Worship Him! - Revelation 19:1-10

This is one of those times when we make a syncopation from the earthly scene. That's what we've seen for two chapters, chapter 17, chapter 18. It had been on the earthly scene. Now we're making a switch up to the heavenly scene. To stick with our outline, here is the chapter-by-chapter outline. And we're now here beginning chapter 19, which is the chapter that talks This is right ahead of the second time. Here we are in chapter 19, stepping back up into the heavenly scene. One of the things that we've brought up before is there are 150 verses approximately in the heavenly scene in Revelation.

And this isn't in the handout, so I'm going to shoot from the hip so you don't get shot, okay? One of the things that excites me about Revelation, a lot of people like to look at it because they think, oh, here's a biblical crystal ball into the future. Well, it's that, I guess, but that's not what excites me about it. What excites me about it is to walk into the heavenly scene and to look at it with identification glasses on. These aren't identification glasses. Don't try to buy them, okay?

What I mean is, is understanding that we've been identified with Christ, that we are in Christ, that we're identified with Christ in His death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and seeding. When you look at what John describes here, it is not simply a matter of, okay, here is Christ and He died for us and He is the Lamb who took our sins upon Himself. Yes, that's true. But He is the Lamb in whose death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and seating you and I have been identified.

And here's some other things that's interesting. We like to study the letters of the Apostle Paul because Paul explains identification. He explains Ephesians chapter 2. We're seated in the heavenlies. Paul explains. There's Philippians. We have a heavenly citizenship.

He explains in Colossians that we're to set our mind on things above. John, if we take what Paul explains, gets to describe us where our identification has come to full fruition. As John himself put it, we will be like him for we'll see him as he is. Why? Now you have to go back to Paul because we've been identified with him.

Our identification with Christ comes to full fruition. So as we step into this heavenly scene, that's the cool thing. Folks, this is describing, we're home. The place where we have this heavenly citizenship, we're home. The one in whom we now have our spiritual history because we've been identified, he's there. We're seeing him face to face. Right now, we see him face to face. face to face. We trust because of what he has revealed, and by faith we behold him. We will, as this comes to pass, see him face to face. We will be like him.

We will no longer be saying, this is really cool, but my rear is getting tired, when do we get a break? This is alright, but I'm a little drowsy, can we go get some coffee? It won't be any of that anymore. It will instead be there, unobstructed, there without any shadow or fog, is my Savior and Lord, the One in whom I am, the One with whom I am identified. And here's a fascinating thing. Paul was privileged to describe for us our identification with Christ. John alludes to it from place to place.

But interestingly enough, as we'll see in 1 Corinthians, and even in 2 Corinthians, Paul was forbidden to describe his visit to the heavenly scene. Yeah. Paul was forbidden to describe. what is in the heavenly scene. John was told to describe it. Isn't that interesting? So Paul explains our identification. John describes it. Paul visited the heavenly scene, but was told he could not write it. John now visits the heavenly scene, so far as we know, the last living apostle, and is told to write about it. and write about it he does. 150 verses there in the heavens.

Really cool. It is amazing, kind of mind-boggling for us to think about this. Here is Paul who uniquely is privileged to describe our identification, or at least explain it. Here is John who actually gets to write about what he sees. They have a complementary ministry, if you will, in writing in the New Testament. So we're seeing the complementary part. So what I would encourage you to do as we step back into the heavenly scene, here are the believers along with angelic beings of different kinds. And the church believers that are there are looking face to face with their Lord. having been identified with Him.

Imagine looking upon the Lord face-to-face, not saying, boy, my rear is getting tired, when are we going to take a break? I need to stand up and walk around for a while. But just to look and behold Him and have no sense of, boy, I'd like to stop for a little while, for no interruption, Let me behold him some more.

That's what this is about. So that's one reason I get excited about Revelation. I'm really not a prophecy nut. I mean, I'll study it. And there are people that are. People just get all whacked out about prophecy. To me, I'll study it and that's okay. But what I really get excited about are these heavenly scenes.

Because this is the only book that describes where we're seated. This is the only book that describes the place where we have our citizenship in any extent at all. It's the only book that describes where we're to have our mind set. Does this make any sense?

I just, that's why I get excited about it. If it was all just about having a biblical crystal ball, I'd kind of yawn and walk away. But it's because it's a description of the heavenly scene, there where I'm seated, there where my citizenship is, there where I am to set my mind. John, in effect, gives me the tools to be able to set my mind on things above. Because I can read about it for 150 verses. because my identification, which is now all by faith, will then be face-to-face.

Okay? So that's what I get excited about. And if we don't get through today's text, then it'll be okay, because we talked about this. Okay? All right. Now I can put my glasses back on, which are not identification glasses. Don't ask for them in the store. Okay. Revelation 19, verse 10, verses. Worship Him.

So here is the tribulation period is about to end, and you can imagine the people living on earth during this time are going to say, you know, hurry up, get on with it. But here on the heavenly scene, He takes the time to describe what's going on. So we're making one of these momentous turns, and we have four different groups that are described there. The great multitude, much people, in verse 1. Twenty-four elders representing the church, those saints from Acts 2 to the Rapture. The four living creatures, who are angelic creatures, as we studied back at the beginning.

And his bondservants who fear him, all created beings in heaven, including those groups listed above in verse 5. So he says in those first three verses there, After these things I heard something like a loud voice of great multitude in heaven, saying, Hallelujah, salvation and glory and power belong to our God, because his judgments are true and righteous. For he has judged the great harlot who has corrupted the earth with her immorality. who is corrupting the earth with immorality, and he has avenged the blood of his bond-servants on her. And a second time they said, Hallelujah. Her smoke rises up forever and ever."

So John uses this phrase, after these things, again. We mentioned it last time, and so I won't elaborate on it. The main point of after these things is it refers to sequential and real-time events. John uses it rather uniquely I say rather uniquely, because he uses it for future events that are in sequence, in real time.

He also says, I heard, remember what we said from the very beginning, the very first time we met about Revelation, John writes as a witness. His first eight verses of the book of Revelation are written as a legal certification. in the language of the day, a legal certification, these things are true. He again and again says, I saw, I heard, I heard, I saw. And he describes as a testimony.

It's very important to John as he writes, that he writes and you understand that he is telling you truth. This isn't just some, I dreamed it up and you know, had some strange vision after eating some weird food for breakfast. It's not some mushroom he dropped. This is something the Lord deliberately and specifically revealed to him and he uses words that tell us this is actual real stuff.

After these things, he looked and behold, a great multitude which no one could count. Every nation, all tribes, peoples, and tongues. And by the way, that every nation, all tribes, peoples, and tongues, what group of people is that? Pardon? The human race. Okay, good. What else? Gentiles. Okay. Particularly that word nations, but all the others fit in with that. Yeah. He's particularly looking at a Gentile people here. standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes and palm branches, were in their hands.

And they cry out with a loud voice saying, Salvation to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb." So you have tribulation period saints who have been martyred and are now gathered in God's throne room in heaven. This massive chorus of voices, this great multitude shouts, Hallelujah. Ever been in a big crowd and have people start saying something and it's just like, whoa! It's overpowering. That's what John is hearing.

This Hallelujah comes out of Psalm 113-18. This was this was spoken. It's called the Hallel when that when the Jews would be approaching Jerusalem particularly and Especially as they're coming closer and getting under on the road that comes into Jerusalem when they're getting ready for a feast day they would recite Psalm 113 through 118 and it's called the the Hallel it means praise and That was what they were saying when Jesus was coming on what's often, I think, misnamed the Triumphal Entry. Here Jesus is coming over the Mount of Olives on this trail. It's kind of a rock line trail on the bottom and on the sides. And they're going over this and they would be reciting the Hallel together. Psalm 113 through Psalm 118. And in that would be all the things that you see recorded in the Triumphal Entry.

Hosannas, okay? And the word Yah is a shortened form of Yahweh, because this is the Hebrew name for God. So putting Hallel and Yah together, you have Hallelujah. Meaning praise the Lord. That's what's being said. Now on page 2 here, it turns out that though the word Hallelujah is used a number of times in the Old Testament, particularly Psalms, it is often translated praise the Lord. So we don't recognize that for what it is. In the Hebrew, hallelujah.

This chapter in Revelation is the only place that is used in the entire New Testament where we see it four times in the passage we're looking at this morning. And listen to the things the multitude praises the Lord for. Salvation, glory, honor, and power. Those four things. So with great numbers and with an overwhelming chorus, they praise God for salvation.

Remember, these are ones who were not believers at the time of the rapture when the tribulation had just started. They were not believers just not that long before. So these are all people who have become believers during this tribulation period, the time since the rapture, and have lost their lives and are now praising the Lord here.

Think of it, for them, what is death? Death is a relief from the immense trials that they've gone through. Remember, these are people who couldn't feed their families adequately because they wouldn't take the mark of the beast. These are people who ran and ran and ran and ran and finally had their heads taken off. For them, death is a relief.

It's been crazy, crazy thought up to this point and finally now here they're home with the Lord. Now, this is an ongoing killing, right? I mean, it just doesn't cease here. Is that growing all the time? Yes, but what you have to remember is this is right at the end of the tribulation period, right before the Lord comes again. So that the killing of the saints is about to end here. So this group has grown This group has grown during this tribulation time, starting from the beginning of the tribulation period, or at least right after the rapture. By the way, there's a possibility of a time gap from the rapture to the start of the tribulation. But nonetheless, at the time of the rapture at least, no believers after that. There's a moment there when no believers at all. None.

Imagine what it would be like here at Holly Hill some Sunday morning. We're all singing, praising the Lord, and maybe Wayne gets up there and reads the scripture and says the kids are all dismissed. And they're ready to start, and I get up front and say hello, and then the Lord decides to come. And all of a sudden the room just empties.

People have conveyed it different ways. I don't know whether there will be a bunch of clothes and shoes left here on the pews or not. We'll find out. I'm sure that would be rather surprising. But there may indeed be people who walk into the room who don't know the Lord. And I'm sure they will find it rather shocking. It will certainly give them something to think about. And, depending on how things turn out, a lot of free clothes. Hope they fit. Okay? Okay. So they acknowledge God as the origin and source of all glory. You see, all glory is derived from God.

You know, we think of what's glorious here on planet Earth. All glory is derived from who God is. Glory is the radiant essence of who God is. and He is that eternally. Glory is the radiant essence of who God is. And so here is glory here. There is no glory that doesn't ultimately derive from Him. The multitude attributes honor to God. So what's honor? It's respect, reverence, and esteem. It's acknowledging the exalted power of God Himself. Finally, the great multitude attributes power to the Lord. The Lord's never limited in His power.

We used to have problems at my folks' place. We moved on to the ranch about the first year I was in high school, just a few weeks before high school, and we at first lived in this little tiny cabin. And the cabin had real old-fashioned wiring in it. I think it was worse than old-fashioned. Anyway, it had those little screw-in fuses, you know, that you used to have back in those days. Well, at first we didn't have the electrical panel on the house we were building. And we had kind of haywired some electrical power into the new house out of the old cabin until we got the power hooked up for the new house. At times we would run into problems where we would have inadequate power.

And it would be really strange. Like you turn the lights on and okay, we've got enough power for that. But the problem was if you turned the lights on and you also had the pump turn on, At the same time, the water pump turned on at the same time, blow a fuse every time. The whole house would go dark, the pump turned off, it was just terrible. I had to go out there with a flashlight and unscrew this fuse, find which one's blown, unscrew the fuse, put a new fuse back in, you know, in the middle of the night. It could be really terrible. So sometimes we even had strange events like somebody would flush the toilet and yell, turn all the lights off! Because you didn't want to blow a fuse. I mean, it was really odd. There is no power shortage with the Lord. His power is always adequate. So they glorify the Lord for His power.

And that's one thing, if you look at salvation, glory, honor and power, the Lord's expression of these things, the Lord's innate character in these things is infinite. When Christ died on the cross, he did not die for just a few, and then other people say, well, I believe in Jesus, and they say, sorry, he just didn't die for enough people, so you're out of luck. All these things, God's glory, God's honor, God's power, all infinite, all entirely adequate.

Now we get on to page 3 there. Sometimes we want to address this because some people say, well, God can do anything. And we understand that's usually well intended, but it needs to be understood. It doesn't mean that God can do absolutely everything. What we usually mean by that is God has the power to do everything.

But in fact, his power, though unlimited, is constrained by other aspects of his character. Let's take a for instance. God has power, but his power is constrained by his love. God has power, but his power is constrained by his mercy. God has infinite power, but his power is constrained by his justice.

So God can do anything consistent with all of the infinite aspects of his character. So God can do anything, he has the power to do anything, but his character will not allow him to do just anything, and that's a good thing. His question is a very good one. Are all the elements of his character listed in the Bible? Two things. One is there is a limitation in the sense of we cannot necessarily learn about and comprehend everything while here on planet Earth.

That is why Ephesians 2.7 It is going to take eternity, rolling ages, for Him to reveal His glory and His grace. We are further limited by what God reveals through Isaiah. His ways are higher than our ways. His thoughts higher than ours. So, it goes along with that same idea.

If God has some aspect of His character that is not given in the Bible, I would have to say that that's something that he will reveal in eternity, and that if it is constrained, he has his purpose in not revealing that just yet. Here's one other thing. It is possible that God has aspects to his character, although all of them will be consistent with what is revealed. It is possible that God has aspects of his character that he can't reveal to us because there's no human way to convey it.

Is that why, which one of the, we came back and didn't have words to describe. What Paul says is he was, words which a man is forbidden to speak. So it's apparently he was not able to do so. But it seems that it was forbidden for Paul to say that, but commanded for John to say things on the heavenly scene. Interesting. However, there is one place, I think it's chapter 10, remember the seven thunders? John was told don't write about those. That one brief little part where he's told don't write that. Real interesting.

So, the Bible is not exhaustive in its revelation. It is true in what it reveals in every degree, but it is not exhaustive. The Bible is revealed from an infinite God, so none of us will exhaust the depths of God's Word while we're walking this planet. None of us. But, It is true revelation. It is a sufficient revelation for us. Really good question. Yeah?

You say in verse 1 the great multitude is the tribulation saints? Yeah, and particularly focusing upon the Gentiles with that terminology. That excludes other people that are in heaven though? It does not necessarily exclude others that are in heaven, because for one thing we know that there's also, and we'll see it shortly, the church as well. Yes, the church is up there also, and let me add to that that there's also Old Testament Jewish and Gentile saints. One of the reasons why I am inclined to think this is particularly talking about tribulation saints is because this peoples and nations and languages and tongues and all that, that kind of phraseology is used repeatedly during the tribulation period. And so it would tend to point in that direction. I would say it's not exclusively so, but that's primarily where the focus is. Then we see, let's look at the middle of page 3, verse 4.

And the twenty-four elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshipped God who sits on the throne saying, Amen, Hallelujah. Amen means it's true. So be it. Kind of used to use a saying several decades ago, right on. Hallelujah, which means praise the Lord, as we discovered earlier here. We've seen the 24 elders and the four living creatures have done things together before. Chapter 4, chapter 5, chapter 7, chapter 14, and now in chapter 19, the four living creatures and the 24 elders seem to speak in unison.

This verse, Revelation 19, will be the last mention of the 24 elders. Interesting. The reasons that the 24 elders represent the church, then these will be gone from the scene as the 24 elders because their heavenly presence as the church will be changed as they are taken with Jesus Christ to reign upon the earth. Now you will observe that Revelation chapter 5 ends with 24 elders falling down to worship as well.

In this the four living creatures join them. And whom do they worship? They worship God who sits on the throne. This isn't simply indicating that God just sits all the time. That sounds like God doesn't do anything. What's the purpose, what's the reason for describing this throne and God sitting on the throne and all that? Why that description?

He's sovereign. He's reigning. Both of those answers are correct. He is sovereign in training. Does God continue or has He done? Does He continue to do things or has He done already done them? Let's ask that question. Does He continue to do things? Yeah, God will continue to do things.

And we will continue to see God on the throne. We'll see that some more here. The focus of thrones as we step into chapter 20 will be on the earth, however. The kingdom of heaven. It's not indicating that God just sits all the time. The Greek of verse 4 has some insights. Theos, that Greek word for God, is the definite article. The God. Him specifically and no other.

The word translated sat also has a definite article. The one sitting. and the verb is a present participle indicating the one continually sitting. It's called the nomic present, it means God's always perpetually in that place. The word translated throne is the definite article as well, indicating not just any throne, but the throne. The singular one. Page four there. Alright.

So taken together, this verse is telling us that these 24 elders and 4 living creatures fell down and worshipped the God who is the one continually sitting on the throne. And God's continual sitting on the throne is an expression of His always having the power and authority of that position. The unchanging God who loves us and saves us is always sovereignly in ultimate power and authority. So the expression of these four living creatures and twenty-four elders, that's you and me, are they say amen, which means they agree with what the great multitude has said is true, and they also say hallelujah, and as we've seen this is the third of four hallelujahs in this passage, which all are saying praise the Lord.

Okay, verses five and six. And a voice from the throne saying give praise to our God, all you his bondservants, you who fear him, the small and the great. that I heard something like the voice of a great multitude, and the sound of many waters, and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, saying, Hallelujah, for the Lord our God, the Almighty reigns."

Now, it's interesting. Some people have thought, well, that must be Jesus. However, it speaks of God separately. It doesn't talk about, you know, I, me, anything of that sort. And so, real interesting here, that he puts together a combination that's rather unique.

And he says, the call to worship is like the voice of a great multitude, the sound of many waters, and the sound of many thunders, all three at once. Now, try to put that together. Ever been like a stadium when everybody's cheering? Okay? Now, don't put that aside. Keep that in your mind. All right? And now, have you ever been at the base of or near a huge waterfall? Okay? All right?

Don't put that aside. Add that to it. And now the sound of thunders. And of course, if you live in Colorado, you've heard that. Right? Think of a close one. Like, you're just impressed. Wow! Okay? Now put all those together. Wow! Get it? This is really immense. Okay? It's huge. What he's saying is, here's John, and John's old, you know, in his years. He's just saying, wow! This is an immense magnitude of sound that's hitting his ears. Aged ears at that. He is really excited about this.

So here are these, this great mass of angelic creatures and those saved from the mess on earth. They all praise the Lord. They say hallelujah for the fourth time, that is, praise the Lord. They say that the Lord God, who is all-powerful, reigns. That's the one sitting on the throne. He's always sitting on the throne, because he reigns. The Greek here says that his reign is in the aorist tense, meaning that the focus is on having been reigning in the past, including the tribulation period that's just about to come to a close.

Yes? Wouldn't that be perfect tense? I thought aorist tense was like No. The aorist tense is frequently misexplained. We don't have anything quite equivalent to it in English. And the aorist tense has sometimes been described as punctiliar. It is, in general, the decline to state case with respect to time. the decline to state. It doesn't directly address time. It doesn't directly address time by itself. You have to look at the context.

Okay, so now Page 5, let's read verses 7-9. Let us rejoice and be glad and give glory to him for the marriage of the Lamb has come and his bride has made herself ready. It was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. And he said to me, write. Now here's one of these things here. Remember John's told, write. What's Paul told? Can't even say it. Can't speak it, can't say what it is. Here's John Gibbon in contrast. Right.

Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb. He said to me, these are the true words of God. Now before the second coming of the Lord, that's going to happen here in the last part of the chapter. We'll get there next week. The Lord will come with his angels and all the resurrected saints to reign. There must take place the marriage supper of the Lamb.

As we look at these verses, there are a few points to clarify. The bridegroom is the Lamb, the glorified Jesus Christ, and the bride is the church, the body of Christ of the entire church age. How do we know this is true? Well, I give a few examples and then turn you over to this, which by the way is not exhaustive, but it's at least more detailed. But let's look at the bullet here for starters.

In John 14, 2-4, Christ speaks to the disciples using words that are much like the words of a bridegroom who has just completed a wedding arrangement under Jewish custom. Imagine, because what you see from the end of the Gospels into the letters that the Apostles wrote into the Book of Revelation is this. At the end of the Gospels, Jesus starts using terminology and using symbols with his disciples that speak of a betrothal in anticipation of a wedding. And we oftentimes miss it. Jesus said, I go to prepare a place for you. You know that that's the words the bridegroom would say to the bride-to-be before the wedding. I'm going to prepare a place for you. Here's another one mind-boggling.

Here's Jesus and the disciples. It's the Last Supper. They're going through the Passover and of course they've been through many Passovers. They know what everything is, you know, that's traditionally said at the Passover. Jesus takes one of the cups in his hand and says something that's never said at the Passover. You know what he said to the disciples holding the cup? This is the new covenant. Those were the words that a bridegroom would say to the prospective bride. when the engagement was official. You can imagine these disciples are mind-blown.

What? Wait a minute, this is the Passover, what are you doing? And so now here after telling these guys, I go to prepare a place for you and they're kind of blushing and puzzled. Whoa, wait a minute, you know, what's going on? And then he turns around in the middle of this Passover, and they all know what the right words are.

He's not saying the right words! He comes up instead, and gives them this bride and bridegroom thing, and they just, ooh, eww! What is this? They must have been baffled completely by these words. So you start getting a sense of Christ is trying to tell them, hey, something very different is taking place here. But they're not getting it. They're still puzzled.

And then, here's Acts 1. They're out on the Mount of Olives or headed there. And they say, is this now the time when you're going to establish your kingdom? He's thinking, oh boy, we're going to push these Romans out of here. And basically Jesus says, not now.

He says, you know, the father calls the timing. Well, there are two places where he says the father calls the timing and that's what happened in the Jewish wedding ceremony when it was time for the bridegroom to go get the bride. Do you know who told the bridegroom to go get the bride and when? The father! His father would say, go get your bride! And guess what? There'll come a day, I hope it's today, when the Father tells Jesus Christ, go get your bride.

So that's why, if you look at this as a passage in isolation, you might think, what's this marriage supper lamb thing? The reality is, he's been, since the end of the gospels, he's been giving them these hints And you even see examples here. Pull my sheet back up here. Here's Paul, 2 Corinthians 11, 2. For I betrothed you to one husband, so that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin.

What would happen is the bridegroom and the bride's family and the bride's friends all took it as a solemn responsibility to present the bride to the bridegroom. And the term that they would use is that she would be presented holy and blameless. So what you find on the top of your handout here is Ephesians 1, 3 and 4. We've been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as you chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be what? Holy and blameless before Him. And then you get into chapter 5, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she would be holy and blameless.

He keeps using these wedding words, okay? So this is really cool stuff. What we're seeing here in chapter 19 is just the culmination of this thing. We're not called to live out and have all of our wedding details just like the Jews used to have it. But Jesus and the authors of the New Testament intentionally used wedding terminology and wedding pictures from the end of the Gospels to the end of the Book of Revelation To get this point across, the Church is the Bride of Christ. The Church is the Bride of Christ. Frankly, that's one of the reasons why I get excited every day to be married to Nancy. Because I get to live out, for each little 24-hour period the Lord gives us, the eternal romance of Christ and the Church. This is cool stuff. This is great stuff. So that's what's exciting about this. So you have to look at the appendix for more of this in detail here.

So we need to take a look at where this wedding supper takes place as well as when. There are some scholars who think that this wedding supper thing gets carried on throughout the whole millennial period for the thousand year reign of Christ, but there are some reasons to conclude that the wedding supper of the Lamb takes place in heaven, during this tribulation period. To look at this in context, let's examine what would take place in the typical Jewish wedding in the New Testament times.

The father selects the bride, which would explain why scripture speaks in terms of our having been elected, chosen, even using the singular and referring to the church as the elect, the chosen bride. The bride and groom are betrothed, during which time the bride is to prepare herself And that would explain the reference to the righteous acts of the saints being our wedding clothing in verse 8. The righteous acts of the saints, why? So that at the wedding she would be pronounced holy and blameless. A righteousness of position lived out in condition.

Expressions of the life and righteousness of Christ in and through us right now are the preparation for the wedding day and the subsequent celebration. Let me click through something here. There we go. There's the waterfall. Here is kind of an artist's rendering of what would typically be a Jewish wedding celebration. what the bride would be done up like there in the Jewish wedding ceremony.

So anyway, let's see, the marriage of the bride and groom is initiated when the father tells the groom, go get your bride. And the groom brings her to his father's house. This would explain why the Lord Jesus said that the father knew the time of his coming for the church. It was the father's place to call the time and say, go get your bride. It would also explain why Jesus spoke of preparing a place at the father's house in John 14 and is going to get the bride and bring them to the father's house. And the marriage supper and celebration would take place at the home of the father of the groom. That fits too, doesn't it? In the Jewish wedding supper, the groom is particularly honored. that would be Christ. Since the Father's house is not the Millennial Kingdom, this would leave us with the conclusion that the Father's house would be in heaven, where we see this announcement taking place in verses 7 through 9. So what happens next might surprise you.

Let's read this again. Then I fell at his feet to worship him, and he said to me, Do not do that. I am a fellow servant of yours and your brethren who hold the testimony of Jesus. Worship God, for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy." So John sees this angel, the one who spoke to him back in verse 9, and he responds by worshiping him. You see, here's one of the things that I think is amazing.

Paul was told, Paul, you can't write about this visit that you had to heaven. You can't write about it. But John is told, you must write about it. But there's something that John still lacks. John lacks calibration for the heavenly scene. Here is a radiant, glorious creature. And what is it? Who is it? It's an angel. The angel is so glorious, he can't tell the difference between that and the Lord. It's like his equipment just isn't there to tell the difference. This is, by the way, the second time he's started to worship an angel and been corrected. Oh, by the way, also back in chapter 4 or 5, he cried and was told to stop crying. He just lacked calibration for the heavenly scene.

Now, we read of some times when our Lord is worshipped on earth, and he did not refuse such worship. Mark 5, Jairus came to Jesus to plead for his daughter's life. Mark 7, 25, the Seraphimician woman came to Jesus to plead for her daughter's release from a demon. And in John 20, 28, we read where Thomas finally believing proclaims of the resurrected Christ, my Lord and my God.

Did Jesus refuse any of those times of worship? Did he? No, he didn't. There are times when created beings do refuse worship, and here's Acts 10.25. Cornelius falls down before Peter, and Peter refuses Cornelius' worship, saying, Stand up, I too am a man.

Acts 14.11-15.

Paul and Barnabas show remorse at being thought of as Greek gods. What's interesting is this last Monday I had a couple of Jehovah's Witnesses over for one of them, it was the second time. And see, they teach, as does the Seventh-day Adventist Church, that Jesus is really Michael the Archangel.

But what's wrong with that? Jesus is God, and therefore rightly receives worship and does not refuse it. When the angels are worshipped, they say, don't do this, eh? So that's one reason right there that shows that they're teaching that Michael's, you know, the archangel is God. It's wrong. Angels refuse worship. Jesus does not. Yeah. Do Mormons believe that Jesus is the brother of Christ? Jesus is the brother of Christ? Or do you mean brother of Satan? Satan. Satan, yeah. And Satan is an angelic being, right?

So yeah, that's confused too. Anyway, we've run out of time here. But I think it's just one of the neat things, we start to look at this scene, we get a sense of, you know, to whom does our worship belong? You know, he says right here, worship God. Is worshiping Jesus Christ refused at any time? No. Therefore, Christ is God and not an angel. And as we see who Christ is, here is the bridegroom.

Here is the one with whom I've been identified. Here is the one in whom I am. What's described here is when my body will be like his. We'll see him face-to-face, we'll be like him, or we'll see him as he is. Not with the eyes of faith, but face-to-face. Right now we're face-to-faith.

Let's pray. Lord, as we look at this passage, what a neat scene that John has described for us here. We get more description of the heavenly scene in those ten verses than we see described practically throughout the rest of the New Testament together. And what a privilege we have for it to look, to peek ahead through the eyes of faith at what will be our own future. Our own future beholding you face to face. Thank you for that blessed hope. We just pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.