The Revelation 18:12 | Episode # 1156

March 23, 2026

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

The Revelation 18:12

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.

If you would like to revisit today’s Bible study, please visit our website at https://hopealive.buzzsprout.com/ to download the transcript. 

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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.

And that's an important aspect of it. And so we're going to go into this list real quick, and the list is given to us for a reason. And I think the list kind of opens your eyes up as to the depth and breadth of this religion. Okay? Because I'm going to tie it off like I would normally do when I ever get to a place where. Where I have especially a list, but not just a list, where I have a list of things that are quite clearly have spiritual understandings to them. Okay? The Bible has symbolism. If you don't believe in biblical symbolism, you need to get out of the revelation anyway, okay? Because the biblical symbolism is everywhere. All right, now look, don't be trying to take the symbolism and make one little symbol, a whole theology around a verse, okay? Remember, I'm telling you that the symbols are rivers of truth that you can kind of. It gives you. Like when I'm reading something, I can. I can know, okay? This is pointing toward that. All right, When I get to a passage, take for instance, when I get to a passage, it's talking about boats. I know boats represent salvation. Okay? All right. And so whenever I have a story that has a boat in it, I think, okay, one of the storylines here is dealing with salvation. Makes sense. When it mentions gold, I know gold represents the royalty of God and there's fool's gold also, right? Which would lead you down a path to that which is not the glory of God. All right, so when I see gold, I always think, okay, this. There's aspects to this story that are going to teach me something about the. The royalty of God. Does that make sense? All right, we know that the people who are lamenting are what, merchants? And how did merchants move? Well, product in big boats. Big ships. Boats. Okay. All right, so these merchants are selling a salvation from this religion, okay? And by the way, religions, if they have Any context to them at all are in some ways teaching you, trying to get you to believe in some aspect of salvation, okay? Some way this religion is going to deliver you from whatever you're dealing with, right? Whether it's Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, all those things, okay? They're selling you a form of salvation. All right? Now the people who've been selling the salvation are standing off a far away because they don't want to be a part of it. But what did they sell so that we can kind of get an idea of what this religion's about? Well, he gives us a list. It says gold and silver. All right? If you want to make a list of symbolism, this is a great list to go by. Gold's the royalty of God, all right? Silver is the blood price, okay? Silver is the price of redemption. Jesus was sold for 30 pieces of silver, by the way. That's how you bought someone out of slavery, okay? What was the price for buying somebody out of slavery in the Old Testament? 30 pieces of silver, okay? So Jesus was sold for 30 pieces of silver. Silver always deals with grace or redemption by the blood. When you see it, when I see silver, that's what I think. Immediately I think, okay, this story has something to do with that. May not know exactly what it is, but it's got something to do with that. All right? Now it says precious stones, pearls and pearls. Now you go, what does that represent? Well, it always in scripture tends to point to some. Some aspect of a king or monarchy, okay? Some kind of a royalty. Now, we're not talking about the royalty of heaven, but we're talking about monarchy, and we're talking about having the ability to actually go into the presence of that monarch. And you go, well, how do you tie that off? Well, the breastplate of the high priest had 12 precious stones on it, okay? And each stone represented one of the tribes of Israel. I. What was the. Is called an ephod, okay? It's the. It's the. It's the best that he wore over his priestly garments, all right? That ephod was made for a priest who was going to go into the holy of holies and put blood on the mercy seat. So the high priest had access to the throne room of heaven and the mercy seat of God, okay? So whenever you're dealing with precious stones, it does deal with monarchy in some way, but it mainly deals with access to monarchy, okay? And so you've got gold and you've got silver. So you've got the royalty, you've got the blood price. So there's. There's something. Has something to do with redemption. And then. So this, whatever this is, is selling the redemption. And I want you to hear me. It's selling access to some deity, okay, that. What else did they sell, Scarlet? All right? Now this is. This is. This is really, really important because when you see, I mean, fine linen, all right, of purple and silk and scarlet, all right, really, really important purple, it's a picture of royalty. Scarlet's redemption again. All right? But what are, what, what, what are they? They're what? Clothes, all right? That's very important. In fact, most of the time. Most time you're going to find these symbolisms in Genesis. Okay, all right, where do we first see clothes, huh? In the Garden of Eden. And they're the covering of what, sin? He sacrificed some animals, right? And he made clothes for them out of their skin. All right, so what did God do? He shed blood. Because without the shedding of blood, there Israel, no remission of sin. He shed blood and then he redeemed them from that. All right? That's why when you get to the story of Cain and Abel, that's why Cain should have known that a proper worship had to involve blood. It's a blood sacrifice. And you go, well, why is that in there? Well, if you've been going through Matthew, if you've gone through Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, numbers and Deuteronomy with me, okay, we've been doing a whole lot of blood sacrifice. Why? Because all of it points to Christ in some way, some aspect of his redemptive work. All of it does, all right? Because Jesus is the final and complete sacrifice. And what did he have to do? Shed his blood, right? He had to. He had to. He had to give his blood. By the way, blood is always. What do y' all know? Anybody know what life. Blood is? Life. That's right. When you see blood, it's life. It is the life force of your body, okay? Those cells are very, very unique cells, okay? And they carry all the nutrients of your body and carry away all the. Well, the. The stuff you make from the nutrients of your body and they deposit in your sweat glands and some other places that you have to relieve yourself with, right? That's what blood does. It takes care of your body. It takes care of all the organs of your body, all right? Very neat how it works. Very, very, very neat how that works. All right? So you've got. You've got the blood price, the covering of the coverings. The coverings are really, really important. I did A Bible study maybe a few months ago when we were going through Joshua. And if y' all remember, Achan committed a sin. Do y' all remember that? If you don't, you're going to have to go back and Kathleen will have the. The. The podcast out on Joshua sometime next year. Sometime next year. All right, how many y' all ever heard of? Achan, raise your hand. All right, Achan. All right. That's not what you do when you get up in the morning. Achan, it's a guy. Okay? I'm making. No, you're not. Not. Well, you are, but you're not aching like Achan is. Okay? All right. Achan. Achan. They were told that everything, everything from Jericho was devoted to God, all of it. Why? Because God gets the first fruits. First fruits, offering. Like I said, you're just going to have to go through the Bible studies to figure that all out. All right, well, Achan, when they took the city of Jericho, they went in and there was a bunch of stuff there and he liked it, all right? And he took some of it and hid it in his tent. Okay? Now normally that'd be fine. Achan stole some stuff and we're going to deal with it. But remember, when God gives you detail, detail is important. When God doesn't give you detail, not important, Right? All right, so what did a conceal. Steal? He stole silver and gold and hid both of them under a Babylonian garment. Babylonian, huh? Now we're all the way the book of Revelation. You mean the ***** of Babylon? You mean that false religion? So he took the gold of Christ, the royalty of Christ, the blood price of Christ and hid it under a Babylonian false religion, and it resulted in him and his whole family being killed. All right? Why? Because that false clothing doesn't get you. There you are. You have been fitted for a white robe. It's going to go from your neck to your feet, okay? And you're going to have a. You're going to have a sash across your waist. Not this waist, but this waist, okay? And it's going to be made of gold. Why? Because you were bought at a price. And the covering you have is going to be the glory and the holiness of God, all right? Not a Babylonian garment, not a. Not a garment of silver or. I mean garlic, garment of scarlet or purple. None of that. Okay? You're going to have a white garment, a white robe. But when we have this, we now, so. So this, whatever this is deals with sin. Whatever this religion is deals with certain sin, all right? Which means it can't be a religion that says there is no sin, right? That if it's a religion, says there's no right and wrong. That ain't it. Which means that wipes out a certain heresy in the New Testament, which is called Gnosticism. Gnosticism says the spirit. There's spirit and flesh, and the flesh and spirit have nothing to do with each other. You can do what you want to in the flesh just as long as you have a spiritual side. Okay? That's called. Also called Eastern religion or Eastern mysticism. All right? That's not. That's not what this is talking about. Because that religion says there's nothing wrong. You. You know, enjoy it. Live it out. Do what you want to. Can't be that. So that wipes out Buddhism and Hinduism for sure, right? And all them other weird ones, Isms. Well, not all of them. There's one left. All right? It says. It says. And every kind of citron wood. All right? Now, this is a unique word that's used here, okay? Some people think it is talking about gopher wood, okay? Gopher wood, which would be the wood that the ark was made out of, okay? That floats, all right? But wood is the remnant of human. Of human beings, okay? In fact, that gopher wood that the Ark is made out of is a picture of our bodies, right? Because what's inside of it, okay? The word of God, the Holy Spirit, the budding. The budding staff, which is a picture of the power of the Holy Spirit to bring about life in something that's dead. The Ten Commandments, and then the manna that they had in the wilderness, okay, which is the bread of life. All right? That ark was made of gopher wood and then overlaid with what? With gold. Don't miss those pictures there, okay? That's a picture of us, all right? We're the. We're. We're the. We're the Ark of the New Covenant. Jesus said, I'm giving you a new covenant. A new covenant in my blood. And how does God's presence. They carried the Ark on the men. Now his presence is in the men and women. All right? It says every kind of object of ivory, all right? And every kind of most precious wood. Now, ivory doesn't really have a whole lot of context for me, okay? Ivory's mentioned in scripture some, but it doesn't really. For me, I don't have anything that I tie it off with in my mind as I'm going through scripture, okay? It doesn't take a prominent role, but he's Saying every type of wood, which is very important to me in that he's saying, we got this citron wood and then all these other types of wood, which means that this religion appeals to different people groups, different nations. Okay? Remember, what are the two symbols in the Bible for a group of people? A whole big old group of people? Trees and fish. C stands for the gentiles. Land stands for the Jews. Fish. I'm just talking about people in general. Fish and trees, okay? Says, I saw a whole bunch of trees. He's saying, this represents some kind of people. Trying to tell you something there. What did Peter. Peter catch? Put out for a catch of fish. Once he caught him, he said. He said, you fish now, but I'm gonna make you a fisher of men. Okay? He draws that direct parallel there, and you'll see that. You'll see that. In fact. In fact, where the fresh water flows from the throne of heaven, that's where the fish congregate from the river that flows out of the. Out of the new Jerusalem. All right? Fish are pictures of people. All right? So wood, if trees are pictures of people, wood would be a product of that, right? It would be some aspect of that. I don't know. It may even deal with the worship of the dead. Okay? Bronze, iron. Now, what's that? Well, it's judgment, okay? But cleansing. Be right, because judgment does purify you. All right? So this religion deals in judgment. Well, that would get rid of the Eastern religions again, right? This religion, whatever this religion is, and it takes its full. When it takes its full form at the end, has a whole lot of judgment to it, okay? And marble tends to point to almost exclusively in scripture. Marble points to the institutions by which government exists, okay? That's why we build a whole lot of stuff of marble in the cities. That's why the Romans had marble all over everything. And then when they built something new, if they didn't have enough marble, they took it off something old and moved it to something new. That's why. That's why the Coliseum today doesn't have a whole lot of marble on it. You all know that, right? Because where did the marble go? They took it from the Coliseum and put them on some other buildings that they were newer buildings. You go, well, that was stupid. But not really. If you ain't got so much marble, I mean, and you're emperor, you want to have your stuff be the marble stuff, right? Well, that's a picture of it. So it has some institutional basis to it. It's institutionalized into the world. It's the way the world operates. It's involved in the governmental systems of the world. I'm just giving you ideas. I know what I think it is, but I can't say it. Okay, but if you think about it, there is one religion that fits all these things. Okay. 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 nam