The Destiny of Christ's Enemies

I want to just start the message this morning by sharing a little bit about my testimony, just a portion of my testimony. when I was in early college, I had the privilege of working for a boys' camp called Robert M. Pyle Boys Camp. And this camp basically takes boys from all around Southern California who come from difficult backgrounds, underprivileged, and a lot of these boys have gone through abuse situations.

And they bring them up to the Sierra Nevada for an experience in the mountains that many of these boys have never even been to the mountains, they've never seen snow. And, and I had the opportunity to be a counselor and take around 89 of these boys, for a 2-week period and you take them on a backpacking trip, and it's, it's a lot of fun, it can be really challenging. But I remember, speaking with our director, a man named Rocky, who is a believer. And we were talking about the situation that one of my boys had been going through.

He had come from an abuses background, and I remember Rocky, who had just had, I think, his 2nd child at the time, and he looked at me and he said, Mike, before I had children, I never thought that I could harm another human being. But when I consider what's happened to this abused kid in my group, and I think of that happening to my kids, I could kill somebody. And even though I wasn't a parent at the time, I could, there's a part of me that could relate to that story because even though I wasn't a parent back in Bakersfield, I had been through a situation where I'd experienced abuse with my siblings.

And so I could reflect back upon that situation and think, yeah, I, I could, I could see myself wishing someone harm, wishing that someone had died.

In fact, After I became a parent, I started to reflect and I and think about what what must my mom have felt and gone through when she pulled up one day in Bakersfield in her car, I was out riding my bike with friends. And she had just found out about part of the second abuse situation, pulls up, says, Give your bike to your friends, get in the car. We're leaving. And so I jumped in the car and she drove us up to Bishop and she got us out of this terrible situation and brought us to stay with our grandparents for a time.

And when I reflect back upon that, she must have wanted to kill somebody. She must have wanted to kill a couple of different people. there's a part of our natures that because we are made in the image of God, when we see abuse, when we see people that are mistreated, something cries out within us and says, God, Why or what are you going to do about this situation? Oh God.

And in this morning's message, this is not an easy topic, but we're going to be contemplating. Christ's destiny for his enemies or the destiny of Christ's enemies and ours. What will happen ultimately to people who do not embrace Christ, who do not embrace the gospel, who actually live lives of wickedness apart from the kingdom of God? What will happen to them?

What is their destiny? And is there an answer for the question, why does God allow so much evil? Why did God allow this boy in my group at Pyiles Boys Camp to go through such terrible abuse? Why did he allow me and my siblings to go through such terrible abuse?

Why does God allow children in Uganda? To see their enemies behead their own parents and then hold up the head of a mother to shock a child and then force them into an army to go kill other children or other other armies. There's something within all of us because we're made in the image of God that cries out for justice, right? How long, oh Lord, we say with those saints in Revelation, how long, oh Lord, will you allow this to happen?

And I believe the doctrine of the righteous, vengeance of God has something to say to us about this topic. Now, I have a couple of different fears in approaching this type of doctrine or this type of doctrine. One is, I've really only got about 30, 35 minutes or so. We'll see how that goes.

And, and so to be able to really give you the full suite. of something as large as the enemies of Almighty God and their destiny, I am no doubt going to leave some things out. And so I'm going to trust your care group leaders and your guys' discussion and family worship to try to fill in some of the gaps. We're only going to be able to hit some of the edges of this.

The other thing is, Pastor Milton is about ready to speak on a topic similar to, similar to this when we hit Romans 12:19. Where Paul tells us not to take vengeance, but leave vengeance to God. Vengeance is mine, says the Lord. And so, what, how I want to present this message is almost like a part one, part two.

I'm going to be talking about the broad scope and the theology of the wrath of God, the wrath of Christ. And Pastor Milton's gonna come in and talk about how we are to treat our enemies in the interim. So I'm probably going to give you guys a little bit of sour, and we're going to leave the sugar largely for Milton. Does that make sense?

Hopefully, I'm going to give you sugar too, because we want the gospel and everything. But I'm going to be focusing a lot on the wrath of God this morning, and not a whole lot on how we are to treat our enemies between now and the time of judgment. so we're going to more be developing. The concept that there are enemies.

I basically, I'm going to be presenting to you 4 main points, and that is that Christ has enemies. And that because we are His church, we have enemies, and Christ will thirdly come and take vengeance upon his enemies. And lastly, one of, one of the motivations for Christ's infliction of vengeance is his protective love for the church. Those are my 4 main points that we hope to cover this morning.

Let's go ahead and talk about the first one, that is Christ has Enemies And this is just plain as day as you read the passages that are in the New Testament. We can look at Philippians 3. Verse 18, Paul says, for many walk, of whom I have told you often. And now tell you, even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction.

There are those who are enemies of the cross of Christ. They are enemies of Christ. And Paul can prophetically look out as an apostle and say, their end. Is destruction.

There are those in the world who when it's all said and done, we can say prophetically, it does not end well with them. Hope does not come to some people in this world. And we look at the life of Christ when he walked the earth, he had enemies, right? my family and I have been reading through the Robert Murray McShane Bible reading program.

I don't know how many of you guys do that, but we've been, we've gone through Matthew and now we're in Mark, and it's amazing how many times you see Christ in the Gospels just being confronted by his enemies. there's Pharisees, there's Sadducees towards the end of Matthew, and you have Pilate, and then you have the Roman soldiers that are beating him and spitting upon him. And if you didn't know anything about Christ, like some of the people at Christ's trial, obviously didn't know a lot about him.

They must have thought this was a horrible guy.

To be treated like this by Pilate and the soldiers, to be hated like this by the Pharisees and the Sadducees, this must be a pretty bad dude. But we know as we look at the scriptures that Christ was the ultimate man. If any man was loving, it was Christ. If any man was balanced, it was Christ.

And yet the most balanced and the most loving individual who ever walked the planet was put upon a cross and slain by his enemies. Jesus Christ had enemies. Jesus Christ still has enemies. And we feel the brunt of those enemies as His church.

And so secondly, Christ's church has enemies. If you are a believer, if you have come into Christ and aligned yourself with the bride of Christ, the body of Christ, You will have enemies because you are aligned with this bridegroom. Because you are the bride, you will have enemies of the bridegroom. Turn to 2 Thessalonians chapter 1, and we'll be referring frequently to this chapter because it has so much of our theme in it.

2 Thessalonians chapter 1. We could look down at Verse 4, so we ourselves boast of you, Paul says, among the churches of God, for your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that you endure. The Thessalonians had come underneath severe persecution in their area. You remember Paul when he preached, he was kicked out of, kicked out of the Thessalonica, right?

And so he preaches there and he leaves this church and this church is growing. And and they're just getting hammered. And the persecution is so severe that we find out in this book that some of them think they're actually in the tribulation. They think that this is it.

Paul's talked to us about the great tribulation. He's talked to us about all the terrible things that are going to happen. We are in it, right? This type of scenario has happened many times in church history where Christians find themselves in such dire straits they feel like this must be it.

We're in the great tribulation. It's what many Christians thought underneath the reign of Nero when Nero was taking Christians and torching them to light his dinners. When Christians were being thrown to lions, when underneath the Diocletian persecution in the 3rd century, Christians were being actively hunted and sought out for persecution, people thought, this is it. We're in the persecution, we're in the Great Tribulation.

If you align yourself with Christ, if you let yourself be known as part of the bride, you will have enemies. It may not be as extreme as what Christians are facing in North Korea. It may not be as extreme as what you see going on in southern part of the Philippines, but you will face persecution. When I was a student over at Cal State San Bernardino, I had a professor, one of my literature professors, who was not a believer, but she said something that has stayed with me to this day.

She said, if you do not have enemies, then you probably don't believe anything. And that was very profound coming from an unbeliever. If you're going to stand and believe in something, You will have enemies. And, and how true that is, if you believe in Jesus Christ, who claims to be the only way to God.

How true that'll be if you believe in Christianity, which is a self-proclaimed exclusive religion. Christianity does not mix with the pluralistic ideas of today. And if you stand with Christ, and if you stand with Christianity, you will have enemies. If we don't align ourselves with Christ, then we can avoid enemies.

Let me just offer two contrasting concepts under this point. Because you are a Christian and because you are aligned with Christ, you will have enemies. That doesn't necessarily mean that you and I are doing something wrong. There could be the temptation for Christians to think that they are doing something wrong if people don't like them and if we're getting persecuted.

The counterpoint to that is, just because you're getting persecuted doesn't mean you're doing everything right. You could be using, you could have bad behavior or maybe your speech is not salted, seasoned with salt. So let's talk about these two points for a second. There is Some pastors and Some researchers who look at what is going on in the church today, describe the consciousness of the evangelical church as this almost like abused stepchild.

That sometimes we have this self perception of ourselves that any accusation that's made against us must be true. And we need to repent of it. So if somebody comes and says the church is unloving, oh yes, we're very unloving, we need to stop doing that. If the church is bigotous, yes, we're a bunch of bigots.

We have, we, we need to repent of that. The church this, the church that, and I think partially because we do, I think the evangelical church largely does have a healthy sense of indwelling sin and depravity, and we look around at our own family and we see that yes, we do things that are unkind and we still sin in this body. But a lot of times we allow the media or we allow the world to give us our own perception of ourselves. And, and we even become critical of the body of Christ, for whom Christ died.

And in response to that self-consciousness, I just would want to challenge us as a church to start our thought process, not with what the world says about the church, not with what the devil says about the church, because we know he's an accuser and he's a liar from the beginning. But to start our self consciousness, to start our thought process with what Christ says about the church, that he is washing this church with the water of the Word, and he is working to get the wrinkles out of the church, and he is working to present her a beautiful bride, and this mission will be accomplished.

It doesn't mean that the church never does anything wrong. But there are many things that the church is doing just like Christ did, and Christ was killed.

Just because you and I have enemies does not mean that we are necessarily to be blamed. So when the world comes and says, You guys are a bunch of bigots, or you guys, the church today, you guys are just a church of two issues. All you care about is abortion and homosexuality. And, and we were like this beaten up stepchild, and we say, yes, that's right, we're so sorry.

When what is the reality? What is the reality? What does church history teach us but that the church has to rise and respond in its era to the false teachings of the time? If we were to look back at the 2nd and 3rd century, we could easily accuse the 2nd and 3rd century of being a church of two issues.

All you guys care about is the Trinity and the deity of Christ. That's all you talk about. All you attack is Aryanism. Why don't you guys talk about something else?

The reason that they had to talk about those two issues is because that's where the point of attack was in the 2nd and 3rd century. Today, it's not the only attack, but a key point of attack upon the Church of Almighty God is the family. Because God in His program has created this thing called family where a husband and a wife would get together and reflect the glory of Jesus Christ and His love for the church, and then they would have children, and these children would go out and spread the gospel, and they would have more children, and they would have more children, and, and God's glory would be spread as believers are causing their seed to go throughout the world and proclaim the glory and love and message of Jesus Christ.

And so what does the devil come and do?

He comes and attacks the family. He attacks what it means to be a man and a woman and what marriage means, and comes and attacks the whole concept of having children and why we have children and the whole purpose within the kingdom structure of why we want to have children and cause them to be spread throughout the world. This is a direct assault in our day. Martin Luther said in his time.

If you're not preaching where the devil's attacking, you're not preaching the gospel. If the devil's attacking here, and you preach over there a message that nobody really cares about, we're missing the point. And so when the enemies come and say, and accuse us of certain things, don't automatically roll your mind into their identity. Go into the identity that Christ has given us as a church.

Now that being said, that doesn't mean that we as a church or in church history that we have not done some really bad things. Ask yourself, have you ever aggravated the enemies of Christ by your behavior, or words? When we look back at the medieval believers, we run into a period of time called the Crusades, that was quite frankly, a very something to be ashamed of. We look and we see believers being taught and buying into the idea that it is the will of God for us to take up arms, to march to Jerusalem, to slaughter people on the way, to try to free Christ's city so it can be restored back to the kingdom of God.

A noble concept. But very wrongly motivated and motivated by false teaching. In the 4th Crusade, you actually have Christians who can't afford to pay the Venetian shippers. And so the Venetian shippers say, go up to Zara, a Christian city.

Why don't you attack them, get some gold, come and pay us off. When they do that, they get excommunicated by Pope Innocent II. They get mad and then they go and sack Constantinople. Another Christian city and this ends up creating a huge breach that goes on till this day.

And yet people were doing these types of things in the name of Christ. I think we could, if you look at your own life, we can think of ways in which our own behavior and words have caused us to be enemies, not because for righteousness' sake, but because of bad choices and bad behavior. I remember I was a brand new Christian. some of you may have heard this story.

I went up to San Francisco with our marching band, the Magnolia Marching Sentinels. Right. OK, so we go up to San Francisco. And I'm really excited.

I brought a whole bunch of Bibles with me. I think I've known the Lord for like 2 months. I'm gonna share Christ with everybody in San Francisco. I'm gonna lead San Francisco to Jesus Christ.

And then my roommate, who was not a believer, I'm talking to him about Christ. And he was disagreeing with me. And he was a real irritating guy. And he was, he just really got under my skin.

And so I did what any loving Christian would do. I hit him. In the face. It was a wonderful example.

of medieval Christianity. I later apologized. And no credit to myself, he came to know Christ two years later. And we became friends in the Christian club in our high school.

We recently were reacquainted on Facebook, and Dale, as soon as we got reacquainted, he said, Hey, I remember you pack a really good punch. And I was like, yeah, yeah, really sorry about that. But, when, even though we make mistakes as Christians, and we do things that are not honoring to the Lord, even then we can repent and humble ourselves and bring glory back to Christ, and we can have a footing with our enemies in the way that we repent. Proverbs 16:7 says, when a man's ways please the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.

This is a truism that doesn't fit every scenario. But, as we try to live out our lives for Christ, and as Colossians says, we try to season our words with salt. There are a lot of times where we can have a standing with the enemies of Christ and not aggravate the situation. That being said, you could live a life just like Jesus Christ.

And you and I will have enemies. You and I will have times where people don't like us. They're going to mistreat us, they're going to speak badly about us, because that's part of what it means to be a Christian. We have the opportunity and privilege to suffer with Jesus Christ.

That's our second point. Christ has enemies. Christ's bride has enemies. But thirdly, Christ will inflict vengeance upon his enemies.

Look back at 2 Thessalonians, chapter one. In verse 8, Paul says, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on those who do not know God, on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, these shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, from the glory of His power, when he comes in that day to be glorified. In his saints and to be admired among all those who believe because of our testimony among you is believed. Jesus Christ will come and take vengeance upon his enemies.

Paul's talking to the Thessalonians. He wants to encourage them, and he reminds them of something in order to encourage them that Jesus Christ is coming, and he will pour out his vengeance on that day. What is that day? That day is that great and awesome, terrible day of the Lord that we would call the second coming proper.

Revelation 19, we see a depiction of Christ coming on a horse with white hair and flame in his eyes and a sword coming out of his mouth, ready to slay his enemies. This was the picture that you guys saw at the very beginning of my slide presentation. This particular portrait was given to me by Vernon Anderson, who used to play organ for us years and years down here to my left. And he just loved to think about and teach about the return of Jesus Christ, both in the rapture, but also in Christ's coming, as, as a judge.

And this picture has always spooked me out. It's just, I don't automatically think of Christ in these terms. But when you read Revelation, and you look at this picture, you're just like, yeah, he captures it really well. Jesus Christ, coming back at the end of days, after the offer of peace has been withdrawn, Christ will come and defeat his enemies.

We see at least 6 or 7 times in the Bible. Of phrases like this, that Christ's enemies will be made his footstool, or he is waiting for the Father to put all of his enemies under his feet. And when we examine these passages, we see that we are living in an era in which Christ's enemies, the defeat of his enemies has been promised, but it is not yet complete until the end of the millennium. But there is coming a day when Christ, all of Christ's enemies will be underfoot.

This is an image of a conqueror, a king who has his foot on the neck of his enemy right before he is beheaded and slain. That's the image of Christ coming back to defeat his enemies. This is a very common ancient image. Even an emperor, the boy Emperor King Tut, had sandals that had pictures of the traditional enemies of Egypt.

You have slaves that are in the middle and then 4 bowls on the top, 4 bowls on the bottom that all of this represents the 9 traditional enemies. of Egypt. And this was meant to symbolize the Pharaoh, in this case, King Tut, trampling upon his enemies every time he took a step. And this is exactly what we see Jesus Christ will do.

In fact, turn over to Revelation. 19 because I do want you to see part of this further image., in Psalm 19 we see the vision of Christ coming on the white horse, his robe dipped in blood, a sword coming out of his mouth, and if you look at verse 15, Now out of his mouth goes a sharp sword that with it he should strike the nations, and he himself will rule them with a rod of iron, and he himself treads the wine press of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God. This image which comes from Isaiah.

is literally, I guess you would say figuratively, it's the image of somebody who is pouncing on grapes to squash grapes, and the juice is flying up on their robes.

And it's the image of, it's picturing Christ as executing his wrath by pouncing on his enemies and their blood splashes up on his robe. The fierceness, the wine press of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God. Later in the chapter, you see birds are being invited to come and devour the flesh of human beings who would not partake of the peace offering. We see this same type of language being used in the Old Testament with David, David is actually praising the Lord for his treatment of his enemies in Psalm 21, your hand will find all of your enemies, your right hand will find those who hate you.

You shall make them as a fiery oven in the times of your in the time of your anger. The Lord shall swallow them up in his wrath, and the fire shall devour them. Their offspring, you shall destroy from the earth and their descendants from among the sons of men, for they intended evil against you. They devised a plot, which they are not able to perform.

Therefore, you will make them turn their back, and you will make ready your arrows on your string toward their faces. This is David, speaking of God's enemies and his enemies. And when we look at David and examine him, David didn't just walk the earth as a tyrant king, trying to extend his kingdom, right? When we look at 2 Samuel 7, you have the Davidic covenant, where God promises that you are going to be an eternal king.

I will cause all of your enemies to submit to you, and your throne, the reign of your throne, there will be no end. And we, as we examine this and compare it to the New Testament, we see that Jesus Christ is the ultimate fulfillment of the Davidic promises that Jesus Christ will reign on the throne of David. And so when David is operating in human history, he is prefiguring the reign of Jesus Christ in the millennial history. I point this out to make this point that is, is made by Dale Davis in a commentary on 2 Samuel 8.

Dale Davis is of no relation to the guy that I punched. This is a totally different guy, same name. But in 2 Samuel 8, right after the Davidic promise, David goes around and systematically destroys the Philistines and the Moabites. And when you read 2 Samuel 8, it's a bloodbath.

And if you have no context for the Davidic covenant in Christ's fulfillment of David, There's no other way to look at 2 Samuel 8 but to say this guy is a mass murderer. But when you understand that he is actually prefiguring the reign of Christ, and that right there in the context of chapter 8, it says two different times, and God saved David. God saved David. David was not just doing this to spread his political kingdom.

He was doing these things because he had been made a promise to expand the kingdom. And those that would not receive God's kingdom by an offer of peace would be forced into it by war. Now notice what Dale Davis says about this particular chapter. David's kingdom is not a perfect, but a preliminary and principal form of Christ's kingdom.

The kingdom pattern, however, is the same. Conflict precedes conquest. Both Old and New Testaments testify that on the whole, men and nations do not long to receive, but live to resist Christ's reign. And that he will establish his rule at the last, not by popular demand, but by armed might.

The church tends to mute this viral biblical note and thereby emasculates the doctrine of the kingdom as if should people only be nice enough, the kingdom would arrive, but surely the cross has taught us that no one defeats the dominion of darkness in a bloodless coup. Nor will history simply ooze into the kingdom of God. That kingdom will come at last, because Christ, David's seed imposes it over all objection and opposition and conquers all his enemies and ours. That is an amazing statement.

And in one, in some senses it's a frightening statement, is it not? Christ will have his way. He will have his way. And we live in a period of time today, where it can be somewhat confusing as we read the scriptures, if we don't get these things straight on the purpose of David and the purpose of Israel versus the purpose of the church and what Christ can be doing in the millennium.

We live in a period where Christ is making a peace offer to the world through the gospel. And the church is going out to spread that message of peace. But that offer is only being made for a period of time, and when that offer is withdrawn, war will return. And Christ will come and take vengeance upon his enemies.

And it's interesting that we as Christians have a dual role in this time period in our preaching of the gospel. As we go out and preach the gospel in 2 Corinthians chapter 2, verse 15 and 16, part of what we're doing brings a fragrance of life. But part of what we're doing brings an aroma of death. Paul says, for we are to God, the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved, and among those who are perishing.

To the one, we are in a real of death leading to death, and the other in the realm of life leading to life, who is sufficient for such things. When you really think about what we're doing as Christians as we preach the gospel, who is sufficient for such things that as we go out and we preach the gospel and we want to see people saved from the wrath to come, That there will be those that are awakened to that aroma and come to life, but the vast majority of mankind will reject it.

The vast majority of mankind will not submit to the kingship of Christ. And so to those folks, we are an aroma of death.

That is the dual message. That is the dual purpose of preaching the gospel. In recent times, there's been a revival of hymns that are getting more varied and trying to explore various aspects of the gospel. And it's very encouraging.

Over the last 10 years or so, there's been a number of churches and hymn writers and songwriters that are trying to bring a greater breath back to our singing in the church, as it was in centuries ago, like with Isaac Watts. Isaac Watts writes a hymn. I'm just going to give you one verse of that hymn. In which part of the verse the church would sing says this thine hand shall find out all his foes, and as a fiery oven glows with raging heat and living coal, so shall thy wrath devour their souls.

This is a rewrite of Psalm 21. And this would be sung in the church, and these types of hymns were recited in the church so that people could remember the dual edge of the gospel that there is wrath from which we need to be rescued. There is bad news, and there is good news. And praise the Lord today.

There are more of these types of hymns that are starting to be written in the church. We pray that more and more of them will be sung in the church. That brings us to our our final point. And that is this Christ's vengeance upon his enemies is in part motivated by his protective love for his church.

Christ has enemies. There's no doubt about that. And if you align yourself with Christ, you will have enemies. And Christ will punish his enemies.

But we need to look at one of the motivations. This isn't the only motive, but one of the motives for Christ's punishment of his enemies is he wants to protect. His church. Look again back at 2 Thessalonians chapter 1 and notice the motive that Paul gives.

In verse 4, Paul says, so that we ourselves boast of you among the children of God for your patience and faith and all your persecutions and tribulations that you've endured. We, we boast about how you guys are handling this persecution. We know it's terrible. Verse 5, but this is a manifest evidence of the righteous judgment of God.

That you may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God for which you also suffer, since it is a righteous thing with God, to repay with tribulation, those who trouble you. Part of the motivation for the wrath of the lamb is his kids have been picked on. And Jesus is not happy. Jesus looks over the landscape of humanity and sees that his bride is being abused, and the wrath of the lamb is being stored up.

And when it is filled to a full, he will come back and pour out his vengeance upon those who have dared to mess with his bride. This is one of the motives for the wrath of God. You mess with God's kids, you mess with the bride of Christ, without repentance, and it will come back upon your head a hundredfold. This is part of the message that Paul is giving to the to the Thessalonians.

And it is actually meant to be a message of comfort. In verse 7, Paul says, and to give you rest who are troubled, rest with us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven. What can comfort these these Christians in Thessalonica who have lost children in the persecution, who have lost wives or husbands? What can comfort those who have lost livelihoods?

They look and they see the landscape and they see that Christ is coming and He will pour out His wrath upon their enemies, and this gives comfort and rest and so they can say with the saints in the book of Revelation, these tribulation saints who had been beheaded, and they say, How long, how long until you will avenge us? And they're given white robes, and he says, just a little while longer. The angel says, there are more to die, but after their number is complete, then vengeance will come.

And this is meant to be a comfort to us.

And if we are, if we could have the eyes of these tribulation saints, and be able to see things from the other side of heaven, we would look down at what is going on, and we will look and see the wrath of the Lamb, and we will say, praise you. Thank you, Lord. We honor your name for your righteous justice. How should we respond to the prospect of Christ exercising his judgment?

I want to suggest a couple of applications here in ending. We should be comforted, as we just said. As we look at what will happen to the enemies of Christ in the Bible, it is meant to bring his people great comfort. Secondly, we should be humbled.

Because when we think of our own situations, as Paul says in Colossians, we were enemies, we were alienated. We deserved the wrath of God, and yet Christ died for us. And if we believed in Him, we've been rescued from the wrath to come. And so we do not boast about our own position, but we are greatly humbled.

That we escape this coming wrath. Thirdly, we should praise Him and rejoice in His justice, as David does in Psalm 21, when he says, Therefore, you will make them turn their back, you will make readier arrows on your string toward their faces. Be exalted, O Lord, in your own strength. We will sing and praise your name.

When the saints in heaven sing this song that has been turned into a modern song, when they sing, you are worthy to take the scroll, and to open its seals, for you were slain and have redeemed us to God by your blood out of every tribe, tongue, nation and people. When the saints in heaven sing that, They're singing that Christ is worthy to take the scroll, and he's going to open up the first seal, and the 2nd seal and the 3rd seal, and judgment and wrath will fall upon the planet.

And they are praising the Lamb for executing His just righteousness. We should also pray, continue to pray for His kingdom to come.

When we pray Thy kingdom come, part of what we're praying is that His goodness and glory would be spread through us during this time of the peace offering, and that as the gospel goes out, that people would respond and be saved, and that our culture would be preserved as there is more and more salt that is spread. But what we are also praying for is that His kingdom would come, which does not come by a vote. Jesus Christ will not be voted into office. Jesus Christ will come and by force, take over the planet.

He will come and all will bow, every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. And we should fifthly, leave vengeance to Christ. Pastor Milton will be preaching on this in the next couple of weeks, and we'll be talking about how we should treat our enemies in this time of the peace offering. We see in verse 19 that Paul says, beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath, for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay.

We're not talking about Christians going out and executing their wrath in this dispensation. We're talking about being comforted at Christ's future wrath. The medieval church got this totally mixed up. They tried to import Old Testament concepts into this dispensation and totally blew it.

So, when Jesus came and he was trying to teach about the kingdom, there's a point at which, remember, he was about ready to be arrested. And he says to his disciples, OK, whoever doesn't have a sword, get a sword. And then Peter comes running up, he's like, Here's 3. He says, that's enough.

They're about ready to have a whole garrison come in and get Christ, right? And then they come in. They start to arrest Christ. Peter gets out one of the swords.

He cuts off the ear of one of the servants. What does Jesus say? Put your sword away. He lives by the sword will die by the sword.

What's going on? Is Jesus schizophrenic? No, Jesus is trying to communicate to his disciples, Hey, new dispensation, folks. We're not doing this.

We're moving into an era of the peace offering. I am now going to allow you to preach the gospel. You're not going to be fulfilling the Davidic covenant now. David's not going to go out and slay everybody now.

You're going to preach the gospel. You're going to give the peace offering. And then after this time of peace, then the two witnesses will come and breathe out fire and destroy the enemies. Then there will be attacks and the wrath of the Lamb will come and all of the seals and bulls, and Jesus will come and destroy all flesh that does not follow him.

But we live in a very different era, and the medieval church lost that. They forgot about that. We need to remember that vengeance is not ours. It is the Lord's.

And then finally, how do we respond by preaching the gospel? In Matthew 24:14, Jesus says, and this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come. And this proclamation and prophecy is made right in the middle of the all of it discourse, where there's all kinds of crazy stuff that's going on, including the pouring out of the wrath of the lamb and the sheep and the goats' judgment. You have the return of Christ and people saying, trying to hide themselves, wishing the rocks would fall upon them, save us from the wrath of the Lamb.

And in the midst of this, there's this reminder that the gospel is going to go out, and it will be preached. Doesn't mean there's everybody's going to get saved. It's going to be a Roma of death, and aroma of life. And then the end will come.

These are some of the ways that we can respond to this teaching. I hope that you can work them out in your family devotions with your care groups. There's things that we can't mention this morning because of time that would complete and fill out this doctrine. What does it really mean for us to serve with Christ and so on?

But let me just let this be the final thing that we ask and say. And that is this question, are you Christ's enemy? Or are you his friend? We've been talking a lot about the enemies of Christ and the friends of Christ.

And it would behoove us not to assume that everybody in this room is a friend of Christ, just because you're within the four walls of something called Cornerstone Fellowship Bible Church. Just because we preach the gospel here on a regular basis, we cannot assume that every man, woman, and child here is a friend. Of Christ Jesus promised that he would not bring peace on the earth, but he would bring a sword, and that our enemies would come from with their own households, fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters.

And there may be those here this morning that don't know the Lord Jesus Christ, and you are currently on the outside looking in, you are actually in the domain of darkness, awaiting the wrath of Almighty God.

But the good news is, is that you live in a time of the peace offering, where Jesus Christ is extending his hand to you and saying, repent, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved. Listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit and come to the Lord Jesus Christ today, and you can be rescued from the wrath to come, and you will get his goodness and kindness for all of eternity. That's the good news. The bad news is reject the Lord Jesus Christ, and there is no other sacrifice.

There is no other hope. There are two different people. There were 2 different people that were involved in doing wicked things to To my To our family. And One of those individuals fell deeper and deeper into alcoholism, died a horrible death, and is in hell, and will be resurrected to the great white throne judgment.

It will be cast in the lake of fire forever. And while I don't rejoice, In that person's misery, would, I would have loved to have seen them come to know Christ. I rejoice in God's justice. That God will not let evil go unpunished.

And that God is not a God that stands back and looks at evil and just turns a blind eye, but he punishes people like that, wicked people like that will be punished. And yet there's another individual that was also involved in taking advantage of us as children that for all I know, they could be alive today. I don't know. But maybe they came to know Christ.

Maybe they heard the gospel. Maybe they repented and confessed their sins and mourned the decisions that they made. And I can rejoice at that because I know that Jesus Christ died for people who do terrible things to kids, just like Jesus Christ died for me. And I've done terrible things in my lifetime.

We see the dual role of the gospel. On the one hand, we embrace the hope and the peace, and the forgiveness that we have in the gospel. At the same time, let's not cheapen the gospel. God will rightly inflict punishment on evildoers.

And it's hard for us to see from this side of heaven, but we will praise Him for all of eternity for being that God. Let's pray. Our Lord, we thank you For your word. That is so clear, and we thank You, Lord, for being kind to us.

In our lifetime that Many of us in this room have been able to hear the gospel in our lifetimes, and you have opened up our eyes to believe it. We were able to smell the sweet aroma of forgiveness and salvation, and that we were able to respond to your sovereign grace. And we stand in this room as friends because you first loved us. And we thank you so much for that.

And yet we pray for people maybe sitting next to us who are still in the enemy's camp. And are smelling. A stench of death, and we pray that you would reach down in your mercy and save them. And yet we thank you, Lord, that you are a just God, and all accounts will be settled in the end.

In Christ's name we pray Amen.