Sermon - Revelation Verse by Verse

5C. Setting of Great White Throne where the damned are judged and follow Satan into the lake of fire and brimstone, 20.11-15

1. Turn to Hosea 5.15 and read: “I will go and return to my place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek my face: in their affliction they will seek me early.” The verse we have just read predicts the occasion of the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. He will come when His people acknowledge their offenses and seek His face.

2. As the campaign of Armageddon squeezes the regathered Jewish people in a military vice, with the forces of antichrist to the north, the forces of the kings of the east coming in from the east, the southern confederacy coming from the south, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west, the Jewish people will have nowhere to look for their deliverance but up.

3. After three and one half years of hearing the preaching of the young Jewish evangelists mentioned in Revelation chapters 7 and 14, their desperate straits will be used by God to persuade them that their situation is hopeless and that the only one they can turn to for salvation from their sins and their enemies is their Messiah.

4. The chapter before us deals with the return of the Lord Jesus Christ in power and great glory, fulfilling the prediction made in Acts 1.9-11 by the two angels at the time of His glorious ascension to His Father’s right hand on high:

⁹And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight.

¹⁰And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel;

¹¹Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.

(19.1) And after these things I heard a great voice of much people in heaven, saying, Alleluia; Salvation, and glory, and honour, and power, unto the Lord our God

1. “This chapter is one of the most dramatic in all the Bible. In it, the Church, the Bride of Christ, is the guest of honor at the marriage of the Lamb in heaven (vv. 1-10) and returns with Christ in His triumphal Second Coming (vv. 11-21).”[1]

2. “The first ten verses are parenthetical, depicting heavenly pronouncements preceding the Second Coming of Christ. ‘After these things’ refers to events that occur after the bowl judgments and the destruction of literal Babylon as discussed in Revelation 16 and 18. John hears the voice of the great multitude praising God for His salvation, power, glory, and honor. This is the same great multitude identified in Revelation 7, made up of saints killed or martyred during the Tribulation Period.”[2]

3. The phrase “After these things,” meta tauta, is John’s old reliable phrase for changing scenes. “This is a time key. After the destruction of Babylon at the end of the Great Tribulation, just before the kingdom is established (chap. 20). This section bridges the Tribulation and the millennial kingdom.”[3] John is turning our attention from the earth and the final destruction of the political and economic Babylonian system to the events immediately preceding the second coming of the Lord Jesus.

4. In this verse we see the first of our four hallelujahs. The word “Alleluia,” correctly pronounced “hallelujah,” means, “Praise Jehovah,” and is the utterance of tremendous praise toward God. Found only in Revelation chapter 19 in the New Testament, it was a term first used in the Bible by King David when the Ark of the Covenant was finally brought to Mount Zion and placed on the threshing floor of Araunah.[4] It has always been a word of ultimate praise and adoration toward God.

5. Lehman Strauss referred to this first hallelujah as “the hallelujah of redemption because the first note of praise is salvation. Christ is about to appear with His Church to complete the redemption He began at Calvary. One final conflict remains and then, after Armageddon, the swords of men shall be beaten into plowshares, the earth will be redeemed, and the lamb and the lion shall lie down together. While Satan is the prince of this world now, Christ holds the title deed to the earth, and the day is coming when He shall possess that which is His own by creative right and redemptive right. There has been much speculation in the many attempts to identify the “much people in heaven” who utter the first hallelujah. But what does it matter? Let us all join in the chorus. The great day of deliverance for all creation will surely come. Hallelujah!”[5]

6. But to what do the words of this hymn of praise refer? What about the words “salvation, and glory, and honour, and power, unto the Lord our God”?

a. Salvation has to do with deliverance. Not only does the Lord Jesus Christ deliver sinners from their sins, Matthew 1.21, but He also delivers other things from other things. For example: Will He not rescue this entire physical universe from the curse? Moreover, will He not deliver the entire nation of Israel to the covenant position promised them through their father Abraham? Therefore, the second coming of Jesus Christ in power and great glory is not a future event that should be considered only from the limited perspective of a single sinner who does not want to go to Hell. There are bigger things than just you and me wrapped up in my Lord’s second coming.

b. Glory is the end to salvation is the most incredible means. Keep in mind what we read back in Revelation 4.11: “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.” Ultimately, God, specifically the Second Person of the Trinity, the Lord Jesus Christ, has created everything in existence so that the triune godhead might be glorified. However, what does this word “glory” mean? We sing the doxology whenever we take up an offering, and the word doxology comes from the Greek word for “glory,” doxa. The word has a whole range of meanings, from brightness, shining and splendor, to fame, recognition, honor, and prestige.[6] As nearly as I can figure out, glory has to do with that opinion of God, or that estimation of the Lord Jesus Christ, which recognizes and acknowledges that God is the most majestic, most sublime, most surpassingly excellent of beings. In addition, the single most significant reason why Jesus Christ saves sinners is that by so doing the Father is greatly glorified. In John 17.4, Jesus said, “I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.” That is, He greatly exalted men’s opinion of God. We are called upon to do the same, in John 15.8: “Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples.” So then, when Jesus Christ comes again, men’s opinion of Him will be greatly lifted up, and He will in turn greatly elevate men’s opinions of God the Father.

c. Honour is closely related to glory, except that honour, the Greek word timh, has to do with price, value, and the respect that a person enjoys.[7] Therefore, though these words obviously overlap to a degree in their meanings, glory would have to do with your estimation of God, while honour would have more to do with how you behave because of your estimation.

d. There are two words translation power in the New Testament. One word refers to authority, such as in Matthew 28.18, where Jesus indicates the absolute authority the Father has given to Him by declaring, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.” The word we have here is the other word, the word dunamiV. It refers to might, strength, force, capability, the ability to do something as opposed to the authority to do something.[8] This is what the angel Gabriel was referring to in Luke 1.37, when he told Mary, “For with God nothing shall be impossible.”

a. All those in heaven who have been waiting for so long; the angels from the fall of Lucifer and from the fall of Adam, Abel from the moment he was slain by his older brother, and the rest of the saints of old from the time of Enoch and Noah and Abraham, down to those who we are personally acquainted with who have gone before us, can finally begin to rejoice.

b. And you almost never see a great crowd of observers wait until the contest is finished before they begin to cheer and rejoice. The rejoicing begins as soon as you see the final episode begin to unfold. And so, though the Lord Jesus Christ has not yet returned to earth in power and great glory at this point, the celebration begins just like on the last lap of the Indianapolis 500, just like when the last pop fly goes up before the catch will end the game, just like when the clock runs out with the home team too far ahead for the visiting team to have any chance of scoring enough to win in the end. It is a weak parallel that I have drawn, but you get the point. Revelation 19.1 is where the celebrating begins.

[1] See footnote for Revelation 19.1-6 from Tim LaHaye Prophecy Study Bible, (Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers, 2000), page 1396.

[2] Bob Kollin, Revelation Unlocked, (Springfield, Missouri: 21^st Century Press, 2003), page 181.

[3] See footnote for Revelation 19.1 from John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible, (Nashville: Word Publishing, 1997), page 2018.

[4] First Chronicles 16.1-4

[5] Lehman Strauss, The Book Of The Revelation, (Neptune, New Jersey: Loizeaux Brothers, 1963), page 315.

[6] Bauer, Danker, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other Early Christian Literature, (Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 2000), page 256-258.

[7] Ibid., page 1005.

[8] Ibid., pages 262-263.