The Revelation 16:3-4 | Episode # 1119

January 29, 2026

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

The Revelation 16:3-4

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.

With the, you know, what is, what is what is known as in theological circles, the Great Tribulation. Okay, and,

and I say that, and maybe I haven't said that about this in the last couple of weeks as we started through this chapter,

but what you call the tribulation is the beginning of the judgments that happen.

But the truth is that what is known as generally in parlance's, you know, in church teaching,

the tribulation is, you know, the seven years that take place.

But the Great Tribulation is the last three and a half years.

And that's why you have those people who believe that, you know,

we're not taken up until the Great Tribulation, which begins here. And that's why if you'll remember when we were dealing with the first part of this chapter,

there is of, of throughout the book of the Revelation, if you were going to believe that there was a mid trib rapture, mid tribulation, meaning this mid part of the seven and a half years.

That verse, verse one is the verse that you would use. Now I told you that I'm, you know, that's not,

it's not something that I believe, I, I believe in, in a pre.

That we're raptured in, in chapter four.

But, but also, you know, as far as that's concerned, that's not a hill to die on.

That's not, that's not a hill to get all bent out of shape about.

And when I use a hill to down there are theological understandings that if you remove that understanding,

okay, then you remove the teaching or the message of Jesus Christ. You gut the teachings of Scripture and that's really, really important. Okay? And it's important for us as believers to know what those hills are to those things that, you know, people in the faith can have genuine disagreements about different thoughts on scripture,

okay?

Not that scripture's different. They Just have genuine disagreements on how that plays out. And then those things which cause Scripture,

those things which cause the message of the whole Bible to be removed, okay?

And I'm telling you that because, you know, as we started through this,

the truth is in the universe.

And I know we have some people that haven't been here much, and tonight's really what we do on Wednesday night is I teach,

okay? I teach the Bible,

but I also teach theology.

We teach what is important in the word of God, okay?

And so there's really only two categories of what is in the universe or what is in creation.

There are those things which are of God and from God,

and then there's everything that is not God,

okay? There's everything that is according to his will, his way, his desires, his plan. They emanate from his character and his nature. And then anything that's not that is sin.

We call it sin.

It's anything that's not defined within the heart or the will of God. In the New Testament's idea of missing the mark, the mark being the character, the nature, the thoughts, how God sees things, if, if, if.

So, so you have all that is God and then all that is not God, okay?

And so if you'll remember, the first. First night we. We entered into this chapter, or really, I think it was actually the end of chapter 15 when I began to teach you that everything God has done and everything that results from that is consequential,

it matters,

okay?

And that is a great way in your mind to kind of think through when you're thinking through the judgment of God,

the righteous judgment of God, his just judgment against sin,

is to think that everything is consequential,

everything that matters. You know, we, we in the. We in the. In the legal profession, there are arguments to be made. People will say, well, you know, that's a crime with no victim,

okay?

And.

And I don't agree with that at all. But there are those who believe that certain crimes, certain criminal activities have no victim, okay? So they shouldn't be a crime because it doesn't hurt anybody else.

And that's a libertarian point of view. And I have a tendency to think libertarian, okay?

But that being the case, that's not true.

Okay?

I want you to hear me.

Everything you do either is in the will of God by the leadership of God, by the leadership of the Holy Spirit,

a part of his divine will for you,

or it's not.

And no matter what you do,

everything you do is consequential.

Everything you do matters, which means it has consequences to it,

okay? It leads to something. We know the universe was created that way. I mean,

I can give you physics terminology. We can talk through philosophy. You know, everything there is, everything has an equal and opposite. For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction.

That's. That's. That's evidence in the universe that if something happens, it causes something else to happen.

Okay?

So every force causes an equal and opposite force. The other way. That's a physics term.

I wish I'd learned this physics, understand. I wish I'd learned more in that classroom, but I didn't. And so we know those things. We understand those things, okay? That our universe has consequences.

And now the scriptural understanding is, do not be deceived.

God is not mocked.

That which a man sows,

so shall he also reap.

Now, what is he saying? So many times? Because we. We are struggling with our own sin,

struggling with the things that are in our life that are not God. When I say that to you, you immediately think I'm fixing to reap all the bad st. Am I right?

I mean, isn't that how you feel about it when I say, do not be deceived? God is not mocked. That which a man sows, so shall he also reap. Well, your thought is, is that,

well, I'm reaping all the consequence of that and this and the other.

But what we fail to see is those things we do within the will of God are more and greater and more powerful than those things we do outside the will of God.

God's will and God's way is greater than anything that's not Him.

Anything that's not in his will or his divine way. And so if I walk in his will and way, even if I don't do it perfectly, then I'll do it well.

I'm never going to do it perfectly. Even if I don't do it very well,

I unleash the power, the presence of God, the will of God in my life, which is far more powerful than the darkness. Because Jesus has overcome the darkness with light,

okay? And he overcome the darkness. And I'm gonna use this analogy because it's important for the judgment that's about to happen that we're gonna deal with.

He overcame it by the blood of the Lamb, by his blood,

his shedding his blood and blood. Every time you see blood in scripture, you need to think life,

okay?

Every time you see it.

And by the way, life's in the blood.

The blood is. The blood is really a wondrous Creation of God.

I don't know if y' all know it or not, but Charles Darwin,

when he was presenting his theory,

and all they really knew about the smallest part of a human or a living being was the cell,

okay?

And he said if the cell was more complex than a billiard ball,

then his theory of evolution wouldn't work.

Did y' all know that he said that the cell that he could see in a microscope back then,

if it was any more complex than a billiard ball,

which is not complex,

okay?

He said that his. His theory of evolution would not work.

It could not work.

Okay, well, you. Let me tell you about a cell.

Well, cells have millions of genes in them.

Those genes are made of proteins,

okay? And enzymes. Those proteins and enzymes are made by the human body.

By the way,

even in a lab,

if we put them together,

put all the things together in a lab in the perfect conditions,

they have to. They have to form together within a few hours at the most, seven,

or the. The protein will not be made.

Did you know that?

All right, we have millions of them.

You say, well, what makes these genes okay, in your cells?

Well, we figured out that there are billions of little bitty machines in your cells.

Did you know that that form tasks billions of them?

That if your genes are messed up, if your DNA gets out of order, they go and fix it like train tracks.

Did you know that?

Huh?

Well, you need to figure that out.

The cells in your body are little cities that are run by machines that do certain things because they're programmed to do those things.

Something programmed those machines to do those things.

And it didn't happen by accident,

okay? It didn't happen by accident.

All of the. The. I want you to hear me today.

I know you get taught it all the time,

but the theory of evolution for evolutionary biologists is on the verge of being dead.

It's. It's impossible that.

That we evolved even over billions of years,

that we evolved because what we are and how complex we are could not evolve by chance.

You can't make machines that little.

Little machines that are smaller than atoms,

that are smaller than atoms that keep your cells running. And by the way, you got billions of those in your body.

And the most important cells you have in your body, the one cell, the cells that you for sure can't do without,

is blood cells.

Because blood cells are the ones that bring you the oxygen,

they bring you the nutrients that all the rest of your cells in your body need to survive.

So if your blood is messed up, you're messed up.

You're going to die because in the blood, as scripture says,

is the life.

Now I want you to hear me. When that was written, there was no microscopes.

All they knew is that was red and it flowed out of you if you got cut,

okay? And if enough of it flowed out of you, you were dead,

okay? That's all the people that wrote scripture knew about blood.

Aren't you hear me? That's the totality of it. And if it fell on the ground, it coagulated,

okay?

I had a buddy that had a. Had. Well, he had what in essence was a disease that caused his blood.

He had a disease that caused him. Due to the treatment for his. His disease that the bone marrow in his body began to fail, okay? At non Hodgkin's lymphoma.

And Brett and I spent many nights at the. At the ER taking him because he. He began to bleed from the nose and the mouth and couldn't stop bleeding.

And.

And I remember being in the room with him when he died because they could not give him any more treatments because it was destroying his blood.

And he died.

And within five minutes, he was rock hard because he almost had no blood.

Because in the blood is life,

okay?

And I want you to hear me.

That life that was made by God.

I don't know if I finished the rest of the story.

There's only one person that could make machines that would run your blood, your cells,

okay? That's an infinite God who's perfect,

okay?

That's the only answer to that question. There is no other answer to that question,

okay? Anything that comes into being has a beginning,

has an initiator, that initiator for our universe, our life, our bodies, is God,

a supreme being who's perfectly knowledgeable, who's everywhere, and who is at his core good.

Okay? That's why he said every time he made something in. In Genesis, and it was good because why it came from him.

It came from him.

All right?

So the. In the blood is life.

Now, you need to hear that because he's about to judge the judged, the earth and the sin in the earth.

And his judgments are going to start with life itself.

16, chapter 16, verse 3 says this.

The second angel poured out his bowl on the sea,

and it became blood as of a dead man.

And every living creature in the sea died.

Now notice he says, the whole. All the oceans of the earth became as blood of a dead man, which means what happened to coagulated and everything in the seas died.

Now,

there might not be anything more Horrendous.

To be alive in than all the seas of the earth being rotting, coagulated blood.

Notice his judgment is to give them death at the core of what he made life out of.

Now, you got to see that it's important I sustain life.

The Bible says that he holds together his universe with his mighty right hand.

All of creation is held together by him.

Okay?

He is the author of life,

and he is just and righteous in his pronouncement of death and judgment.

And so he begins his judgments by giving us death.

He gives full measure of death boldly.

All that's created dead in the sea.

Notice what else it Sundays.

Then the third angel poured out his bowl on the rivers and the springs of water,

and they became blood.

So we've got the salt water and the fresh water.

We've got the waters of the earth that are becoming blood. By the way,

we're not going to get to it tonight.

But the fourth judgment is going to flow out of these two judgments.

The reason we have rain,

the reason we have weather,

the reason we have the chance to be nourished by the earth and vegetation in the earth is we have these giant oceans and we have these four winds that run across that flow across the earth at jetliner, faster than jetliner speed.

And those winds blow across the sea and water vapor is picked up and rain comes. And if you're blocked off from the winds, from the sea by a mountain range, on the other side of it is what deserts,

okay?

So the sea itself is a source of life for us.

By the way, you do know the Bible talks about the four winds of the earth,

the jet streams.

They didn't know about that either.

They had no idea that there were four winds on the Earth that turned and rotated and blew across the Earth.

That means if I'm flying to the east,

they can get there just whenever they want to. Y' all ever noticed if you're 30 minutes leaving the. Leaving the gate and they're flying east, they can get there whenever they want to.

If they. If you're flying west and you're leaving the gate late,

they're not. They're not always as sure that they make it up. You know why? Because if the jet stream is strong,

then, you know, not sure that plane can quite fly fast enough to get to where they want it to go.

Am I right, Stu?

That's right.

Understanding that is important.

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 na