Sermon Tone Analysis

INTRO:

We are almost finished with the book of Revelation.

Last week Dave finished off Rev. 19 And in a nutshell what we looked at was the coming to an end of the tribulation period.

The end of the 7 years of judgement on a Christ rejecting world.

the ending of the tribulation period really is looking at the two different dinner reservations.

These reservations were made many years in advance and every day filled with decisions was leading closer and closer to the feast.

My wife and i are going on 20 years of marriage this year, i know its crazy since i am soon young.

But I remember when we first got engaged and we started making plans for our wedding.

the first thing that we had to do was to pick a day to get married.

My Natalie made it easy on me and picked our dating anniversary to make it one day for me to remember.

We picked a day that was close to a year away.

Now for a wedding , there are a number of things that have to be organized, planned, picked out.

Do we want a big wedding or a small wedding?

What color do we want for the wedding, what type of food, what type of music, where are we going on our honeymoon, where are we going to live, how many people are we going to invite...... and most importantly...... how are we going to pay for it.

from the time that we made a decision to get married and we set a date, each day was counting down to the wedding ceremony and the banquet dinner party that we had reserved.

Each decision from that day on was bringing us one day closer to the wedding and closer to fulfilling the wedding plans ....

Transition

in a similar way, this is what we looked at in chapter 19.

There were 2 specific dinner feasts that the people of the world made reservations for years in advance .

And each daily decision would lead them closer and closer to the reservations that they made.

the two dinner reservations were the “Marriage Supper of the Lamb” and the “ Super of the great God”

Marriage Supper of the Lamb

is the feast that would take place after the 7 days of celebrating in a Hebrew wedding.

The bride and the groom have been married and they have gone away to consummate the wedding and they return after 7 days.

the bridegroom returns with His bride to the Marriage Supper.

this is the picture we see in the bible, Jesus being the bridegroom and His church being the bride.

At the time of the rapture, the groom came for his bride to be unitied with Him.

And He has been gone for 7 years with His bride in heaven, while on earth, it has been 7 years of tribulation.

After the 7 years of tribulation Jesus returns with His Bride , the church to the earth in His second coming.

Those that are a part of the marriage supper of the Lamb, those who will return with Jesus at His second coming are those who put their faith in Jesus.

Who committed their lives to live for Him.

The moment they gave their lives to Him in faith was the moment that they made their reservations and each day they walked in faith would lead them closer to the day that they would be with the Lord.

Supper of the Great God

We have this other reservation that the people of the world have made.

They have chosen to reject Jesus.

From the moment that they chose to reject Him, they made reservations to this supper.

See at the end of the tribulation period, we see the armies of the world and those who reject God gather at the valley of Megiddo, and they come to fight against God and those who came with Him.

This is the great battle of Armageddon.

And what we see here is that God destroys all of the armies of the world who come against Him in this huge valley in Israel.

Rev 14:20 tells us that the blood that is spilled during this battled is like grape juice coming from a winepress.

It is flowing after being crushed.

It talks about how the blood will rise to the horses bridle.

so in this great battle , God destroys all the armies and the people who came against Him.

This is the culmination of the 7 years of tribulation.

The destruction of all these who rejected Him.

and in Rev. 19 we saw that an Angel cried with a loud voice saying to the birds of the air to gather “together to the supper of the Great God”.

That you may eat of the flesh of the captains, the mighty men, the flesh of the horses and those who sit on them.

Basically, God destroyed everyone who came against Him and He left the bodies to rot in the fields.

Now birds will come to eat the rotting flesh of the dead corpses.

These who died here also made reservations to this day.

They made a choice to reject God and each day, they made daily decisions that lead them here to this day .

Transition

this is what we are going to look at today.

The tribulation period is over but now we will see both the “REWARDS” and “CONSEQUENCES” given out.

for some they will receive their reward for their faithfulness and for some, we will see the consequences of their rejection of Jesus.

Jay has talked about the spiritual law that is at work in our lives.

That whatever you sow or whatever you bring into your life will eventually produce something out of your heart.

if you have accepted the Lord and have made it a point to bring the things of Him into your lives daily, your life will begin to produce fruit of the spirit.

Gal. 5 talks about this.

There will be Godly character traits that will come out of you that are Christ like as a result of that relationship with God.

yet the opposite is true.

If you reject God, reject His word, reject to obey His word...... you will produce the things of the flesh in your live.

things that are not of God and with those things, with that type of life, there will be consequences......

this is what we will see as we look at the end of the tribulation period and now entering into the millenial reign of Christ.

I. SATAN BOUND FOR 1,000 YEARS (V.1-4)

A. THE BOTTOMLESS PIT (V.1)

We see an angel here who has come down from heaven to the earth and he has the key to the bottomless pit and a chain in his hand.

the bottomless pit is actually the “abyss” which speaks of being a shaft towards the center of the earth.

This is not hell, but it appears to be a holding cell if you would, which is why it would require a key to lock the gate.

This angel appears to have the key and the chain in his hand ready to lock somebody up in the abyss.

in Rev. 9: 1-6, we see an angel , possible the same one, was given the key to the bottomless pit and he went and opened the door to let out some of the craziest demons that appear to contained in the abyss.

These demons were like locust and they were given power to torment those who were not sealed by God.

this is the same bottomless pit that in Chapter 9 & 20.

Now we see instead of letting demons out, this angel is about to put one back in to confinement.

B. Satan Bound for 1,000 years (v.2-4)

so we see that as the Tribulation period is over, as Satan has been running wild on the earth for thousands of years corrupting the world and the people of the world, now there comes a point that he is contained.

this angel who holds the key to the bottomless pit in one hand and a chain in the other hand, binds satan and he locks him up for 1,000 years.

Understand that his final judgement has not come yet, God still has a plan to use him in the future...... judgement will eventually come but for now , he is locked up in this bottomless pit for 1,000 years.

now as we read this, there are many questions that we really don’t have the answers to.

Like who was the angel, was the chain a pyshical chain?, if it was, then how big and strong must this chain be?

How strong was the angel that bound him?

we don’t know all these things , the bible does not tell us of it.

But we take the words of the bible litterally that these events will happen, yet how exactly , we just don’t know.

But we rest on the fact that the God of the universe who created all things, can do anything.

There is nothing impossible with God.

Transition

Now we are told the reason that he is being bound.

So that he will not “deceive” the world.

the bible calls satan by many different names, including here we see 4 different names for him.

One of his names is “deceiver” , or liar....

And i think this name fits him the best because it describes his nature.

He is a liar.

In Eph. 2 we are told that the wold is under the control of the world.

So we see that Satan is at work in the world..... controlling the world in a direction that is contrary to God , contrary to His word, contrary to His will..

Satan’s entire purpose is to destroy you and i

Satan is trying to destroy an entire world, the entire human race, trying to get us to follow the path that will lead us away from God and will lead to our destruction, just like him.

and one of the ways that Satan is controlling the world, leading the world and current culture , is to cause people to believe in a lie.

If Satan can cause you and i to believe a lie, then he can lead us away from following God and eventually destroy us.

Lies Satan Teaches

GOD DOES NOT EXIST