His Perfect Love

Guest (Male): Pastor Matt says when Jesus returns, the people on earth won't be welcoming him with open arms.

Matt VanderVen: We are not only in the last days, friends. I would suggest to you we're in the last of the last days, and Jesus is coming anytime to rapture his church. And all of the signs are there. All of the symptoms of the days like Noah, Matthew 24, everything is put before us. And again, just read the Bible, and you would see as I see that all these things are coming to fruition.

And yet, the thing I'm so struck by all of this is that there are groups of people that will be on this earth that will turn around and look at Jesus Christ when he comes and say no. No, you're not going to be the king here. No, you're not going to be the Lord. No, you're not going to establish a theocracy on this earth. We like our monarchy. We like our perversion. We like our manipulation. We like our dominance, control, and attacking of the weak and most vulnerable.

We don't want that to change. We like our commercial Babylon. Wait a minute, Pastor, that's not very friendly. That is not a way to win friends and influence people. Carnegie would not be happy with me. But please prove me wrong based on the statistics and what's going on of the day. Did he not tell us hearts would wax cold?

I mean, we literally have psychologists and psychiatrists now writing books telling people that our inner boy needs to be expressed. So when an adult man, perverted, goes and rapes a young child, that's simply an extrapolation of that older man bringing out his younger boy. No, I'm sorry. That's perversion. That's sexual abuse. That's disgusting. But modern psychology is going to tell you it's okay.

Just like modern psychology has tried to tell you that we need to be so inclusive that we turn around and, instead of coming alongside people that have some mental illness or needing help to love them and invest in them and bring them through this process of whatever they're going through, trauma and difficulty, gender identity and confusion, as though we're somehow identified by our sexual preference.

Everywhere else we say be scientific, go to the research, except biologically. I mean, what are we doing? Have we really got to a madness, a delusion? Even in the academy and in medical science, we understand hard science. Biologically, there's male and female, and we don't mix the science. The science is the science.

But if somebody feels like they're a pink pony, we need to turn around and we need to say, "We need to respect their feelings." You know what respecting their feelings is? Coming up alongside them, putting your hand around them, investing in them, and telling them that you have a God that loves you. You are not defined by your sexual orientation. You are defined by a God who created you for a plan and purpose, and he is not done with you yet.

He has hope for you and a plan for you, and the best is yet to come. You are not defined by the way you feel because your emotions betray you. We should not be a Corinthian church that turns around and tries to take the sin and say, "I'm going to bring love," so that we minimize and compromise the sin. We compromise with sin because we want to be loving. So loving that we don't call sin sin anymore, but now we call it "stuff" because we don't want to hurt people's feelings.

Why is God coming back to judge? Because of all of that and more. And now it's multiplied by eight billion, and the stench has reached heaven. He's coming to judge it because he is a holy, righteous judge, and he's going to bring an end to all wickedness, an end to all evil.

Guest (Male): Hey, thanks for starting the week off together with us here at His Perfect Love. Pastor Matt VanderVen will be continuing a study in Revelation. When Jesus returns, it will be as judge, and he'll bring an end to wickedness and evil. We read about the battle of Armageddon that will occur when he arrives on the scene. The people of the earth will fight against God and lose. It makes you wonder why anyone would fight against the Lord. Here's Pastor Matt with Revelation chapter 19, starting with verse 16.

Matt VanderVen: Look back in chapter 19 at verse 16. "And he has on his robe and on his thigh a name written King of Kings and Lord of Lords." So on his garment, on his robe, that's his garment, and he has on his thigh, it says. The thigh is important because it's a place of prominence. I want you to think about this: a king sitting on a horse. If it was written somewhere else where the linen is covering, you may not see it.

But he has put it on his thighs because when you're seated on the horse, your legs are positioned so that those that are on the ground or those that are looking on can see. There's no hiding God. There's no hiding that he is the Lord of Lords. It's prominent and it's being visibly displayed. Now, at the same time, no one knew except Jesus himself. We read that already in chapter 19, in verse 12. It said he had eyes like a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns. He had a name written no one knew except himself.

And yet we're also told later on here in verse 16 that he has on his robe and on his thigh a name written, King of Kings, Lord of Lords. I think what he's trying to communicate to us that we would understand in our day is that no one can fully comprehend him. His vastness is perfect. It's beyond study. You can't possibly apprehend the entirety of God. When it says King of Kings and Lord of Lords, we only get a sliver of the divine.

Even when we go to be in heaven with Jesus Christ, we'll never be divine. We may be eternal in living with him forever and ever, but we were created as a created being. This mortality must put on immortality, the Bible says. This corruption must put on incorruption, receiving my glorified body. But what he's describing here is something that my mind tries to wrap itself around and it's difficult because he's talking about the divine aspect and nature of God that I will never fully comprehend, even spending all of eternity with him.

The Lord of Lords. And he puts this on display, the Kai Kyrios, if you want to use the original language. It's a title that's only fitting to the Lord Jesus Christ. And look what we read in verse 17. "Then I saw an angel standing in the sun, and he cried out 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.'" This is interesting. It's an invitation to a great supper.

Doesn't everybody like to get an invite to supper? But this angel is doing something we've never seen before. It's incredible. It's supernatural. He's going to be incredibly bright for those on the earth that look upon him since the angel shines and can be seen even though he's standing before the sun. That means he's going to be brighter than the sun. You have to be brighter than the sun to stand out in front of it.

Also, notice with me that this angel doesn't burn up. What is the heat of the sun? 27 million degrees approximately Fahrenheit. He doesn't burn up in the sun. He's standing in the sun, as it were. You know what it reminds me of? A courtroom. I shared with the first service, it just kind of came to me. When you walk into a courtroom, you have a judge often in front of the courtroom, and when he begins to come into the chamber, they'll say, "Please rise."

Everybody stands up and they'll say, "Honorable such and such." Look upon this angel because Jesus Christ is going to be riding this white horse and we're coming back with him. It's like that angel is standing in the sun and saying, "All of earth, pay attention now. Please rise. This is the King of Kings. This is the Lord of Lords." Do you have everybody's attention?

Then look what he says to all the birds that fly. The word for the bird here in Greek is a vulture or scavenger. It's not really an eagle; some have tried to say that, but it doesn't fit the context of an eagle. It's more of a scavenger or some type of vulture. The idea here is: come and gather together for the supper of the great God. This is a preparation for a great slaughter.

What is the battle that's about to unfold when Jesus Christ touches down again for this thousand-year millennium reign? It's the battle known as the battle of Armageddon. I just want you to think about that. There are four billion or so people left. How many billion people are on the earth right now? We've talked about it in the earlier teachings when we were going through the seal, trumpet, and bowl judgments, looking at the destruction and how that would impact humanity.

Those that might think, "I'm going to go hunker down somewhere," nobody's escaping it because all the seas, the waters, the air, everything has been judged. There's not even a fresh spring or water supply. We talked about how God, when he comes back and touches down, is going to renew the springs so that life can again happen on this earth during that thousand years. But there's approximately 8.13 billion people on earth.

This is interesting to me because I love to study sociology. I love research. My mind is wired that way. I was interested in looking back 50 years ago. A number meant something to me recently, so I just said, "Look back 50 years ago to 1975." How many people were on the earth in 1975? I found this incredibly interesting. There were about four billion people. Most people don't know that.

But we can all go look it up. There were censuses. There were about four billion people on the earth at that time. So for the first 6,000 years of human existence—because I believe in a young earth because that's what the Bible teaches—you had four billion people on the earth. In 50 years, you've now doubled that population. If there's any question about whether we are living in the last of the last days and a pressing forth of it all coming to fruition, look at that.

Some people say it's not as evil and wicked as it was back in the dark ages. How many people know the quality versus quantity conversation? Some people say the quality was different because there were smaller groups of people. Do we not realize there's more people, and the stench reaches right up to heaven the same way? We've just multiplied it. People say it's not as bad because we don't put people in a Coliseum. No, we just murder babies.

We just take our elderly population and we murder them, too, through euthanasia and different things they try to determine as though it's a good thing. Is it any coincidence that it's at both ends of the spectrum? He says, "I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end." And the very thing humanity tries to murder and destroy is the beginning and the end. But that's just a coincidence.

If we would slow down long enough to realize that in 50 years the entire human population doubled, we would see. There are so many other things I could share if we had time here this morning. What has changed in 50 years? The stench of the sin has reached to heaven. We are not only in the last days, friends. I would suggest to you we're in the last of the last days, and Jesus is coming anytime to rapture his church.

All of the signs are there. All of the symptoms of the days like Noah, Matthew 24, everything is put before us. And again, just read the Bible, and you would see as I see that all these things are coming to fruition. And yet, the thing I'm so struck by all of this is that there are groups of people that will be on this earth that will turn around and look at Jesus Christ when he comes and say no. No, you're not going to be the king here.

No, you're not going to be the Lord. No, you're not going to establish a theocracy on this earth. We like our monarchy. We like our perversion. We like our manipulation. We like our dominance, control, and attacking of the weak and most vulnerable. We don't want that to change. We like our commercial Babylon. Wait a minute, Pastor, that's not very friendly. That is not a way to win friends and influence people.

Carnegie would not be happy with me. But please prove me wrong based on the statistics and what's going on of the day. Did he not tell us hearts would wax cold? We literally have psychologists and psychiatrists now writing books telling people that our inner boy needs to be expressed. So when an adult man, perverted, goes and rapes a young child, that's simply an extrapolation of that older man bringing out his younger boy. No, I'm sorry. That's perversion. That's sexual abuse. That's disgusting.

Modern psychology is going to tell you it's okay, just like modern psychology has tried to tell you that we need to be so inclusive that we turn around and, instead of coming alongside people that have some mental illness or needing help to love them and invest in them and bring them through this process, we identify people by their sexual preference. Everywhere else we say be scientific, except biologically.

What are we doing? Have we really got to a madness, a delusion? Even in the academy and in medical science, we understand hard science. Biologically, there's male and female, and we don't mix the science. But if somebody feels like they're a pink pony, we need to turn around and we need to say, "We need to respect their feelings."

Respecting their feelings is coming up alongside them, putting your hand around them, investing in them, and telling them that you have a God that loves you and you are not defined by your sexual orientation. You are defined by a God who created you for a plan and purpose, and he is not done with you yet. And he has hope for you and a plan for you, and the best is yet to come.

You are not defined by the way you feel because your emotions betray you. We should not be a Corinthian church that turns around and tries to take the sin and say, "I'm going to bring love," so that we minimize and compromise the sin. We compromise with sin because we want to be so loving that we don't call sin sin anymore, but now we call it "stuff" because we don't want to hurt people's feelings.

Why is God coming back to judge? Because of all of that and more. And now it's multiplied by eight billion, and the stench has reached heaven. And he's coming to judge it because he is a holy, righteous judge, and he's going to bring an end to all wickedness, an end to all evil. And so he says, "Come and gather." He's the Lord of Lords. So this angel says, "Come and gather together for the supper of the great God."

I think that's interesting the way he does this, this preparation for this great slaughter of Armageddon. There are four different suppers I shared with the first service, too. Let's go over them together. You have Luke chapter 14, verses 16 through 24. That's the supper of salvation. It was alluded to in Jesus's parable. So you have a supper of salvation; that's the first one.

There's another one that we read about in Matthew chapter 26, verse 26. We actually just went through that passage together the last time we were together for communion. "This do in remembrance of me." This was the Lord's supper, and it was a commemoration of Jesus's sacrifice and a celebration of what he did. And then we read in Revelation 19 another supper. That's the marriage supper of the lamb, the wedding feast of the lamb. Revelation chapter 19, verse 7.

Now we're reading of a fourth one. This supper of the great God is described here. As you start thinking about that, I go, "Wait a minute. Four suppers." You're bringing these things up. This is a time you're coming from heaven to earth. There's no coincidence that you begin chapter 20 then, so you're making a change of direction. Why are you talking about supper in this capacity? Why have you used these terms previously in the past?

If you reject the first supper, which was about salvation, that second supper is going to mean nothing to you. What is that second supper? It's communion. Therefore, if you reject the first, you're not going to attend the second, and that means you're not going to be at the third. And what is the third supper? The wedding feast of the lamb in heaven.

But you're going to be at one of the suppers. You're going to be at the fourth supper then, which is when Jesus Christ comes and judges and all of the scavengers and vultures, as we read, devour the human body. You will be the supper. You wouldn't come to the others, you were just made supper. Everybody gets to attend at least one of these suppers. Some are going to enjoy the feast of Christ while others will be the feast for the vultures and the birds.

Verse 18 says that you may eat the flesh of kings, captains, the mighty men, the horses and those who sit on them, and the flesh of all the people, free and slave, both small and great. We talk about hermeneutics. In scripture, when we see repetitions of words, what word was just repeated five times? Flesh. That's right. It's revealing and it's inclusive.

The entire human race has walked in carnality and enmity against God, living after the flesh. And now the day of his patience is at an end. Notice with me that it shows that all men are cast in a sort of stature of judgment. No one can escape the judgment of Christ. Jesus is the divine judge of all wickedness. He's no respecter of persons or station.

The most important thing I think he wants for us to see here is that he is the great equalizer of all. That's really humbling. There is no relativism. There is no gray. You've been lied to. There is no gray. And those that are trying to walk a gray Christianity are going to be very surprised because they might be the ones that find themselves at the wrong feast at the wrong supper.

He warned about that over and over again in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. He talked about those that were playing church and those that were playing Christian. It's not like we're going to get to Jesus and say, "I didn't know what you meant." He gave us example after example. He called us to it because that's real love, and it's not mincing words. No one will ever be able to call Jesus a liar.

Look at verse 19 as we continue. "And I saw the beast, the kings of the earth, and their armies gathered together to make war against him who sat on the horse and against his army." So we have these armies gathered together to make war against him who sat on the throne. It seems crazy that anybody would try to do this. Why would anybody try to make war against God?

And then I'm reminded that every day, if we're not careful, some of us strive in the flesh in direct opposition to God's holy commands. It's so easy to look at somebody else's sin. My sin looks amazing on you guys. It looks amazing. No, really, my sin looks so much better on you and worse on you. And Jesus described it in one way: before you turn around and call out somebody's speck, take the plank out of your own eye.

Why did Jesus say that? Because he knows us. He knows that we're very capable of looking and going, "Do you see that guy's sin? Do you see that girl's sin? I'm doing pretty good." As though the comparison is another man and woman and not Jesus Christ himself. The race is not against other human beings. The race is you and Jesus, and he's at the finish line.

The measurement rod is God's holy commands, God's love, God's truth, Jesus himself. He is the reward. That's the inheritance. It's not the blessings on earth, while they may come. That's why he told us very simply: love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. If we're not really doing that, what race are we running? Who are we following? What are we doing with our time?

Then he said love your neighbor as yourself. Last I checked, Jesus laid down his life for me. He was willing to go to the cross of Calvary so that no matter what I do in this life, no matter what I've done, I could be absolved of all sin, I could be set in right posture before a living God, and invited into his throne room to sup with him, to be with him, to have true intimacy with him in true love.

I really believe he would have done that just for one soul, let alone for all of humanity. But I think we lie to ourselves when we turn around and we say, "Yeah, I love the Lord with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength," and then we are so quick to dismiss others. We forget that there's a hierarchy of needs for so many people on this earth.

There are people that are struggling with just food and drink, and we just drive by them. We don't think anything of it. We just think, "They'll be back. They'll get fired again." We just come to these stereotypical ideas and we don't have any compassion or heart to be able to be there for the most vulnerable. He told us very clearly: orphans and widows. He said take care of them.

When's the last time any of us went to an orphanage? This isn't meant to be browbeating; this is just stating the truth of the scriptures. Let's just be honest with the scriptures. We need to put our lives into the scriptures so the scriptures change our lives. This is real love. I need this. I don't need a church that's going to tickle my ears and make me feel really good and send me on my way.

I need a Bible, I need a God, I need a church that's going to come alongside me and certainly not condemn me, but turn around and build me up and strengthen me, brother and sister in Christ, for the fight and the goal ahead. And that's what we have. That's what the Lord does when he comes in the midst of his people because he's welcome where his word is taught. He dwells because it's his word and he's anointed it.

It's not man's wisdom. It's not another gospel or an ideology fleecing sheep. He's really clear: love your neighbor. I just think about it. When's the last time I took Thanksgiving and I looked at somebody in the fellowship and I know they eat alone and said, "Come to my house. Come sit around our table. We want you to be there with us." Nobody should have to eat alone.

Maybe they're widowed, maybe there's something else. There's no reason for that. "Well, they look funny." I look funny. I mean, what's the comparison here? It doesn't say, "If they look funny, thou shalt not invite them." We need to really look at it from Christ's perspective. Are we really being children of God or are we playing church? Only the individual can answer that, the person that is running their life through the grid of scripture.

Before we walk out here going, "Wow, thanks, Pastor Matt. That was a great message here this morning. I just feel so good. Yay Christ." When Jesus Christ does surgery on me, of course it doesn't feel good in the moment. But the fruit that is produced excites me even before I can see it.

Guest (Male): Pastor Matt VanderVen on His Perfect Love. Thanks for taking part in today's study of Revelation, a book that comes with a blessing attached to those that read and study it. If you were blessed and encouraged by the Lord, we'd like to know. Email us while it's fresh on your mind there at our website hisperfectlove.org. Be sure to include your prayer requests.

Also at our website, you'll find an archive of these studies in Revelation, making it easy to replay a message you enjoyed or catch what you missed on the radio. Again, we're at hisperfectlove.org and now at oneplace.com as well. Look for us wherever you get your podcasts. And we also have a free mobile app. This is a convenient way to listen to Pastor Matt on your mobile devices. Go to hisperfectlove.org for more information about that.

And if the Lord is leading you to support this ministry with a one-time gift or ongoing monthly support, you can do so through the website at hisperfectlove.org. There is much more to come in Revelation. Don't miss a moment of the journey here on His Perfect Love with Pastor Matt. His Perfect Love is brought to you by Calvary Chapel Harrisburg West Shore.