Rev No.16 Harvesting the Earth

Good morning to you all. We're glad to have you with us on this lovely day. It's a very special day.

I was going to tell you why, but I think I'll keep that until we have the spot for the boys and girls. Before we sing When Morning Gilds the Sky, let's stand and bring to the Lord the words of the prayer which our Saviour taught us. Our Father, who art in heaven.

Let us all stand and sing the Lord's Prayer. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven.

This morning's reading is taken from Revelation chapter 14, beginning at verse 1. Then I looked, and there before me was the Lamb, standing on Mount Zion, and with him a hundred and forty-four thousand, who had his name and his Father's name written on their foreheads. And I heard a sound from heaven like the roar of rushing waters, and like a loud peal of thunder. The sound I heard was like that of harpists playing their harps.

And they sang a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and the elders. No one could learn the song except the hundred and forty-four thousand who had been redeemed from the earth. These are those who did not defile themselves with women, for they kept themselves pure.

They follow the Lamb wherever he goes. They were purchased from among men and offered as firstfruits to God and the Lamb. No lie was found in their mouths.

They are blameless. Then I saw another angel flying in midair, and he had the eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth, to every nation, tribe, language, and people. He said in a loud voice, Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come.

Worship him who made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and the springs of water. A second angel followed and said, Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, which made all the nations drink the maddening wine of her adulteries. A third angel followed them and said in a loud voice, If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, he too will drink of the wine of God's fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath.

He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment rises forever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and his image, or for anyone who receives the mark of his name.

This calls for patient endurance on the part of the saints who obey God's commandments and remain faithful to Jesus. Then I heard a voice from heaven saying, Right, blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. Yes, says the Spirit, they will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them.

I looked, and there before me was a white cloud, and seated on the cloud was one like a son of man, with a crown of gold on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand. Then another angel came out of the temple and called in a loud voice to him who was sitting on the cloud, Take your sickle and reap, because the time to reap has come, for the harvest of the earth is ripe. So he who was seated on the cloud swung his sickle over the earth, and the earth was harvested.

Another angel came out of the temple in heaven, and he too had a sharp sickle. Still another angel, who had charge of the fire, came from the altar and called in a loud voice to him who had the sharp sickle, Take your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of grapes from the earth's vine, because its grapes are ripe. The angel swung his sickle on the earth, gathered its grapes, and threw them into the great winepress of God's wrath.

They were trampled in the winepress outside the city, and blood flowed out of the press, rising as high as the horse's bridles for a distance of 1,600 stadia. If you'd open your Bibles to Revelation and chapter 14, as has been indicated on Notes and News, I aim this evening to take up the topic that we were driven to consider last Sunday somewhat hastily. Of the Mark of the Beast, I'll preach an address that will be more or less self-contained.

In other words, understandable for folk in an evening who've not been present in the morning, but if the benefit of the morning addresses, then it will perhaps help to set off more clearly God's teaching on this remarkable, frightening, yet stimulating theme. So now we turn to Revelation and chapter 14, and I'll be following my pattern of Chinese homiletics and going to the end before I bring you back to the beginning. Have you ever considered how this world is just permeated with a sense of judgment? I mean, you don't have to be more than a 15 or 16 year old to realize that you're going to be tested in regard to your CSEs.

Hopefully every dentist, before they let him or her rip on your teeth, has, despite all appearances to the contrary, gone through training and is fully qualified. Before we let a couple come down the center aisle here as yesterday and conduct a service of marriage, then we do our best at the human level to check that they understand what they're involved in and that their chemistry aligns with one another, and we give them advice and teaching and so forth, doing the best to preserve the sanctity and the longevity of marriage. You don't take your car into the Worthing Roads, hopefully, unless you've gone through a test.

So what's so shocking about thinking that life, which is a tremendously gracious gift, will ultimately lead to a test, an evaluation as to how you lived it? Well, that's what the Bible says. It does so sometimes in picturesque and symbolic and almost frightening language, but shot through every book of the Bible almost is this concept that at the end, when a man dies, he does not leave the consequences of his sinfulness. Rather, he goes to face them after death, the judgment.

There is in Scripture a twofold handling of the concept of harvest. Here is Ruth, a non-Jew, a Moabites, and she's in difficulty. So is her Jewish mother-in-law, and so they return to the birthplace of her mother-in-law.

You remember the story. It's encapsulated in that delightful, romantic book of Ruth in the Old Testament. And when these two demented, sorrowful women come to Bethlehem, they arrive at the time of the barley harvest, and the law being what it was in those days, provision is made for people like them in need.

They can glean from the borders of the fields. They come back at harvest time. Other occasions in Scripture you read harvest referred to not as the physical harvest, but as the spiritual harvest.

The Hebrews being an agricultural people, they understood quite easily the instructions of the psalmists and of the prophets as they used an agricultural metaphor. Here, for example, is Hosea in the tenth chapter of the prophecy that bears his name. And he says to the people in the twelfth verse, Sow for yourself righteousness, reap the fruit of unfailing love, break up your unplowed ground, for it is time to seek the Lord until he comes and showers righteousness on you.

So there is a different harvest. It's a spiritual harvest. It deals with the immediate and also with the end time.

Here is our Lord Jesus, and he combines both use of the words harvest. In the fourth chapter, when he's speaking to the woman by the well of Sychar, you remember his disciples have gone to the village to buy food, they return to the Lord, and he speaks to them because he has dealt with this incident with the woman in an evangelistic way. And there are people from the village actually coming towards Jesus to hear more about what he has to say to them as he has spoken to the woman.

And as the disciples return to the Savior, he says in the fourth chapter and the thirty-fifth verse of John's Gospel, Do not say four months more, and then the harvest. Now that was a literal statement. The harvest will come in four months.

But Jesus says do not be so wooden, do not be so literalistic in your understanding of harvest that you say in four months there will be a harvest. Look at the fields now. They'll whiten to harvest.

What does he mean? Well, these people emerging from the village. They are people who are not Jews. They're half Jews.

God has a concern for them. He wants them to be brought into the kingdom of the redeemed. Now, Lord, on another occasion as he uses the idea of the spiritual harvest, speaking of the Holy Spirit says, Pray you that the Lord of the harvest will send out laborers into the harvest field.

Now you say, why do you engage in these scriptures from the Old Testament and New Testament? Why are you quoting them? Well, without them, my friends, you're not going to understand the last chapter, at least the last part of the 14th chapter of the book of Revelation, where in the 14th verse we read, I looked and there before me was a white cloud and seated on the cloud was one like a son of man with a crown of gold on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand. Then another angel came out of the temple and called in a loud voice to him who was sitting on the cloud, Take your sickle and reap. Why? Because the time to reap has come.

For the harvest of the earth is ripe. Harvesting the earth. This is what this chapter speaks of.

And it does so sustaining the agricultural metaphor, but it divides it into two. It will tell you of the wheat harvest. And it will also tell you of the grape harvest.

There is the reaping of the wheat and the reaping of the tares, the reaping of the redeemed and the reaping of the unregenerate, the reaping to glory and the reaping to condemnation, It says one Puritan preacher when passing comment on these verses, Our Lord Jesus through his gospel makes it possible for men and women to come to such an understanding of him that at the end when the command is given to the angels to reap, they will be those who have received the seed of the gospel. They will be brought into his eternal kingdom. They will come perhaps with sorrow and with tears thinking of past experience, but they will come with great joy into the Father's house because of the grandeur of all that lies in front of them.

And on the day when our Lord Jesus brings in the end of time, then there will be this significant reaping of the whole earth. On another occasion in one of the gospels, he shifts the metaphor from that of wheat and tares and that of grapes to sheep and goats. And he speaks of the sheep being gathered on one side, do you remember? And the goats on the other side.

There is a reaping to eternal life, to glory. But there is a reaping to eternal condemnation. And so you read in the 17th verse, Another angel came out of the temple in heaven and he too had a sharp sickle.

Still another angel who had charge of the fire came from the altar and called in a loud voice to him who had the sharp sickle, take your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of grapes from the earth's vine because its grapes are ripe. The angel swung his sickle on the earth, gathered its grapes and threw them into the great winepress of God's wrath. They were trampled in the winepress outside the city and blood flowed.

God bear me witness that of choice I would not preach on this passage. But you see one of the reasons that I have said on many an occasion, and as Tim has illustrated and all who come into this pulpit recognize, our own thinking is subservient to the word of God. The agenda for the pulpit is not set by the preacher.

It is set by God himself who has inscripturated, that means written his revelation down in a book. And he charges the preacher with a mandate, go preach, not your own ideas, your own speculation, your own fancy, go and preach what is in this book. The great tendency and temptation for modern minds is to pour water on this book, to neutralize this book, to say as some bishops do, that when I sing the Apostles' Creed, then I sing it poetically, therefore I do not believe it literalistically.

Whereas you know full well that that Apostles' Creed, and the reason for us referring to it, is a summary of all that we believe about this Lord Jesus, who shall return from heaven and he shall set up his everlasting kingdom. And there will be a great reaping of souls to eternal life, and souls to utter and eternal condemnation. Now, this metaphor of the grapes and the wine press, this is not new to you, is it? I mean, many of you here have studied the word of God for as long as myself, and some of you even longer.

You know those words in the prophecy of Isaiah which refer to our blessed Lord, and his great time of need and his courageous action, when he came into the world and died on Calvary's cross. And the imagery in Isaiah in the 63rd chapter is that of the wine and the vat and the press. Who is this that comes from Edom, from Bozrah, with his garments stained crimson? Who is this robed in splendor, striding forward in the greatness of his strength? The Lord Jesus replies, it's me, it is I. Then the question comes, why are your garments red like those of one treading the wine press? And the response is, I have trodden the wine press alone from the nations no one was with me.

And you think of our beloved Lord, as he looks down from the cross of Calvary, all the breath squeezed from his lungs, as he endeavours to breathe with a weight on his shoulders, compressing the lungs and making the action so very difficult. I looked for someone to have pity on me and there was no man. And you say, blessed Lord, where is it that you're situated now? And he tells you, it's outside the city, in the dunghill.

That's where they placed me. But why are you there? Why are your garments, if you wore any clothing at all, which is most doubtful? Why is your body smattered with blood? So you look like a man who has come out of a wine press. And the answer is, this is my blood, which is shed for many.

For the remission of sin. I go outside the holy city, into the place of utter condemnation. And there I take upon myself the sins of the world.

And don't you understand, my beloved brother and sister, this morning, that the heart of the gospel message is this, that he went outside the city so that you could go in the city. He came to the place of dereliction. He came to the contemptuous spot so that you might enter into the presence of God.

The man or woman who is confronted with the essentials of the gospel, and rejects him, will at the last have their choice confirmed. And they will always remain outside the city. They were trampled in the wine press outside the city, and blood flowed out of the press, rising as high as the horse's bridles, for a distance of 1,600 stadia.

To what does John refer? He refers with symbolic, but with great literal meaning, to the lot of those who never confessed the Lord Jesus as Savior. The sickle has been put in. And those who rejected him will ever stay outside Zion, which is understood in Revelation as being the spiritual home of God, the place where God is, typified in the Old Testament as Jerusalem, the place where the presence of God was felt, and where he wished for it to have been felt more and more, but because of the obduracy, the hardness of the Jews, he removed his presence.

But all that was promised of Jerusalem of old becomes the potential experience of Christian people and Jewish people down the centuries and around the world, but it depends upon your response to the gospel. You see how this particular chapter of Scripture cautions us about being cavalier in the way that we conduct our affairs, we conduct our lives, as though there is no bar of judgment to which we shall be called. A man or woman who says that flies in the face of human experience on this earth.

We bring people to bulk, assuming that we can find who the culprit is. And will not God who set the ethical law ultimately apply his law to the whole of humanity? And one day, the sons of Adam, everyone who has breathed the breath of air, who has known of the grace of life, will be brought before this God. Well then, having set the scene from those last verses, let me, with some degree of haste, take you to the beginning of the chapter.

Because here we have a very wonderful sight, in contradistinction to what John has taught before about this false messiah, this beast, this one who has the numerical equivalent of 666. He sees the true Son of God, the true Lamb of God, standing on Mount Zion. Then I looked.

When, John? Well, when I had been taken into seeing the problems brought by he who masquerades as a savior, when I have seen humanity in its lostness and its wretchedness, when I have become tempted to think perhaps there is no hope, then I look and I see before me is a Lamb standing on Mount Zion, and I recognize that He is the hope of the world. And with Him, 144,000 people, that great number which symbolizes the Old Testament to the New Testament redeemed. And these people, as opposed to those who serve the spirit of this world and the principalities of this world, these people have on their foreheads the name of the Father, and they have the name of the Son.

These are people who are sealed. You say, what does he mean? It's quite obvious. He is referring to people like the vast majority of this congregation who have confessed that Jesus Christ is Lord, who are sealed.

It's one of the most wonderful words in Scripture. You know about sealing. You know about branding.

They used to brand the animals in the Wild West, beyond the hills of Escondido, and elsewhere in the United States and in other countries. Well, it's the idea of the seal, not a literal seal on the forehead, but the sealing of the Holy Spirit. And when you're sealed by the Spirit, then your eternity is secure.

That's why Christian people should be the happiest people in the world, the most joyfully infectious people. Not because they live in this world as a sort of holy club, not caring a toss as to what happens to the world. They are there to release the ethics and the light and the glory of the gospel of Jesus.

But they have as a certainty that come the assassin's knife on one of the streets of our country, come a car smash, or come a ravaging disease, only their bodies can be afflicted. Their soul's destiny remains secure because they're sealed in the precious blood of Jesus, and they bear His name upon their hearts. And therefore, these joyful people sing a new song, verse 3, a song before the throne, and before the four living creatures and the elders.

No one else can sing that song. Have you ever thought that in eternity, there'll be no angel who can sing the old gospel songs? For when people or when angelic beings fell and rebelled against God, there was no rescue work mounted for them. Throughout eternity, you'll sing the old rugged cross, and you'll look upon Him who still bears the marks of the crucifixion.

And in one sense, you'll always be the wonder of eternity, sons of God, daughters of God, because God has so shown His love in such a unique fashion. Therefore, we're people of song. I was moved.

I spot John Sampson in the congregation just down there. We were both moved. And then, Gruber, to the depths of our being, when we were in the Romanian church, the Baptist church in Lupen, just three or four Sundays ago, to hear the quality of their singing.

When you've suffered for the Lamb, do you know the glories of the gospel? Then you'll sing with deep-throated enthusiasm. These were men and women with a new song. These were men and women who had a remarkable purity.

Verse 4, these are they who did not defile themselves with women, for they kept themselves pure. What does that mean? Well, here again, you remember we're in the area of symbolism. If you dart into literalism and you get it wrong, then you throw the whole thing out of relief.

Scripture is balanced by Scripture. That's the principle of interpreting Scripture. And Scripture tells you of marriage that it's honorable.

The bed is undefiled. So what is John referring to here? Well, you remember the Apostle Paul, when he's writing to the Ephesians and to the Corinthians, he speaks of the church. And he speaks of the church as a chaste bride.

And there is a sense in which that is one of the most wonderful metaphors that describes the people of God throughout the whole of the New Testament. They are a bride of the Lord's. They keep themselves for Him.

And the immorality here is a spiritual immorality. The adultery is a spiritual adultery. It's the sort of condition, the sort of mindset in which the non-Christian lives.

But contrasting these, the way the unbeliever often conducts his life, these are those who did not defile themselves with women. They kept themselves chaste and pure. Their reasoning, their doctrine, their manner of life, their behavior.

And I demonstrate the point that my interpretation is accurate by taking to what follows in the fourth verse. They follow the Lamb. They follow the Lamb.

I listen to John and I think of him perhaps in some cave in Patmos, that he's getting this vision. And old men reminisce. Never put old people out to graze.

They can tell you a lot. An old person with a clear mind will have a distilled wisdom that you'll never read in any book. And John thinks back.

To that day years ago it seems when he was mending the nets and there was his brother Andrew and there was Peter and there was James. And all blessed day a man in white came by the seashore and he said, follow me. And they left their nets.

They followed him. On and on, mile after mile, month after month, months for John, decade after decade. These are they who have a new song, who kept themselves pure, who have taken up the cross and followed him.

And they're depicted as being purchased from among men. You see, it's got to apply to the church. There's no other interpretation that's possible.

I've been listening to and looking at and reading through some absurd speculation in the book of Revelation as I've been preparing for these series of addresses. There is only one way that you can interpret this. They were purchased from among men and offered as first fruits to God and the Lamb.

And we remember it's Jesus who has purchased the church through his own blood. Towards the end of his days, Martin Lloyd-Jones went on record as saying, I'm thinking a lot about angels, more than I've ever thought or preached about them before. We're told that when you die, an angel bears you into the presence of God.

Forget about stained glass windows and all that depiction of angels. They have a ministry. They have an authority.

They're there at the time of death as you cross the Jordan. And here we get in the sixth verse, John's saying, I saw another angel flying in midair. He had the eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth, to every nation, tribe, language, and people.

You see, it's moving to the end time, to the consummation of all things. But within the heart of God is evangelism. He does not want the death of any man.

And so there's the re-echoing of the fundamentals of the gospel, fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come. The sickle is poised in his hand and he's about to bring it down. Are you in the field where you will be reaped and taken into the eternal kingdom? Or will you know eternal condemnation in the winepress of God's wrath? Another angel on the scene declares in the eighth verse, fallen, fallen is Babylon the great.

You remember Nebuchadnezzar? This city which I have built. This great Babylon. And Babylon throughout the whole of the Old Testament from the tower of Babel right through to the building of Nebuchadnezzar and on into the New Testament speaks not just of a literal place, but of a scenario, of a society, of godlessness, of men and women who raise their fists, who will not have this Jesus.

Babylon is fallen. The world society outside of God is broken down. He who sitteth in the heavens shall have them in derision.

He will laugh them to scorn. You remember the Old Testament? The way that it warns puny man and says you're just like a grasshopper. You pit your power against this great God.

Your world and all that it stands for is utterly doomed. Babylon is fallen. You read it in Jeremiah.

You read it in Isaiah. The predictions. And here John has these apocalyptic words from the Old Testament resounding in his ears as the angel spells the doom of this earthly scene and all those who are contemptuous of God.

And then the third angel, verse 9, follows them and says in a loud voice, If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead of the hand, he too will drink of the wine of God's fury. You see, the imagery takes you back to the end of the chapter. Did you not know, has it not been told you that there are two cups that are referred to in Scripture? You go to the prophecy of Jeremiah, he'll tell you something more about it.

The cup of God's wrath. As God allows a man or a woman to rebel against Him and consume the contents of that rebellion over against the cup of God's wrath, there is the cup of God's new covenant in the blood of Jesus Christ. And here again you get the two contrasts, you see.

He too will drink of the wine of God's fury, verse 10, which has been poured full strength into the cup of His wrath. You either take the cup of God's salvation, as the psalmist will tell you in one of the great Psalms 116 and verse 12, which is offered to you, or you take the wrath, the cup of the wrath of God. And with the symbolism and the metaphor of Sodom and Gomorrah used by the angel, we read of the torments and the awfulness of knowing an eternity without God.

You say you don't like the language. Do you think John liked the language? You say you don't like the idea of burning and sulfur and so forth. Doubtless there's metaphor in this, but what sort of language do you use to describe an eternity without God? You see, the writers of this book, they've got two problems.

Heaven is so great, they don't have words. Words wobble as they try to describe it. And to be without God is so unpalatable that again they ransack their vocabulary to spell out the awfulness of this.

Do you ever ask yourself about your loved ones who have gone to glory? It's a legitimate question. Verse 13. Having dealt with the awfulness of those who've been sealed by the beast and not by the Christ, who've turned to the phony Messiah, who are part of Babylon, the kingdoms of this world, and the endurance that's been necessary for the church of God, verse 12, as Babylon has exercised its strength before it capitulates.

Then John goes on and says, I heard a voice from heaven say, Right, blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. And there's an echo on the part of the Holy Spirit. Yes, says the Spirit of God, the one who sent laborers into the harvest.

They will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them. You ask about your loved ones. They're safe with the Lord, absent from the body, present with the Lord.

Amen, said John Wesley. Die well. You see, you can go through this world recognizing the problems of Bangladesh and North Africa and being confused by the politics of the Middle East.

You can cope with all this and all the trauma that there is if you have in mind that this earth is fully in the hands of God and ultimately He will work out His plans and His purposes and your loved ones have gone, those who confess Jesus, into His eternal presence, into His eternal kingdom. Some of you will know I've been researching and have still a long mileage in front of me, the life and the preaching of that great man who influenced me, perhaps more than any other, with maybe the exception of my father. I refer to Martin Lloyd-Jones.

He's dying now and his consultant named Mr. Williams comes in and he quotes to Lloyd-Jones the old hymn of Bona. Well, Dr. Lloyd-Jones, you're weary, worn and sad. Sad, said Lloyd-Jones.

Not a bit of it. Sad. The very word almost annoyed him.

He is about to go into that eternal blessedness concerning which he had preached for so many long years in London and in the Principality of Wales. He's about to go into the eternal dimension to see the King whose message he has heralded for so long. Sad.

He and Murray, a friend of mine and Lloyd-Jones's biographer, said he wrote a note to his daughter because he could no longer speak. Do not pray for healing. Do not hold me back from glory.

The next day, said Murray, speaking of this man who always looked so severe and so stern in the pulpit, he was full of smiles. I saw more smiles on him than I'd ever seen before. The next day, he'd slipped away.

Blessed are they who die in the Lord from now on because the Christ has paid the price of their sin. He's opened, Zion. He's opened the celestial realm.

Their eternity is secure. The sickle went in and they were plucked from this life into the next and they await the grand consummation that is yet to come to this earth. Harvesting the earth? That's what gospel proclamation is all about.

It's the ministry to which we call you in prayer, in industry, in giving until the king comes back or he calls you into your eternal kingdom. Thank God you're the men and women with a new song with a new spirit of life with a destiny that is secure in time and in eternity. Amen and amen.

Let's sing. Once again, I've been ransacking the hymn book to try and find something relevant and I found it. 498, Lord of the living harvest that whitens all the plain where angels soon shall gather their sheaves of golden grain.

We sing this hymn then take a brief break and we'll come immediately around the Lord's table and if you can be present this evening I remind you that I want to speak on the mark of the beast. If you're not coming this evening and you're prepared for this offering for the that is so keen to get this offering for the Africans if you're prepared for that offering then the box is there as you leave. 498.

If they must share If they must share They must share