The Revelation 9:20-21 | Episode # 1067

November 11, 2025

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

The Revelation 9:20-21

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

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Transcript

This is Chad Harrison, and you're listening to Hope Applying God's word to your daily life.

Hi, this is Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years.

I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life.

I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up.

His word to you and allow you.

To see him and to know him and to know his will, that you might glorify him and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day, especially today in Jesus name.

But it's not just gold and silver. It's common stuff,

like brass.

You know, some people worship hatred and judgment.

Y' all know that brass stands for judgment.

They do.

You ever been around somebody that wanted everybody dead?

You begin to get a little nervous that they might want you dead also.

You know what I'm talking about?

Well, now, listen,

in our conversation today, everybody else, you want everybody dead but me and you.

So I really know you want me, too, dead.

Somebody else was sitting here, they'd think it was. I was in the other group.

We do that.

There's a lot of people that worship their hatred. One of the bus were young. We only had four channels.

Y' all remember that?

And if. If. If somehow a movie made it to one of those four channels, meaning they got control of it, it actually grew to five. We had the.

We had wgn, we had tbs,

and we had pbs, but nobody watched PBS after childhood, right?

Did you?

We'll pray for you. All right,

so. So we were. If. It. If. If. If somehow WGN and TBS got the movie, you got to watch it over and over and over and over again. Y' all remember that?

Well, one of the movies when I was child. A child that we got to watch,

oh, maybe 150, 200 times,

was called Red Dawn.

Do y' all remember that? It's about the Russians invading America. And the band of young high school students and young adults are fighting the Russians, and one of them's whole family's gotten killed, and he's just angry and mad and.

And they rescue a fighter pilot who's fighting up above, and he gets shot down. And he's kind of learning them. And finally one night, he goes after they've done an ambush, and one of the young men got his knife, and he's cutting marks in the butt of his rifle for the number of people he killed that day.

And the fighter pilot who's older, you know, in his late 20s, early 30s,

he says, he says to him,

that'll eat you up one day.

And the young man says, it keeps me warm at night.

See, he, he worshiped hatred. He wanted him dead. And he, he worshiped hatred.

It reminds me of that when I think of somebody worshiping hatred.

And you know that that's possible.

You know we have, we have all the,

all the, all the stories of the last century to tell us that.

And the worst one everybody thinks is the Nazis.

And they were bad,

but there were others just as bad.

The Russians.

The Russians starved and killed millions.

And they were only, they were only beat out by the Chinese.

And the Chinese killed dozens of millions of their people.

Perhaps as many as 100 to 150 million of their people.

And if you want to get really good at it, people, a group that got really good at it, but they didn't have enough people to kill to outnumber the Russians or the Chinese or the Nazis.

The Khmer Rouge,

they killed probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 to 65% of their population.

And you know who it was that were doing the killing?

Children.

Y' all ever heard of the Killing Fields?

That's a movie about the Khmer Rouge.

It's a movie about them killing almost all the adults. One of the movies that came out that I didn't like scary movies. But Children of the Corn is the same idea.

It's the same idea of children being.

Being co opted by a terrible group of people, a terrible group of Marxist communists.

And they killed all the adults in their society, almost all of them.

It got so bad that the Marxists in Vietnam couldn't stand them so much that they invaded them to kill them.

The less pure Marxists invaded the really pure Marxists and killed them.

So if you don't think you can worship hatred, you can,

he says, not only of brass, but of stone and wood.

And if you think about stone and wood, what is the one thing in scripture that is described as stone?

Or would.

The most.

The human heart.

Your own heart would be an description of, of the results of the human humanity.

But, but stone being your heart.

If you've been listening to Bible studies this week, we,

we've talked about him saying there were stiff necked people have their heart circumcised. I think we talked about that this morning. So long ago, I can't remember.

But you worship your own desires,

your own things.

Look, if 400 or if 4 billion people being dead around you can't change Your heart,

then nothing can. And I don't want you to hear me.

Nothing can change your heart except the movement of God himself.

I want you to hear me. You cannot talk someone into the kingdom of God.

I was raised thinking that that was what my job was,

was to talk people into the kingdom of all, right?

And a verse was used,

and it just didn't ever really sit right with me because it didn't make sense.

Passage was that we were to preach the gospel to all creation.

Am I right?

How many y' all heard that told to you? How many grew up being told we're supposed to preach the gospel to all creation,

right?

Well,

now, as I thought through it in my mind, I thought, well, does that mean the frogs?

What about the grasshoppers?

Let me tell you something. Disney loves her mama at my house.

But if I started talking to her about Jesus, she ain't gonna get it right.

All right? So either one of two things is true.

Either my interpretation of that passage is wrong,

right?

Or God don't realize that the frogs ain't getting it.

Am I right?

I'm gonna say B is wrong.

I'm gonna go with A,

my interpretation of it's right.

But, you know, I can. I can interpret that word to be not all creations, but I can interpret it to be all created ones.

All right,

well, what's a created one?

Well, we're not created.

Did y' all know you're not created?

How many of y' all knew you were born? You weren't there. You don't remember it, but you knew you were born.

All right,

so you were not created. You were conceived and brought to life. Brought. Brought into the world by your mother.

The life came in to your mother's body when her egg and your father's sperm came together.

You were conceived.

You were not created.

That really hurts your feelings, too, don't it?

There were two who were created.

Adam and Eve.

But if you had a new spirit birthed in you,

that would be a creation of God made in you, right?

I don't know about you, but the Bible tends to teach that, right?

It does.

It teaches that we are a new creation.

The old is past,

the new has come.

What?

Well, you're newly created. What's created? Your heart and your mind.

How many of y' all got your heart and your mind from your parents when you were conceived?

You did.

What about your body? Did you get your body from your parents when you were conceived?

Did you get the new spirit that Jesus said must be born again in you when you were conceived.

No, you didn't.

So what is that passage telling us? Well, that passage telling us to preach the good news and look for those who are born again, newly created to all the newly created.

Now, here's the cool thing about it. You can run into somebody today and they not be born again. You run into tomorrow, and they might be born again.

You go, well, what are you talking about? Well, the Bible says that it happens by the work of the Holy Spirit. And it uses the symbolism that the Holy Spirit's like the wind.

You don't know where it comes from, you don't know where it goes, but you know when it's been by,

right?

So I might be preaching the gospel to my neighbor, and they acting like I'm a nut.

Two weeks later, I might say the same thing to them. And they go, you know,

it's amazing.

How has this happened to me?

And I realized something.

How many of y' all ever had a conversation like that? How many of you ever had a friend or maybe a family member you ain't seen a long time?

Absolute heathen,

lost, going to hell. You know, they are okay. They're not only going.

They've been telling you they are going,

okay.

Then all of a sudden, you see them at a funeral,

you see them at a wedding.

You see them at some family function somewhere. And all of a sudden they start talking about Jesus around you.

And you look at them like,

what happened to you?

What happened to him was not. Somebody talked them into it.

Nobody talked them into it. They were what born again?

What changes the human heart?

God.

What changes the world?

God.

What does he give me? He gives me the ability to trust him.

And then I can repent and turn and trust him.

Hear me. If it's any other way, we could have done it ourselves.

And if.

If a sinful creature can make righteousness, then we don't need Jesus.

Now, listen, there's no way to get around that argument.

If unrighteousness can make righteousness,

then the righteousness is not really righteous at all.

Only the righteous can make righteousness. Only the holy can make holy.

Only the godly can be made holy,

can make godliness.

It's important that you get that. That is a fundamental understanding.

If you go, well, where is it? First Peter, start reading.

He goes right into it. Romans read it first. John read,

even Jesus talking on the seashore.

When Peter said, well, what about him? Jesus said, he's my business.

If I keep him hanging around till I come back, that's my business.

God does the Business of doing that,

he said, which can neither see nor hear nor walk.

These are things that are dead.

You need to hear that. Well, you say, well, you can worship humans and they can he see and hear. No, they can't.

They can't see the spiritual. They can't hear the spiritual. They do not know the spiritual.

It says, and they did not repent from their murders,

their sorceries,

their sexual immoralities or their thefts.

And you go, well, why is that list there? Well, it's an important list,

okay?

It's an important list because it really kind of groups together all the sins,

you know what I'm saying?

It pulls them together.

First thing is, is murder,

hatred,

okay?

It's the opposite of the law of love in the New Testament,

okay?

Second one is sorceries,

okay?

Now you go, well, we don't have a lot of sorceries going on nowadays. Yes, you do.

And let me tell you how I know you do.

And the way I take I can tell you how I know you do is because that word is an interesting word.

Can anybody tell me what that word is? It's sorcery. In the New Testament it's the word Formica.

So where do we get pharmaceuticals from?

How many people in the world worship pharmaceuticals?

So we go from nobody.

We don't really know a whole lot that do that to what a lot.

I tell people all the time I was a naive pastor for many, many years.

I pastored different churches. I loved folks.

You know, I thought that,

you know,

somewhere around 5 to 10% of people smoke dope.

I did. That's what I thought. You know,

the hippie folks, you know, they smoked a little weed and enjoyed themselves, you know what I'm saying?

You know, the free spirited ones out there.

I went to law school,

started practicing law,

and within about a year or two,

I came to the conclusion everybody was smoking dope and I was too. I just didn't know I was.

That's a joke. But it really is. I mean, it really is true.

I'm sitting there going,

you know what?

I think everybody's smoking it and I'm smoking it and just don't remember,

okay?

Am I wrong, Renee?

I'm not.

I mean, it seems like every police, all everybody, the police pull over has got some weed in their car or something.

Anyway,

I say that as a joke, but I don't say it as a joke in that there is a lot of dependencies on pharmaceuticals,

on drugs, period.

And some of them, some of them were foist upon People,

okay, we have a. We have a huge epidemic of people who are addicted to opioids, who were made addicted to opioids by those companies.

Really debilitating opioid is addictions,

struggles, something that they never went out and searched for themselves.

And, you know, people who have that addiction,

and you may not know that they have it, but there's some clear evidence that if you struggle with opioids,

you're going to have certain aspects to your skin color,

your fingernails, the way you.

The way you talk, the way you deal with things,

your. Your inability to cope with the settings that you're in.

I'm talking about addictions that are not necessarily ones that people chose.

I didn't choose to be addicted to red velvet cake. My. My momo made it,

and she would say to me, don't you want some more red velvet cake? And I go, well, yeah.

And now I love it.

That's joke. That's for fun of their sexual immorality.

And we know that that's a fundamental part, a struggle, especially a struggle not just for men, but especially for men with the old testosterone issue and.

And the *********** that's in the world.

We know that we've got all.

If when I mention these is murder up today.

We even got new kinds of killers that we started making about 50, 60, 70 years ago.

Serial killers,

people who go out and that's their whole job is to kill people.

We even got one in the show that he kills people who are killing people.

I don't think it shows real. But.

And they're thefts.

Taking something that's not yours,

taking something that's not yours.

And you know,

really that starts with you and God.

Okay?

And one of the ways that we rob God, although Malachi tells us that we rob God by not bringing in our tithes and offerings.

And how are we robbing Him? Well, it's not like he needed it. We're robbing him of the blessing.

And I will say this, that Kathleen and I learned at a very, very young age and started at a very, very young age to.

To meet that part in our lives. And God has blessed that tremendously.

But first of all, we rob God of his glory by not taking, but not giving him glory for what he does and trying to usurp it and say that you're doing it and somehow you've made this happen.

And you hadn't made this happen.

You didn't make. You.

You didn't. You didn't redeem you. You didn't make you okay with God,

you didn't do it and you're not going to do it.

And the theft just moves on from there.

Because once you lie to yourself and begin to rob God of His glory, rob God, rob God of his position, his rightful place in your life,

once you begin to do that, it just goes downhill from there.

And eventually you'll steal from anybody,

including yourself.

That happens all the time.

It happens all the time.

In the old way of doing law,

before I was a lawyer, far before I was a lawyer,

they had crimes of moral turpitude,

okay?

Interestingly.

And crimes of moral turpitude carried a higher sentence.

Okay? They carried more of a judgment.

Does anybody know what the crimes of moral turpitude generally are?

There's sexual crimes and theft.

What about murder? Pastor?

No, that's not always a crime of moral turpitude.

Sometimes that's just somebody who's angry and got mad and got mad in the moment and killed somebody.

That's not a morally corrupt heart.

But I can tell you a morally corrupt heart is a heart that robs God of His glory,

robs God of His position, robs God of who he is and what he's done for you. And humanity takes that as if it's your own and acts like you got his power rather than you.

Acts like you have the power of God and it emanates from you rather than understanding that any power that emanates from you came from him,

that you're nothing. You didn't do anything for it. Everything that you do that glorifies God, everything that you do that's good,

everything that you would say was, was, was right and noble and wonderful. All those things have their genesis in God. And it's only given to you by the goodness and grace of God and the love of God because He loves you.

Everything else is a waste of time.

There's been a lot of praise lauded on me in the last week or so,

and I appreciate folks loving me. And there's nothing wrong with you loving me and you really thinking highly and all that, whatever.

But I can tell you this. I grew up with me.

There's somebody I know real close,

okay? I grew up with me.

I had to live my life with me.

And I'm telling you,

without Jesus, I'm worthless.

We all are.

Now, when you figure that out, and you figure out God's sovereign and made everything and that he made you and that he foreknew you,

and that he gave you the opportunity to know him and he gave you the power to actually walk in that, and he taught you how to walk in that, and he taught you how to operate in his power and his glory.

And anything that's a result of that comes from him and not from you. Until you realize that you. You can't really know God because you worship in yourself.

And that's what the Book of Revelation is about, is the judgment of God.

It's the. It's the Kinsman Redeemer and the Goel, the Avenger of blood. He redeems his people and he avenges the world,

which is full of murders and thefts and. And sorceries.

And he says,

that's worthless.

Now, that's really a hard teaching.

And the reason it's hard is it causes. It forces you to come to the realization that I do nothing without God.

And if. And, and the cool thing about God is when you figure that out,

really,

when you figure that out,

you realize that everything you do good is from Him. And he'll start showing out.

Tell you a little story.

Many of y' all came Monday to my.

It's called an investiture.

But I kept messing with Kathleen, calling it an internment,

you know,

she said, doesn't that mean it have something to do with you being dead?

I said, well, that's my internment,

if y' all don't know. Me and Kathleen, we.

I pick at her a whole lot, and she messes with me a whole lot back. You know what I'm saying? It's low, don't you, baby?

She says, no, I don't do that at all.

Well, I planned out a great talk at the end,

you know,

as a good pastor, I had my sermon ready and I stood up. I knew where I was going right at the start,

and I stood up and I said,

I was born in Montgomery.

And when it was coming out of my mouth, I said, that's not what I was going to say.

And as I'm talking the whole time, literally the first two or three minutes, I'm going, this has nothing to do. Nothing to do with what I was going to say.

I almost want to say, God, give me my mouth back.

I tell you that because there's a reason for it. God will just show out sometimes. Sometimes I'll get ready to do something and God will say, well, I appreciate all your effort and energy, but let me tell you something, this is how we're going to do it.

And I'm doing it right now.

And before you know it, you're just doing what God told you to do.

And it's some good stuff. And the whole time you're doing it, you're going, well, this is really good.

But the cool thing about it is you didn't plan it out.

You didn't do any of the planning. You couldn't have come up with it. If you wanted to come up with it, you wouldn't have come up with it.

And let me tell you something that goes on with me speaking. But there are gifts God has given you that that happens to you for with. I don't know what it is.

And here's the thing. That gift is precious or those gifts are precious.

And Christians who don't seek after those gifts really miss out.

How many of y' all like the Batman movies when they came out?

I'm Batman.

What if you really were Batman and just never figured it out?

Wouldn't that be sad,

huh?

You could have actually said, I'm Batman and you're not.

Well, you have superpowers. They're supernatural gifts that come from God.

They're superpowers.

You have them.

He says he gives them to all his children.

Some of them, he gives one. And you're just really good at that one.

I mean, I'm talking about top notch when you do that. I'm talking about it's just like, whoo.

Some of you have multiple. And you can operate kind of in some of them. Maybe none of them are really all that strong. You know what I'm saying? But you're good.

You're good with those.

I don't know who you are. But if you don't know those gifts,

it's really sad because in using those gifts in the supernatural way they're given to us,

you get to see that, you know, I didn't do that.

And it helps you glorify God more.

And I didn't do that.

One of the neatest things to ever be able to say to God is,

you know, God, you did that.

Wow.

Look at there as you go. Today, I pray that the Lord will.

Bless you and keep you, that he'll make his face to shine upon you, and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.