Participants:
Series Code: ICJ
Program Code: ICJ190022B
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00:01 In the book of Revelation 19 there are two suppers;
00:04 one is the marriage supper of the Lamb. 00:07 That's the one we want to be in, 00:08 and that's going to be in heaven. 00:10 But there's another supper, and it's not a pretty sight. 00:12 We just read it just before the break. 00:14 And that is when all those who oppose Jesus, 00:18 they're slain with the brightness of His coming. 00:21 And this mighty angel calls the birds to a supper. 00:25 The birds to eat the flesh of people. 00:29 Why are the birds called to eat the dead people, 00:33 all of them on the face of the earth? 00:35 For one reason. 00:37 There's no one alive. 00:38 There's no one here to bury them. 00:42 And so, the wicked living when Jesus comes are dead. 00:48 And of course, we know what happens to the righteous. 00:51 They're caught up to meet Jesus in the air, 00:53 those who are alive. 00:55 And those who are sleeping are resurrected. 00:58 And they don't go ahead, of course. 00:59 They all go up together, those who are righteous alive 01:04 and the resurrected dead go together with Jesus. 01:09 So we want to see what's happening here, of course. 01:11 Jesus is pictured in symbolic form coming 01:16 in the clouds of heaven as a mighty warrior. 01:19 And this is the prelude to the 1000 years. 01:22 It introduces us to the 1000 years. 01:25 Now let's go to Revelation 20:1-3. 01:30 "Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, 01:34 having a key to the bottomless pit 01:36 and a great chain in his hand." 01:40 Now what is this bottomless pit? 01:42 It's a place that's unbounded, it's a place of darkness. 01:46 Another little picture of that we get is found in Luke 8:31. 01:51 If you remember the story of the demons who were cast out 01:56 of the two demon possessed men on the other side 01:59 of the Sea of Galilee. 02:01 Now as Jesus was casting those demons out, 02:05 those demons asked Jesus, they said there was a legion of them, 02:09 they asked Jesus, they pled with Jesus 02:12 not to throw them into the place of darkness. 02:16 "Don't throw us into the abyss," as it were. 02:20 Now I don't know what that means, but I think, 02:23 if I understand it right, and I think 2 Peter says 02:27 something similar about evil angels being reserved 02:30 in chains, it seems to be that there's even limits 02:34 to what God will allow evil angels. 02:37 And if they step over those limits, they get chained. 02:40 Or they get locked up somehow. 02:42 I don't know how that's happened. 02:44 But God has His ways of doing that. 02:46 They're certainly restricted. 02:48 Because these evil angels begged Jesus 02:50 not to throw them into the abyss. 02:53 Not to lock them up, so to speak, 02:56 but to let them go into the pigs. 02:58 And of course, Jesus did. The pigs ran down and drowned. 03:01 You know the story; I don't have time to get into the story. 03:04 So something is going on here where 03:06 Satan is getting locked up. 03:08 He's going to be put out of business. 03:11 And that's a wonderful day for planet earth. 03:13 It's a sad day that everybody is dead that were wicked. 03:18 And the righteous are all in heaven. 03:21 And so the devil is going to get locked up here. 03:23 Well, let's go ahead and see what goes on here. 03:27 "He laid hold of the dragon, that old serpent, 03:30 who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years..." 03:34 I told you, Jesus is mad about him messing with His church, 03:38 with His bride. 03:39 And so He's locking him up now. 03:42 "...and cast him into the bottomless pit, 03:44 and shut him up, and set a seal on him, 03:47 so that he should deceive the nations no more 03:50 till the thousand years were finished. 03:52 But after these things he must be released for a little while." 03:57 So how is it that the devil is chained up here? 04:02 Well, the key to that is the word, "deceived." 04:06 I mean, there's nobody here for him to deceive. 04:09 Now the earth is going to be broken. 04:10 It's going to have horrible earthquakes. 04:12 You can read all about it. Hail stones. 04:14 The whole earth is just broken up. 04:16 In fact, it's going to be a dark awful place to be. 04:20 Maybe the sun will still be shining somewhat, I don't know. 04:23 But it's going to be a wreck. 04:26 All the people are dead. 04:29 Satan has spent his whole time here 04:32 deceiving, deceiving, deceiving, and destroying people 04:35 with his deceptions. 04:36 Now he has nobody to destroy. 04:38 So he's locked up. 04:40 He certainly can't leave the earth. 04:42 He's locked up from that standpoint. 04:44 But he also has no one to deceive in a vast broken world 04:50 where the bones of dead people are lying on the ground. 04:54 He can spend a thousand years thinking about his choice 04:58 to go down a selfish road, 05:02 to reject the principle of unselfish love. 05:05 And he can look at this world for during that thousand years 05:08 and see what he has accomplished. 05:11 It's a terrible thing to think about. 05:13 But he deserves it. 05:15 Maybe being on death row, maybe being on there is almost 05:19 worse than finally meeting your fate, 05:22 which he certainly will meet one of these days. 05:25 So let's continue to go on in the Scripture here. 05:28 It says, "...that he should deceive the nations no more 05:33 until the thousand years were finished." 05:37 So what makes him able now to deceive, 05:40 whereas before he was unable to deceive? 05:44 Well, let's go ahead and take a look at that. 05:46 Because in order for that to happen 05:50 there would have to be a resurrection, 05:52 not of the righteous because they've already been 05:55 resurrected, but a resurrection of the wicked. 05:59 Remember we talked about the last time, 06:01 Jesus said there are two resurrections. 06:03 There's the resurrection of the righteous, 06:05 and the resurrection of the condemnation. 06:08 So everybody that's dead on the earth 06:12 is going to be resurrected to meet judgment. 06:17 And of course, judgment comes at the end of chapter 20. 06:21 We'll get into that as we talk about the lake of fire. 06:24 So they're going to be resurrected to face judgment. 06:27 They won't have any covering. 06:28 But when they are resurrected, 06:30 now Satan is going to be able to deceive them again. 06:33 So what is he going to deceive them about? 06:36 We'll talk more about that next time. 06:38 But the camp of the saints comes down. 06:40 So the saints who have been in heaven for a thousand years, 06:44 they're going to come back down, but they're safe 06:47 in that New Jerusalem that John said, 06:49 I saw it coming down from heaven. 06:52 We'll come back to that at a later point. 06:55 But all these wicked are resurrected. 06:57 And Satan goes out to deceive them. 06:59 No doubt telling them that, "Hey, look, 07:01 we can conquer this thing. 07:04 More about that later. 07:06 But now he's able to deceive because he's got people 07:09 who are alive. 07:11 The wicked dead are resurrected to meet judgment. 07:16 These were slain at the brightness of Christ's coming. 07:20 And of course, we know that those who were slain at the 07:22 brightness of Christ's coming, they were not the good ones. 07:25 They were the bad ones. 07:26 So Satan is bound to this earth, described as a pit, 07:30 a bottomless pit, just in symbolic language here, 07:34 with no one to deceive for a thousand years. 07:38 Now the next scene is found in Revelation 20:4. 07:43 And it says, "And I saw thrones, and they sat on them, 07:47 and judgment was committed to them." 07:49 Judgment? I thought the judgment had already come. 07:52 Well, it was the judgment for those who 07:55 claimed to belong to Christ. 07:57 It separated the tares from the wheat. 08:00 But this is a different kind of a judgment, I think. 08:04 And he says, "I saw the souls..." 08:05 Or the lives, another way of saying that. 08:07 "...of those who had been beheaded..." 08:09 These are people that are martyred. 08:11 So the martyrs are there. 08:12 The people who went through the final time of trouble, 08:15 they are there. 08:16 The righteous from all generations, they're all there. 08:23 And it says, it goes on to say, "...who had not worshiped 08:26 the beast, his image, or received his mark 08:29 on their foreheads or their hands. 08:30 And they lived and reigned," or ruled, 08:33 "with Christ for a thousand years." 08:35 What is this judgment about? 08:37 You know, God is going to answer every question. 08:40 God has been blamed for everything. 08:42 There's always questions. 08:44 But God wants to produce a universe, 08:47 a universe that is both free and sinless. 08:51 And the only way that He can do that 08:54 is for everybody to be satisfied 08:57 that He was just and true and good. 09:00 Those in heaven who are saying, at the first of chapter 19, 09:04 they know that God is just and true. 09:07 They have all the information. 09:10 They've seen it all. 09:11 But the people who are saved, they don't have it. 09:15 They've trusted the Lord, they believe He's just and true, 09:18 they believe that He is love and that He is good, 09:21 but they don't have all the information. 09:25 And I think during those 1000 years the books are going to be 09:29 opened and the righteous are going to have 09:33 all their questions answered. 09:37 There's also a sense of judgment... 09:38 There's usually two phases of judgment. 09:40 There's a judgment that decides whether a person 09:43 is guilty or not guilty. 09:45 And if they're guilty, there's another judgment 09:47 that decides what their punishment will be. 09:51 And so it's only fair that the ones who suffered so much 09:56 persecution and heartache are going to be in charge 09:59 to make sure that righteous judgment 10:03 is given, and the execution of sinners. 10:09 It will be good that sinners are gone. 10:11 Not that anybody wanted them gone. 10:14 Jesus gave His life for them. 10:15 He paid the price for them. 10:17 He never wanted them to come to this place. 10:21 But once they made up their mind and they're not changing, 10:25 then the universe cannot survive if they live. 10:28 They have become identified with the very sins 10:33 that they have acted. 10:35 Sins that Jesus paid for, would have wiped out of their life, 10:39 but now they've become identified with it. 10:43 And so this judgment will answer all the questions 10:46 of the righteous. 10:48 Throughout eternity no one will ever have any questions 10:51 about the goodness of God, or the justice of God, 10:54 or the fairness of God. 10:56 Sin is not going to raise its ugly head again. 11:00 And we can be glad for that. 11:02 So we go now, of course, to the last part 11:06 at the end of this thing, and we find that in contrast 11:11 to the rest of the dead who do not live again, 11:14 that those who were in the first resurrection 11:17 are called blessed and holy. 11:19 Now that's the resurrection you want to be in. 11:22 You want to be in that first resurrection. 11:24 Because if you're in that one, you're going to be blessed 11:26 and you're going to be holy. 11:27 That, "holy," means that you won't sin. 11:30 You're going to have a perfect heart. 11:32 A heart of unselfish love. 11:34 You're going to blend right in with the rest 11:35 of the unselfish universe. 11:37 Isn't that going to be wonderful? 11:38 So at the end of the 1000 years, the wicked are resurrected, 11:43 Satan is released, and he then goes out 11:48 "to deceive all the nations in the four corners of the earth, 11:52 Gog and Magog, and to gather them to battle 11:56 whose number is as the sand of the sea." 12:00 They do not come up with everlasting life. 12:03 You know, the book of Romans in chapter 6 says that 12:06 if we are buried with Christ... 12:08 What does it mean to be buried with Christ? 12:10 It means to repent in front of all the Ten Commandments. 12:13 If you're buried with Christ, then you will certainly 12:18 be resurrected with Christ. 12:21 So if we want to be resurrected, we must repent. 12:26 Repent in front of all of God's Ten Commandments. 12:29 We must have those written in our hearts, 12:31 and the love of God written in our hearts. 12:35 And the promise is that if we go through that experience, 12:40 then the resurrection of Jesus will be ours. 12:42 And I want to say this again, our hope depends on our 12:46 union with Christ. 12:47 It is that union with Christ that makes it possible 12:51 for us to come up in the resurrection 12:54 of the blessed and the holy. 12:56 For sure, you do not want to come up 12:59 in the resurrection of condemnation. 13:03 Condemnation that Jesus would have saved them all from 13:06 if they had only trusted Him. 13:09 He would have saved them. 13:11 But if you put your trust in God, 13:13 you will not come up at the end of the 1000 years. 13:17 You'll come up at the beginning of the 1000 years. 13:21 And when you come up in the beginning, 13:22 you live forever. |
Revised 2019-11-06