In the middle of the book here. Revelation chapter 10. You know one of the things that we value most as Americans is our autonomy. And that is that, you know, I get to do what I want to do. You even see this with people who just don't think they have to follow anybody's instructions about anything. So, like, rules of the road, those are just suggestions, right? Like, if I don't feel like stopping at a stop sign, I shouldn't have to stop, or if I don't feel like, you know, driving that speed, I shouldn't have to do that.
I have not exactly a relative, but I know of a situation where one of my relatives had... so it's a relative through marriage... had a family member, and this family member was a young woman and she got a job in the summer working in a resort. And at this resort, she was hired to do housekeeping. So she's, you know, making up the rooms and stuff at this hotel. And so the boss noticed that the bathrooms were never getting cleaned. She would make the beds and vacuum the floors, and he said, "You know, I really need to retrain you on cleaning the toilets." And she said, "No, no, I don't do that." And he said, "What do you mean?" She said, "I don't clean toilets." He's like, "Yes, you do. That's your job, okay?" And she looked at him and used several colorful words and told him what to do, et cetera. And he looked at her and he said, "You don't understand, this is a small town. You're fired, and you're leaving town." She said, "You can't do that." He said, "Oh, yeah?" And he gets on the phone, he calls the sheriff, who was like his brother-in-law or something. And the sheriff comes and says, "You have to leave town. You've been fired and you have to leave town. You have no reason to be here." And she said, "You can't do that." He said, "Okay, then turn around, I'll put you in cuffs, and then you'll have a place to stay for the night." And she ended up being kicked out of the town, and all because, you know, she was too good to clean toilets. She thought, "The boss can't tell me what to do, right? I can't do that kind of thing." I didn't know that was, you know, but she knew that was part of the job; she just decided she wasn't going to do that part.
And there are a lot of people that think that way. If there's something that I... and we're not talking about moral issues. If the boss tells you to do something God tells you not to do, you obey God rather than man. Okay, that's clear. But we value our autonomy. But in the scriptures, what we find here and what we're going to find in this passage is many servants of the Lord. You know, ultimately, as Christians, okay, I'm thankful I live in a free country and I do agree that I don't want the government to have too much overreach and those sorts of things, but on the other hand, I do recognize I have to obey God. I am a servant of God. That I'm not ultimately autonomous. God is my Lord. He is the one that I serve. I don't determine where my life goes. God does. And we're going to see John recognizing that very clearly in this passage.
Revelation chapter 10, verse 1. "And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven." Another. Well, when did we see a mighty angel? If you look at chapter 5, turn back to chapter 5 for a minute. Verse 2, "And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the book and to loose the seals thereof?" So we see in the throne room of God in chapter 5, this book, sealed with seven seals, and only the Lion of the tribe of Judah, Jesus, is worthy to open the book. Now, we get to chapter 10, and we see another mighty angel. Okay, so this isn't the same one from chapter 5, but it's another angel like that. And where does he come from? "Come down from heaven." This seems to indicate to us that this is a holy angel, right? This isn't a fallen angel. This isn't a demon. This is a holy angel sent from God, "clothed with a cloud." That sounds comfortable, but I don't think that's the point. Okay. In other passages of scripture, clouds are usually used in reference to judgment. When Jesus comes in the clouds, what's he coming to do? To judge. And that's true in Daniel, it's true in Revelation, it's true in Matthew 24 in the Olivet Discourse. And so when we see a cloud in a symbolic kind of setting like this, what it is indicating is judgment is coming. Okay? And so the idea is he's going to declare some kind of judgment, which we wouldn't be surprised at at this point in Revelation.
"And a rainbow was upon his head." A rainbow was upon his head. Now, we saw a rainbow before, but it was a green one. Here, this rainbow, in fact, the Greek word for rainbow is the word we get the word "iris" from. Okay, so like the iris in our eye, it's the Greek word for rainbow. And the idea is what we're used to a rainbow, you know, the various separating of the colors, you know, from red to violet. And you have that symbol here upon his head. Now we have to ask this, what is a rainbow a symbol of in scripture? Deliverance, and a promise, right? So he's coming simultaneously to bring judgment, but also, there's good news in what he's doing. Why did God give the rainbow to Noah? Because he promised him, "This is going to be the sign that I will never destroy the earth with water again. I'm never going to flood the earth and wipe out the whole earth with water again," and the rainbow was the sign of that. And I know we're living in a day and age where rainbows are everywhere this month of the year, and they're being used by the world to mean other things, okay? Somehow Judy Garland's "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" became a symbol. I'm not joking. That's where that came from, if I understand it right. You know, if you saw The Wizard of Oz as a child, that became the symbol that the LGBT group eventually said, "Hey, this is going to be our symbol," based on the idea that, you know, somewhere over the rainbow we'll be accepted and this sort of thing. And it was really common in the mid-20th century for gay men to attend Judy Garland concerts, and they'd sit right in the front row and cheer when she'd sing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," and then it became the symbol for that.
But in the Bible, the rainbow is the symbol of God's deliverance of Noah and the promise that he would never destroy the earth that way again. So the rainbow has a meaning. We shouldn't get upset with rainbows. We should be upset with the rainbow being used for wrong meanings. Okay? And so what we see here is the rainbow is a picture of God's deliverance.
"And his face was as it were the sun, and his feet, as pillars of fire." Okay, so obviously his face is very bright, and then his feet are as pillars of fire. When do we see pillars of fire in scripture again? Remember? In Revelation, we're saying, "Go back to the Old Testament. This will help us know some of the meanings." There is a pillar of fire, right? In the Old Testament, the pillar of fire leads the children of Israel in the wilderness. We see that in Exodus. And so what we find here is this is a picture of God's protection. So this angel simultaneously represents God's protection as well as God's incoming judgment. And what is he holding? Now, he's a really big angel, we're going to see from this. Okay, This is not your normal kind of... he's not man-sized, like maybe Gabriel or something like that when he appears to Mary and tells her she's going to give birth to Christ. "And in his hand, a little book opened, and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth." On the Earth means on the land. All right, so he's pretty big. He stands with one foot on an ocean, and the other foot on dry land. So he's obviously really big, right? So I think this is to indicate his power, but it's also indicating where the authority of this book is going to apply: to both land and sea. In other words, it applies everywhere. That's the point of it, okay? So in the symbolism, it applies everywhere.
And in his hand, maybe in his left, he has a little book. So this is a small book. It's not that book we saw in chapter 5 that has seven seals. It's written on both sides. That's a big book. This is a little book, and this one's open. It's not sealed. All right, but what we learned was that the book in chapter 5 was the prophecy that we were going to see going forward of the seal judgments. Now we're going to see this book is going to be described for us. "And he cried with a loud voice as when a lion roareth." This word for a lion's roar can also be used in Greek for the noise that an ox would make. So the idea is this is the sound of an animal. But obviously a lion sounds different than an ox. But the idea is a very strong voice. He's crying with a very loud voice. I don't know if you've ever heard a lion roar, other than like, on a film. I was at a zoo one time and there was a lion at the zoo, and he roared, for whatever reason, he decided to roar that day. It was loud. It was a lot louder than I thought a lion roar would be. And so I could see where you're in the savannas of Africa somewhere, and the lion roars, you're going to know. Like, that goes a really long way. That sound goes a really long way.
So he has a strong voice, "and when he had cried, seven thunders uttered their voices." After he cries out, then there are seven thunders in the sky whose sound goes forth. "And when the seven thunders had uttered their voices, I was about to write." So evidently, these seven thunders had something to say. This wasn't just a rumble of thunder in the distance. This was a message from God. And John is about to do what? He's been told to do what so far in this book? "You're going to see a vision, and I want you to write these things down. Tell people what this is about." And so what he does is he hears these seven voices from the thunders, "and I was about to write, and I heard a voice from heaven." So where's that authority coming from? God. "saying unto me, Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not." In other words, don't write that down. Don't write that part down.
This is one of the things we need to understand, as well. We have the Word of God that God has given to us. He's given it to us because he is communicating to us. He loved us, and he wanted to tell us about the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ, about his faithfulness in the past to past believers, and what he says is going to happen in the future. There are many reasons that he's written things down. Ultimately, it all revolves around the revelation of Jesus Christ, right? And He's given us this. This, I think, is an important point to understand. The Bible is not here to confuse us. It's here to reveal God to us. So we need to be careful of overly complex approaches to scripture. I remember hearing a sermon one time and the man said, "Well, the number 12 was in the sermon." He said, "Well, the number 12 is the number of the 12 tribes." That's true. "And of the 12 Apostles." That's true. He said, "Well, if you factor the number 12, it's the numbers three and four. And the number four is the number of family." And I thought, where'd you get that? I don't know where the Bible says that. "And the number three is the number of the Trinity, and so therefore the number 12 is the family of God." And I'm like, you made that up. Like, the Bible never says... started doing math. What about the square roots? You know, what about, what if we did it in base two? or something? You know what I mean? I can do all kinds of math. I could come up with nearly anything if you let me do the math. You know, you can find all kinds of... just start assigning numbers to the letters, do all kinds of mathematics. We could just do some calculus and make things up. That's not what we're supposed to do when we approach scripture. Is there symbolism? We've already seen it. Absolutely. Is the symbolism intended for us to... only for clever people to know what the Bible is saying? No. Okay, it's there for God to reveal Himself to us.
On the other hand, though, what this verse is telling us is there are some things that God has said only to certain people. And there are some things that only God knows that He has not told us. And those things belong to the Lord. And that's okay. There are sometimes... there are Christians out there that... and beware of this, if you run into a Christian teacher or leader, and he says that he's the only one that has the truth, he's a false teacher. Okay. And sometimes they... "John, I have the secret of whatever." Any Christian book that says "the secret of," it shouldn't be a secret because it's right here. Okay, so if it's the secret of something, that sounds exciting to me. "Oh, I'll learn the secret." Well, it's not a secret, God put it in His word. But there are some things God doesn't need us to know, doesn't intend for us to know. He told us what he wants us to know, but there are some things He doesn't want us to know. At least not yet. And that's okay. We could see, that's part of our recognizing God's God, and we're not. Because there are some things he knows that I might never know. There are some things he knows that right now I don't know. There are some things God knows that will become evident later, but they're not evident yet. And that's all right. That's God being God.
And so that doesn't mean we're not to be curious and try to find truth, but we have to be careful that we don't, especially be careful that we don't try to find this truth in a way that God has forbidden us from doing. Okay? By one, disregarding his authority in Scripture, and two, by doing things, for example, there are lots of people who try to find information, you know, in other ways that are illegitimate. What do I mean by that? Fortune tellers, psychics, all that kind of thing. People that say they can tell you what the future's gonna be, specific future events. Something's in scripture, you ask, but, like in your life, you want to know what's gonna happen, et cetera. People go to fortune tellers and psychics to find these things out. You're trying to go around God to learn it, which indicates that you don't understand God's authority. Okay. And so what we see here is, a message is given for John, but it's not for us, so he didn't write it down. And we can understand this, I hope, that there are times that God spoke to the prophets and what he inspired them to write, what was inspired by God, is written down, but the things that were just messages just for them, or just for that commonplace, are not preserved for us. All right, so the scriptures are more than just the things God has said. It's what God has said and intended for us to know too. I mean, what did God tell Adam when he talked with him in the garden in the cool of the day? We don't know what they said, do we? We know they did talk, but we don't know what they said. And so that's okay, though. We don't need to know that. That's not information God needed to share with us. The things he wanted us to know we have here.
This is important. "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be thoroughly furnished unto all good works," may be mature, thoroughly furnished, unto all good works. That is why, why is the Bible given to us? It's given to us for four reasons there, right? Two negative, two positive. It's given by inspiration of God. It's given to us for instruction. That is, what you should know. For correction, all right? What you shouldn't believe. And so you have, for reproof, what you shouldn't do. So you have what you should know and what you shouldn't believe, what you should do and what you shouldn't do. The scriptures tell us those things, as Christians. It doesn't tell us everything you have to know, okay? It's not going to tell you how to, you know, rotate the tires on your car. That's not what the point of it is. It's not necessarily going to tell you how to, you know, format a hard drive on your computer or something like that. That's not the point of the scriptures. What it is going to tell you, though, is the things you need to know spiritually and believe, what you need to avoid spiritually, what you need to do spiritually in your obedience to God, what you need to avoid doing. Those four things are all in scripture, and that you can be perfect. What does that perfect mean? Mature. Unto all good works. Everything you need spiritually is right here.
That's a really important point because nobody believes that. In other words, the people that write the books that say "the spiritual secret of whatever" are saying, "No, no, no, it's not all right here. I wrote it in the book that you need to know." And there are some people out there, "Well, we need the Bible, plus we need, you know, we need the Bible, plus we need some other information to be mature Christians." And, you know, the problem is that we must never undermine the sufficiency of Scripture. That the sufficiency of Scripture doesn't mean that we can't know other things that the Bible doesn't talk about. But it does mean that we don't, in order to be mature Christians, we don't need more than what the Bible has said, if that makes sense. And that's important.
Verse 5, "And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever and ever." So he takes an oath. All right? He takes an oath before God, the one who lives forever and ever. Who's the one who lives forever and ever? God is the only one who's not bound by time. He didn't have a beginning, he doesn't have an ending. We all had a beginning. And we're in the flow of time. So here's God who's... And also, this is implying that God's existence is not derivative of something outside himself. You exist because God is your creator. God doesn't exist because anyone made him. I remember when I was a boy asking in Sunday school, "Who made God?" Okay, God made us, who made God? And one of my Sunday school teachers said, "Well, God made himself." That's not the best way to answer that. "He was never made," would be the better answer. Okay, I don't know how you make yourself. "I don't exist. Let me make myself." That would be difficult to do. The whole idea is that he lives forever. He's eternal. "Who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth..." so the sky and what we would call space, all the things there, "...and the earth, the land, and all the things that are therein..." everything on dry ground, "...and the sea, and the things which are therein..." the oceans and the seas. So who is he taking this oath by? By the Lord, by God. Who, one, doesn't have a start, he doesn't have an end, and he's the one who made everything that does have a start. All right, everything else was created. The Earth, the stars, the sun, the moon, human beings, animals, water, the elements, all those things are made by God. So this is teaching a creator-creature distinction. There's a distinction, eternally, between the creator who made everything, and the creatures, the created things. And we're the creatures. There are sometimes Christians who will say, "Well, when we get to heaven, we'll be gods." They're false teachers, but the Bible never says that we're going to be God when we get to heaven. That's pantheism, the idea that, you know, we just become part of God. We just get absorbed into God, and everything is God. And that's pantheism, that's not biblical. No, we will be God's servants. We are his servants now, and we'll be his servants then.
And what does he say? What does this angel say? He swears by the Lord, by God, "that there should be time no longer." All right? Now, I want to suggest another translation of the word "time" there. It's the Greek word chronos, from which we get the word, like chronograph, a stopwatch, or chronology, like a calendar. But if you think about it, in English, we use the word "time" in multiple ways. "What time does the service start?" right? I'm asking you, on the clock, what time should I be there? Okay? On the other hand, I might say, "How much time does it take?" And then I'm asking for duration, not a specific start time. And then third, I could say, "How many times have you been to Four Rivers for lunch?" And I'm not asking the time of day. You don't say, "Well, it was 2 p.m., and it was 1:30, and it was 12:30." That's not what I'm asking. I'm asking, how many times have you been there? Some of you would say, "I've never been there," so it would be zero. Some of you would say, "I've only been there once." Others would say, "Give me a second. I should have brought this with me... more." All right. Others would say, "I've been there many, many times." But the point is, that's three different ways to use the word "time." So I want to contend that the word "time" here, he's not saying that at this point in the book of Revelation, like, there's no time, eternity has begun. What he's saying is this word can also mean delay. Like, span of time. So let's translate it this way, "that there should be no delay any longer." That there should no longer be delay. In other words, there's no span of time to fit in here anymore. This is going to happen now, okay? I think that's the better translation. That's the better idea of it.
"But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound..." All right, so remember we're getting to the seventh trumpet of the trumpet judgments. There were seven seal judgments, the seventh seal judgment was the seven trumpets. And now we're coming to the seventh trumpet judgment. And there were two visions of heaven right before the seven trumpet judgments started, or right before the seventh seal. And here we're going to see visions in heaven of an angel and those kinds of things, or visions, at least, of John seeing something happen other than judgment, and we're going to see chapter 10 and 11 having this right here at the seventh trumpet judgment. "But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel," so when the seventh trumpet sounds, "when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets." All right? Mystery in the scriptures does not mean "whodunnit." When we say mystery, we often mean, you know, Agatha Christie, or something like that. That's not what this means. A mystery is something that you can't know unless God tells you. It's something God knows, but he hasn't revealed to you, and then when he reveals it, you know it. Now you know the mystery, okay? And so the mystery of God should be finished as he has declared to his servants the prophets.
Now, that word "servant" there is the Greek word doulos, and it's the word that everywhere in scripture has the idea of a bondservant. Somebody we would often translate as "slave." The challenge with "slave" is that, you know, there's a lot of different kinds of slavery in the world. And so I'm not saying "slave" is a bad translation of it, but you have to understand this is someone who is under authority and what this is saying is, when God commissioned a prophet to go speak, who was that prophet? What was that prophet supposed to say? Only what God said. Where was he supposed to go? Where God told him to go. What happens when Jonah doesn't go where God tells him? God makes sure he gets back there. Right? He gets on a boat, he goes the opposite way, and the Lord sends a storm. The sailors throw him overboard when Jonah says, "The only way to save your lives is to throw me overboard." He gets thrown overboard. God prepares a great fish, the great fish swallows Jonah, spits him up on dry land. Now you have a chance to walk back to where God told you to go. All right? The fish actually rescues him, because if you read the poem, he's going down in the deep and the weeds are wrapping around his head, and the fish rescues him and brings him to dry land. Now you can do what God told you. Okay? A prophet goes where God tells them and says what God tells them to say. They're not their own lord; they have a Lord. They're servants, they're slaves of the Lord.
Who did God, who has God revealed this mystery to? "To his servants the prophets." Now, the book of Revelation is very dependent on a lot of the Old Testament prophets. Ezekiel, Daniel, Zechariah, there are a lot of references. Even Jeremiah and other passages, there are lots of references to Old Testament prophets.
Verse 8, "And the voice which I heard from heaven spake unto me again, and said, Go and take the little book which is open in the hand of the angel which standeth upon the sea and upon the earth." Now, who's going to go take this book? This isn't one that only one is worthy to go get. If someone has to be worthy to open the book with the seven seals, and only the Lion of the tribe of Judah is worthy. Now, here, this little book is prepared specifically for John. It's God's commissioning for him. So he goes over to this big angel, and I went to the angel, and said unto him, "Give me the little book." And he said unto me, "Take it, and eat it up; and it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey." So he says, "You know what I want you to do? I want you to go get that book and eat it." That's an unusual commandment. Okay, we don't serve books for dinner at our house. We read them, we have them on shelves, but we don't generally eat them. Eating them is a little unusual. Okay, but he's commanded to eat the book.
This is more than just symbolism. Eating something in Hebrew, the expression in Hebrew, has the idea of internalizing it. Like you might say about somebody, "He is a reader. She is a reader. They just devour books." If you think when I tell you that that person eats books, you're misunderstanding. What you should be understanding is they read lots of books, and they love reading books and learning from books. Okay? That's the point here. Now, John is going to literally eat it because it symbolizes something here, but the point is, John is to take this message and internalize it. This isn't just something that he's... you know, he's not just bored. "Let me read this message to you." Do you remember this in school? Maybe some of you who were in school remember this. There'd be announcements in the morning. Sometimes they'd have one of the students deliver them. Sometimes it would be a teacher or principal to read it, but sometimes they'd get on the PA system and a student would get on. "Today's lunch is grilled cheese and tomato soup," you know, "and today you have to be sure that if you're wanting to buy school pictures that you get your forms in," and you know, you make all those school announcements, and a lot of times that student was not very interested. It was just like, it came up in the rotation and it was their turn to read the announcements. And they just kind of read them unenthusiastically. They did not internalize them. They weren't like, "Today we're having my favorite, grilled cheese, and our school cook makes the greatest grilled cheese in Florida!" They don't do it that way. Why? Because they didn't internalize the message.
Here, John is to internalize the message, but here's the message: it tastes sweet when you eat it, but when it gets down in your stomach, it's bitter. You don't feel so good if you ate it. All right, it's got two aspects to it, a sweetness. Why is it sweet? Because God is going to be announcing how he's going to prepare the earth for the coming of Christ. So there are sweet aspects to this message. Jesus is coming again, and God is preparing the earth for that. But on the other hand, there are aspects of this message that are difficult and bitter. I don't think the bitter part is that John is worried that Satan's going to be judged or the antichrist is going to be judged. That's not the bitter part. The bitter part is, look at all these believers who are going to be oppressed. Look at all the terrible things that are going to happen. Look at how in this message, we're going to see, you know, we haven't gotten to it yet, but we're getting to it pretty soon. You know, we're going to get to chapters that are all about the antichrist and Satan and these kinds of things. Those are bitter chapters. But there's sweetness to the message too.
You know, sometimes this happens, even with the gospel message, just to draw a parallel here. This isn't talking about specifically the gospel, although the return of Christ is obviously part of the Gospel message. But it has the idea of... you know, when we give someone the gospel, there is a part of it that people don't like to hear, right? I mean, when you say, "God loves you," people love to hear that. "Oh, that's great. God loves me." But the Gospel says more than just that. The Gospel says, "You're a sinner." People don't like to hear that. And I put myself wholeheartedly in this category. It's not me as a preacher getting up here and saying, "Well, I'm not a sinner, but a bunch of you are. You didn't put your shopping cart back at Walmart. I saw it." Whatever. No, no. Sin's even more significant than something like that. Although there could be a sin in that if you're just being selfish, you expect somebody else to do things for you. But the fact is that the Bible tells us that we're all sinners. We've all rebelled against God, we've all fallen short of the glory that we're to give God, and we're all sinners. We've all sinned. We've all broken God's good law. We're all sinners.
Now, that's not to say we're all of equal levels of sinfulness. Not everybody's committed the same amount of sin, and not everybody is as corrupt as they could be. I mean, there are some people out there that the amount of sin that they've embraced and just brought into their life is scary. Where they just, you know, they're the kind of people that we describe as monsters. Those kind of people are out there. You know, the kind of people we think of as serial killers and the Stalins and Hitlers and stuff of history. But to think that because I'm not them means that I didn't sin against God, is to not understand what we're saying about the gospel. I'm not saying you're Hitler, but I am saying that just because you're not as bad as Hitler doesn't mean you've obeyed God's law. In other words, you could go to the jail. I haven't had much experience with prison ministry, but I've talked to some folks who've been in and out of prison and I've been to jails a couple of times. And when you go there, nobody deserves to be there. Like most of the people I've ever met in jail were framed. It's so bad that our system puts so many innocent people in jail. Well, obviously, many of them are guilty, they just say they were framed or they didn't do it or they didn't deserve to be there. "I'm not a sinner." And in some cases, you know, um I talked to a man once and the thing that he was arrested for was a violent crime. So when he was put in the jail, they put a bracelet on him that said he was a violent criminal, so the guards would know he was arrested for a violent crime. He didn't just, you know, shoplift. He was arrested for something that was violent. Now, he was a professing Christian, and he told me, he said, "Actually, that rescued me." He said, "Because when other inmates saw that bracelet, they kind of steered clear." He said, "Because once they saw the violent criminal thing, they thought, 'Ooh, like, maybe he's a murderer, maybe I shouldn't mess with that guy, you know, whatever.'" So it gave him some jail cred, I guess. But the fact is, he hadn't murdered anybody, but what he was accused of was a violent crime. The fact is, the fact that somebody's in jail because they burglarized homes... they broke into a home and they knew nobody was there and they stole people's stuff. And they were in jail. They're in prison. Doesn't mean they don't belong in prison just because they didn't murder. Now, I might be more afraid of the murderer. He might be a more dangerous individual, but they've both still broken the law. And I've broken God's law. Maybe not at the level of Hitler, but I've broken God's law, and that brings God's just condemnation on me. Those are bitter truths. Those are not truths I want to hear about myself. Those are not truths people want to hear about themselves, but it doesn't make them not true because I don't want to hear it.
But, you know, there's a sweetness to the gospel message as well. "While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Even though we were sinners under God's just condemnation, even though we hadn't earned heaven and even though the Bible says you can't, "not by works of righteousness which we have done, but by his mercy he saves us." Jesus died. You can't say, "Hey, Jesus died for me, but I'm not a sinner." That makes no sense. So why did Jesus die? Because your sins had to be paid for. He is the only one who never sinned. The second person of the Trinity, God who took on our humanity. He came to this earth, he lived a righteous life, he perfectly obeyed God, and he willingly went to the cross, not because of his sins, but he bore our sins in his body on that tree. He died. And then he rose again on the third day and conquered death, because death could not keep him, because of what Jesus has done. That's the sweetness. God loved us so much that he sent his son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. The good news of the gospel is while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Yes, there's a bitter aspect in the fact that it tells us we're sinners, and it condemns our sin, but the good news is, once I recognize those things are true, I get the sweetness of the gospel that God loved me so much that he sent Jesus to die for me. And the Bible says that "all who come unto him, he will in no wise cast out." If we come in repentant faith to Jesus, turn from our sin and our former loyalty, our autonomy, loyalty to self and sin, and we turn from that to Jesus... I don't mean turning over a new leaf or doing good things or making my life better. I don't mean doing some sort of penance. I mean, repentance, which is the idea of, "I'm no longer loyal to self and sin, I'm going to follow Jesus as my Lord. He's my Savior. He's the only hope I have of eternal life." That I need Jesus and His death on the cross for my sins, His resurrection. He's the only hope I have of eternal life. That if I commit to him, he will save me. So the Gospel message, the good news of the gospel, has a bitter part, because it condemns our sin. But it has sweetness because it tells us the hope of Jesus Christ, that we have through Jesus Christ.
Maybe you're here with us today and you've never come to know Christ as your Savior. You don't know that if you died today, you have a right standing before God. You don't know that your sins are forgiven. Maybe you're just coming to understand the bitter side of the message, that you're a sinner under condemnation. But we want to give you hope through the gospel of Jesus Christ. You can have eternal life, because the sweetness of the gospel is that "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." After the service is over, we'd love to help you. You can find me, you can find Matthew leading us in singing. Most of our church members can direct you to somebody who can help you. We'd love to show you from the Bible how you can come to know Christ and know His life eternal. We'd love to show you from the Bible how you can know Christ. Please don't leave today without getting that help.
Verse 10, "And I took the little book out of the angel's hand, and ate it up; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey: and as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was bitter. And he said unto me, Thou must prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings." You have a message to give, and this message is for what? "Many peoples, and nations..." That's ethnic groups. That's what that word "nations" means. "...and tongues..." These are languages. "...and kings." All right, we're going to come back to this because this is going to be a repeated thing. God has allowed government authority on earth to have authority. But there is only one kingdom, God's kingdom. And all other kings are subject to the authority of God. Whether they recognize it or not, they have to give an answer to God someday. It doesn't matter whether it's the King of England today, or whether it's the King of Persia from the days of Daniel. It doesn't matter whether it's Caesar Augustus, or whether it's Xi Jinping in China. All those rulers, whether they have the title "king" or not, anybody who rules has to give an answer to God. It doesn't matter if it's Donald Trump or if it's George Washington. And every president in between has to give an answer to God. They are not the ultimate authority. God is. And they need to hear God's message, just like all the other people need to hear God's message. All the nations and languages and ethnic groups need to hear the message, so do the kings.
All right? And it doesn't matter whether you have some other title of king. If you... the famous pop singer, Michael Jackson, people called him the "King of Pop." Elvis Presley was called the "King of Rock and Roll." You know what? They both died. And they had to stand before the King of Kings in judgment. And that's... that's not to rejoice when they're gone. I'm just saying, that's true of all of us. You can be the king of something. You can be called "King James" on the basketball court, and someday you have to stand before Jesus and give an answer to him. And so do not disregard his message. We must not disregard his message. In other words, we need to be very careful as American Christians that we don't go, "Nobody tells me what to do." No, yeah, Jesus does. Okay, I agree. I don't want tyrants in government, but avoiding tyrants in government doesn't mean I reject Jesus. He's not a tyrant. He's a benevolent king. He's the only one who has authority. All other authority is derivative. Government has authority because God allows them to have authority. Jesus has authority because he is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Because he was... because he humbled himself, as Philippians 2 says, he's been highly exalted and given a name which is above every other name. That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
And maybe there are some Christians in this room here today, who think you have the right to do whatever you want in your life. Sometimes people call that "Christian liberty." We do have Christian liberty, but Christian liberty doesn't mean, you know, "free from the law, oh happy condition, I can sin as much as I want and have no remission." That's not Christian liberty. Okay, Christian liberty means I'm free to obey Jesus. I'm not the slave of sin. I'm not enslaved by other human authorities who want to take the place of God. I have liberty to not have to obey human man-made rules, but I don't have the freedom to disobey Jesus and the truth of the gospel and the commandments of God. That's not Christian liberty. And we ought to be very careful with that. And I find this sometimes among Christians, this idea that, like, "You know, I've trusted Christ, and so it doesn't matter how I live." Yes, it does. "Does it matter what I do? It's all forgiven anyway." That's not the gospel message. The gospel message isn't that you trust Jesus, and then you can sin as much as you want. The gospel message is, God loved you. He saved you. And you have a Lord, who's a loving and kind king, who has your best interest in mind, and loves you. He's worthy of all honor, confidence, and obedience.
Now, in just a moment here, we're going to bow our heads, and as we do, we're going to have a time of silent prayer, where we can pray to the Lord. We can meditate, by that, I don't mean the Eastern style of meditation, but the Biblical kind, where you focus on what you've heard in God's word and apply it to our lives. We can rejoice in the authority of the Lord, in the goodness of the Gospel. Maybe the Lord has put his finger on something in your life. You're a Christian, the Lord put a finger on something in your life. You know this area is not under the authority of Jesus, and it needs to be. Whether it's John eating the scroll and preaching the message that God sent him to, or whether it's the Old Testament prophets being under God's authority, or whether it's recognizing that kings are under God's authority, this whole chapter implies that God is the authority. Maybe the Lord put his finger on something in your life through his spirit. You've heard this and said, "I need to be obedient to the authority of God in this area of my life." So we're going to have a few moments to silently pray to the Lord, and then I'll have a word of prayer and invite Matthew to come and lead us in our closing hymn. I do want to say this as well. If we can help you at all spiritually, find me after the service, find Matthew.