The Revelation 18:20-21 | Episode # 1159

March 26, 2026

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

The Revelation 18:20-21

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.

He said, rejoice over her, O heaven, and you holy apostles and prophets, for God has avenged you on her. Now that is. That's something that I'm up here. Listen to me. I hear this in the. In the back of my mind all the time. My. My dad loved the vengeance he got. I mean, he loved. He was pulling for it all the time. He picked people out that he wanted the vengeance of God to fall on. I mean, let me tell you something I grew up with. My dad was like. He was a great guy. I mean, he was great, but he loved some vengeance of God. I mean, anybody who knew my dad knew he. He. You know, he loves the grace of God, but he was into some vengeance of God. You know, he wanted to be the hand of that vengeance so much. He wanted to be the tool of that vengeance. Lord, choose me to destroy the enemies. He had his. His favorite. I just. I. For a second, his greatest desire was to be a Apache fighter pilot. Yeah. Manicore. In a car, in a truck. He wanted to have, you know, the hit thing where it shows all the stuff, and on his car would be riding around and then, you know, the Gatling gun pop up in the back and he look over at the side and go, that's what he desired. That's what my dad wanted. If we could ever got that for Christmas for him, it had been the greatest Christmas present of all. I'm making a joke. Joke about that because I learned that comes from anger, that comes from bitterness and hatred. And it wasn't good for me. And as a young man, I learned that that burned down God's blessings for me. It ate it up. I. I remember. I remember the. The. The original movie. I can't remember the name of the movie where. Red Dog, she said Red Dome, She. I mean, she knew. You get that? Y' all remember the rest. You all had to finish the sentence, Red dawn, so proud of you. I Red Dawn. Y' all remember the young man whose parents had gotten killed? And he was sitting there and the fighter pilot walked up to him and they just had an ambush. And he was carving in notches in the butt of his rifle for the number of guys he killed in the ambush. And the fighter pilot, the older fighter pilot, he says, that'll burn you up on the inside. And he said, it keeps me warrant at night. What a sad thing to say. But the only thing that you get any joy out is vengeance. And I want you to hear me. You can't be a trophy of God's grace or a vessel of his grace and be an instrument of his vengeance. You can't be both. And I'm gonna tell you, I've explored both jobs. The grace job's better. It's way better. I mean, it's way better. It's way better. It's way better. Looking for grace where there seems to be no grace is always fruitful. Looking for vengeance where God is not ready to be vengeful can be very fruitless on empty. He says, I am vengeance. Your life God. Okay, now, is there going to come a day where we're going to celebrate God proving his might and holiness? Yeah, there's a. It's right there. Chapter 18, verse 19, right? 20. Verse 20. If you're looking forward to the day of God's vengeance, that. That's it. Where you're going to get it, you're going to get to experience it. But that's when the grace is done. Until then, we're. We're trophies of God's grace. Until then, we are what? We're trophies of God's grace. We're vessels that carry his grace. You can't be both. I want you to hear me today. You can't be both. You can't. And if you have vengeance in your heart most of the time, there's no room for God's grace at all. Sometimes they think that master carrying. They will frustrate you to dinner. If they really will. They really will. If you're. If you're into vengeance, you're. I mean, I. I remember one day I walked in the law office and I told my dad, he said, we need to do this. I said, no, we're not doing that. You know, it's hard for me for dad to hear that from his son. And he says, why not? I said, it ain't godly and ain't good. We ain't done. I said, we're not walking God's venues because I'm not getting anything out of that. We're gonna walk in God's grace. Now, my dad could be very graceful, and there's a lot of people who experienced my dad's grace, and they didn't deserve it at all. Okay? But there's a great lesson to be learned in that. When we read this passage, those who love vengeance, it makes you think, well, let's just get it to vengeance now. No. Until God's grace reaches its fullness, he is not going to be vengeful. We live in a time of God's grace. His grace has been poured out on all flesh. Then, mighty angel now here, for all y' all who like the. The rabbit holes, y' all ready for one? Because, I mean, you could take this. I just give it to you. I'm not saying it is. I'm just saying that this would be one of those things that you go, oh, I know what that is. And maybe it is, and maybe it's not. It says, then a mighty angel took up a stone, like a great millstone, and threw it into the sea. Now, I know what y' all are thinking, right? Yeah. Meteor, comet, something like that, right? Is it a meteor comet? I don't know. That's exactly. I don't know. It could be. Could very well be. I mean, if a mighty angel took a mighty stone and threw it into the ocean, I mean, I mean, it could be. It could be that. Right? Now, I want you to hear me on this because this is always the truth. And it's very important for. For. For God's people to hear this, okay? The minute you think it's for sure one of those things, it ain't okay. It's something totally different. I. If you. You're not good enough to do it like God does it, so you're not going to come up and come up with it as well as he does. However this happens is going to be so cool that you're going to. Well, in order to glorify God, you got to be saying, wow, I can't believe that happened. Right? In order for God to be glorified, you need to hear this. If you can predict it and make it happen all the time, it doesn't glorify God, right? So many times when we come up and, you know, we have an illness or we pray for things, so many times the first thing you do is you walk up to. For whatever you're asking God for. We walk up to God and we go God, okay, now listen, this is the problem. Like you're. Like you're explaining something that he don't know, right? And listen, I got to have a solution to this problem. Maybe immediately, right? Maybe immediately. Okay? And by the way, I've been pondering this for all couple of days now, and I've got some solutions. And let me run some of these by you. Now, if you don't think you do that to God, you do. You do it all the time. And let me say this about it, if you can come up with how it's gonna work, you didn't need God. You didn't need. You go, why did God. For the power and all. No, you got that. You got. Look, look, you got it all. You got the power of the Holy Spirit. You got the gift of the Spirit, right? You got the redemption of Jesus Christ, got the grace of God, got the mercy that's been poured out on you, right? He's got an anointing for you. He's giving you away. You got it all. Don't you hear me? Even if you got it all, you still got to trust him for it. You still got trust him for it. So quit playing games with God that way. Can I go to God and say, God, I'd like this solution? Sure you can, but you better follow it up with, but if you got something better than that, I'd like to see it. Because song like it is, whatever God's going to do is much better than what you thought it was going to be. And you won't want to limit him by expecting something less than him. You don't want to limit him by spending something less than him. So this millstone lands in the sea, and this is what the angel said. Thus with violence, the great city Babylon shall be thrown down and shall not be found anymore. Okay, now that brings up something that's really, really good. All right? When God does a work, he does it completely. He doesn't do a partial work. Okay? All right, now I want you to hear me. If your solution to the situation you're in is only going to partially or temporarily fix the problem, it's probably not God's solution. You with me? It's probably not God's solution. If you're sitting there saying, lord, I need a hundred bucks right now, that's probably not God's solution, because 100 bucks ain't going very far. And it goes for less and less every day. Every day go less and less and less. Have y' all noticed that thus far? So. So when God does it. He does it completely and utterly. And, and I want you to hear me unmistakably, I want you to notice. Jesus didn't walk on water through a pool in Jerusalem. What did he walk on? Water across a 16 mile to 23 mile sink in inland sink. Notice when he fed the 4,000 and fed the 5,000, he didn't feel 200. And those counted just the men he fed thousands more than you could imagine. When he made the water into wine, he made 60, give or take gallons of the best wine that was ever made. He didn't do it partially. He didn't do it on small, on a small level. When he raised the dead, they were shown off dead. Right. They weren't sick and quit breathing a couple of minutes ago. But I mean, they've been dead for a while. Jarius, Jairus's son. No, daughter. Jairus's daughter. She'd been dead a while. The widow whose son was in the funeral. Funeral procession. That Jesus walks out the touches. He was in his funeral procession. Notice when Jesus does it, he does it amazingly. So amazingly that if you don't know him, you can't believe it was that way. Now, if that's the way he does things in scripture, how has he changed? He's not changed. He says, I'm the yes time yesterday, today and forevermore. So when God does things big, he does them really, really, really big. And he does them right at the right time. You ever notice he shows up right at the right time? Not early, not late, right at the right time. And so when I read this, and I see that he utterly destroyed this one world, one world system. He utterly destroyed it. And he did it quick, he did it in an hour. It wasn't a slow descent, it was an immediate event.

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.