Preached by Andrew Smellie, July 8, 2007

What are you sowing?

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Revelation 14:14-16
“I looked, and there before me was a white cloud, and seated on the cloud was one “like a son of man” with a crown of gold on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand. Then another angel came out of the temple and called in a loud voice to him who was sitting on the cloud, “Take your sickle and reap, because the time to reap has come, for the harvest of the earth is ripe.” So he who was seated on the cloud swung his sickle over the earth, and the earth was harvested.”

God’s plan from the beginning has been to give every person a chance to be saved by His grace. God will harvest the earth as is clear in Revelation. The question we must ask ourselves is: Will we live up to our role of being God’s fellow workers?!

“The Harvest of the Earth”
Preached by Andrew Smellie
Sunday, July 8, 2007

Revelation 13:1-18
More symbolism used by John to inspire his first century brothers and sisters’ faith:
• The beast that came out of the sea = Satan’s agents.
• The false prophet = false religion that could deceive the Christians.
• In the 1st century, a group called the Commune forced people into emperor worship.
• Those who gave into the pressure of the beast (Roman Empire) received a mark (666).
• Jesus was concerned that the church was starting to lose its distinctiveness.
• We are in the world but we are not of the world. (John 17:14)
• We lose our distinctiveness when we want to fit in and be accepted by the world.
• We’ve got to be weird to the world otherwise we start to lose our distinctiveness.
• They were bowing their knees to Domitian and saying Caesar is lord; however, we know that Jesus is Lord.
• The number twelve stands for the people of God (The twelve tribes of Israel and the twelve apostles of Jesus Christ).
• The number ten stands for completeness.
• The number one thousand stands for ultimate completeness.
• John saw Jesus standing on Mount Zion.
• The song that only those redeemed by God could learn was a song made by God.
• You see that Jesus made it clear that you either have the mark of the beast or the name of God on your forehead.
• Either you are giving your best to the world or you are giving your best to God.
• There is no neutrality with God.
• Sexual purity is of the utmost importance in our church.
• In too many churches today, there is no call to really obey God and therefore, there is really no call to be distinctive from the world.
• Common to the Old Testament themes and alleghories of Israel being an adulterous nation, when someone is personally unfaithful to God, he becomes adulterous, a prostitute, a harlot to God.
• Men and women throughout the centuries who kept themselves pure and had no lies in their mouths were rewarded as blameless—they were holding to the Word of God.

Question: What was the enticement of the Roman Empire?
• God uses the weak to shame the strong. (1 Corinthians 1:27)
• In essence, when you worship the ways of the Beast, when you worship the world, when you worship the things of the world, then you are worshiping Satan.
• When you give the world your best and consider the world more important than God, then you worship Satan.
• The disciples of Jesus Christ today need to be woken up.
• We try to be a friend of the world and a friend of God. (James 4:4)
• Unless we follow the Word of God, there is no distinctiveness in our lives.
• One of the areas we need to maintain our distinctiveness in—is in our purity.
• Satan can attack us daily in the summer by the way people dress, a television program, pornography, a lewd conversation at school or at work.
• Sometimes we may be tempted to look at someone in the world. (Matthew 5:28)
• When we are seduced by the world, we are worshiping Satan. (2 Corinthians 6:14-16)
• A faithful man of God is rare. (Proverbs 20:6)
• We are hard-lined about this as a church: disciples date only disciples.
• The call for faithfulness. This is an eternal gospel.
• The book of Revelation was addressed to the seven churches battling for their very souls.
• We keep forgetting that we are the body of Christ.
• There is a call that all people of all languages and of all nations need to know God.

Question: What did this say right here?
• Sodom and Gomorrah represented Babylon.
• Babylon sent the people of God into exile once the temple was destroyed.
• In the same way as Babylon, Rome had led them astray, away from God.
• Look at our world today.
• When people see power, women and cars, they get drunk off of it.
• The world is pulling people away from their Creator.
• In contrast to the prayers of the saints which were the incense of heaven; now all of heaven is smelling the sulfur of those drunk by the wine of Babylon.
• Be patient and endure; those who live a worldly life will get what they deserve.
• Being a disciple, preaching is a labor. . . but the very least we can do is worship Him.
• We have all felt like this: “Nobody knows what I do.” (Questioning is it worth it?)

Question: Why do you do what you do?
• Because we do it to glorify God.
• The world thinks that it is weird to glorify God. (Matthew 25:21)
• When we go through tough times, we got to endure, we got to repent.
• The following are the only things that have eternal significance in your life:
i. Your salvation.
ii. The people that you bring with you.
• We are reminded that we got to remain faithful in patient endurance.

1. Remain faithful.
• To remain faithful you got to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

Philippians 2:12-13
Question: How do you act behind closed doors?
• We need to be DAILY refining each other.
• That is the distinctiveness between God’s definition of Christianity and the world’s definition of Christianity.
• All of us must own one hundred percent of where we are at spiritually.
• We have got to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.

Question: What has eternal significance?
• That is why we have discipling times.
• Discipling is not just meeting once a week and shooting the breeze.
Question: What are we here to do?

Acts 19:8-10
• We can have life-changing times with each other, helping each other be more like Jesus Christ.
• We need informal Bible discussions where we are calling people to the standard.
-A Christian is bold and arguing persuasively.
• When you preach the Word of God, you are going to get persecuted.
• Anyone who wants to live a godly life will be persecuted. (2 Timothy 3:12-13)
• In modern day Turkey (Asia Minor) all of the heard the Word of God.
• They were calling people to repentance. (Daily ministry)
• The pattern of discipling is an everyday walk with each other.

Acts 20:18
• These were the elders in the church at Ephesus.
• Paul was talking to the same guys that he was working with in his ministry in Acts 19.
• These were the same converts from the beginning of Paul preaching there!
• We can expect God to help us all grow in amazing ways!

Acts 20:31
• These people had daily discipling relationships.
• There were times that Paul had or did not have a job.
• The people around Paul had jobs but they still met with him everyday.
• We have got to be a church of the Bible.

Hebrews 3:12-13
• Every one of these elders in Ephesus was responsible for their own salvation.
-When they went after God, they went after discipling.
• There was emotional stress involved in this kind of lifestyle—does that surprise you?!

Question: Are you working out your salvation with fear and trembling?
Question: Are you going after your relationship with God?
Question: Is your discipling changing your life?
Question: Is discipling changing your life today?
Question: How am I holding up Chris and Kerri-Sue Adams?
Question: How am I holding up Mike and Pam O’Donnell?
• As we continue to grow as a congregation, if people do not rise up to do even greater things for God, then we will fall flat on our faces.
Question: What is your excuse?
Question: Are you going after the discipling?
Question: Are you getting lost in your civilian affairs?

More symbolism:
• White means that He has triumphed and gold means that He was martyred.
• The entire earth was being harvested by Jesus Christ all of the people who were going to be saved.
• There were two harvests of the earth. The first harvest was done by Jesus.
• The great winepress of God’s wrath: the grape produces red juice.
Question: What does this mean?
• The number four represented the created or cosmic order.
• The first harvest of souls of salvation.
• The second harvest of souls of damnation.
• The reaper is an angel of God but intense that death is also an angel of God.
• Everyone who was given every opportunity to repent but had not.
• There has got to be urgency with our patience.
• What happens when we are overloaded or overwhelmed with bad thing after bad thing happening to us is that we want to quit or we want to give up. (Galatians 6:9)
• Jesus envisioned the harvest: we cannot quit; we have got to envision a harvest.

2. Envision a harvest.

Revelation 15:1-8
• Something was going on in the throne room of God.
• Remember the smoke we read about in the throne room of God.
• There is a time for God to be patient and wait for people to repent. (Ecclesiastes 3:1)
• There is a time when God’s divine patience has run out.

3. Angels are at work.
• The angels are at work; they are working hard up there.
• We forget that it is so much beyond what we can see. (2 Corinthians 5:7)
• For example, the Ethiopian eunuch, Gideon and Mary . . . all had angels around them!

Revelation 16:1-21
• Again, we got to see that this is the last cycle of God’s wrath and partial judgment.
i. Seven Seals.
ii. Seven Trumpets.
iii. Seven Bowls of Wrath.
• This reminds you of the Egyptians who had painful sores. (Exodus 9:9-11)

Question: We look at the world and say: Why are they so blessed?
• They will be a harvest of damnation even if they do not repent.

Question: Why don’t people change?
• God exerted even more pain yet they still refused to repent.
• Even in the midst of the final act of judgment they still refused to repent.
• No more islands, no more banishment because we are going to be free.
• Armageddon: Ar - city, Mageddon - Megiddo (Judges 5:19).
Question: Who was on Mount Zion?
• Jesus Christ.

4. Prepare to meet God.
Question: Are you prepared to meet God?
• When you sacrifice everything, you are ready to meet God.
• There are seats in your heart.
Question: Are you sold out for God?

Matthew 13:44
• We cannot get insecure and defensive.
• When you put the four main points together you get the following:
R -remain faithful.
E -envision a harvest.
A -angels are at work.
P -prepare to meet God.
REAP! We need to reap a harvest of salvation for God.

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