His Perfect Love

Matt VanderVen: There's nobody that will stand and say, "I did it my way." Frank Sinatra, there's going to be no national anthem "I Did It My Way" at that time. No. The Bible tells us every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. You're either going to do that as a born-again believer or you're going to do that in rejection, but you're still going to bow your knee because there's no getting around the fact that Jesus is Lord. And that doesn't change like our opinions and our feelings do. Our emotions betray us.

Guest (Male): Calvary Chapel Harrisburg-West Shore presents His Perfect Love with Pastor Matt VanderVen. We're at the tail end of a study in Revelation, and today the plan is to cover the latter half of chapter 19. It's at this time of year that we collectively remember our Lord's first advent, but the Bible also speaks of a time when Jesus will return to this earth. What will it be like? Will you be around to see it all happen? You're about to find out. Here's Pastor Matt with today's message.

Matt VanderVen: We're in Revelation chapter 19 here this morning. We'll begin in verse 14, but as context, I'll go back and start in verse one. This is a beautiful chapter and passage for those that weren't with us in the last few weeks. This chapter specifically goes through, if you're a born-again believer, if you believe in Jesus Christ, what it will be like during this time when Jesus Christ comes back to this earth. We come with Him, and all the things that our senses are going to see and hear and everything that's going to happen.

It's remarkable because again, as we look through these scriptures, we know that God has been right 100% of the time. If you've been with us for midweek study on Wednesdays, it's something that God, in the chapter we've been in in Isaiah, has really just been matter-of-fact in saying, "You know what? Test me." Name another book that exists on the earth anywhere in 6,000 years that can tell you what's going to happen with precision accuracy 700 years earlier. And oh by the way, when I say precision accuracy, 100% of the time. I mean, naming Cyrus that he would be a king 150 years before he was even born. 200 years before Babylon even existed.

He said, "This is the way I want you, humanity, to test me." Because there's only one way to make it very simple to know that there is a God. Anybody can say, "I'm a god." Anybody can argue and say, "Well, I know these things, Nostradamus. I know this." All these other things. He says, "But you know what? I'm going to prove it." And He has. And believe you and me, if there was a way to have disproved it by now over 6,000 years, somebody would have, and the reality is no one has been successful. And never will be.

And so as we narrow our focus here this morning, specifically in chapter 19, it's a sobering chapter because there's a part of us that are born again, we're excited because we're coming back with Christ, and we're going to co-reign with Him on this earth. And that's wonderful and music to almost all of our ears as born-again believers. All wickedness, evil, is going to be destroyed. But He is coming because there's going to be a battle, and it's going to be the battle of Armageddon.

Some of you prepare for war, soldiers. I know we have people that are veterans in this fellowship that go out on the front lines to protect us. Men and women that give their lives. And when you're going out to battle, that's because you understand you have a foe. The Bible's very clear that those who have rejected Jesus Christ, it's not something that is gray. They've declared that "I don't want Jesus," and therefore, He's my enemy. And God is going to come back with us. Part of what we're going to do is reign, but we're also going to turn around and watch Jesus Christ bring judgment. Long overdue judgment. Very overdue.

So as we look through these passages, as we read these things, it's with a beautiful heart, but with a sobering heart that we come to this this morning. So I'm going to read chapter 19, I'll begin in verse one again. And again, as we prayed together, we want the Lord to speak to our hearts and what role He wants us to play, what purpose He has for each and every one of us. There is no coincidence that you're here.

Chapter 19, verse one: "After these things I heard a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven saying, 'Alleluia! Salvation and glory and honor and power belong to the Lord our God! For true and righteous are His judgments, because He has judged the great harlot who corrupted the earth with her fornication; He has avenged on her the blood of His servants shed by her.' Again they said, 'Alleluia! Her smoke rises up forever and ever!' And the twenty-four elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God who sat on the throne, saying, 'Amen! Alleluia!'"

"Then a voice came from the throne saying, 'Praise our God, all you His servants and those who fear Him, both small and great!' And I heard, as it were, the voice of a great multitude, as the sound of many waters and as the sound of mighty thunderings, saying, 'Alleluia! For the Lord God Omnipotent, all-powerful reigns! Let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready.' And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints."

"Then he said to me, 'Write: "Blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb!"' And he said to me, 'These are the true sayings of God.' And I fell at his feet to worship him. But he said to me, 'See that you do not do that! I am your fellow servant, and of your brethren who have the testimony of Jesus. Worship God! For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy,' just like we read in Isaiah. Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, descriptors of Jesus Christ. And in righteousness He judges and makes war."

"His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns, of victory and more. He had a name written that no one knew except Himself. He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. And the armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses, plural. Now out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God."

"And He has on His robe and on His thigh a name written: King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Then I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the birds that fly in the midst of heaven, 'Come and gather together for the supper of the great God, that you may eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, the flesh of horses and of those who sit on them, and the flesh of all people, free and slave, both small and great.' And I saw the beast, the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against Him."

"Who's Him? Jesus. Who sat on the horse and against His army. Who's His army? The hagios, the saints. That's the Greek word. That's you and I and all of heaven. Then the beast was captured, and with him the false prophet who worked signs in his presence, by which he deceived those who received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image. These two were cast alive into the lake of fire burning with brimstone. And the rest were killed with the sword which proceeded from the mouth of Him who sat on the horse. And all the birds were filled with their flesh."

So as we begin in verse 14 here, again, making our way through this passage, a whole lot going on. He said, "And the armies in heaven were clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses." Now we read already, and that's why I like to read the whole chapter even though we've been through a good portion of this, because early on he's already told us and we read this back in verse eight of that same chapter: "And to her it was granted to be arrayed," the bride of Christ, born-again believers, those that have been raptured off this earth, that are in heaven with God.

"Arrayed" means to wear, to put on, "fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints." Now lest we get, lest we forget to understand this, that any righteousness we have in ourselves has been, and I'm going to use a word here, it's not something we walk around and say to our friends a whole lot, "Hey, did you have anything imputed to you today?" We don't really use that word a lot, but imputed, what that means is to freely and willingly give something that one has that something one does not possess.

Only Christ, Jesus Christ, possesses full, complete, true righteousness. The righteousness that we have has been imputed, given by Jesus Christ to the born-again believer as part of the new nature that you and I have received. And we also were given a guarantee of that. Do you remember what that guarantee was? Sealed by the Holy Spirit. The down payment that God gave us for the righteousness He gave us. Just think about that for a minute. You go to buy a car, you take out a loan, you give the guarantee, don't you? You put the down payment when you're going to buy a house.

But God turns around and says, "I've sealed you, and I'm giving you the down payment," meanwhile He's the one that paid for our sin, past, present, and future, in the present perfect tense. So let us not forget that the righteous acts of the saints, which this idea of the white clothing here that we're wearing, white and clean, he's talking about something very important that Jesus Christ said on the cross: "It is finished." Tetelestai. I know many of you use the word teleios, but the correct conjugation in the Greek is tetelestai. And what He was communicating there is it is finished, past, present, and future.

In other words, God wasn't grammatically challenged. He was saying that all the sin on the entire face of the earth for the believer that has given their lives to Him has been done away with, removed as far as the east is from the west, even things you haven't even done yet. But that's what removal of sin does compared to covering a sin. Because in the past, when sacrificial system was given and a covering of sin was done via Yom Kippur, or Kippur if you prefer, the Day of Atonement, every year that had to be repeated.

And every year they had to be washed and cleansed. Not so for the born-again Christian. Because we are walking, even though we don't see the glorified body, we haven't received the glorified body, Jesus sees us glorified already. Now, the armies in heaven, some have come back and said, "Well, who are these armies in heaven clothed in the fine linen?" As if verse seven and verse eight didn't already describe. He called it the bride. So it's the born-again believer, the hagios, the saints. We know who that is. That's you and I. That's the saints of the Old Testament. That's the saints of the New Testament. That's the saints of those that have died in the Great Tribulation.

And then there are still what we call latter saints that are still coming to Christ, that will come to Christ in the Great Tribulation and will be there at the time when Christ comes back and you and I come with Him, that weren't martyred. But he's talking about the saints, and he's talking about the people. And again, Revelation 17:14, Jude verses 14 and 15, Zechariah talks about chapter 14 verse 5: "And all the saints with you." It's translated "with Him," the same passage we see here. So we know this isn't talking about angels, because angels don't get born again. They're not called the hagios.

Zechariah uses that term in the Septuagint. It's translated through the whole Greek, and it uses the word hagios, speaking of the same Greek term in our New Testament that we use for born-again believers that are saints. That's what a Septuagint does. It translates the whole Bible into Greek so we understand the words from the Greek, whether they are the same word that God wants to use in the Old Testament that was written in Hebrew. You see, the idea here is that Jesus is going to accompany His people. He's going to lead us. The Son of God leads the people of God from heaven against those on the earth that are rejecting Him.

Now, please also look in this verse with me. There's no mention of weapons. Some of you are soldiers. All of you are soldiers for Christ if you're born again, but some of you have been soldiers and you're going to, you've gone off to war. Some of you have been in the military in some capacity. Some of you may go serve in the military. When you find yourself in the military, they are going to train you, and one of the things they're going to train you in using is what? Weapons. Because a soldier has a weapon. And many of our soldiers, if not all of them, become excellent handlers of their weapon.

Lest let's not forget we are soldiers of Christ. We have a weapon, too. What is our weapon? The word of God, right? Prayer is our mighty weapon. We're going to see a sword comes, Jesus is going to talk to us about a sword from His mouth that He's going to speak the word. That's God's weapon. He's going to do that in the future. Our weapon is used right now. Right now. But notice there's no swords, there's no shields, there's no guns, nothing. No, no, no. None of that's needed. Jesus will speak it, and it will be so.

We don't need any weapons that way in the Millennial Age or when Christ comes back. The only armor or weapon that we'll ever have need of, really, is those fine linens, clothed white and clean. You know what our other weapon is that we'll say heaven forward or looking to? Christ's righteousness. That's our weapon as well, because it absolves and destroys all sin. The righteousness of Christ and the love of Christ is greater than the greatest sin that could ever be committed on this earth. And the blood of Christ can destroy it all and remove it as though it never, ever happened.

There's a legal term for that. It's called justified. It's justification. That's part of what redemption looks like. And so this is all being communicated in this one verse. It's simple, and yet it carries a lot of weight with it. But he's trying to communicate to us, he's making it simple that it's the fine linen white and clean followed Him on these white horses, again in plurality. And this is all after the wedding feast of the Lamb, just keeping chronological order here, after the end of the Great Tribulation after seven years.

Verse 15: "Now out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of fierceness and the wrath of Almighty God." Now this is interesting. There's a lot going on here. He's talking about a sword. He doesn't take out a sword. His tongue isn't a sword. It's not like he's waving it around. He's not pulling it out. It's His spoken word. It's in His mouth. He opens His mouth and speaks truth, validity. As a matter of fact, isn't that what we called Him, when we say the Bible tells us that He is truth and faithful? Didn't we read that already in chapter 19? Truth and faithful.

So He's going to speak this, but there's something also very interesting here. It says that He's going to rule with a rod of iron, right? There's not this pushover, there's not this relativism that's running in the mainstream today. There'll be none of that. He says He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. Now, a lot of us, we are so removed from our food supply. We are so removed for how things get done every day. We go to the Piggly Wiggly, we grab our chicken, we grab our beef, we grab our grape juice. When's the last time any of you went out and treaded your own grape juice?

Some of you are saying, "I never have." Well, one of the first things you're going to do after you clean your feet, just saying, you're going to turn around, you're going to take a vat, and you're going to fill it with grapes. How high do you think they used to make that, you know, 2,000 years ago when they didn't have all the machinery and industrial revolution and everything we think about today? Do you know that they were up to three feet in a vat? And that predominantly the women actually would go, you talk about women having strong legs, ever heard that? Women have strong legs. They do. They would turn around, they would get in there, and for hours, hours they would literally pressure, stomp down, and they would crush these grapes.

So that out of it would come this pure, what we know today as a grape juice. Now some back in that day, again, please understand, yes, there was wine, but it's not like the wine with the high alcohol content that we see today at 13 and 15%. Back then, 2,000 years ago, you might have been at 2% or 1%. They didn't ferment it. Well, they fermented, excuse me, but they didn't do some of the things we do to increase the alcohol content. So it would be fermented. So they would also capture that, pull it out, and they would also put it into like barrels, think of it that way.

And they would let it ferment and spend time and it would expand and hence a lot of the parables Jesus would speak about about a wineskin. How that the fermentation big and would burst, instead get a new wineskin, don't use an old wineskin because it'll burst at you. You can't take the old covenant and try to shove it into the new covenant. You understood what he was talking about like he was talking about wineskins giving that passage and understanding to us.

But the idea here is that this is about wrath. This is about Jesus Christ coming, and what He's describing is the pressure that will be exuded, the pressure that will be used. I want you to think of strength. I want you to think of what it takes a man or woman to stand up there for hours to continue to do this with such pressure, gravity, all the force of 200-and-whatever plus pounds I weigh to literally be pushing down as I'm doing this to get these grapes to crush. To get out the pressure, the juice. And that's exactly what God is going to do, Jesus. He's going to put such a, that's going to bring such a crushing judgment.

And that's the picture He wants us to see here. He made it very clear He's going to rule with a rod of iron. Jesus comes to rule and reign in triumph, to rule the nations, just as it was foretold in Psalm chapter 2, verse 4 and 9. Hold your finger here, turn to Psalm 2, please, in your Bibles. In your Old Testament. Psalm 2. Some 1,100, a thousand years before Jesus Christ even touched terra firma on the earth. Psalm 2, verses 4 and 9: "He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall hold them in derision. Then He shall speak to them in His" what? "Wrath," judgment, "and distress them in His deep displeasure. Yet I have set My King on My holy hill in Zion, Jerusalem."

"And I will declare the decree: The Lord has said to Me, 'You are My Son, today I have begotten You. Ask of Me, and I will give You the nations for Your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for Your possession. You shall break them with a'" what? What's it say right there? It's there, it was prophesied, "a rod of iron; and You shall dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel." This was declared. This was not something new. Christ knew the heart of humanity and that there would be many that would reject Him, and He knew there would come a time where His patience, He would say the long-suffering and the patience, "now you'll be given, and you'll be weighed and measured, and you'll be found wanting."

And so He makes it clear here. There's not of us that could misunderstand what He's trying to say. The sword comes out of His mouth. He rules like a rod of iron. And as we read last week in Isaiah 63:3, "the Lord alone will tread in the winepress of the fierceness of His wrath." It will be Jesus Himself that does this. He doesn't say that the armies, you and I, turn around and have to get in there and tread or use pressure. No. God will simply speak it. I often have the video, I like to let the video play in my mind. He doesn't describe a sword that He's taking out and hitting them with.

It's out of His mouth. The idea here is it's spoken, just by the power of God. He spoke the whole world into existence, didn't He? He will speak and I just think the flesh will melt off. Sorry for the graphic nature, but you're going to see it. You're going to see it with your eyes. You will be here for it when you come back with Him. But literally the flesh, however He's going to through the spoken word, melt. Melt right before Him. There's nobody that will stand and say, "I did it my way." Frank Sinatra, there's going to be no national anthem "I Did It My Way" at that time. No.

The Bible tells us every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. You're either going to do that as a born-again believer or you're going to do that in rejection, but you're still going to bow your knee because there's no getting around the fact that Jesus is Lord. And that doesn't change like our opinions and our feelings do. Our emotions betray us.

Guest (Male): That is Pastor Matt VanderVen on His Perfect Love. We're going through Revelation at the present time. And I'll remind you that you can hear the program again when you visit HisPerfectLove.org. That's HisPerfectLove.org. We're also at OnePlace.com and look for us wherever you get your podcasts. We also offer a mobile app. This is a great way to take Pastor Matt's teachings with you on the go. You can learn more about the mobile app and start your download when you visit our website HisPerfectLove.org.

We can't thank you enough for your prayers for this ministry. Please pray that as God's word goes forth, that lives will be greatly impacted for the glory of God and people would grow by His grace and love, or even enter into a relationship with Him. And if you have a prayer request, please send that our way. You can email that to us through our website at HisPerfectLove.org.

If you live in the Mechanicsburg, PA area, we hope you'll stop by for a visit. Just like you hear on the radio, Pastor Matt teaches verse by verse through the Bible here at Calvary Chapel Harrisburg-West Shore. Sunday morning services begin at 8:30 and 10:30. We have a midweek gathering on Wednesday at 7:00 PM. We're located at 28 North Locust Point Road in Mechanicsburg, PA. Go to CCHarrisburg.org for more information. And then join us next time when Pastor Matt will pick up where we left off in Revelation here on His Perfect Love.

His Perfect Love is brought to you by Calvary Chapel Harrisburg-West Shore.