The Revelation 15:7-8 | Episode # 1115

January 23, 2026

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

The Revelation 15:7-8

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.

It says they were guarded with golden bands then one of the four living creatures. Now remember, the four living creatures are the living creatures that protect the throne of heaven. The 4 and 20 elders are right around them and they worship day and night, which is a picture of the church, the, the. The. The. The family of God worshiping around the throne. They are protecting the holiness of God and they are protecting the worship of God. So these plagues are coming from the throne room of heaven where God is rightly worshiped. They're not coming from an ancillary area outside of who God is. And you go, well, why are you even bringing that up? Because it's really important. It's not something that it's not. The idea of the judgment and holiness of God is not an ancillary outside idea. It's not some of the periphery of who God is. It's at the core of who he is. Anything that comes from the angels that sit on the throne, that. That surround the throne come from the very core of who God is. So these plagues are not some afterthought from God. They actually come from the core of who he is. And so it should be thought of and treated as such. It says, then one four living creatures gave to the seven angels, seven golden bowls full of the. Full of the wrath of God. Who is, it says, who lives forever and ever. When I read that who is omnipresent, he is present at. In all space and all time at the same time. He exists in all space and all time at the same time. He is omnipresent forever and ever. And what he's saying is these plagues are the fullness of God's wrath going back to the beginning, to the very, very end. All his breath from the beginning to the end, His. The fullness of his wrath. The temple was filled with smoke. That's the glory. That's the glory of God, Okay? It's the. It's the glory of his presence. It's the glory of his presence. Every time God met with his children in the tabernacle out in the wilderness, the Shekinah glory of God filled the place. Every time you see a picture of God and his holiness in heaven from the Old Testament to the New Testament, his Shekinah glory, his glory is present. It says the temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power. And no one was able to enter the temple till the seven plagues of the seven messengers or angels was completed. What he's saying is, is there'll be no discussion of these matters. These things are not to be talked. They're not. We're not going to. We're not going to to discuss them with humanity or anyone else. This is the completion of who I am, and it's the perfection of who I am. And he is saying that from his throne makes me think of Job. When he tells Job to stand before him, embrace himself and prepare to be really to be tried. And what happens there is an action, is a is a full trial, and the trial is a is, is. Is. Is. Whether or not Job has. Has there anything about Job that makes him such that he can question who God is because he's being pushed by, you know, his nagging wife and his terrible friends. Right. To do what? To curse God? To question God. And then he goes with these questions to God and God says, well, okay, stand before me and let's see. Let's see if you deserve. You have a right to question me. And the answer is, you don't. Now, will he allow you to?

Sure.

Absolutely will. He wants you to know. He wants you to understand. But I want you to hear me. You don't have a right to it. That comes from his grace. It doesn't come from an innate right that he's given you. You have a right. You have a right to suffer the consequence of your life. That's what you have a right to. You have a right to suffer the consequence of your life. That's all you got. Anything else that's good or right or wonderful comes from the grace and the love of God. Otherwise, the consequence is eternal damnation, eternal separation, eternal fire, eternal sin, eternal death. That is what you deserve. That is the consequence of you. Okay? And here's what's so cool about it. Once I've come to terms with that, I'm not trying to figure out how to make myself better before people. I'm not better. Ain't nothing better about me. I'm not okay. Ain't nothing okay about me. Okay? I don't have to be. I don't have to be on a pedestal. I don't have to be the one who's. That's. That's not important. It's not important. And not only is it not important, I'm sinful. Utterly sinful. Which makes me. The minute you get to that place, makes you completely usable by God. Otherwise, you're not. Otherwise, your life is going to have very little consequence until you come to the terms of the holiness of God and the depravity of yourself. Until you come to terms with those things, you can't really have a life of consequence. Because the only way for me to have a life of positive consequence, not negative consequence, is that God, through his divine will, bring about that consequence by his own work and by his own hand, not by mine. And once I get good at that in my mind, realizing I ain't nothing, then I'm prepared fully for his work. And you're not. And I'm not. That's right. You got to be persuaded. And I am. We're good with it. I'm good with God being God. I'm good with me being me. And then all of a sudden, you can actually begin to love yourself, love your own life. Because your life begins to actually have some. Something of value in it. And the thing that's of value is spelled G O D. That's it. That's the thing that's a value. And the more I let go d be God, the better off I am. Right? Our best, best idea does not improve. I like to think of it. Of course, Kathleen, she. She. You know, Kathleen is very ocd, y'. All. I don't know if y' all know that or not. Highly ocd. So there will be no magnets or pictures on the refrigerator ever. Nothing. There'll be nothing. It will be clean and maybe clean twice a week. And it will have no fingerprints on it or nothing. But I want you to hear me. Your very best work, your very best work is a finger painting from when you were 18 months old to God. I can remember sitting not too many months ago with little Naomi, and she was taking pieces of paper and putting two or three coloring lines on it. Just colored it out and handed it to me like it was a great thing of value. She was presenting it to her grandfather. Bop, bop. Here is the great thing that I have made for you. And I received it. I tried to Put it on the refrigerator. But it's not on the refrigerator. It's not going on the refrigerator. And I received it as it was a great gift offering made to her grandfather. But that was garbage, absolute garbage. And the Bible calls our works before him as filthy rags. They are. That's what they are. They're. They're worthless. But God, and if God's in it, then everything he does in the midst of that is of great value and great reward. And we got to get good at getting good at that. In your mind, getting good at that. I move from being, being who I am to being okay with who God is, to that causes, that propels me to do the things that God has made me to do. It, it pushes me toward those things. Without them, I live in a murky state of, of really, of really lostness and untruth. You with me? I live in a murky state of lostness and untruth. One of the things I'll end with this. One of the things I feel compelled to do as a judge is when a person's arrested, are in jail. I set bonds three or four days a week for those who are arrested in the county. And if their bond's just a normal bond, sometimes they'll get out before I get there. So there's some that I don't see, but I always go, I go to the jail and have them brought in to sit in front of me because I want to read how this experience is effectuating them, you know, because I might set a bond. I might think I'm gonna set this, this big bond here and they bring them in. I realize, you know, this is one of those life changing experiences, so I might not want to keep them in that situation. They've, they've, they've learned, you know what I'm talking about. And then some of them they'll bring in and I'll think I'm gonna give them this bond and I'll bring them. They bring them in. It's quite obvious that the minute I let them go, they're gonna do it again, you know, and then I'm gonna just give them with my access, whatever next bond is. That's what I'm giving. Whatever I can give them by law, that's what I'm going to give them. Because, you know, I need to see whether life has had consequence for them. You know, that's a right judgment. Well, I want you to hear me. God is continually in the process of evaluating you and your willingness to accept his, his character, nature and that your life was made to be a life of consequence. It was made for that. And the only way for you to get there is to be really, really truthful with yourself about who you are and then being honest with yourself about who God desires you to be. And that will make you consequential. That will make your life consequential. And so if we live in a place where there is no consequence, where. Where there are no truths, where everything is relative, cultural relativism is. Is a. Is a cancer on society. It's a. It's cancer to a society, okay? Everything's not the same and everything's not okay. It's just not. Some things are better than others. Some things are evil, and some things are good. I'm completely evil. God's completely good. The more of God I've got, the better off I am. All right, well, we're going to be really heavily into some judgment here. Coming up. Y' all ready for that? We got the seven plagues, and they. They pretty rough plagues. And. And that is going to be the finality of God's judgment because it's really meant to purify the earth of sin, okay? And it. And it does. It brings about the end. And he is going to judge not only the sin of humanity, but he's going to judge the sin of false religion, which is Babylon itself. Mystery Babylon. And we're going to get into that. I do want you to see that. Because really, if you're going to have a purity to how you approach God, there is a necessity to realize the heathen and paganism that we bring to the table as far as our worship, okay? And so I want you to be able to understand that. And chapter 17 deals with that. Because God, you know, God realizes we either worship something he made, we worship him who made all things, or we worship the. The worst thing we can possibly worship, which is ourselves. Okay? Every human being worships one of those three things. Every human being worships one of those three things. They worship something God themselves are. God himself. Makes sense.

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.