SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/25/2015
11:08 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Praise for
God’s Sovereignty PT-2
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Revelation
11:15-17
Message of the
verses: “15 Then the seventh angel
sounded; and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, "The kingdom of the
world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ; and He will reign
forever and ever." 16 And the twenty-four
elders, who sit on their thrones before God, fell on their faces and worshiped
God, 17 saying, "We give You
thanks, O Lord God, the Almighty, who are and who were, because You have taken
Your great power and have begun to reign.”
Before we continue looking at these
verses under the topic above I want to quote from my Spiritual Diary from
08-02-05 which was written for verse fifteen:
“First is seen in this verse is
that the seventh angel sounds his trumpet and then there is heard voices from
heaven talking about the Lord Jesus Christ reigning forever and ever. At first this may seem like a strange place
in this book for this to be heard, after all the battle for the earth has not
yet been fought and Christ is still in heaven seated at the right hand of the
Father. However when this seventh angel
sounded then it will signal the start of the last set of judgments, the vial or
bowl judgments and at the end of these judgments the wrath of God will be
finished and the Lord Jesus Christ will return to earth and set up His Kingdom
on earth that will last for 1000 years.
Another thing to think about is that Jesus Christ
has always ruled this earth and when He returned to Heaven after being
resurrected from the dead after His death on the cross to pay for the sins of
the world His Father gave Him His inheritance as spoken of in Psalm 2:4-9: “4 He who sits in the heavens laughs, The Lord scoffs at them. 5 Then He will speak to them in His anger And
terrify them in His fury: 6 “But as for
Me, I have installed My King Upon Zion, My holy mountain." 7 “I will surely tell of the decree of the
LORD: He said to Me, ‘Thou art My Son, Today I have begotten Thee. 8 ‘Ask of Me, and I will surely give the
nations as Thine inheritance, And the very ends of the earth as Thy
possession. 9 ‘Thou shalt break them
with a rod of iron; Thou shalt shatter them like earthenware.’"
Now we will continue to look at where we left off
yesterday and begin to look at a number of verses which tell about Jesus Christ
reigning forever and ever.
John MacArthur writes “The glorious truth that the Lord
Jesus Christ will one day rule the earth permeates the Scriptures. In chapter 15 of Revelation John “saw
something like a sea of glass mixed with fire, and those who had been
victorious over the beast and his image and the number of his name, standing on
the sea of glass, holding harps of God. 3
And they *sang the song of Moses, the bond-servant of God, and the song
of the Lamb, saying, "Great and marvelous are Your works, O Lord God, the
Almighty; Righteous and true are Your ways, King of the nations! 4 "Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify
Your name? For You alone are holy; For ALL THE NATIONS WILL COME AND WORSHIP
BEFORE YOU, FOR YOUR RIGHTEOUS ACTS HAVE BEEN REVEALED’ (Rev. 15:2-4).” Now we will continue to look at different
verses on this subject. In the book of
Exodus we read in chapter 15 the “song of Moses” and we can find in this song
that it anticipates the moment when Jesus Christ would become King of the
world. Now in the portion that came from
my older SD we saw what was written in Psalm 2.
Psalm 2 is what is called a Messianic Psalm which speaks of the Lord
Jesus Christ and in this case it predicts the coming earthly reign of Him.
Next we will look at some of the OT prophets as they
looked forward to Christ’s reign on the earth beginning with Isaiah 2:2-3 “2
Now it will come about that In
the last days The mountain of the house of the LORD Will be established
as the chief of the mountains, And will be raised above the hills; And all the
nations will stream to it. 3 And many peoples will come and say, "Come,
let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, To the house of the God of Jacob;
That He may teach us concerning His ways And that we may walk in His
paths." For the law will go forth from Zion And the word of the LORD from
Jerusalem.”
Next we will look at Daniel 2:34-35 “34 "You continued looking until a stone was cut out without
hands, and it struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and crushed them.
35 "Then the iron, the clay, the
bronze, the silver and the gold were crushed all at the same time and became
like chaff from the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away so
that not a trace of them was found. But the stone that struck the statue became
a great mountain and filled the whole earth.”
The stone is the Lord Jesus Christ as seen in verse 34. Daniel writes the following in 2:44-45 “44 "In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a
kingdom which will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not be left
for another people; it will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, but it
will itself endure forever. 45
"Inasmuch as you saw that a stone was cut out of the mountain
without hands and that it crushed the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver
and the gold, the great God has made known to the king what will take place in
the future; so the dream is true and its interpretation is trustworthy.’” The kingdom that he writes about here comes
from the ten toes of the statue and speaks of the Antichrist led kingdom which
is what we are looking at in Revelation 6-19 and Jesus will crush this kingdom
as we will later see in Revelation chapter 19.
Daniel see another vision in chapter seven. “13 "I kept looking in the night visions,
And behold, with the clouds of heaven One like a Son of Man was coming, And He came up
to the Ancient of Days And was presented before Him. 14 “And to Him was given dominion,
Glory and a kingdom, That all the peoples, nations and men of every
language Might serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion Which will
not pass away; And His kingdom is one Which will not be destroyed.” Now verses 18 and 22: “’But the saints of the
Highest One will receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever, for all
ages to come.’” “22 the Ancient of Days came and judgment was passed in favor
of the saints of the Highest One, and the time arrived when the saints took possession of the kingdom.” Verse 27: “’Then the sovereignty, the
dominion and the greatness of all the kingdoms under the whole heaven will be
given to the people of the saints of the Highest One; His kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom, and
all the dominions will serve and obey Him.’”
We will look next at Micah 4:13 “1 And it will come about
in the last days That the mountain of the house of the LORD Will be established
as the chief of the mountains. It will be raised above the hills, And the
peoples will stream to it. 2 Many nations will come and say, "Come and let
us go up to the mountain of the LORD And to the house of the God of Jacob, That
He may teach us about His ways And that we may walk in His paths." For
from Zion will go forth the law, Even the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. 3
And He will judge between many peoples And render decisions for mighty, distant
nations. Then they will hammer their swords into plowshares And their spears
into pruning hooks; Nation will not lift up sword against nation, And never
again will they train for war.”
John MacArthur writes “Summing up a lengthy discussion of
the Day of the Lord and the coming of Christ’s earthly kingdom Zechariah wrote,
‘And the Lord will be king over all the earth; in that day the Lord will be the
only one, and His name the only one’ (Zech. 14:9).
The angel Gabriel said the following when he announced
the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ to Mary:
“31 “And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you
shall name Him Jesus. 32 "He will
be great and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will
give Him the throne of His father David; 33
and He will reign
over the house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end.’” We know that this did not happen at His first
coming, but will happen at His second coming.
MacArthur writes “The monumental moment in redemptive
history anticipated in the Old Testament prophecies, in the announcement of
Christ’s birth, in the preview of Chris’s second coming glory at the
Transfiguration, in Christ’s teaching and miracles, in the covenant promises to
Israel, in the promise to believers that they will reign with Christ, in the
promise to the twelve disciples that they would judge the twelve tribes of
Israel, and in the promise of Jesus that He would return in glory will be
imminent. And that will cause all heaven
to praise God for the wonder of His sovereign plan that Christ should reign.”
The following is a quote from my SD from 08-03-05 on the
sixteenth verse of chapter eleven: “In verse 16 it can be seen that the 24 elders
get off of their thrones and worship God, who is upon His throne and this is
the third time this has been written about in this book. This time they worship God for His soon
judgment upon the earth, something that is hard for Christians today to
understand fully. God hates sin and has
provided forgiveness for all who sin, which is everyone, and so those who
reject this forgiveness will be judged, and those who have accepted this
judgment will be judged for their works at the “Judgment Seat of Christ.””
It has been a while since we have
seen the 24 elders, but we said that they represent the church and sit around
God to worship Him as we saw earlier, and so that is what they are doing in
this scene. John MacArthur writes “The elders’ praise focused on three of God’s
attributes. Pantokrator (Almighty) describes God’s sovereign, omnipotent,
irresistible power. Nine of its ten New
Testament uses are in Revelation (cf. 1:8; 4:8; 15:3; 16:7, 14; 19:6, 15;
21:22). It has the sense of God exercising
His all-embracing, and all-encompassing will by means of His irresistible
power.”
Next we see the phrase “who are and
who were” and this speaks of God’s eternity, for God has no beginning nor has
any end, another thing that is hard for us humans to understand since we live
on planet earth and see the birth and death of people all of the time.
Next we see the attribute of God’s
sovereignty that the elders praised the Lord for when they said “because You have taken Your great power and have
begun to reign.”
MacArthur concludes “All attempts to equate this glorious
reign of Christ over the whole earth with any past event or with the church is
utterly foreign and contradictory to the clear eschatological teaching of
Scripture, including especially this passage.
There is no way this text can be fulfilled except by the universal reign
of Jesus Christ over the whole earth—as the prophets had for so long predicted.” And to that I say AMEN!
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: I can praise the
Lord who has opened up the Scriptures to tell me and all who will listen that
He is coming again, and when He does He will rule and reign forever and ever.
My Steps of Faith for Today: To praise the Lord for His love and watch care
over me and my family as we celebrate the freedom we have in this wonderful
country and also celebrate the freedom we have in Christ Jesus.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Revelation.”
Today’s Bible
question: “Who discovered that the
Syrians had fled from Samaria after a long siege?”
Answer in our next SD.
5/25/2015 12:03 PM
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