.
So in chapter sixteen, you have the seven bowls poured out.
Verse two So when the first went and poured out his bowl upon the earth.
And a foul and loathsome sore came upon the men who had the mark of the beast and those
who worshipped his image.
The plague of boils from the Old Testament.
You remember in the plague in the Old Testament in Egypt where the plague came upon them
and they had boils all throughout the land of Egypt.
This is just a picture of plague of boils.
Alright?
But remember, we’ve already had partial judgment where a third of this and a third of this
was destroyed, a third of this was killed.
Now these are full judgments.
You had the warning first, you didn’t repent, now you’re actually getting the judgment.
Then the second angel poured out his bowl on the sea, and it became blood as of a dead
man, and every living creature in the sea died.
What happened in Egypt that accords with this?
The water of the of of what what body of water turned to blood?
All right, the Great River, the Nile.
Now it didn’t become like blood, it became blood.
Now notice the text here.
The second angel pours out his bowl on the sea.
And it becomes blood.
It didn’t become like blood.
It didn’t become red.
It became blood.
Now, you have friends and family, you have associates at work and people you’ve known for
years.
Who are going to come to Revelation chapter 16, and they will have been told for decades
that every minute detail of this is going to literally, physically occur.
So much so that the promoters of premillennialist doctrine will say and have said in the
past that the water will be turned to blood to the point where there’ll be a run-on water.
There’ll be no water left anywhere.
People start buying up.
you you you know how uh precious toilet paper was in the early in in the beginning of
COVID.
That’s how desperate people are gonna be for Coca-Cola.
Just to have something to drink.
Because there won’t be any water anywhere.
Of course, they’re quickly gonna run out of that because guess what?
You make Coca-Cola out of.
Yeah.
And I don’t know of any industrial process for turning blood back into water to make more
coke.
So the picture that someone comes to and says, Well, I think this is going to physically
happen at a point in time is that every sea across the entire planet turns to blood.
Now hold on for a moment.
Because what was unique about the day and time of Egypt where it wasn’t the sea that was
turned to blood, it was a river.
What’s the difference between the function of the sea and the function of a river in the
water supply system of this planet?
All right.
River transports and is constantly being what?
replaced.
Uh i if you’ve ever spent much time by a river, you’ll notice the water doesn’t stand
still.
That’s a good thing.
It’s because there’s water upstream that’s gotta go d down to the sea.
Now if you took the entire Nile River, one of the largest rivers in the planet and it
turned to blood, how long think about it, this just from a physical perspective, how long
would it be blood?
Until all the blood had flown down where?
Downstream.
Till eventually hit the Mediterranean Sea.
And then it would be replaced by, since only the Nile River was turned to blood, all of
the source locations for the Nile River were not turned to blood.
Therefore, when the replacement water flows through, guess what it is now?
It’s water.
What happens if all the seas turn to blood?
Guess what you don’t get back from?
Guess what you don’t have a re s a cycle to replace.
Once the seas which are the reservoir turn to blood, sure you can have evaporation, but
you’re not ever gonna get back to a point where the seas aren’t blood anymore.
The climate scientists of our planet are constantly worried about all of these glaciers
melting and the desalination balance in the oceans changing as a result, the planet
changing, because we’ve got uh imbalance in their mind, short-sighted though they may be,
of the amount of salt in the water in the seas across the entire planet.
Because the water that’s melting from the polar ice caps is fresh water.
Now you’ve got a real issue because they’re worried about the amount of salt in the water
changing across the planet.
What if it was all blood?
You think we’d have a much bigger problem?
The vision is visionary.
But what part of the planet is untouched by a sea?
There is a
This perspective, this vision is to supply scope.
When you look and see all the people who don’t have the mark of God have boils.
All right, well, that’s all the people.
That doesn’t affect all the animals.
That doesn’t affect all of the creatures.
That doesn’t affect anything except humans.
What if all the seas turn to blood?
What does it affect?
Well, the text tells us every sea creature dies.
Every single one of them.
But they’re not the only things that are fed, nourished, and maintained by the sea, are
they?
Okay?
Now we have the third bowl.
The third angel poured out his bowl, verse 4, on the rivers and springs of water, and they
became blood.
God doesn’t just do the sea.
Nope.
Round two of the plague.
Now bear in mind, in the days of Exodus, it was one plague.
The river Nile turned to blood.
It was over.
Next plague.
God takes the vision and says, No, no, no, I’m not just touching the ocean faring people,
I’m gonna touch everybody.
And so the seas and the rivers are all sorry, the the rivers and the springs of water,
they became blood.
So even if you could have argued a moment ago, well, you know what, we’re gonna we’re
gonna we’ve still got a water cycle.
It’s still gonna be able to replace the blood with water, we’re gonna s somebody’s gonna
survive this.
Nope.
Not if the s the springs that flow out of from underground have turned to blood.
Nobody’s surviving this.
If
We’re on hold on to this because this is important.
If we’re on bowl three and the global water supply has become nothing but blood.
Лет’счя: How long can a human uh survive without water?
Approximately three days.
So if bowl three, the water supply on the entire planet is done.
Uh you kinda end the book pretty much right here.
Nothing else gonna happen.
by the way, how are the Christians who have the mark of God going to be untouched by the
entire planet’s water supply being turned blood?
They’re not.
I bring all this up and I’m spending the time on it to help us realize what
premillennialist doctrine does, what doctrines about the Battle of Armageddon, which we
haven’t even gotten to, about the rapture.
What they do is they give you one little picture and another little picture, and they
never actually put the pictures together.
Because they’re expecting a great big battle to start being fought here just in a moment
or two.
And the problem is, three days from this point, everybody everything on the planet’s dead.
Терзно батл.
Or you have to reject the way they interpret the book.
Doesn’t mean you have to interpret it the way I’m telling you to interpret it, but you
have to reject the way they’re interpreting it.
Because if this is physical and if it’s literal, and if it’s scoped to the text exactly as
the text says it, which they will argue, that there’s an actual 144,000 down to the
number.
That there’s an actual mark, that the mark’s gonna actually be 666, that the mark’s
actually gonna be on somebody’s hand and it’s actually gonna be on their forehead, and
it’s going to be a physical thing.
Фізикл ами, фізика начин і фізика Ізраї.
Then the problem is come plague three, everybody on the planet’s dead.
I heard the voice or sorry verse uh verse five and I heard the angel of the waters saying
You are righteous, O Lord, the one who is and who was and who is to be, because you have
judged these things, for they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and you have
given them blood to drink, for it is their just due.
The angel identifies for us why the picture of the blood is pervasive.
And the answer is because of all the blood of the Christians that these people have shed.
And I heard another.
From the altar saying, Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are your judgments.
Hold here for just a moment.
I want you to come over to Romans chapter one, and I want you to notice something.
Romans chapter one verse eight.
First I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of
throughout the whole world.
For God is my witness whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of His Son, that without
ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers, making request if by some means now at
last I may find a way in the will of God to come to you.
For I long to see you that I may impart to you some spiritual gifts so that you may be
established, that is, that I may be encouraged together with you by the mutual faith both
of you and me.
Now I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that I often planned to come to you but was
hindered until now, that I might have some fruit among you also, just as among the other
Gentiles.
I am a debtor both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to wise and unwise.
So as much as is in me, I am ready to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome also.
For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ.
For it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and
also for the Greek.
For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written.
The just shall live by faith, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all
ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
Paul opens his letter to the church which assembles in Rome.
And he opens it by saying, I want to come to you.
I want to be in your presence.
I want to impart spiritual gifts to you.
And I want to have the benefit of being able to preach and convert people because you are
going to experience the righteous judgment of God.
When Paul quotes Habakkuk 2 verse 4, he is quoting the passage where Habakkuk asks, how
God are you going to use a nation like the Chaldean Babylonian nation to judge your people
and who is going to survive the judgment to come if you use such a wicked nation?
And God tells Habakkuk The just shall live by faith.
When my righteous judgment comes.
Now, if you go back to Ezekiel chapter 9, which we won’t for the sake of time, you will
find pictures of judgments like this.
You go back to Exodus chapters 7 through 12, you’re going to find pictures of judgments
like this.
You’re going to find historical events and visionary events, depending upon which context
you’re in.
But the point, every time.
Із год дефендспи.
And when God brings his judgment against the unrighteous world, he is justified in that
action.
The angel that comes and pours out the water or pours out the bowl upon the water says,
Lord, you are righteous.
You’re not an angry God throwing vengeance every direction.
The reason we need to spend a moment with this is because we need to be careful.
that we do not in our own lives and in our own minds and in our own actions describe God
as anything other than just and righteous when He establishes and performs His judgment.
The angel who’s before the altar.
Now remember back to chapter six.
Chapter six, where did we see the altar?
In which seal?
Fifth seal.
What was under the altar?
Souls of the saints that were dying.
They were being killed for their testimony.
So the angel pours out the waters.
Pours out the bowl upon the waters, and all the waters turn to blood.
And when the act is done, the angel declares God was justified.
And the answer comes back from the angel who’s standing with the saints who’ve been
killed.
And his reply is, Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are your judgments.
The Christians asked, How long till you deal with this?
And the angel who pours out the bowl upon the waters says,
Done.
And the angel that’s with the Christians who’ve been killed says, you’re right, it’s done.
And it was justified.
Then the fourth angel, verse 8, poured out his bowl on the sun, and power was given to him
to scorch men with fire.
First bowl comes out and it boils.
Second bowl comes out and the seas turn to blood.
Third bowl comes out and all the rivers and the springs of water turn to blood.
Then the sun gets turned to darkness.
By the way, that Old Testament Exodus picture.
Absolutely.
You have the plague of darkness.
The sun was poured, or the bowl was poured out on the sun, and power was given to him to
scorch men with fire.
Notice it’s going to be darkness, but it’s going to be darkness and fire.
Okay, watch this.
And the men were scorched with great heat, and they blasphemed the name of God who has
power over these plagues, and they did not repent or give him glory.
Then the fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and his kingdom
became full of darkness, and they gnawed their tongues because of the pain, they
blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and did not repent of
their deeds.
Now you’re gonna keep being told they didn’t repent, they didn’t repent, they didn’t
repent.
That also is an Exodus picture, remember?
The plague would occur.
And Pharaoh would call Moses and Aaron in and say, All right, we’re gonna let you go.
And then Moses and Aaron would leave and Pharaoh would say, We’re not letting you go.
And when Moses and Aaron come before Pharaoh during the plague of the frogs and they say,
How long do you want the plague to continue?
Pharaoh says, Well, one more night.
Have it in tomorrow.
You’ve got every house in the entire nation filled with frogs to the point you couldn’t
open a stove without getting frogs jumping out.
Frogs in your bed, frogs everywhere you can imagine, so much so that when they finally
started cleaning up all the dead frogs when the plague was over, the entire nation stank
from the pile of frogs.
But the frogs were a god in Egypt.
And so when asked how long do you want this to continue, Pharaoh said, One more day.
Don’t want to offend the frog god.
as the people go through the judgment.
They don’t look at the judgment and realize, you know what, we caused this.
They’re not going to be introspective and say, you know what, we need to repent.
If we would have repented, this would never have happened.
No, they blasphemed God.
Saw his fault.
Verse 12.
Then the sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was
dried up, so that the way of the kings from the east might be prepared.
Now you’re going to ask the question wait a minute, who are these kings from the east?
And we’re going to get into that a little bit later, so I’m not going to tell you yet.
But I’m going to tell you it’s not China.
It’s not Japan.
It’s not the kings from the Orient.
But there’s an old testament picture here, for there was a king from the east in the Old
Testament times who dried up the river Euphrates.
You read about his conquest and the con the ending of that conquest in the city of Babylon
in the book of Daniel, because Daniel read some writing on the wall the night that it
happened.
Cyrus, as he led the overthrow of the city of Babylon, diverted the Euphrates River, which
ran under the walls of Babylon, so that they could come into the city through the riverbed
and conquer and defeat Babylon.
Oh, right.
That’s what we read back in chapter 14.
Babylon is fallen, is fallen.
Great city.
When you find this plague drying up the river Euphrates, it’s an Old Testament picture of
the fall of Babylon.
So the great river Euphrates with its water is dried up so that the way of the kings from
the east might be prepared.
And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs coming out of the mouth of the dragon, out of
the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet.
So that this this onslaught is occurring, and they’ve got answers for it.
They’ve got reasons to convince people that it’s not their sin, it’s not their iniquity,
it’s not their
their mistreatment of the Christians as to why all this is happening.
They’ve got false prophecies, galore.
For they are spirits of demons performing signs which go out to the kings of the earth and
of the whole world to gather them to the battle of the great day of God Almighty.
You’re going to read that, chapter 19, chapter 18, you’re going to find the picture of the
great battle.
Hold on to it.
But God’s reply, Behold, I am coming as a thief.
Blessed is he who watches and keeps his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his
shame.
False prophets start delivering their messages that we’re going to be victorious, we’re
going to win, we’re going to conquer.
You know what, nations, you better be on our side.
They’re threatening their allies.
You better be on our side.
You better make sure you’re aligned with us because we’ve always won before and we’re
gonna win again.
God says you don’t stand a chance.
And they gathered them together to the place called in the Hebrew Armageddon.
Now, if you’ve watched much television, if you’ve seen many movies, especially from the
religious quote unquote Christian right in this country.
Then you might have imagined that the Battle of Armageddon is some great giant battlefield
where multiplied millions and millions of people will come and do battle, and the greatest
battle that’ll ever take place will happen in this place called Armageddon.
Except the Valley of Megiddo, which is the Valley of Armageddon in the Hebrew, is not a
big place.
It is not a place where large armies are ever going to meet.
It is certainly not the culmination point from a physical perspective of all of the
central powers of all of the planet coming to do battle.
The picture is a picture.
It’s a vision.
And while Lar Mageddon sounds mm pretty scary in English.
It sounds like the valley of Megedo in Hebrew.
And everybody who would have travelled through the valley of Megetta would have been
going.
Really?
This place?
Are you sure?
it’s a vision.
Okay, got it.
I mean i it it’s kinda like when Jesus and by the way there’s a connection here when Jesus
starts talking about eternal hell.
But he doesn’t use some mystical visionary language for hell.
He uses the word gehenna.
And yet Gehenna was the word for a place that everybody in Jerusalem knew about.
They knew where it was.
It wasn’t some spiritual place that God had prepared for the devil and his angels.
It was the trash heap of Jerusalem.
It was the place that Isaiah said, We’re going to take all the dead bodies of all God’s
enemies when God brings Israel back from Babylonian captivity, and we’re going to go burn
them in the valley of Gehenna.
And the fire of the torment of us burning the body of God’s enemies is never going to go
out.
Because God is going to conquer so victoriously, so completely, that we’ll never stop
piling up the bodies.
And the worm will never die because he never runs out of food.
And the fire will never be quenched.
Now I’m not telling you hell’s not a real place.
I’m telling you Jesus used a picture of a place people could go walk to and say, I get the
picture.
Not that there was going to be some coming day where hell would be located in the valley
of Henam outside Jerusalem.
And we need to have the honesty with the text to do the same thing with the Valley of
Meghetto outside of it or in the region of Israel.
All right?
Thank you for your attention.
We’re dismissed.
What To Do When Your Nation Falls – Aaron Cozort – June 28, 2026
Good afternoon.
As I mentioned this morning, for those who were able to be present as we looked at the
lesson this morning of things from which we must not declare independence.
This afternoon’s lesson is really intended to be in essence a part two of what we
considered this morning as we consider the idea of what to do when your nation falls.
If you to were to observe history, if you were to study history, what you will find is
history is quite often a progression of nations that rise and collapse.
That throughout time, though much of the the background
People have remained the same.
There’s been migrations from one place to another.
There have been changes in some of the uh makeup of the people who live in a particular
area throughout time.
But the reality is nations come and go.
Governments come and go.
They have throughout history, they do in Scripture as Scripture records history, but as a
result of that, when we turn into the old
Testament, we find a number of occasions where God is going to warn his people concerning
the fall of a nation.
He is going to warn them concerning the things that were coming in the natural course of
national history.
And as a result of those things, God is going to inform his people, those who are
faithful, those who are righteous, what they are to do.
Do when a nation falls.
Now as I began to study concerning this and delve into this, I quickly realized there were
far more things that could be said that we would actually have time to say, so we have
boiled it down to just a few.
But let’s begin in the book of Isaiah.
As we consider the nation of Israel, and most of these things will be focused on the
nation of Israel due to the fact that uh God had such an intimate interaction with the
people of Israel in regards to the falls of their nation.
But in Isaiah chapter one, as Isaiah opens his prophecy and calls Israel back to God,
calls Israel to wash themselves as we read in verse sixteen, to make their lives right
with God, to learn to do good and seek justice, rebuke the oppressor, all those things God
says through Isaiah.
But in verse eighteen, we find this statement.
Come now and let us reason together, says the Lord.
Though your sins are like scarlet they shall be as white as snow, though they are red like
crimson they shall be as wool.
If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land.
But if you refuse and rebel you shall be devoured by the sword for the mouth of the Lord
has spoken.
Here we have a passage in the opening of the book of Isaiah, where God, as he speaks to
Israel, the both the northern and the southern kingdom around 800 BC will make it
incredibly clear that as a nation is going to fall, because Isaiah, if you read the 66
chapters of the book of Isaiah, Isaiah is going to prophesy the fall of numerous nations.
But the whole prophecy begins with obey God.
When a nation falls, what should the people of God do?
And the very first thing is they should obey God.
They should obey God and not governments.
They should obey God and not culture.
They should obey God and not carry forward traditions of men.
They should obey God and not do what they have always done.
They should obey God full stop.
Verse 21, we continue reading in Isaiah 1, and we read somewhat the reply, the answer, the
reality of Israel as a nation.
How the faithful city has become a harlot.
It was full of justice, righteousness lodged in it, but now murderers.
Your silver has become dross, your wine mixed with water, your princes are rebellious and
companions of thieves.
Everyone loves bribes and follows after rewards.
They do not defend the fatherless, nor does the cause of the widow come before them.
As the picture is here portrayed concerning the state of Israel, the state of Judah, the
state of God’s people, and the city that was once able to be described as a faithful city,
we find now that it is a faithless city.
And as the nation declines into oblivion, God calls upon the nation, and they will refuse
to obey.
But God furthermore calls upon his people to obey.
So when a nation falls, we should, number one, obey God.
But number two,
As nations decline and nations fall, and specifically those who claim to have any
allegiance to God, we should not trust in religious objects.
In Jeremiah chapter 7, many of our thoughts this evening will come from Jeremiah.
And if you’ve not studied Jeremiah, I encourage you to do so.
We find chapter seven verse one the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord saying, Stand
in the gate of the Lord’s house and proclaim there this word, and say.
Hear the word of the Lord all you of Judah who enter in at these gates to worship the
Lord.
Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, amend your ways and your doings, and I
will cause you to dwell in this place.
Do not trust in these lying words, saying, The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord,
the temple of the Lord are these and
If you do not sorry, for if you thoroughly amend your ways and your doings, if you
thoroughly execute judgment between a man and his neighbor, if you do not oppress the
stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place, or
walk after other gods to your hurt, then I will cause you to dwell in this place, in the
land that I gave to your fathers for ever and ever.
As Jeremiah points out the situation in Judah, the northern kingdom of Israel at this time
has already fallen.
They’ve already gone into captivity.
Ten of the tribes are already gone.
And now two tribes remain: Benjamin and Judah.
And as Jeremiah prophesies to them and he stands before them and he speaks to them in the
gate, as they come into worship, he makes it clear that their problem.
Partly stems from they have people going about throughout their land declaring, as long as
we have the temple, we cannot fall.
They would declare, as is repeated here in verse 4, the temple of the Lord, the temple of
the Lord, the temple of the Lord are these.
As if to say, well, the reason why the northern kingdom of Israel succumbed to Assyria,
the reason why God destroyed them is they didn’t have the religious objects.
Their trust was not in obedience and faithfulness to God.
It was in religious curiosities.
It was in stone and wood and gold and silver.
Verse thirteen and now.
Because you have done all these works, says the Lord, and I spoke to you rising up early
and speaking, but you did not hear, and I called you, but you did not answer, therefore I
will do to the house which is called by my name in which you trust, and to this place
which I gave to you and your fathers as I have done to Shiloh.
God makes it clear.
That there’s not a building or a structure in all Israel that God will not raise to the
ground.
Because ultimately it wasn’t their uh their their access to the temple that gave them
strength, that gave them resilience, that gave them protection, as they thought it was.
It was their relationship to God.
When you step over to the book of Matthew and you find there in Matthew chapter twenty
three Jesus
Will give a series of woes against the Pharisees and against the Israelites, and
ultimately culminating in Jerusalem.
In verse thirty-seven, Jesus will say, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the
prophets and stones, those who were sent to her.
How often I wanted to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her
wings, but you were not willing.
See, your house is left to you desolate.
For I say to you, you shall
Shall be you shall see me no more till you say, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the
Lord.
Then Jesus went out and departed from the temple, and his disciples came up to show him
the buildings of the temple.
And Jesus said to them, Do you not see all these things?
Assuredly I say to you, not one stone shall be left here upon another that shall not be
thrown down.
In Jeremiah’s day, the people were convinced they were untouchable because of the Temple
of Jerusalem.
Fast forward 600 years, and you find even the disciples and those again in Jerusalem,
brand new temple, of course, they’re now in the same situation.
The disciples want to show Jesus how the majesty of the building of the temple and the
magnificence of it and the durability of it and the guarantee that it will never fall.
And Jesus will say, Do you not realize not one stone will be left upon another?
As Christians, when a nation falls, we must not trust in religious objects.
Instead, we must trust the word of the Lord.
But then consider number three, we must not listen to false prophets.
Jeremiah chapter twenty three says.
Jeremiah in his prophecy, beginning in verse sixteen, thus says the Lord of hosts, do not
listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you.
They make you worthless.
They speak a vision of their own heart, not from the mouth of the Lord, but from
They continually say to those who despise me, the Lord has said, You shall have peace.
And to everyone who walks according to the dictates of his own hearts, they say, No evil
shall come upon you.
As you consider what Jeremiah is describing.
He is describing what could not be described any better than the religious leaders of the
denominational world of quote unquote Christianity today.
They offer a pronouncement of peace on political leaders that agree with them.
They offer a pronouncement of peace upon business leaders that agree with them.
They offer a statement and a declaration of assurance that God is with someone simply
because the circumstance turned out the right way.
They assure
The individuals that they have seen a vision, they have a message from the Lord, they have
a declaration from God.
And yet Jeremiah will make it quite clear.
If you can’t find the message that the person preaches in the Word of God,
If you can’t find the declaration that they claim to declare, if you can’t find the vision
they claim to have seen, if you can’t find the message in the Word of God, then I can
guarantee you it may have not come from God, but it came from somewhere else.
Jeremiah, as the nation crumbles around him.
You gotta think about Jeremiah for just a moment.
Jeremiah began his time as a prophet at age 17.
He was a young man, a very young man, when he is called by the Lord to become a prophet.
And Jeremiah will live through the first carrying away, the second carrying away, and
finally in the third carrying away, 30 years into this process, Jeremiah will still be
around.
Now he is an old man.
And all through his time as a prophet, he has been warning his nation and warning his
nation and warning his nation, and they will not listen.
But all during that time, they were listening to messages.
They had religious interest.
They were listening to religious teachers, just not anyone who would speak the word of the
Lord.
Jeremiah twenty eight.
We read
For thus says the Lord, verse 14.
Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, I have put a yoke of iron on the neck of
all these nations, that they may serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and they shall
serve him.
I have given him the beasts of the field also.
Then the prophet Jeremiah said to Hananiah the prophet, Hear now, Hananiah, the Lord has
not sent you.
But you make this people trust in a lie.
Because Jeremiah had to stand before kings and princes and individuals and leaders of the
people.
Jeremiah had to speak clearly about the message of these false prophets, and he declared
in this instance Hananiah as a liar.
We need to be careful with false teachers.
We need to be careful with those who say it’s all going to turn out great.
Just elect the person I’m behind and everything will go well.
Just support my cause and everything will go well.
If we just do this or just do that, then everything’s going to turn out great.
Jeremiah’s day, it was quite clear that what the nation was lacking was a willingness to
hear God at all.
they would hear a message that sounded like the message of God.
But the moment the actual message of God was proclaimed, they weren’t interested.
If we’re going to be what God would have us to be when nations fall, we’re going to not
listen to false prophets.
But then consider Jeremiah in the passage we read earlier, Jeremiah will tell the people,
he will tell Judah, he will tell the nation that had the opportunity to survive and endure
through this coming time that yes, they were going to go into captivity.
They were going to suffer the results of years and decades and generations of sin and
iniquity and turning against God.
But
He will tell those in that nation, you need to amend your ways.
He’s going to tell the nation, you must repent.
Verse 3 of chapter 7, thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Amend your ways and
your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place.
There was a period of time during Jeremiah’s day where there was still a chance for them
to remain in the land.
There was still an opportunity for them to continue in that land, even if but for a few
generations, but they would not.
It is here that we were reminded and we are encouraged that the future in our nation is
not set in stone.
The future of our nation and the future of nations around the world isn’t guaranteed.
It hasn’t been prophesied by God.
There’s not coming a day except for the very return of Christ in which we know that this
nation must fall.
But we do understand this: unless the nation amends its ways, the outcome is guaranteed.
The outcome is assured.
As it has always been.
But then number five, though I’ve put number six on there.
Number five.
We must reject false worship.
In Amos chapter five
Amos will write and will prophesy, and though his time as a prophet, the duration of his
prophecy as it is recorded in Scripture is not as long or as uh thorough as that of Isaiah
or that of Jeremiah, yet Isa uh Amos will write.
Beginning in Amos chapter five and in verse twenty-one, God will speak through Amos and
declare, I hate, I despise your feast days, and I do not savor your sacred assemblies.
Though you offer me burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I will not accept them, nor
will I regard your fattened peace offerings.
Take away from me the noise of your songs, for I will not hear the melody of your stringed
instruments, but let justice run down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.
As you look at what Amos is saying, as you understand that the feast days were appointed
by God.
The sacred assemblies were appointed by God.
The sacrifices were appointed by God.
The burnt offerings were appointed by God.
The grain offerings were appointed by God.
And yet, what had happened was the people had desired to continue in the offerings without
obedience.
They continued in the offerings because they wanted to participate in the offerings.
They continued in the offerings because they thought they could curry favor with the Lord.
They desired to participate in these things because they worshiped themselves and not God.
I caution us when we see spectacles in our day and time, when we observe events in our day
that appear to be religious.
And yet the word of the Lord, the truth of the gospel, the message that is clearly
declared by God concerning that which is right, concerning the kingdom which he built, the
church which he established, the gospel which he preached, the message that he declared,
the order and method of worship which he announced, the rightful position and assembly of
those and the roles within it are completely ignored.
When we observe spectacles like that, we should be cautious before we start thinking,
well, at least people are being more God centered.
think back to the four hour event that was the memorial of Charlie Kirk.
And I didn’t say a whole lot to folks around that time, because many people had listened
to this young individual for quite some time and much of what he said was commendable and
right in a political sphere and in a time, but when you observe that event
Was there religious adoration?
Was there a continual message that declared that we ought to be obedient to God instead of
uh obedient to governments, that we ought to be attuned to what God has to say, that we
ought to be focused on what God has to say, that we ought to be those who uh give our
lives to God?
Yeah, all throughout the event.
You wanna know what was missing?
The actual word of God.
The actual gospel, the actual appropriate and right worship as d described and authorized
by God, the actual submission to God instead of cultural religious practice.
And we have to be careful.
Because so many times we will take hope in what appears to be a turning back toward God,
in which is only in actuality a turning back towards self-willed religion.
If we are going to be what God would have us to be and what God called his people to be,
we are going to realize that unless righteousness dwells in our nation, unless
righteousness is lived out in our nation, all the worship assemblies in the world won’t
make a difference for the fate of the nation.
Because at the end of the day, God will just say.
Yeah, I’m not interested in your worship.
If there is not first a willingness to obey.
Jesus will make it clear as he speaks to his disciples, as he preaches to them there on
the mount, in the Sermon on the Mount, and as he looks at those individuals who came from
simple backgrounds like fishermen, tax collectors, zealots.
And he will declare to them, Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the
scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of God.
And he will conclude that lesson with a reminder many will say unto me on that day, Lord,
Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name and done many wonderful works in there in thy
name?
And he said, I will declare unto them, depart from me.
I never knew you.
As we consider what happens when nations fall, we should know, as we have discussed many
times in the book of Revelation, that the things that we find it’s not advancing.
The things that we find in this life, the things that we understand about our nation are
not all positives.
But may I remind you they never were.
You can go read a lot of history.
And you can go see that we were in this country a nation born in compromise.
We were a nation born in a failure to declare with clarity that all men are created equal.
We were born as a nation in a time where not only was there injustice from outside
countries, there was injustice inside the country.
And because of history being what it is, and because, you know, we are the way we are, as
humans, we often think back to the good old days.
It was so much different when we were younger.
It was so much different in our parents’ generation.
It was so much different when society
gave a little more credence to the word of God.
And yes, some of those things are true.
But we need to be reminded that many of the things that we saw were small sections of
society and not really society at large.
For many times the things that were true about that day in time is that the sins were just
a little more uncomfortable for society than they were they are today.
Where today they have embraced them.
Back then it was still taboo.
It was still not normal.
But that didn’t mean that there were that many people who actually opened up the Word of
God and actually knew why it was right or wrong.
We need to be careful that we do not confuse religious mindedness with obedience to God.
But for that reason, we also ought to be reminded that there is exactly one thing that
will amend this nation.
There is exactly one thing that we can do to set this nation on a right path, and it is
the exact same thing that caused individuals to ask Paul concerning the thing which he
declared, the gospel that he preached that turned the world upside down in the first
century.
It is not America first.
It is God first.
It is righteousness first.
It is holiness first.
It is obedience to God above family, above background, above tradition, above culture.
Above society, above political leaders, above party, it is that and that alone.
It is allegiance, not to the flag, not to the country, not to the nation, but to Jesus
Christ, to his church, to the kingdom of which the saved are citizens that will restore a
right nation.
And we are called to be examples, examples of what God would have us to be, of what God
would have a nation to be.
If our neighbors, if our friends, if our society cannot look to us as the example of what
a righteous nation would look like, then we are letting our nation down.
If our friends and our business companions and those who we meet throughout this day and
throughout this week and throughout this year cannot see us and say, you know what, if we
had more of that in this city, in this county, in this state, in this country, we would be
a nation that follows God.
If they can’t identify that in our lives, then how are we going to have a nation?
That follows God.
For they will not get that from those who do not preach the truth.
If you’re here this afternoon and you’re outside the body of Christ, we don’t invite you
to become an American.
We invite you to become a Christian.
We invite you to become a child of God and a citizen of the only kingdom that will never
fall.
You know, I began as we were talking in this lesson with the fact that nations always
fall.
But there’s one nation that I left out of that.
In Daniel chapter two
Daniel will interpret a dream as a prophet.
As a young Israelite, as one who determined not to give up his righteousness, not to
defile himself, even though he had been carted off to Babylon, even though he had been
taken away from his home country, even though his own companions and his own other
citizens, who were part of those who were carried off into captivity, also defiled
themselves.
There weren’t just four young men of Judah that were taken away to Babylon, but there were
only four that were still righteous.
And that Daniel will declare to the king.
Nebuchadnezzar, he says, verse thirty-seven this is the dream.
Now we will tell the interpretation of it before the king, you, O king, are a king of
kings, for the God of heaven has given you a kingdom, power, strength, and glory, and
wherever the children of men dwell, or the beasts of the field or the birds of heaven, he
has given them into your hand, and has made you ruler over them all, you are this head of
gold.
But after you shall arise another kingdom inferior to yours, then another a third kingdom
of bronze which shall rule over all the earth, and the fourth kingdom shall be as strong
as iron in as much as iron breaks.
Breaks in pieces and shatters everything, and like iron that that crushes, that kingdom
will break in pieces and crush all the others.
Whereas you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron, the kingdom
shall be divided, yet the strength of the iron shall be in it, just as you saw the iron
mixed with the ceramic clay.
And as the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of clay, so the kingdom shall
be partly strong and partly fragile, and as you saw the iron mixed with ceramic clay.
Say they will mingle with the seed of men, but they will not adhere to one another, just
as iron does not mix with clay.
And in the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never
be destroyed.
Babylon fell.
The Medo Persian Empire fell.
The Grecian Empire fell.
The Roman Empire fell fell.
God said, In the days of those kings, the kings of Rome, I will set up a kingdom which
shall never be destroyed.
He says, And in the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which
shall never be destroyed, and the kingdom shall not be left to other people.
It shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever.
Inasmuch as you saw the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it broke
in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold, the great God has made
known to the king what will come to pass after this, the dream is certain, and its
interpretation is sure.
What can Christians do when nations fall?
The answer is they can remember and they can be reminded they’re part of a nation that
will never fall, and a kingdom that will never be destroyed.
For Jesus said, the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.
If you have need of the invitation,
To put Christ on in baptism or to be restored to a right relationship in his kingdom.
Why not come now as we stand and as we sing?
Never Declare Independence – Aaron Cozort – June 28, 2026
Good morning.
In just a few short days, America will celebrate its two hundred and fiftieth birthday, in
a sense.
For two hundred and forty-nine days and few or four hundred two hundred and forty nine
years and quite a number of days ago, the Congressional Congress wrote a declaration.
It began the unanimous declaration of the thirteen United States of America when in the
course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political
bands.
Which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the
separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them.
A disdecent respect to the opinion of mankind requires that they should declare the cause
which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self evident.
That all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just
powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes
destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to
institute new government.
Laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such forms as to
them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness.
The individuals who wrote these words wrote them, many of them being those who believed
firmly in the God of the Bible, many of them representing constituents and individuals in
their home states that believed firmly in the God of the Bible, and believed that because
God exists, rights exist.
Because God exists, there’s someone higher than the government.
And because God exists, there’s someone higher than the king.
Wanna read you another short passage.
This comes from a song, country music song.
Johnny Cash sang years ago.
I thought maybe it might be a good lead in to the thoughts of our lesson.
I do encourage you, if at all possible, to be back this afternoon.
Cause today’s lesson is really kind of a two part lesson.
We’re going to talk about this idea of independence this morning.
This afternoon we’re going to talk about what do God’s people do when their nation falls?
And of the two lessons, I suggest that perhaps the second one is the more important.
But Johnny Cash wrote sang song years ago.
I walked through a county courthouse square on a park bench, an old man was sitting there.
I said, your old courthouse is kind of run down.
He said, nah, it’ll do for our little town.
I said, your old flagpole has leaned a little bit, and that’s a ragged old flag you’ve got
hanging on it.
He said, have a seat, and I sat down.
Is this your first time to our little town?
I said, I think it is.
He said, I don’t like to brag, but we’re kind of proud of that ragged old flag.
You see, it got a little hole in that flag there when Washington took it across the
Delaware, and it got powder burned the night that Francis Scott Key sat watching it
writing, Say can you see?
It got a bad rip in New Orleans when Packingham and Jackson tugging at its seams and it
almost fell at the Alamo beside the Texas f Texas flag, but
She waved on though.
She got cut with a sword at Chancellorville.
She got cut again at Shiloh Hill.
There was Robert E.
Lee, Beauregard, and Bragg, and the South Wind blew hard on that ragged old flag.
On Flanders Field in World War I, she got a big hole from a Bertha gun.
She turned blood red in World War II.
She hung limp, and lo, a time or two.
She was in Korea, Vietnam, she went where she was sent by her uncle Sam.
She waved from our ships upon the briny foam, and now they’ve about quit waving back here
at home.
In her own good land she’s been abused, she’s been burned, dishonored, denied, and
refused, and the government for which she stands is scandalized throughout the land.
And she’s getting threadbare, and she’s wearing thin.
But she’s in good shape for the shape she’s in, ’cause she’s been through the fire before.
And I believe she can take a whole lot more.
So we raise her up every morning, we take her down every night, we don’t let her touch the
ground, and we fold her upright.
On second thought, I do like to brag, because I’m mighty proud of that ragged old flag.
You know, when you think concerning this nation that we live in.
It is a nation with a present time.
It is a nation that we can look at and say, well, there’s a lot of problems with this
nation that we live in.
There’s problems in the government, there’s problems in the cities, there’s problems in
the states, there’s problems in the counties, there’s problems in the homes, there’s
problems in the schools, and all of those statements would be true.
But as you consider what gave birth to this nation, what gave birth to this nation was a
desire based upon the knowledge of the existence of God, that people should have a right
to worship and serve their God and serve their homes and their families in equity.
In justice, in liberty and in freedom.
All of those are Old Testament and New Testament concepts.
All of those are ideas and ideals that are formulated not in the thoughts of human
psychology and not in human philosophy, but in the words of Scripture.
And there were things going on in that day and time from which a group of colonies
determined that they needed independence from a king in England.
I’m gonna pause for a moment and ask Micah, Will you bring my notebook that’s sitting on
the pew there and bring it up to me?
‘Cause that’s got my sermon notes in it.
And I’ll get most of them right, but I might leave one or two out.
Thank you, son.
My wife will tell you if I forget, if she’s not around, sometimes I’ll leave my head
behind.
Snap screwed on.
I want to spend some time with you this morning thinking about three things.
As we consider this birthday of America’s independence, three things from which we must
not declare independence.
As you think concerning the words that those individuals wrote 250 years ago, they made it
clear that they weren’t just revolting.
They weren’t starting j as a matter of fact, they weren’t starting a revolution.
They were simply out of respect declaring why they could no longer remain under the
authority of a certain king.
And so they were declaring their independence with respect.
By writing it down.
But three things from which we must not declare independence.
Turn to Acts chapter seventeen.
In Acts chapter seventeen
Paul is standing in Athens.
And he is discussing with the philosophers of the day, the people of the day who gathered
in their time to there at Mars Hill discuss the new things that they heard, the the new
ideas that they learned, about the new gods that they could worship and follow.
And so Paul stood, verse twenty two, in the midst of the Areopagus and said, Men of
Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious.
For I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an
altar with this inscription to the unknown God.
Therefore the one whom you worship without knowing him I proclaim to you.
God who made the world and everything in it, since he is Lord of heaven and earth, does
not dwell in temples made with hands, nor is he worshipped with men’s hands as though he
needed anything, since he gives to all life, breath, and all things.
And he has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on the face of the earth, and
has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings.
So that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for him and find him,
though he is not far from each one of us, for in him we live and move and have our being,
as also some of your own poets have said, for we are also his offspring.
Therefore, since we are the offspring of God.
We ought not to think that the divine nature is like gold or silver or stone, something
shaped by art and man’s devising.
Truly these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to
repent, because he has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness
by the man whom he has ordained, he has given assurance of this to all by raising him from
the dead.
Paul makes it clear whether it be a nation, whether it be a people, whether it be any of
humanity, no matter who they are or where they live, they cannot declare independence from
God.
Paul said there in verse 28, for in him we live and move and have our being.
This nation could exist without the influence and the authority of the King of England.
But not one of us can exist without the authority and the influence of God in heaven.
And yet many through time have attempted to declare independence from God.
They have attempted to argue that they do not need a God, they do not need a spiritual
being, they do not need an authority of power greater than themselves.
They can live of themselves and by themselves.
But they cannot.
None of us can.
More so than just in our physical lives.
Truly we cannot declare independence from God in our physical lives in this physical
world, for it will cease to exist if he ever determines that it will.
But even more so in our spiritual lives, turn to John chapter seventeen.
In John chapter seventeen, Jesus, as he was preparing to go into the garden, preparing to
be betrayed, preparing to be crucified for our sins, prayed to the Father.
In John chapter 17 and verse 1, Father, the hour has come, glorify your Son, that your Son
also may glorify you.
As you have given him authority over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as
many as you have given him.
And this is eternal life.
Jesus gives us a definition, a defining picture of eternal life.
He says, and this is eternal life that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus
Christ, whom you have sent.
Jesus makes it clear in our spiritual lives we may not have eternal life while declaring
independence from God.
For eternal life is fellowship with God.
It is knowing who God is, knowing Him in a personal way in eternity.
John would write further in first John chapter three.
Passage which I firmly believe is directly tied to the statement that Jesus made in John
17.
And in first John chapter 3, he says, Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed
on us, that we should be called the children of God.
Therefore the world does not know us because it did not know him.
Beloved, now we are the children of God, and it has not yet been revealed what we shall
be, but we know that when he is revealed, we
We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
John tells us that not only can we not declare independence from God and have eternal
life, but rather that eternal life will be with the Father and with the Son, and we will
see them as they are.
We are to be eternally blessed in a home in heaven.
We must not declare independence from God.
In Ephesians, Paul would write in Ephesians chapter two.
And he would write to this church, and he said, And you he made alive.
Now Paul wrote concerning our physical existence, or spoke concerning our physical
existence there at the Areobagus and said that in him we live and move and have our being.
But as he writes to the church at Ephesus, he’s not talking about their physical being.
He’s not talking about their physical life.
He is talking about their spiritual life, and he says, And you he made alive.
Who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of
this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the Spirit who now works in
the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of
the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature
children of wrath just as the others.
But God, who is rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us.
Even when we were dead in trespasses made us alive together with Christ, for by grace you
have been saved, and raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places
in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding great exceeding
riches of his grace in his kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves it is the gift
of God, not of works, lest any one should boast, for we are his workmanship created.
in Christ Jesus for good works, which God has prepared beforehand that we should walk in
them.
We cannot declare independence from God, for our spiritual life was created in God and by
God.
Our spiritual existence and our salvation and our hope for eternity
abides exclusively, singularly in God.
For salvation is his gift.
It is not earned, it is not merited, it is received because it was given.
But we as Christians, we as those who have died to the world and died to sin and risen to
walk in newness of life, Romans chapter six, verses three and four, in that watery grave
of baptism, as it is described there, have risen to walk in newness of life, and now we
are his workmanship prepared for good works.
It is not enough to say I pledge allegiance to God.
If you don’t don’t then do the works that He’s given you to do.
It’s easy to pledge allegiance to a nation.
The nation doesn’t require much of you except show up, pay taxes.
Follow the law, don’t get kicked out.
It’s pretty easy to pledge allegiance to a king, so long as he doesn’t tell you to go to
war.
But God’s commitment when you pledge allegiance to the Lord, when you confess the name of
Christ, Romans chapter ten, verses nine and ten, is a commitment to live every single day
doing the work God has prepared you to do.
But you cannot, you must not declare independence from God.
But Paul, as he writes here in Ephesians chapter two, makes it clear that it is not just
God the Father that we must hold allegiance to.
But rather that God gave life to us in Christ Jesus.
And that we must hold allegiance to Christ.
Turn to Colossians.
Paul would write to the church at Colossae in Colossians chapter one and beginning in
verse 15.
And he would write to them, and he says, He is the image of the invisible God, speaking of
Christ, the firstborn over all creation.
For by him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and
invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things were
created through him and for him.
And he is before all things, and in him all things consist.
And he is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the
dead, that in all things he may have the preeminence.
God the Father makes it clear you cannot have independence from Christ and allegiance to
God.
That God has put all things, as the Hebrew writer would state, under his feet.
As Paul would write here in Colossians, he has made him to be head over the body, the
church, who is the beginning and the firstborn from the dead.
If we desire a home in heaven, if we desire an eternity with God, if we desire a salvation
from the sin and the iniquity in this world, then we must not declare independence from
Jesus Christ.
Paul would go on, verse 19, for it pleased the Father that in him all the fullness should
dwell, and by him to reconcile all things to himself, whether by him, excuse me, reconcile
all things to himself, by him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made
peace through the blood of his cross.
And you who are once alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now he has
reconciled.
Paul says there was a time where you had independence from God.
Because you were in a state in which you were lost.
You were in a state in which you were succumbing to the wickedness of this world and you
were involved in those things which God says, I will have no fellowship with them.
John would write in first John.
That God is light and in him is no darkness at all.
To declare independence from God, to declare independence from Christ is to declare, I
will walk in darkness and do not the truth.
But Paul will go on, and he will write, and you who were once alienated and enemies in
your mind, by wicked works, yet now he has reconciled in the body of his flesh through
death, to present you holy and blameless, and above reproach in his sight, if indeed you
Continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the
gospel which you heard, which was preached to every creature under heaven, of which pa I,
Paul, became a minister.
Paul makes it clear that in order to remain in fellowship with God, in order to remain one
who is in allegiance to God, in order to be one who is in fellowship with God and not
independent from him, but one and unified with him, you must not declare independence from
the gospel.
We cannot have our lives separated from the gospel, for it is our hope.
It is that by which He has purchased our redemption and washed us through water by the
Word.
We must not declare independence from God.
We must not declare independence from Jesus Christ.
We must not declare independence from the gospel.
But we must also not declare independence from the church.
Some having left the body of Christ, having left the church that belongs to Jesus Christ,
have said, you know what, I I I think I’ll keep Christ, and I’ll keep God the Father, and
I’ll even keep a form of his gospel, but the church I don’t want to have anything to do
with.
You cannot be unified with God, unified with Christ, and unified with the gospel and at
odds with the church.
Not because the church stands as an independent power, the church has not declared
independence from God.
Rather, because when you are in fellowship with God, you are in fellowship with all those
who are in fellowship with God.
And those who are in fellowship with God are those who have been bought, purchased,
redeemed, and have been added by the Lord to the church.
In Acts chapter 2, verse 47, we read that such as those who were being saved were added
daily to the church.
They were added when they were willing to repent of their sins and be immersed in water
for the remission of those sins.
They were added to the body of Christ.
But we cannot and we must not declare our independence from the church.
In 1 Corinthians chapter 12, Paul will write concerning the body of Christ.
For as the body is one and has many members.
But all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ.
For by one spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether
slaves or free, and have all been made to drink into one spirit.
For in fact the body is not one member, but many.
If the foot should say, Because I am not a hand, I am not of the body, is it therefore not
of the body?
Paul looks at the visual illustration of our physical bodies and says, you know what?
The foot looks at the hand and says, You know what?
Since I can’t be that hand which does so many great things, that articulates in so many
different ways, that that writes books and that that that uh does all of these wonderful
things and builds all these magnificent things, since I can’t be the hand, I’m just going
to declare independence from the body.
Luckily it’s a foot, it can walk away.
But Paul says, no, that’s not how it works.
For we are all members of the same body.
He goes on to say, if the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing?
If the whole were hearing, where would be the smelling?
But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body just as He pleased.
And if they were all one member, where would the body be?
But now indeed there are many members, yet one body.
Now some will come to this passage and they’ll say, See, there’s there’s thousands of
denominations, but it’s one church.
You can’t get that from the book of Cor First Corinthians.
How do I know?
Well, long before he got into chapter twelve, we were in chapter one, chapter one, verse
ten.
Now I plead with you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak
the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined
together in the same mind and in the same judgment.
For it has been declared to me concerning you, my brethren, by those of Chloe’s household,
that there are contentions among you.
Now this I say, each of you says, I am of Paul, or we could say Luther.
I am of Apollos, and we could call the Pope’s name.
Or I am of Cephas, or I am of Christ.
Is Christ divided?
Was Paul crucified for you?
Were you baptized in the name of Paul?
Paul has already established there is no authority for divisions, which is, by the way,
what the word denomination means.
There’s no authority for divisions in the body of Christ.
First Corinthians chapter twelve isn’t dealing with divisions, it’s dealing with members.
It’s dealing with individuals in the church at Corinth.
The context was the difficulties they were having over the miraculous gifts.
And some of them wanted to be in charge, and some of them wanted a greater gift, and some
of them thought they had a lesser gift.
And Paul says: you can’t have a body if all of you are a foot.
And you can’t have a body if all of you are an eye.
And you can’t have a body if all of you are a mouth.
The members here are not churches, they’re not denominations, they’re Christians.
And they’re part of the same congregation.
He says, And if they were all, verse 19, one member, where would be the body?
But now indeed there are many members, yet one body.
The I cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you, nor again the hand the head to the
feet, I have no need of you.
No much rather those members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary, and those
members of the body which think to we think uh to be less honorable, on those we bestow
greater honor, and our unpresentable parts have greater modesty, but our presentable parts
have no need.
But God composed the body, having given greater honor to that part which lacks it, that
there should be no schism in the body.
But that the members should have the same care for one another, and if one member suffers,
all the members suffer with it, for if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with
it.
Now you are the body of Christ and members individually.
And God has appointed these in the church, first apostles, second prophets, third
teachers, after that, miracles, then gifts of healing, helps, administrations, varieties
of tongues, are all apostles.
Are all prophets, are all teachers, are all workers of miracles, do all have gifts of
healing?
Do all speak with tongues?
Do all interpret?
But earnestly desire the best gifts, and yet I show you a more excellent way.
As Paul writes and introduces this idea of the problem and the struggle they were having,
which will continue in chapter thirteen.
as he discusses love.
And he’ll continue in chapter fourteen as he discusses the proper order of things in the
worship assembly.
He will make it clear you are all one body.
There is no authority anywhere in Scripture to have an independent Christian.
To have a Christian apart from a congregation.
To have a Christian apart from the body of Christ.
There’s no authority in Scripture for independence from the church.
There’s no authority in Scripture for independence from the gospel.
There’s no authority in the Scripture for independence from Christ.
There’s no authority for independence from God the Father.
Things from which we must not declare independence.
Two hundred and fifty years ago.
A group of men came together on behalf of a nation and declared, you know what?
We need to declare independence from England and from a king because we’ve been abused,
we’ve been mistreated.
Our rightful position has been destroyed.
It was unjustified, it was unwarranted, and it was unrepresented.
And as a result, given that we know who’s the creator of this world and who is not, we are
declaring our independence from a king, from a tyrant.
As we stand here today, some may say, I feel as though maybe God hasn’t done everything
that I need him to do.
I I feel as though maybe God hasn’t provided for me in the way that I think he should.
I I feel as though he’s he’s done me more harm than he’s done me good.
Perhaps we need to better understand our relationship with God.
For he’s given you air to breathe, sunshine to allow things to grow, rain to water the
earth.
He’s allowed you to live and move and have your being.
And he’s given you Jesus Christ His Son, His only begotten Son, that you might have the
hope of eternal life at the very cost of His Son’s life on the cross.
What could you argue with that God hasn’t given you?
Some might say, well, you know that I I understand what God’s given me, but the church,
the church, the church has done me wrong.
The church has not greeted me the way they should.
The church has not held coddled me the way that they should.
The church has not done this for me and that for me.
Maybe it’s time to explore what it means to be a member of the body of Christ and to
understand what the church does for you rather what you do for Christ.
But I can tell you this.
You cannot hold allegiance to Christ outside of the church.
You cannot have independence from the church and unity with God.
There is one place where salvation is found.
It is found in the place that Jesus said, I have come to build my church, and the gates of
hell shall not prevail against it.
If you have need of salvation from this world, from being alienated and separated from
God,
If you desire not to declare independence from God, but fellowship with God, you first
have to be obedient to the gospel.
You have to hear the word of God and believe that Jesus Christ is his Son, that He is God
in the flesh, come in the flesh to die on the cross for your sins, because without Him
there is no path to the Father.
Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
No man cometh unto the Father but by me.
And having heard the word and believing that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, you must
repent of your sins, confess the name of Christ, and be immersed in water for the
remission of your sins, dying to the old man of sin, no longer in allegiance with Satan,
but rising to walk in newness of life, a new creature, a new creation, created in Christ
Jesus, reconciled to God, not independent from our Lord, but unified with Him.
Ready, anxiously awaiting when this life is over, to be able to dwell with him in
eternity, for this is eternal life, to know the only true God and Jesus Christ his Son.
And during your time on this walk, in this life, to dwell together with the body of
Christ, the church, serving God, being workmen of his service.
If you have need of the invitation of Christ, to put Christ on in baptism, you can do that
this morning.
If you’re a member of the body of Christ and you’ve declared independence from God, from
Christ, from the gospel, or from his church.
May I suggest that you sue for a peace treaty, that you return once again to allegiance to
God.
If you have need of the invitation, why not come now?
Revelation 15 (Lesson 1) – Aaron Cozort – June 28, 2026
Let’s begin with a word of prayer, then we’ll get into our study.
Our gracious Father in heaven, we bow before your throne, grateful for the day you’ve
blessed us with, grateful for this life and the opportunity that we have in this life to
serve you, to glorify your name, to honor you and to study your word, to know what you
would have us to do and how you would have us to live, to know concerning the provisions
that you make for your kingdom and for the church.
And how that you provide for the church and have since its very beginning.
Lord, we pray that you will forgive us when we sin and fall short of your glory.
We pray that you be with the nation that we live in.
May it not become a a wholes wholly corrupted thing, but rather have the influence of the
Word of God continuing to pervade it.
Lord, we pray that you be with us as we stand up and as we speak the truth in this nation
and throughout the world.
We pray that you will give us strength and boldness.
We also pray for safety and peace that we might continue that labor.
All this we pray and ask in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
So in chapter 14, chapter 14 opens, and John is seeing the lamb standing on Mount Zion.
And we’ve got a few people who’ve been in the in the new converts class and been in
Jacob’s class that uh are with us this morning.
So we’ll go through a brief review and catch them up uh on where we are in the book of
Revelation.
When the book opens, John is on the Isle of Patmos on the Lord’s Day.
And he is worshiping, he is, as the text says, he is in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and
he hears a voice behind him, and he turns to see one who is a glorified representation of
Jesus Christ.
And he hears the voice and he sees the person who is Christ, and he sees him in a
glorified state, and he is holding seven stars in his right hand and
He’s surrounded by seven lampstands, and it is the seven stars are the seven churches.
The seven golden lampstands are the messengers of the seven churches.
And John is told to write.
Now, to be clear as we open the very first few verses, John tells us explicitly that the
vision and the revelation that was given to him was shortly to come to pass.
And the things of which he wrote were at hand.
So any interpretation of the book of Revelation that does not first abide by what John
tells us very clearly by inspiration of the Holy Spirit that the things were shortly to
come to pass and were at hand, any interpretation that doesn’t mat match that is wrong.
So
As John writes to those seven churches, as Jesus gives him instruction to do in chapter
two and chapter three, he writes to those seven churches and as he concludes those seven
brief letters to the seven churches, chapter four opens and he sees an open door.
So he sees the open door in heaven, and he the in the implication you’re supposed to
understand is he goes through the door.
He goes into the very throne room of God and he witnesses the glory of God in vision form.
And so he sees the throne.
And he sees the glory of God around the throne.
He sees an emerald rainbow around the throne.
And he sees a sea of glass before the throne.
We’re going get back to that in just a little bit.
He sees a sea of glass and he sees four beasts that are before the throne, and they look
kind of like the four beasts of Ezekiel’s prophecy.
And he sees the four beasts before the throne, and whenever the four beasts are there
before the throne, they praise and glory and offer worship to the one who sits on the
throne.
But he also looks around the throne, and there’s twenty four elders.
And he sees the twenty-four elders sitting on twenty-four thrones with crowns upon their
head.
And whenever the beasts fall down and worship the Lamb, then the elders take their crowns
off, the crowns of victory, Stephanos, and they cast them before the throne, and they
worship the one who sits on the throne.
I think I said the Lamb.
I’m ahead of myself.
Alright, so chapter five opens, and then we see a similar image, except
John looks to the one who’s sitting on the throne, and in his right hand is a little book.
And in the scroll that is, sorry, a scroll, and in the scroll is written within and
without, but it’s sealed up with seven seals.
And so they look through heaven and earth, under the earth, that is, those who are in the
grave, those who are alive, those who are in heaven.
No one is found who’s worthy to open the scroll, to loose the seven seals.
You had to have authority to do that.
Once it had been sealed by the one who sits on the throne.
No one’s found who’s worthy.
John begins to weep, but one comes to John and says, Don’t weep, for we have found one who
is worthy to open the scroll.
And it is the Christ, the Messiah, the Lamb that was slain, the lion of the tribe of Judah
is found, and he’s worthy to open the scroll.
So the Lamb goes and takes the scroll from the one who’s sitting upon the throne, and
again worship commences.
In heaven.
For the elders and the beasts fall down and declare the lamb to be worthy.
They declare him to be God.
So chapter six opens.
And the seals are beginning to be opened by the Lamb, the one who is the lion of the tribe
of Judah.
So he opens the first seal, and it’s a white horse.
And the white horse goes forth and he’s conquering.
And it’s not the Antichrist.
The color white everywhere you find it in the book of Revelation is holy.
It is a picture of Christ and his church, and they’re going forth and they’re conquering.
But when the church and when Christ are being victorious, who opposes that?
Satan does.
The world does.
Jesus made it very clear that not only is it Satan and it is is it Satan and his angels
that we face in this life, but that the world itself is that not the physical world, not
the earth, but the world of the ungodly hate Christ and they hate those who follow him.
And so when the church goes forth and starts conquering, what does it conquer?
It conquers Satan.
It conquers the world.
It conquers darkness.
It conquers that which is evil.
Well, as a result of that, the evil pushes back.
And so the second seal is open and you begin to see persecution coming in the form of war.
Then the third seal is open and you see persecution coming in the form of economic
difficulties.
Then you see the four the
The fourth seal opened, and you see persecution coming in the form of plagues and death
and the grave.
Okay?
There’s a progression of hardship coming in answer to the victory that is that is
beginning in the form of the church.
It’s important to realize in the book of Revelation: everything that you see that’s good
has an evil counterpart.
It it has its opposite in the book.
All right, so fifth seal is open, and the reason why we spend as much time as we do on
these seals is they’re the precursor, they’re the forecast of everything that’s gonna
happen later on in the book.
Fifth seal is open, and you have the saints who are who have been killed for the testimony
of Christ and for the word of the testimony of his name, and they’re under the altar of
the Lord in heaven, and they’re crying out, God, how long are you gonna let this go on?
How long are you going to let the world persecute and kill us?
And they’re told they’re given white robes and they’re told to rest for a little while.
And then the sixth seal is open.
And the sixth seal is open, and the sun turns to darkness, the moon turns to blood, the
sky rolls up like a scroll, the things start falling, persecution begins, the rich, the
mighty, the wealthy, they all run under the mountains and call for the mountains to fall
down on them.
To protect them from the wrath of the Lamb.
And that sixth seal is a forecast of what’s coming in the later chapters.
But it’s visionary language, it’s prophetic Old Testament language about a nation falling.
Okay?
You’re not supposed to look for a point in time in history where the sky rolled up like a
scroll.
You’re not supposed to look for a point in history where the sun went dark and the moon
turned to blood.
You’re supposed to understand what the Old Testament prophets taught their people to
understand, and that is that God can make the world turn against a nation.
So then, before the judgment commences, it’s been forecasted, it’s been prophesied, it’s
been revealed, before it commences, an angel comes forth and says, Wait, wait, wait, don’t
start yet.
We’ve got to mark all of God’s people.
God’s people don’t get judged by God’s judgment on the world.
They got to go through it.
They gotta suffer through it, but they don’t get judged by it.
And so they get the name of God written on their forehead.
Then the seven trumpets commence.
Seven trumpets are seven partial judgments.
We’re gonna get in chapter 15 into the seven bowls, which are seven full judgments, which
correspond to the seven trumpets, which are partial judgments.
So a third of this and that get destroyed in the partial judgments.
A third of men, a third of this, a third of that.
It’s a partial.
Partial judgment, it’s an opportunity for the world that is being judged to repent.
Because they see this partial judgment, they go, you know what?
I gotta fix some things, or I’m going to be judged.
But like many in the days of Israel, they would see the partial judgment and they’d begin
to wonder why God is judging them for all the sins of their fathers.
When they’re so honest and righteous and and guilt free.
So the world doesn’t repent.
At the end of the sixth trumpet, as the seventh is about to commence, there’s another
pause.
And John sees this mighty angel, and he’s got one foot on the land and one foot on the
sea, and he’s got a little book in his hand, and John’s told to go take the little book.
And he’s so told to go consume the little book.
This is again in Ezekiel picture.
And so he takes the little book from the mighty angel and he eats it.
He consumes it.
And it’s the word of God, and it’s sweet in his mouth, but it’s bitter in his belly.
He’s got to tell the Christians that they’re going to survive this, that God’s going to
provide for them through this, but it’s not going to be pleasant.
They’re going to suffer, but they’re going to get through it.
So again, another picture, two witnesses.
As the two witnesses come forth, we see first two olive trees with two golden lampstands,
and the olive trees feed the oil into the lampstands, and the lamp the lights never go
out.
God’s word will never be destroyed.
God’s message will never stop.
God will always have a messenger to deliver his message as long as this world stands.
So God’s
Light never goes out.
But we see another picture of the two witnesses, and the two witnesses are here
represented as two prophets.
They go forth, they speak, and the picture looks like Elijah and Moses.
They go forth and they they do the works of prophets.
They dec they call down fire from heaven.
They they they provide uh the word of God and they declare the word of God, and as long as
they’re declaring the word of God, they can’t be touched.
But then when the prophecy’s finished.
The world goes and kills them.
And they leave them dead in the street for three days and they don’t even bother to bury
them.
They instead throw a party as they rejoice that they don’t have to listen to the word of
God anymore.
Three and a half days later, God resurrects them, brings them up into heaven, and judgment
commences.
The point is this to the church you’re going to tell the world what God has to say.
You’re going to be faithful and God’s going to provide for you, and some of you are going
to die.
But that’s not we we don’t have to wait until chapter 10 and chapter 11 in visionary
language to learn that.
Revelation chapter 2, verse 10.
What does it say?
Yep.
But as you get into the beginning of that, he says, you’re gonna go some of you are gonna
be thrown into prison for ten days.
The number ten has significance in the book of Revelation.
It doesn’t mean ten literal days.
It doesn’t mean you’re gonna spend a week and a half in jail.
He says, some of you are going into prison for a complete amount of time, and some of you
are never coming out.
Be faithful unto, and the Greek means up to and including death, and I will give you a
crown of life.
So here were the two witnesses, they’re faithful.
They pr declare the word of God, they never give in, and they’re killed.
But God says, Don’t worry, I I can conquer death.
I’ve done it before.
So then chapter 12 opens.
In chapter 12, you see a dragon.
The dragon is clearly labeled in chapter 12 as being a representative of Satan.
Okay?
This is a picture of Satan.
Now God is not telling us that Satan, the spiritual being, is a dragon.
Any more than God told us in Genesis that Satan, the spiritual being, was a physical
snake.
Did Satan use a snake?
Yes.
Was Satan a snake?
No.
Okay?
Now, in chapter 12, you have the dragon.
And he looks like the Roman government.
He’s got seven heads and ten horns.
And he looks like Daniel’s prophecy of the indescribable beast in Daniel chapter 7.
Okay?
So this dragon comes forth.
Pictured as Rome at the behest of Satan.
And what is Rome trying to do first?
Tries to kill the baby.
The woman is giving birth.
She gives birth, and the woman’s representative of God’s people.
She gives birth to the the Messiah, tries to kill him when he babies when he’s a baby,
fails.
God takes the Messiah up into heaven, Satan loses.
So then Satan goes up into heaven, tries to make war in heaven, loses, cast back down to
the earth.
So then Satan tries to make war with the woman, but God takes her and causes her to
escape, tries to make war with the people, the descendants of the woman, the children of
the woman, God’s people, fails again.
So Satan decides to imbue his power over to governmental authorities.
And so in chapter 13, you have the sea beast and the land beast.
These are just more pictures of Rome.
In its persecuting power.
You have Rome in the picture of the sea beast as the emperor and the kings of Rome.
Then you have the land beast representative of the Concilia and the high priests of Rome
that would declare either you fall down and worship Caesar or you don’t get to do
business.
You fall down and worship Caesar and you declare him to be Lord or you die.
And so they offered an alternative.
You can either take part in the economy, you can take part in living, or you can choose to
hold fast to Jesus Christ as the only God, the only Lord, the only Savior.
You choose.
So either you give up what you believe and you follow and declare Caesar to be God, or
we’ll kill you.
And God says.
Hold on a minute.
Let me show you this picture.
Chapter 14 opens up, and John sees the lamb, and he’s standing on Mount Zion, and he’s
victorious.
And the people who are with him, the 144,000 who’ve been marked back in chapter 7, they’re
not dead.
They’re not being killed.
They’re not bruised and beaten and bloodied by the dragon or the sea beast or the land
beast.
They’re not just nigh unto death.
No, they’re singing.
And they’re rejoicing.
And as chapter 14 concludes, you have God sending an angel, and the angel preaches to all
the nations in all the planet and gives them the gospel.
But when God sends forth his word, there is a hope and a salvation that goes along with
it.
But there’s also a promise of judgment.
There’s never been a righteous preacher of the Lord that declared hope and salvation and
no potential for judgment.
Not one.
Go find one anywhere in Scripture.
You can’t find one.
You can find ones that offer judgment and no hope of salvation.
Because of the state of the world and the state of the people they were preaching to.
But you can’t find any that offer hope and salvation and no promise of judgment.
So God’s word always goes forth with both the opportunity for salvation and the assurance
that if you defy the Lord, if you determine to continue worshiping idols, if you continue
to
Continue worshiping Caesar as God and Satan and his authority, then guess what?
You’re going to be judged.
And so, chapter 14, second angel goes forth, and he announces Babylon is fallen, is
fallen.
This is an Isaiah prophecy coming in an Old Testament picture of Babylon, the persecuting
nation that overthrew Judah and took Judah into captivity, that was God’s tool to bring.
Judah to bear, but was also in that sense, it was the persecuting power of world
government.
And God says, I’m going to announce the end of Babylon before it ever gets started.
And He does the same thing here in the form of Rome.
Then the third angel followed with a loud voice, verse 9 of chapter 14: If anyone worships
the beast.
And his image, and receives his mark on his forehead or on his hand, he himself shall also
drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out full strength into the cup of
his indignation.
He shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in
the presence of the Lamb, and the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever, that
they may have no rest, day or night, who worship the beast and his image, and whoever
receives the mark of his name, and the third angel makes it clear.
You had your warning.
You’ve had the gospel preached to you.
You’ve had your warning in the form of the first trumpet judgments, the partial judgments.
You didn’t heed them.
You didn’t repent.
So now the full wrath of God is going to be poured out on Rome.
You say, Aaron, how do you know this isn’t this isn’t the UN?
How do you how do you know this isn’t uh this isn’t
This isn’t China?
How how how do you know this isn’t Russia?
How how do you know this isn’t something that’s gonna happen four thousand years from now?
Well the answer to that’s easy.
Turn to Revelation chapter one.
Verse one, the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants, things
which must shortly take place.
And he sent and signified it by his angel to his servant John, who bore witness to the
word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, to all the things that he saw.
Blessed is he who reads and who hears the words of this prophecy, and keeps these things
which are written in it, for the time is near.
Back when Daniel was prophesying in the Old Testament, around, probably around 538, 539
BC, Daniel receives a prophecy.
And God tells him, here’s the prophecy, here’s the vision.
Now shut up the book.
The time’s not yet.
Now that prophecy was going to be about the time of the Roman emperors and the church.
And God says, you know what?
It’s a long way off.
It’s 600 years from now.
Shut up the book.
Seal it up.
Time’s not yet.
John opens his book with the time is at hand.
So I know we’re not talking about China, and I know we’re not talking about Russia, and I
know we’re not talking about the UN, we’re not talking about the US, we’re not talking
about Israel, we’re not talking about the Middle East, we’re not talking about some global
war happening someday in the future after we’re a multiplanetary species.
No, we’re not talking about any of that.
We’re talking about Christians.
in the first century who were faithful to God who in the first, second, and third century
were persecuted by a nation who made it governmental policy to kill Christians.
And God said, Don’t worry, I know what they’re going to do, and I’m going to deal with
them.
The same way God told Israel, faithful Israel, in the days of Isaiah and Jeremiah and
Daniel and Ezekiel, I know what Satan’s doing to you.
And I know what he’s going to do to you.
And you better believe I have reserved a remnant of
That will exit the other side of this persecution and they will be glorious.
And they will the enemies of God will not win.
So, verse 14.
Chapter 14, that I looked, and behold a white cloud, and on the white cloud sat one like
the Son of Man, having his head on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp
sickle.
And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to him who sat on the
cloud, Thrust in your sickle and reap, for the time has come for you to reap, for the
harvest of the earth is ripe.
He who sits on the cloud thrust in his sickle on the earth and the earth was reaped.
The picture here is an agricultural picture of reaping a field, but the one who sits on
the cloud is the one who sits on the horse, one who’s victorious, the one who rules from
his throne, it’s Christ.
And he’s going to reap, he’s going to win.
God’s judgment’s going to be poured out, and God is told, start.
Commence the judgment.
Now, this isn’t the final judgment.
How is Christ going to return when this world ends?
Everything that we know in this existence is going to end.
And it’s going to happen and every eye is going to see it.
And it’s going to happen, and those who are dead in Christ will meet the Lord.
And those who are alive in Christ will meet the Lord.
And the preceding events that will occur will not occur on this earth.
Because Peter made it clear: everything that’s in this physical existence, everything that
God made, is going to be burned up, very elements of it.
Scripture is incredibly clear about what’s going to happen on the last day.
Not gonna be a harvest.
So the one who sits on the cloud thrusts in his sickle and reaps.
Then another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven, he also having a sharp
sickle, and another angel came out from the altar who had power over the fire, and he
cried with a loud cry to him who had the sharp sickle, saying, Thrust in your sharp sickle
and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, for her grapes are fully ripe.
So the angel thrust his sickle into the earth.
And gathered the vine of the earth and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of
God.
And the wine press was trampled outside the city, and blood came out of the winepress up
to the horses’ bridles for one thousand six hundred furlongs.
Here’s the picture.
The first one is of a harvest.
The second one is of gathering in the grapes.
And the first picture
The harvest of the earth is reaped.
The second picture, the grapes of the vineyard are taken and they’re cast into the wine
press.
Where’s the wine press?
Outside the city.
Uh a sickle is a really long pole with a sharp staff on the end, an angled staff on the
end, and they would sweep it through the uh through the field and it would cut down a
whole section of hay all at one time.
Okay?
So a sharp blade.
So as we’re looking at this picture, a couple of things to hold in in mind.
Number one, the wine press.
That has the grapes put in it gets trampled where?
Outside the city.
When the thing that flows out of the wine press flows out, what are we told that the thing
that flowed out was?
Blood.
So, first question, number one.
Was it physical grapes that got put in?
No.
Question number two.
Was it a physical wine press they got put into?
No.
Question number three.
Is there enough blood in all of the world to flow one thousand six hundred furlongs up to
the bridles height of a horse?
The answer’s no.
There’s not enough human blood in the entire planet with the number of people that we have
on the planet to produce enough blood to fill 1,600 furlongs up to the horse’s bridle in
blood.
So you want to know what the premillennialists do?
Well, they say, well, this is uh this this is this is blood and bodies and bones.
No, it’s not not if you’re gonna take this passage honestly.
In the sense of physically literal
Yes, nearly two hundred miles.
So you’re talking about enough blood to be a river up to the bridle of a horse for two
hundred miles.
And the premillennialists, the dispensational premillennialists will be accurate, will
say, Well that’s gonna happen and then the army’s gonna show up.
Really?
What’s the picture?
Well we started with a picture with the announcement of the angels of a fire, a lake of
fire that’ll never go out.
Then we transition to a reaping of a harvest that was the entire earth.
Then we transition to a picture of the graves of the wrath of God being tread out and a
river of blood coming forth.
It’s just three pictures of the same thing.
When God’s judgment commences, there’s not a nation that gets to withstand God.
Then I saw another sign, chapter 15, verse 1.
Then I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvelous, seven angels having the seven last
plagues.
For in them the wrath of God is complete.
You saw three short visionary pictures of God’s wrath being brought on the world, and now
you’re seeing an e elongated picture of God’s wrath being brought on the world in the form
of seven bowls with seven plagues.
Okay, so chapter fifteen and sixteen.
Is just a longer version of the end of chapter fourteen.
So then I saw another sign.
In heaven, great and marvelous, seven angels, having seven last plagues, for in them the
wrath of God is complete.
And I saw something like a sea of glass mingled with fire, and those who have the victory
over the beast, over his image, and over his mark, and over the number of his name,
standing on the sea of glass, having harps of God.
Now, where was the last time we saw?
A sea of glass.
It was before the throne of God.
Now here’s the picture.
God’s judgment’s going to come.
God’s judgment’s going to commence.
God’s judgment is going to cause the nation that is persecuting God’s people to be judged.
And as the judgment commences, John sees the sea of glass that’s before the throne.
But it’s not a sea, just a sea anymore, is it?
It’s gone from being a still quiet almost reflective C to a C mingled with what?
Fire.
Now the picture of the sea of glass, the picture of of this from the very beginning is an
old testament tabernacle picture.
In the Old Testament, when God had Israel build the tabernacle, they built the altar, they
built the tabernacle, they built the Ark of the Covenant, and they also built the brazen
laver.
It was a great big washing pool that was lifted up high above the people.
And the labor sat between the altar and the holy place.
And the priest who offered the offering on the altar could not proceed into the tabernacle
of God unless they first washed in the labor.
Here they are on the
Offering the sacrifices at the altar.
And you might think there’s no place closer to God than when you’re offering the
sacrifices at the altar.
And God tells us, no, that’s not true.
Because if you want to come into my presence having offered the sacrifice, you’ve got to
wash as a priest in the labor.
So in order to approach the throne of God, you’ve got to go through the pool of water.
Okay?
These are all pictures, by the way, of salvation in the church in the form of baptism.
But in the figurative view, the visionary view,
In order for the Christians, those who have been faithful, those who have been persecuted,
those who have been told by Rome you either agree to wear the number of the beast and put
his number on your hand and put it on your forehead and pr profess allegiance to him, you
either agree to that or will kill you.
John sees those who said, You can kill me, but I’ll never do that.
And they’ve been sacrificed.
And they’ve been washed not just with water, but with fire.
They’ve gone through the process of refining.
They’ve gone through the process of being washed and suffering and coming out overcomers.
who are now closer and closer to the very presence of God.
They’ve gone through the sea of glass mingled with fire.
And what does Peter tell us happens to the faith of those who go through the fire?
He says it’s purified.
It’s made more precious.
It’s not destroyed.
It’s not consumed.
It’s not burnt up.
It’s made more holy.
The picture here is of Christians who’ve not only been saved, they’ve been saved, and then
they’ve suffered persecution to the point that there is nothing separating them from the
Lord.
And they stand in the presence of God.
And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb.
Now, Moses has two songs recorded in the Old Testament, and technically, I guess, three,
because there’s one in Psalms, but primarily the focus is of the two.
One is in Exodus 15, the other is in Deuteronomy 32.
Both of them convey the same message.
Both of them are a declaration to God.
That God has unsheathed his sword and conquered his enemies in the form of Egypt and then
through the wilderness.
And so the song of Moses represents a song of those who have overcome persecution and been
saved by God judging his enemies.
But this isn’t just the song of Moses, is it?
They sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb.
These are the Christians who can sing a song like Moses, but they’re Christians.
They’re not Israelites, they’re not followers of the old law.
They’re Christians.
And they sing the song of the Lamb.
And here’s what they say Great and marvelous are your works, Lord God Almighty.
Just and true are your ways, O King of the saints.
Who shall not fear you, O Lord, and glorify your name for you alone are holy, for all
nations shall come and worship before you?
As they offer this song of praise, they make it clear, God, you vindicated yourself.
Not so long ago, the Christians who were overcome in the form of they were killed for the
testimony of Christ because they wouldn’t give up Christ, they would not pledge allegiance
to the Lamb.
Not so long ago, they were under the altar crying, How long, Lord?
Now they’ve gone from under the altar, follow it.
They’ve gone through the fire, and now they’re before the throne.
And they’re saying, God, you vindicated yourself for you allowed your wrath to come full
force on the people who were killing your servants.
me get ahead here.
Alright.
So then verse five.
For your judgments have been manifested.
After these things I looked, and behold, the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in
heaven was opened.
And out of the temple came the seven angels, having the seven plagues clothed in pure
bright linen, and having their chest girded with golden bands.
Then one of the four living creatures gave to the seven angels seven golden bowls full of
the wrath of God who lives forever and ever.
The temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power, and no one was
able to enter the temple till the seven plagues of the seven angels were completed.
John looks in the vision, and the temple tabernacle in heaven is open.
The very throne room of God, the very presence of God is open, and out of it proceed seven
angels, and they’re about to deliver God’s wrath upon this nation that has a allied itself
with Satan, that has embodied the very desires of Satan to destroy God’s people.
And they’re going to be handed the seven bowls.
You can almost watch the the procession in your mind.
They’re coming out.
Here you go.
Here’s judgment one.
Here’s plague one.
Here’s plague two.
Here’s plague three.
Here’s plague four.
This is all Exodus pictures, right?
This is the picture of God judging Egypt.
This is
One plague after another plague after another plague after another plague.
But it’s in visionary heavenly imagery.
As if you were to go back to the book of Exodus and as you find there’s Moses, and there’s
Aaron, and they show up before Pharaoh.
And they say, Pharaoh, let God’s people go.
And Pharaoh says, Who is this God that I should listen to him?
And so the first thing that they do is demonstrate there from the Lord Moses casts down
Aaron’s rod and it turns into a snake.
Well then the magicians come along and they say, we can do that.
They cast down their rod, turns turns into a snake.
Then Aaron’s rod eats all of their rods.
See, you can do things that look like you’re from God, but God always wins.
And so then the plagues begin.
And if you were to picture this in your mind, every time Moses and Aaron are showing up
before Pharaoh, imagine an angel, a spiritual being preparing the plague.
And the option of whether the plague is poured out on Egypt or not is based upon what does
Pharaoh say?
So Moses and Aaron show up before Pharaoh and they tell him, God says, let my people go.
And Pharaoh says, no.
And in heaven, as it were, visionary language, the commencement order is given to the
angel holding the plague, saying, Let it go.
And the Nile River turns to blood.
It doesn’t turn red because of a bunch of leaves upriver that happen to make it look like
blood.
No.
The Nile River turns to blood.
By the way, is there enough blood in all the earth to fill the Nile River?
No
But the same God who can take water and make it wine can take water and make it blood.
And so the second angel prepares the second plague.
And Moses and Aaron are told, go back before Pharaoh and tell them again, let my people
go.
And Pharaoh says, no.
And the second angel’s told, let it go.
There’s your picture.
We’re going to see that in chapter sixteen.
This is an Old Testament picture of an Old Testament nation being judged.
But it’s Rome and it’s a judgment that is a final judgment from God.
We’ll get into chapter sixteen next week.