The Glorious Return of Jesus Christ, Part 1 B

Evan opens on the edge of heaven is Jesus Christ seated on a white horse bursting out of heaven collides with the earth, and merely with the sword which comes out of his mouth, which is nothing more than his word devastates he is able to destroy with his mouth in the same way that he could create no doubt be alarmed if we knew we had only a month to live in yet were careless even though no one knows if you live even another day. Of course that goes for you and me as well. We don't know how long we have, or when Christ will return so that calls for a different approach to day-to-day life, a perspective that the rest of the world doesn't embrace you might call it expectant living today on grace to you. John MacArthur's going to show you why living in a expectancy of our Lord's return is crucial to living the life God desires is part of John's current study titled when Jesus comes.

So now follow along with John MacArthur as the lesson begins to be looking in Revelation chapter 19 verses 11 to 16. So often I am asked the question.

I guess people know that I'm a preacher, pastor, one who study Scripture, and teaches the Bible and they often will say to me, will things in our troubled world ever get any better is it just going to continue to get worse and worse, or will there be an end to all the war to the hostility and the inequity in the crime and the chaos and I always answer the question by saying it's going to get better.

It's going to be better is no question about it. I can give a resounding yes to will the world get better but that yes is directly associated with the second coming of Jesus Christ. That and that alone is what is going to remedy the problems of our world, that and that alone is what is going to bring peace instead of war justice instead of inequity righteousness instead of wickedness.

Jesus Christ will come and he will rule this world. Someday he will return to be the king and to establish his kingdom.

This particular passage prophesies that greatest of all moments in human history and in the saga of redemption.

Now is the scene opens in verse 11. You might want to look at it, we are taken to heaven and we see heaven open and right on the edge of white horse and he was set upon a called faithful and true, and in righteousness he judges and makes her wages war.

What is going to happen here is going to happen very fast speedily and triumphantly the gates of heaven are going to burst open and the Lord is going to appear in glory with angelic and saintly hosts. There's going to be a speedy triumph. There's going to be a catastrophic and sudden collision as he comes out of heaven and hits the earth and I just want to emphasize the suddenness of this text. Heaven opens he's there and he comes and as soon as he comes.

There is a Holocaust that is described in verse 17 is the great supper of God, and the birds of the heavens are called to eat the flesh of the corpses are going to be covering that part of the world.

Sudden capturing of the beast and the kings of the earth the false prophet. Even Satan himself and all of them cast into the lake of fire which burns with brimstone in the slaughter of any who remain in verse 21 and this whole thing is very sudden and very fast. That's important to point out it's not a prolonged engagement.

It's not a siege. It is an instantaneous battle that is fought really with one weapon and that one weapon is described in verse 15 is a sword coming out of the mouth of Christ and with that he smites the nations and immediately then he establishes his rule and his rule is that with a rod of iron Nye. I want to emphasize the suddenness of this for a very important reason because I want you to understand biblical history does not tell us that there is a quiet sort of coming of the kingdom that there is this the sort of merging of this age into the next age that maybe we could even be in the kingdom and we just really can't perceive it it it were just sort of sliding into it and there's a bit of a transition. You say who would believe that many do. They are called post millennialist's. They believe that things will get better and better, and there will be sort of a spiritual movement and the church somehow will capture some of the human institutions and the gradual merging into the setting up of the kingdom. That is what post millennialism's millennium being the thousand year kingdom.

They also could be classified or the term reconstructionist. Sometimes you read about reconstructionist. Those are basically post millennialist who believe that we as a church will reconstruct society around the framework of spiritual reality and therefore usher in the kingdom of Christ. Some of them are called the economists who believe that somehow we can merge the economics of our time. The economy of our time, the social structure of our time with a theological reality and create a fee and Namic kind of kingdom. Some of them are called kingdom theologians and they believe that somehow the church is going to gain great miracle power and by this great power were going to overcome demons and were going to conquer the forces of darkness and were going to arrest them from the powers of Satan and therefore were going to establish the kingdom. This will be some kind of process it gets wrapped up in the spiritual warfare kind of mentality and praying against great cities and demons, supposedly to hold cities captive and we want to rest these these human things away from the powers of darkness or away from the social architects of our time and create by the power of the church, either expressed supernaturally against demonic forces were naturally against political and social forces and therefore gain the kingdom established kingdom and offered to Christ that is utterly in my judgment foreign to Scripture the establishing of the kingdom in which Christ rules with a rod of iron is a sudden, immediate, cataclysmic event and cannot be described in any other way in Scripture. Heaven opens on the edge of heaven is Jesus Christ seated on a white horse bursting out of heaven collides with the earth, and merely with the sword which comes out of his mouth, which is nothing more than his word devastates he is able to destroy with his mouth in the same way that he could create with his mouth market been history does not quietly and gradually merge into the kingdom of Christ.

It comes with a fury and the viciousness and a cataclysmic divine intervention from heaven that is sudden the end will come violently in fiery judgment and furthermore the end will not come because things get better.

The end will come.

Because things get worse. The church will never conquer the kingdoms of this world, the church will never take over the social institutions of this age, there are not going to be better and better days ahead because of Christian influence in the world, nor will we buy some exercise of imaginary spiritual power conquer the kingdom of darkness and bring the kingdom. We will not do that. The world is not going to get better. It's going to get worse and it's clear in the book of Revelation is getting worse and worse and worse and worse until the king intervenes the last blow to a world already engulfed neck deep in blood because of the slaughter in the murder and the bloodshed and the violence it's already gone on is the Holocaust of Armageddon which is followed by the establishment of the kingdom by the Lord himself. He alone can establish the kingdom.

That's why we say we are free millennialist. We believe Christ comes at the beginning of the millennium and sets it up, not at the end of it after we've set it up. That's what post-millennialism believes and then there are the millennialist so don't believe there is any kingdom. And then there are the pan millennialist who believe it will all pan out somehow. In the end, but anybody who takes a chronological and literal course in the book of Revelation is going to wind up with the premillennial coming of Christ in which he returns and sets up the millennial kingdom in which he rules 4000 years. Nothing else makes any sense in the chronology of the book of Revelation. Now the prophets tell us that when Christ comes. The battle will rage in Megiddo in the plain of Megiddo. Also that it will range down to idem through Jerusalem. The valley of Jehoshaphat, but Megiddo is the place which seems to be the greatest battlefield.

The greatest place of bloodshed and those of us who have been to that place are struck by the awesome capability of that particular piece of real estate to be a battleground that Napoleon said it is the greatest battleground in the face of the earth, at least, that he had ever seen their Dirac and Debra fought against Cicero there. Gideon fought the Midianites there.

Saul was slain by the Philistines their Pharaoh NECO Slough good King Josiah. And so it goes. It's in that place that much blood has been shed through the years. Every battle fought their weather by the Druze or the Turks are the armies of Napoleon. All those battles combined were only a harbinger of the great day of the battle of God Almighty so man's day is going to end in God's day is going to begin the glorious return of our Lord Jesus Christ, whose marks and description here. Identify him as the same Jesus who went into heaven, from the Mount of olives is going to come and I have to believe that it's going to come sooner than any of us really think. Remember now, Christ came the first time he was despised and rejected, spit on, mocked and ridiculed when he comes a second time it's going to be just the opposite.

Just the opposite. Now the imagery of this section and I don't want to hurry through it. The imagery of this section is really marvelous. It pictures Christ as a warrior king and he's coming back in that sort of motive for that sort of mode and it really is very similar to the 11th chapter of Isaiah. In fact, you might even think that the writer John who's seeing this great vision was familiar with the book of Isaiah would've made in his own mind. A parallel for in Isaiah we read in chapter 11 a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse branch from his roots will bear fruit.

And of course the line of Jesse was David and then the son of David, the Messiah, and so he came from the line of Jesse, and this one will come out of the stem of Jesse, the spirit of the Lord will rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and strength, the spirit of knowledge and the fear the Lord and he will delight in the fear the Lord and he will not judge by what his eyes see her make a decision by what his ears here but with righteousness he will judge the poor, and decide with fairness for the afflicted of the earth, and he will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked and righteousness will be the belt about his loins, and faithfulness the belt about his waist.

That's very similar to the image, imagery is called faithful and true in Revelation. He is called the faithful one, or having faithfulness the belt of his waist's righteousness is celebrated in Revelation 19 and also here. He smites the earth with his mouth. Here in Isaiah 11, as well as in Revelation chapter 19. He establishes his rule here as he does in Revelation 19, so that same picture of the coming king. The warrior king. The conquering King. In Revelation 19 is certainly very close to the imagery of Isaiah 11 in Isaiah 11. Also, the very next verse, which I didn't read verse six describes the kingdom that he sets up the wolf will dwell with the lamb, the leopard lie down with the kid the goat the calf. The young lion, the family together little boy will lead them. In other words, so no more hostility in the animal kingdom talks about the calendar bear gracing together their young line down together. The lion eating straw like an ox no longer a predator. The nursing child playing in the whole of the cobra.

The weaned child with his hand on the viper's den. They will not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea and he goes on to describe more about it. So it is definitely a kingdom picture in Isaiah 11 in the coming of the King even depicted there in very similar terms to Revelation 19. Now go to Isaiah chapter 63 for a moment and you see another very similar set of pictures. I'm just pointing out that this is imagery which is not brand-new. Who is this who comes from Edom and this tells us of course that the battle stretches from the ghetto in the north to idem in the South and the East who is this who comes with garments of glowing colors from Bose rock literally crimson red garments.

Who is this coming who is majestic in his apparel marching in the greatness of his strength. It is I who speak in righteousness. Mighty to save.

Why is your apparel read in your garments like the one who treads in the winepress I have trodden the wine trough alone and from the peoples.

There was no man with me. I also trodden them in mine anger, and trampled them in my wrath, and their life blood is sprinkled on my garments and I stained all my raiment for the day of vengeance was in my heart and my year of redemption is common.

I looked and there was no one to help, and I was astonished there was no one to uphold.

So my own arm brought salvation to me.

My wrath upheld me and I trot down the peoples in my anger and made them drunk with my wrath and I poured out their life blood on the years and there is the Messiah answering the questions. Who is this one who comes to shed blood, and that bloodshed and imagery of Isaiah 63 go back to Revelation 19 appears here as well. Verse 13 he is clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and is called by name. The word of God is a bloodied conqueror blood spattered garments characterize this great event is not only previewed in Isaiah 11 and in Isaiah chapter 63, but it is also previewed in Matthew chapter 24 you remember that in Matthew chapter 24 and that all of that discourse.

Jesus made a very important statement in verse 29 Matthew 24. Immediately after the tribulation of those days that seven year. The sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, the stars will fall from the sky and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. The whole universe goes dark and then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky.

Then all the tribes of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory. And he will send forth his angels with a great trumpet and they will gather together his elect from the four winds, from one in the sky to the other thereto is a picture of the coming king the event of Revelation 19 over in chapter 25 is Jesus continues the sermon on a second coming in verse 31, when the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. So the Old Testament prophets anticipated it, and certainly the Lord Jesus Christ anticipated it earlier in the book of Revelation, the apostle John saw imagery related to the coming of Christ. Member chapter 14 verse 14 I looked, and behold, a white cloud, and sitting on the cloud was one like a Son of Man, having a golden crown in his head and a sharp sickle in his hand and another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to set in the cloud put in your sickle and reap, because the hour to reap is come, because the harvest of the earth is ripe.

We find even in verse 20 the winepress was trodden outside the city, and blood came out from the winepress, up to the horses bridles for a distance of 200 miles. That's the distance from the ghetto all the way to the south through Jerusalem and down the southern parts of what would be near Edom, so plenty of previews. Chapter 16 verse 14 we find there battle of the war of the great day of God in verse 14 of chapter 16 and then in verse 16 there gathered to the place called Harr McGinn well all that sets us up to grasp the return of Christ and by the way, we now get very chronological in the book of Revelation he returns. In chapter 19 he's sets up his kingdom in chapter 20 we learn about the kingdom and then the kingdom ends and enters into the eternal state. In chapters 21 and 22 so the rest of this to come is all wonderful, glorious fulfillment of the hope and anticipation of all the believers of all time. We who know and love the Lord Jesus Christ ago to be enraptured right working to be at the second coming, but were not going to be here waiting for it were to be coming with him, that even makes it more interesting. I want to know what I want to be doing what I want to be involved in MI gonna be part of the judgment and my going to have a sword in my going to get in on the action, or am I not one want answer the question what is going to be my role in wonderful of all wonderful things is the fact that Jesus Christ is finally going to be exalted all the defamation all the slander all the dishonor that's been against his name is going to be over forever and he will be vindicated and glorified that and that alone makes it a most precious event of all events.

Don't miss that's bound for fathers we think about this tremendous reality. Jesus is coming. We are so grateful to know this else we would be in such despair, such confusion about what's going on in the world.

It doesn't get better. It's just the same, only worse. And where would we hope and where would we look for a gleam of light if we didn't have the confidence that Jesus was coming that he was going to come make the world a paradise that you intended it to be but only for those who love his appearing name. His name and we would say with the apostle John.

Even so, Lord Jesus, the sooner the better. Who needs any more of this. The only reason were reluctant to say come now is that we would wish that more could come to faith in Christ were not eager for the damnation of the lost, nor are you that's why during those final days of the tribulation the gospel will be preached more far and wide than ever in history and men will have a greater opportunity to hear and believe than they've ever had because you're not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. You find no pleasure in the death of the wicked Lord we want the gospel preached. We want people to believe but at the same time we want Christ to come and be exalted and receive the honor that he is due and we want to be a part of the kingdom.

The glorious kingdom over which he reigns. We can only wish that the thing we read about here in Revelation 19, the heaven was opened, was in fact a reality that heaven was opened and Jesus was coming soon. Thank you for the promise that we are not set for wrath, but that before that unfolding wrath comes, you're going to take us to be with yourself and it will return with you and the glory of your coming.

Give us a love for your appearing that affects our life the way we live the way we think, the way we invest our time and money. Help us to live in the light of eternity. Not the passing world.

Help us to lay up our treasure in heaven, where moth and rust do not corrupt and thieves can't steal, help us to take that which is carnal and purchase that which is eternal. Help us to set our affections on things above and not on things on the earth to remember that we are not citizens of this world, but our citizenship is in heaven, from which we wait for the Lord will come to change us into his own image.

Give us her love for the appearing of Christ that affects us mowing these things shall come to pass. May we remember as Peter did, that we are to be blameless and holy in our living, growing in grace and in the knowledge of Christ, help us to live in the light of our returning King and until then to be faith serve and called many to righteousness. They might glorify him with us whose name we pray.

You're listening to John MacArthur as he continues his current study titled when Jesus comes along with being the Bible teacher here on grace to you. John is a pastor, author and Chancellor of the Masters University in seminary.

This study is focusing on Christ's return is second coming event that so pivotal it can seem like it's the focus of the entire book of Revelation, but Jon, I know you'd say there's a lot more going on in this last book of the Bible you were looking down a little bit of the details in Revelation 1920. But I think it would be helpful to people if we could sort of pull up, and instead of come to get the worm's eye view is read as we move along, verse by verse, word by word in that section of Revelation pull back pull up and get the Birdseye view and look at the whole book of Revelation.

It can be grasped and understood it was a number of years ago. Now that II felt that the congregation of Grace Community Church could benefit by getting in overview of Revelation. So I did what I called a jet tour through Revelation and in one message one Sunday night for an hour and 1/2 at least. I went from beginning to the end of Revelation show how it flows how cohesive it is, how clear it is what it together. Revelation it is that is now available in a booklet called a jet tour through Revelation. This is one of the longest messages I've ever preached one sermon the whole book of Revelation we put into a booklet form.

This one book will give you the sense in the flow of the book of revelations a high-altitude panoramic view of the whole book. What a tremendous ministry. This is had through the years through our ministry.

We love to get one to you. Here's the good news.

It's free. That's right will send you free of charge. A jet tour through the whole book of Revelation. All you have to do is contact us tell us you want a free copy of the jet tour through Revelation will get it out to you as quickly as we can. Yes, we will and friend. There is no need to feel intimidated by the book of Revelation. John's booklet will show you what the last book of the Bible is all about to get your free copy of this booklet, a jet tour through Revelation contact us today. Call us at 855 grace or make your request@ourwebsitejidety.org if you have questions about the tribulation, the Antichrist, or if you just want to make sure you're ready for Christ's second coming. This booklet can give you the biblical answers you're looking for the title again a jet tour through Revelation will send to you for free call for your copy today 855 grace or go to TTY.that's our website, TTY.org and we visit there you'll find numerous ways to take in John MacArthur's verse by verse teaching you can listen to radio broadcasts you may have missed. You can watch grace to you television you can search John's entire sermon archived by date, by book of the Bible or my topic that's 3500 sermons and all of them are free to download get the audio or transcript format and if you're not sure what to listen to first a great option is grace. That's a nonstop broadcast of John MacArthur's teaching through the New Testament that web address again TTY.org now for John and the staff. Thanks for being here today and come back tomorrow when John continues his series when Jesus comes with another half hour of unleashing God's true one verse at a time on grace to you