His Perfect Love

Announcer: Pastor Matt says once we come to understand what the Bible says about the future, it should encourage us to tell people about the Lord in the present.

Understanding that this is a future means that if you are alive right now and you have received Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you don't need to be afraid. Instead, you have been empowered. You have been empowered to take the gospel to a lost and dying world and to help people to know about what is coming.

God has put you on this earth and given you a mission to do that. Every one of you have a calling and so do I. In this room, we are called by God to do that. Very few of us are going to end up working directly for the church and doing that as part of a pastorship. Most of us are going to do that through multiplication in our employment, in our homes, our neighborhoods, our cities, wherever we're going. We're going to be doing that and God's going to be using the multiplication effect through that.

Matt VanderVen: Hello again, friend. So glad you've joined us today as we present His Perfect Love with Pastor Matt VanderVen. Today, we get right back to our study of Revelation with another stop in chapter 16. We're learning about the seven bowl judgments, but not everyone agrees on how this will all go down. For instance, some believe what you're about to read has already happened. So Pastor Matt will start off today talking about a few of these different views and why he believes in a literal future approach to the scriptures.

Next, as we keep going here, we're going to look at some of the bowl judgments on the earth. He talks also about the water turning to blood. He talks about the springs. He goes and talks about the men in verse 8, scorched, the sun giving such a power, and we're going to talk a little about what that means, scorched, a very interesting Greek word there.

What about another view called preterism or partial preterism? They believe that the prophecies in the Bible and the events have already happened. They would be people saying that all this has occurred and maybe we're living in the millennial reign now, or maybe these things have occurred and we're just waiting for Jesus to come back and these things have already been accomplished.

The Latin word preter comes from the Webster's 1913 dictionary list as a prefix denoting something in the past or beyond. I don't know that I need to say much more right now in regards to this because how many of you watched Shark Week this last week on the Discovery Channel? The oceans are teeming with life. Fish are all around. They're not bloody. They didn't need a filter.

We have a scuba diver trainer here in the front. He takes people out in the ocean and they scuba dive. He can tell you he's not swimming in blood all the time, hopefully never. My point is that the waters are teeming with life. You and I went to our faucet last night or this morning and we turned it on and what did we do? We took a drink of water.

I don't know that I need to spend much time on the preterist or partial preterist viewpoint because if these things had already occurred and they were complete, you and I wouldn't be alive. Are you with me? That leads me to the third view called the historical or historicism. It's a method of interpretation that associates the symbols or historical persons, nations, and events.

What they do is they'll go to Daniel's 70th week and they'll say that it was fulfilled in Christ's last week of life on earth. In other words, if you take a historical historicism and they were trying to apply that, they would say that all got accomplished during the first week of Jesus Christ's last week of life, but his first week of ministry. They believe it's culminated in that whole time and they would ascribe that to Daniel's 70th week.

I don't think I need a new argument for that. I think the preterist argument works the same here. If that happened during Jesus's time, again, I wouldn't be watching Discovery Channel and I wouldn't be seeing oceans that are teeming with life and fish and all kinds of things that can be cute to look at and also not so cute to look at if you find yourself in the wrong situation.

Clearly, I believe we can all get spring water. So really, that brings me to the fourth approach, which is what we call a futurist approach. Futurism interprets that most portions of the book of Revelation and the book of Daniel are future events in a literal physical and global context. It's in that context that I've been going through the book of Revelation with you and that the wrath of the Lamb that's being poured out is in the future, not given unto the church.

With that understanding, we understand that God is saying in verse 2, the very first bowl judgment, that this is not something that is going to happen to you and I if we are born again believers. The Bible teaches that we are not going to be here. That means that those who are on this earth at that time are either those who have rejected Jesus Christ, hence the blaspheming of God, or those that have gotten saved but then are martyred and are with Jesus. They're not on the earth.

If I could just appeal, I know a lot of you, but there's also a radio audience with people in Indiana and different people who have been subscribing to the radio program. We've had people contact us from all different parts of states and different countries. As the word goes forward, it's important that I just sometimes slow down because we have different folks from different backgrounds and understanding, even culturally.

Different languages are their primary language. It's something that I think is just really important as we go through these and maybe just to take our time is that these final bowl judgments are complete. This is not like in a certain section of the United States or a certain section of Korea or China. It's culminating on the entire earth, all of the bodies of waters, all of the seas, all of the springs, everywhere.

It's a global phenomenon or a global judgment that's being poured out. Understanding that this is a future means that if you are alive right now and you have received Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you don't need to be afraid. Instead, you have been empowered. You have been empowered to take the gospel to a lost and dying world and to help people to know about what is coming.

God has put you on this earth and given you a mission to do that. Every one of you have a calling and so do I. In this room, we are called by God to do that. Very few of us are going to end up working directly for the church and doing that as part of a pastorship. Most of us are going to do that through multiplication in our employment, in our homes, our neighborhoods, our cities, wherever we're going.

We're going to be doing that and God's going to be using the multiplication effect through that. So it's important that we understand that we know something that's coming and God is telling us so that we can warn people about a judgment. It's not something that's okay just to keep that to ourselves. That's a sin of omission. It's a sin of omitting what you know to be true. It's not just the sin of commission we think about when we're part of the sin, but it's also a sin if we don't do what we know we're supposed to do.

Let's look here in verse 2. Thank you for allowing me just to take that moment to say that because I think sometimes people get confused and think this is just going to be a regional issue or something like that. They're not taking into account this is everyone and everywhere that is alive at that time that goes through the great tribulation. It's going to affect the entire world.

Verse 2 says, "So the first went out 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 worshiped the image." Those who worshiped the beast received a mark and now they're marked. Jesus said over and over again what you measure out towards somebody else will be what measured back on you. God is not grammatically challenged. How you have treated other people, how you have done things, how you even treat people today, often will be measured back to you so that you get a firsthand glimpse of what it's like.

They took a mark and now what have they become? Marked. How are they marked? By God's loathsome sores. Loathsome means extreme and distressing. These are sores that are going to be so extreme, so painful, but they're going to be marked. Some have said maybe it's boils. We don't know exactly what they are, but they're going to be something that you're not going to miss. You're going to clearly know those who are the 144,000 that may be alive still at this time, which they will be obviously. They're not going to have these boils or these loathsome sores. Those who've rejected Jesus, rejected God, they're going to be in a lot of pain and there's going to be a lot of loathsome sores and it's going to be very noticeable.

Now look at the second bowl judgment that's poured out. "Then the second angel in verse 3 poured out his bowl on the sea and it became blood as of a dead man. Every living creature in the sea died." If God says every living creature died, every living creature died. This is not allegorical as I've already mentioned. This is not an idea. This has not already occurred because you and I can go to the ocean and seas today and see them teeming with life.

I want to be careful. I'm not saying there's not certain parts of scripture that we are to take as allegorical, like a simile. God's very clear and he tells us when to do that. But it says that the sea became like blood. This is interesting. We have sort of seen this before, haven't we? In the same book. Turn to Revelation chapter 8 and I want you to look back at 8 and 9 if you would, please.

This was the second trumpet judgment. Do you remember that? It talked about how the seas were struck and it says, "Then the second angel sounded and something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea and a third of the sea became blood," which means you still have up to this point how much of the sea available? Two-thirds. A third of the living creatures in the sea died and a third of the ships were destroyed.

What have I been saying about the judgments? What is God teaching us? They've been progressive. Now we're to the bowl judgments. There is no more progression. This is what I want everyone to see here. This has finality to it. It's all the ocean, all of the seas. There is nothing. There is no more one-third. Here the contamination is made complete. Every living creature in the sea dies. It's blood as of a dead man.

A dead man has no life. If you leave that blood in that dead man, what does that dead man become eventually? Putrid. Why do you think it was part of Jewish law, even the hygienic law, that you were not to touch dead things? At that time, they didn't understand all of the things we understand in microbiology and bacteria and transmission of disease. We take that for granted because in our lifetime, we've been very blessed to learn all of these things because of advancement of technologies and microscopes and electron microscopes and all kinds of things like that.

They didn't know necessarily. They had God's word. God's word was far ahead of what any man's microbiology would have ever been. It says when there is a dead thing, don't go near it or touch it. Why? Well, because there's bacteria and it becomes ultimately toxic. That's the point. So when you read blood as a dead man, he's trying to tell us there is no life and it's become toxic. That's what he's communicating to us in our modern vernacular, if you will.

Then in verse 4, we go to the third bowl. This is now the fresh waters. "And then a third of the angel poured out of his bowl on the rivers and the springs of water and they became blood. And I heard the angel of the water saying, 'You are righteous, O Lord, the one who is and who was and who is to be because you have judged these things.'" So interesting. The rivers and the spring water, they became blood.

Well, again, hold your finger here, turn to Revelation chapter 8. Look back at verse 10 and 11, please, just a few pages back. "Then the third angel sounded and a great star fell from heaven burning like a torch and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs. The name of the star is Wormwood, bitterness. A third of the waters became wormwood and many men died from the water because it was made bitter."

What is he telling us? Many men died. Why? Because they could not drink the water. A third of that, that's what he wants us to see here. It was partial contamination in some capacity. But now it's the pollution or contamination of all fresh water, all fresh water. We're talking aquifers as well. No drinking water whatsoever. That's part of why I really believe that when this judgment is poured out, it must be very short until the return of Jesus because of the bowl judgments. With such ecological disasters, the human race cannot survive very long on this earth. They just can't. Humanity cannot survive.

This is total. There is no such thing, all the commercials, all this stuff about packing and having all this stuff and find a place in the middle of this state or that state where there's mountains and buy an underground bunker. Friends, if you can't get fresh water, you're going to die. It doesn't matter where you try to go. There is no such thing as escapism.

What God wants to do is bring us to the reality that we need a Savior. We need a Lord. We need a master. And it's not us. As much as we believe sometimes, it's not us. Well, let's just look at verses 5 through 7 now. "And I heard the angel of the water saying, 'You are righteous, O Lord, and 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 the saints and the prophets and you have given them blood to drink, for it is their just due.' And I heard another from the altar saying, 'Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are your judgments.'"

You see, God isn't doing this as a bully. He's not doing this as a mean dad. He's actually doing the most kind thing you could really do. He is allowing an individual to make a free choice. Will you choose Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? Not because you have to, but because you want to. And if you choose not to choose Jesus Christ, will he be so fair that he will give you over to your will be done?

Romans chapter 1 and 2 tells us he absolutely will do that and does that today. That's why those that are in sin continue to be given over to that. In the Old Testament, you and I would all maybe have had an extra big pocket that we would have carried that rock in and we would have been walking everywhere and we would have had our rock.

You and I don't carry rocks anymore. You know what I'm alluding to, judgment. Most of the judgment, many of it was capital crime. You would have been stoned to death, young people, children. This whole room would be empty because we disobeyed our parents. Our parents told us certain things, we didn't honor both of our parents. We didn't honor what they said. We said no, but I think this, but I think that, I feel this, I feel that. You'd have felt a stone in the head.

Whoa, that's heavy, man. It kind of dealt with the problem. It dealt with the problem. But God is a God of mercy, love, and grace and truth. And so God's answer was, well, you know what? My son Jesus will remove and forgive your sin if you'll place your faith and trust in him.

But in the Old Testament, we used to know when we were in sin a little bit quicker because there was such an extreme to the judgment so fast that we didn't get to dwell in our sin kind of like muddy water. We didn't just get to kind of bathe in the muddy water like a swine or a pig just rolling around in the mud in it, not even realizing that we're going deeper and deeper and deeper.

Now in our New Testament, in our new covenant, the way God handles these things and he allows these things is he eventually says this is what you will, then I will give you over to that. And when you get given over to that, then you begin a downward spiral and you have no one to blame but yourself because you chose that and God gave you the hope of everlasting life and inheritance, forgiveness, but people who reject that choose to reject that and choose to continue in sin and therefore they will have to answer for that and there is a consequence.

I know through a lot of what we see today, consequences have tried to been removed from our culture. I think that's intentional. I think the enemy very clearly doesn't want people to understand that there's a cause and effect. Meanwhile, anybody who's studied physics understands cause and effect. Anybody who's understood anatomy and physiology understands cause and effect. Anybody who studied microbiology understands cause and effect. Anybody who's taken any of the hard sciences, not the humanities of sciences, but the hard sciences, understands there are cause and effect.

And today we are being so duped into thinking that real love means that we don't introduce the effect because of the cause. We're told, "No, don't do that. You're going to hurt someone's feelings." My pastor used to say real love isn't being a respecter of persons. Real love is warning people about the death roll.

You ever seen an alligator grab onto somebody and they take them and they begin to spin them and then they sink them down to the bottom of that body of water? And then they become so full, so enlarged, they swell up and then they feed on them over and over while that person's just down there trapped. They usually bury them under something. That's what sin does.

Humans get so engorged with it, the enemy just spins them and spins them and spins them and they actually in their mind convince themselves that they're right. And that's why consequences matter. That's why consequences are good and healthy.

During the middle of this judgment, we see an angel is declaring that God is righteous. He says, "You're righteous." It's completely fitting that those who delighted in shedding the blood of saints should now what? Drink blood. Pastor, that's not very kind. That's God's love because just maybe at that moment when somebody's going through such a difficult, harsh thing that they will have a moment of where they humble themselves and say, "What's going to happen?" Anxiety, fear, whatever it is that motivates them that tells them, "Wait a minute, I can't fix this. You are real. You are there. You are doing this. Please Jesus, forgive me for what I've done." And in a moment, in a humbling of a heart, they will get saved.

And that's what he wants. That's the whole point. And without the consequence, you don't see any of that. They refused the living water, Jesus Christ, and so now they're given bloody water. Even in the midst of this judgment, the angels declare you're righteous, O Lord. Not only is your justice fair, it's actually pure and true.

You see, there's no other way with God. It has to be purity and truth. And I heard another from the altar saying the voice is another angel speaking from the altar, possibly representing the corporate testimony of the martyrs, maybe back from Revelation chapter 6, verse 9, or maybe it's the prayers of the saints in Revelation chapter 8, verse 4.

We're going to stop here this morning. There is so much more that can be said and I don't want to rush these because they're going to keep getting more extreme. And the hope is that maybe there's somebody here that doesn't know Jesus Christ, that now you have been given a literal future sort of, you know, people talk about, "Well, if I had a crystal ball, if I could just see what was going to happen in the future." You have something better. You have God's holy word, which is telling you what's going to happen.

And again, you might be saying, "I don't know, maybe maybe that's all just made up and these are stories and not actual historical accounts." Please be a student of history. So much of history repeats itself when we don't learn from the errors of our history. And I know we're living in a time where do you notice where the other attacks are coming from? From the enemy. It's to rewrite our what? History.

The devil's overplaying his hand. He's not even hiding it anymore. And most humans are like, "Okay." I just sit back and I'm going, does anyone even care? Does anyone see?