The Revelation 15:5 | Episode # 1113

January 21, 2026

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

The Revelation 15:5

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.

The book of the Revelation deals with some issues. And a lot of times people, when we're studying through scripture, you know, we want to deal with Jesus and for sure we want to deal with Jesus as he presents himself as God's full expression of his grace to humanity. Jesus is the full expression of God's grace to humanity. He is the fulfillment of God's desire to be graceful towards humanity and its sin. Okay? And he is the sacrifice for our sins. He's the finality of that sacrifice. And so understanding that makes Jesus obviously someone we love. He is, He's. He is. He is Lord. He's, He's. He's all the things that scripture would present him as and, and greater than those things because we can't even imagine how great he is in those roles. But the, but the other side of the, of this, of the, of the character and nature of God can't be deleted or muted just because God's desire is for his grace to be manifest to all humanity. That doesn't change the fact that God is holy and that he's righteous and that that which is not of him is under his complete and full judgment. Okay? And so churches and, and denominations, and we've seen this happen enough now in America, churches and denominations, when you begin to detach yourself from aspects of God's Word, because that aspect of God's Word, for some reason culturally doesn't fit with what the world or society would say is something that we want to be tolerant about or we want to be. We want to be an aspect of our society when we, when we separate ourselves from those things and begin to say, okay, well, we're not going to deal with the book of Leviticus because it deals with this type of sexuality, and we're not going to deal with this teaching in First Corinthians or maybe this teaching in Romans because it says things about God that I don't like about God, okay? And what we don't like for sure is the idea that there would be an eternal separation of humanity from God, which we call hell, okay? Which is the absence of any of the goodness of God, and it's the presence of the full judgment of God. I used to think that hell was the absence of the presence of God. But the problem with that is when I always. Every time I begin to think about an idea, I always got to step back and remember my fundamentals. And one of my fundamentals is, is that God is omnipresent, okay? Which means he is present at all times and all places, all the time. So God's presence is in hell. It's just completely his holiness and his judgment, okay? And so. So when churches get to the place where they begin to detach themselves or try to minimize those aspects of Scripture, they begin to go down a very precarious path. Because what you're saying is what God has said about himself I reject so that I can take the things that God says about himself that I like. The problem is that you're moving from a God who has revealed himself to you to a God that is made in your own image and likeness, okay? And you can't take God and make him in your own image and likeness, okay? And what happens is that you diminish the goodness of the gospel by somehow mitigating the depravity of man, okay? And you can't do that. You can't minimize the depravity of man in order to make God palpable to the world, okay? And there's no way to get around that. And I brought up these places where people want to move, where people are moving in droves. And by the way, moving here, we're getting the great benefit of that. People who want to have. Have some healthy governance, people who want to have the rule of law, people who want to. To have society define things that are. Are healthy for society and not healthy for society, okay? And if we. If we. When. When. When we have those things, there is. There is a. There is a great. There is a great protection that comes from that. There's a great sense of safety and security that comes. That law enforcement is going to enforce laws that when I walk into a store, when I pay for what I bought, whoever else comes behind me is going to have to pay for what they bought, okay? And there won't be, you know, in the state of California, until. Until very recently, you could walk into any store in the state at any time and take up to $900 in product from the store. Okay. Yeah. Y' all didn't know that? Yeah, that's been going on. Well, why you think all these Californians are moving to Alabama? I mean, we got a bunch of them moving here. Ain't that right, Miss Diane? All right. Yes. Why? Because that's lunacy. That's lunacy. Why am I going to let somebody take from somebody else and the product of their labor and I can get into. Yeah. When we went to London. London's a very clean and nice town. It's a beautiful town. I was very impressed with. Was like a mixture between Washington and New York, except clean and n. Yeah, it really was. It was just. It was gorgeous. And. And I was with Kathleen and Rebecca. And so obviously we had to go see all the sites, which included, you know, pretty much every store in London. And. And so, you know, people. People ask me, how'd it go? Well, you know, did you relax? Well, no. According to my watch, I did somewhere between 16, 20, 2,000 steps every day. So that's eight to eight to 12, eight to 11 miles of walking every day. Are you. Every day? Yeah. And whenever I go out of the country, my tummy gets a little tore up, so I didn't eat a lot. I lost seven pounds in London. Okay. Kathleen walked it off of me. And that pretty much is every trip I've ever been on is I go somewhere. And the only place that ever you go is if you go to a beach location where you can't get away. And then all you can do is walk down to the beach. But she'll try to have me walking around the beach the whole time anyway. So I'm. It's a joke, but it's not really. And so I'm going in the store and this. And security guard standing right there in the store and kids walked by and he grabs. He. He grabs the kid and. And says, let me see what's in your bag. And obviously the kid stole something. He knew he'd stole something. And I'm just standing there beside him, just watching, kind of interacting, seeing how. Seeing how they do it there in London. And he said. I said, well, you didn't. You didn't have him arrested. And he said. He said, they just let him go. They wouldn't even charge. And I'm saying, if you charged him in Alabama, I wouldn't let him go. He's not going to go anywhere. He gonna face some consequences. And see, here's. Here's the thing about that, everything, that, everything that we do in life, God has given us the gift of there being consequence to your life. Now I want you to think about that and use that. Because we're fixing to go into the book of the Revelation and talk about the judgment of God. And, and, and it is the full blown judgment of God. Okay? Chapter 16. We're going to 15 preparing us for it. But 16 is full, full judgment of God. Now I want you to hear me because this is important, all right? If your life is going to have consequence, mean matter, then there must be consequence to your actions. Are you following me? If my life is going to have any meaning to it at all, then it must. Then the actions of my life must by definition be consequential. Okay? And I'm using that not as the consequence for wrong or bad. I'm using that as the consequence for all things. If, if I'm going to invest in someone's life and help them get from point A to point P B upon on the road that God has made for them, there should be consequence for me for that there should be reward for me for that. There should be. There should be. It should matter that I did that. If it doesn't matter, then why do it? Are you following me? If nothing I do changes the world I live in, why should I do, why should I act? Why should I be? Well, in order for there to be positive consequence, there has to be on the other side, negative consequence. Those two have to exist together. You can't separate the two. You can't say, well, we're just going to have all positive consequence and no negative consequence. You say, well, Pastor, you must be one of those guys you don't believe in, in, in everybody getting a trophy. And the answer is no, I don't believe in everybody getting a trophy. I won the championship about three or four times in my athletic career. I won a championship about three or four times. Well, the whole point was we play to win the game, okay? And, and, and, and, and, and the whole point of athletics is, is unless it's an individual sport, to a goal, to a defined goal. Well, if everybody was rewarded, then there's no consequence to those actions which bring about the best, which teach us the characteristics that are going to cause our life to have consequence down the road. Okay? Second place, you can ask Kathleen is first loser. Okay? That's the way I think about it. I never let my daughters win games. They know. Kathleen says, can't you let them win? You know, they little girls can't you let them win? No, no. And you should have seen them the first time they beat me at something. I have a. I have a. A picture of. Of Caitlin as a young adult, as an older teenager, and having this huge smile on her face because she beat me in something at Disney World. One of the games at Disney World. And she is celebr. Won the super bowl because she beat me in something. Well, you know what? I'm sitting there. I wasn't mad that she beat me. I was happy that she finally figured out how to beat me. Why? Because it made her consequential that that win meant something to her, that that event was. Had consequence for her life. Okay? And. And I don't. If I play you in something right now, I ain't going to let you win. I mean, when we play golf on Sunday afternoon, if you're playing on the other team, I ain't for you. I'm again you. I want you to miss the putts, and I want you to shank the ball out of bounds. You know, I ain't a lot to you. I mean, that's the way. And why? Because. Because. Because doing something well matters. So on the other side, doing something not well should have consequence. Okay? And there's. And if you. If you don't understand that, then. Then you don't know how to lead people to become something better than they are. It's just no way to get around it. I have been cussed out by too many drill sergeants and coaches and people in authority over me about not living up to the standard. And I'm not saying that you got to treat people bad, but, you know, there is a standard. And the standard that we're talking about in a spiritual sense is that you have to be holy and righteous to enter into the presence of God. All right? And the story of humanity is that we're not. So we have no right to have any of the goodness of God or any of the. Of any of the things of God. And so the only way for us to ever experience the goodness of God is that God had to do what it takes to make it right for us. And so the actions that Jesus took to make it right for me are consequential. They matter what he did. The Bible says that because he humbled himself. This is second verse, Philippians, chapter two. Because he humbled himself and became a man, and then humbled himself and became a servant, and even became a servant in that he gave himself up on a cross. God gave him a name that is above every name, including his own. The name of Jesus is above every name, including all the names of the Father. Why? Because his actions were of great consequence. All right? So there has to be hell, There has to be judgment. There has to be a delineation between that which is right and wrong, or better said, that which is God and not God. And we can't get past that. And we should never, ever draw away from it. Look, you don't have to like the holiness of God, and there's aspects of your life. I'm quite sure that it makes you uncomfortable that he is that way. But that's because you're sinful, okay? It's not because he's not right, and it's not because the scripture is in some way wrong. All right? And so when we get to this, it's stark. We had that passage where we found out we're beginning to move toward this final judgment, and we found out that there really aren't any women in heaven. Y' all remember that? Huh? Do y' all remember that? Well, the Bible says that it was quiet in heaven for 30 minutes. So, you know, that was a good one, nephew. Like that joke that really actually is funny. But that was the end of the last series. Some women are looking at me like, I can't believe you said that. One of the funniest things, one of the funniest revelations. And I've had many revelations, living in a house with three women, but one of the funniest revelations I ever had was when they all figured out how to talk. And by the way, a little girl, she doesn't know how to talk. Doesn't know how to talk. But when she figures it out, let me tell you, she's gone, all right? And so I realized there was one time I was sitting in the car and we was riding down the road, and all three of them were talking just as fast as they could. And I was sitting there going, how are y' all listening to each other and talking at the same time? And so there couldn't be silence in heaven for 30 minutes unless there was great judgment. And by the way, that's what this is about, okay? The passage deals with us moving to this judgment because this judgment is a full and complete judgment of the world and its sin.

All right?

So we get to. We get to verse five, and it says, after these things. And this is after the song that was sung. It says, I looked and behold, the temple of the tabernacle of Testimony in heaven was opened. All right? Now, normally, what that means is access is being granted to humanity to be in his presence. Okay, so normally when we read this, especially in the book of the Revelation, this is the doors to the temple being open to us having a relationship with God. But it's not going to be the same. 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.