The Revelation 22:3-10 | Episode # 1189

May 7, 2026

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

The Revelation 22:3-10

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 says here, he says here and there, whereby there shall be no more curse, meaning there's no more bondage from sin. Remember, the word for curse means to be bound, okay? You know, today it would be handcuffed, but chained or tied up. And so there's no more bondage because there's no more influence of sin. Sin does not hold us back. Nothing keeps us from having God's best. We're no longer under the curse, okay? The curse is gone. He says. He says, but the throne of God and the lamb shall be in it, and his servants shall serve him. Okay? So there's not going to be any curse, but God's going to be right there in the middle of it. God's going to be right there in the middle of doing his will and his way. He says they shall see his face and his name shall be on their foreheads. Now that's. That's. That's so cool, okay, that you're going to actually see his face. Okay. That you're going to really know him. You're going to be able to know him and know, know, understand things that you can't understand. And he's going to be in. In our presence. We're going to be around him, okay? Jesus is going to be around. Now we're not going to all be able to be with him all the time, okay? Because he's going to be what a human being as he is today, okay? So he's going to have. He. You're going to have conversations with Jesus. You're going to have times where you sit and talk with Jesus. You are. And you're going to have times when you sit and talk with everybody. And those are going to be great days. And you're not going to have to sleep because there's going to be no night. Oh, I skipped ahead. All right. It says here, it says here they shall see his face and his name shall be on their foreheads. There shall be no light there. I mean, no night there. They. They need no lamp or light of the sun. For the Lord God gives them light and they shall reign forever and ever. So what he's saying is, is. Is we're going. We're not going to have need of sleep. We're going to be like God. He neither sleeps nor slumbers. That's what the Bible says. And the light of God is going to be what illuminates all things. And by the way, that light will be in you, too. So you're really not going to need a light because you're going to be light, okay? You're going to be light. And so the whole city is going to be full of light. And remember, we're talking about a big city. 1500 miles by 1500 miles by 1500 miles by 1500 Miles up. Can you imagine? Can you imagine? I can't get this. Then he said to me, these words are faithful and true. What he's saying is you can trust them. You can. You can have faith in them. There's something to trust. And they're true. Why are they true? Because God is true. And see, that gets down to the very core of things. Until you can get to the place where you trust God for who he is and to be true, you're never, ever going to walk in all the goodness that comes from him. You can't do it. You can't do it. Why? Because you're always. You're always questioning yourself and you're not letting God change you. Now listen to me. I'm not telling you. I'm not telling you that you won't have questions. And I'm not telling you to not struggle with God. You know, I mean, Jacob had to wrestle with God, right? In order for him to become Israel, he had to wrestle with God. All right? There's nothing wrong with wrestling with God. We were talking to pastors in Pastors Bible study Monday morning. And you know, we can disagree about God's word. Do you know what I'm talking about? All right, we can disagree about what you think this is saying and what I think this is saying. And by the way, that happens all the time. And in fact, if there's absolutely no disagreement between me and you about God, then God doesn't need one of us. Because you uniquely honor God. You uniquely glorify God. And so the way you see him and the way you live that out in your life should be different than everybody else. You're not going to know everything. You're not going to understand everything. Do I say that? I mean, you know, I've been studying this since I was 8 years old, since I really learned to read. The year I learned to read, I started studying the Bible. All right? And I promise you this, I've told you, even tonight, there are things. I don't know what it means. Okay, well, if that's the case. If that's the case, then. Then. Then you. You. You don't. It's. It's not. The issue is not whether or not you understand it fully and believe it. The issue is, do you believe it's what God said? We can question what each other thinks about it, but we can't question what it is. You have to come to the place in your heart and your mind where you see it for what it is, which is the full revelation of God and the manifestation of that revelation in His Son. And once you get to the place where, yeah, I trust God's word because it's this, then he can start showing you things. He can start manifesting things. RC we talked about this, and I want to tell the story. Were you telling the story, Philip? Were you telling the story? R.C. sprouls was a great theologian of the 1950s and 60s and 70s, okay? And he was a Calvinist, okay? And Billy Graham was a great evangelist of the 1960s and 70s, and he lived for a long, long time after that. But his great, you know, great crusades lasted into the 80s and 90s. He was an Armenian, okay? And one day they were having a big conference, and R.C. sprouls was asked, did he think, you know, because he had a view of scripture that was a little different than Billy Graham's view of Scripture. Okay? He was asked. He was asked, do you think you'll see Billy Graham in heaven? And R.C. sproul said, no, I don't. And then he just sat there for about 30 seconds and he said, I believe Billy Graham will be so close to the throne, and I'll be so far away, I'll never see him. That's good stuff. That's the fruit of the Spirit. That's humility. That's goodness. Genuine, real differences in the way they saw God's Word. But both of them believe it's God's Word, and it manifests itself in great ways in both of their lives, even if they differed on it. So understanding that that God's Word is that pure and that powerful is the start of your journey. I'LL say it again. I've said it many times. The first verse that, that I believed upon was James, chapter one. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously without finding fault, meaning he gives it to you without pointing out how you're wrong. He just gives it to you. He lets the wrong work itself out because the word changes you. And he says if you ask and you seek it out, he will surely give it to you what it says. And so we ought to see God's word that way. And that's what the angel says to John. He says, these words are faithful and true. And the Lord God of the holy prophets sent his angel to show his servant these things which must shortly take place. All right, now I want you to hear me. We don't have a way of saying this, so I'm going to say it the way it needs to be translated. But if they translate it this way, everybody go, what, what does that mean? All right, this is how you translate that phrase that says must shortly take place. I'm going to just tell you how it needs to be translated, and then I'm going to let you ponder it by the river or on Lake Martin for a while. It means when. When it come, come quickly. Okay? That's what it means when it come, come quickly or when come, come quickly. Okay? All right? So what he's saying is when it happens, it happens fast. He says, he says these things that must shortly take place, or these things which must come when calm come quickly, behold, I am coming quickly. So he actually says it, and then he says, you need to understand, I'm coming quickly, blessed, and it's going to be fast. He says, as when he was teaching disciples. He says, I've come as a thief in the night, which means I come when you least expect it. All right? And that's, that's why, that's why I really, really believe if anybody says he's coming tomorrow, he ain't coming tomorrow. I think he's going to come at halftime of the super bowl because everybody's going to be focused on something else. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Friday at five o', clock, five o' clock somewhere, nowhere. You know what I'm talking about? That's when he's coming. All right? It says here, it says here, he behold, I come quickly. Blessed is he who keeps this word of prophecy of this book. What he's saying is you get a special blessing. The second time he says this, you get a special blessing from this Book. Why? Because it's the culmination of all. It ties all the other stuff together. Okay? He says, now, I, John, saw and heard these things. And when I heard and saw, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel who showed me these things. Well, see, he's still falling down, worshiping the angels because he's just so fired up about it. Now, look, if he's so fired up about it and he hung out with Jesus for three years, think how fired up you gonna be. You're gonna be falling out all over the place. I mean, you're gonna be a real Pentecostal, just passing out places, you know what I'm talking about? You're gonna be falling out over the place. All over the place. Kathleen and I were watching a little video and both dogs, a big old pit bull, and there's a little bit of Chihuahua, and they were watching this video on screen, and there was a guy coming, and then all of a sudden he jumps out, and the pit bull, he jumps all up and runs off, and the Chihuahua just lays back dead. You know what I'm talking about? Just lays back dead. That's how you gonna be most of the time. You're gonna see something God does in heaven. You're gonna go, I can't even believe it. Fall down on your face, worshiping. It's gonna be good. I mean, you think it's gonna be. You think the best worship you've ever had? Ain't even close. Ain't even close. And we're not talking about just a worship service. We're gonna be talking about walking around, seeing the fruits. You're going to see the fruit. You open the fruits up, you're going to look at it, pass out, boom, down on the ground, worshiping God. What in the world have you done? God, I mean, now, listen, I'm not joking about that. You're going to do that all the time. Angels show up, say something you ain't never heard before. See God down on the ground, Boom. He's going to say, get up. Quit doing that. I mean, how many times the angels are going to have to tell us that in heaven? Quit, get up. Quit doing that. You know? But, but, but it's going to be that way. It's going to be way better than you could ever imagine. Way better than you can ever imagine. I hear people say all the time, well, I want to go to heaven. I want to go to hell. That's where all the fun is. Hell's not where the fun is. Hell's where everybody's by themselves in darkness, burning. That's not fun. There's nothing fun about that. Okay, you go. Well, I want to go where the party is. The devil ain't going to be partying down there, okay? He's not. He. He ain't gonna be down there partying. Neither are anybody else. You're gonna be by yourself, alone in darkness, in on fire with worms that don't die. All right? But when you go to heaven, everything you look at is going to amaze you. Everything is going to be amazing. All of it. All of it. All the time. You're going to have to spend at least five or six years just getting over the love of God. You're going to be walking around crying all the time. He's going to be wiping away tears. Quit crying. You know what I'm talking about? I mean, so. So. Can you imagine. Can you imagine seeing a mosquito up there? You're going to be able to see it, you're going to be able to hear it, you're going to be able to watch it go around. It can't take your blood because you got perfect blood now. I mean, can you imagine. Can you imagine seeing a roly poly walk across the ground? How wonderful that's going to be? It's going to be way better than any roly poly you ever saw in your life. You might spend a day by the river thinking about the roly poly. And I say that. And it's not. I'm not making fun of it. I mean, can you imagine, can you imagine going to a worship service? You go to a worship service, God moves, things happen. Great. I might say something. You actually listen to and understand, you know what I'm saying? And then you leave here and you got to all the goodness of God. Can you imagine being like in heaven? Worship service, all the great musicians of the world up there playing. Can you imagine that? Chris Tomlin stepping out on stage for a song. You know what I'm talking about? Can you imagine what it's going to be like? You're going to leave that. You're going to leave the worship service. Ten days later, you're going to still be falling on the ground because of the worship service. Can you imagine that? And I'm saying that because it's going to be like that. So why would you ever want to be anything other than like that right now? Why would you live in. Live in the limited nature of who you are right now when you can ponder and chase after the limitless nature of The God you serve. Why would you worry about the failures of your past? That's why. Paul says, forgetting what is behind me, I press on to the high call of Jesus Christ. He says, I take away all the things that bind me. Why? Because, I mean, to know Christ is to know life. Why would you worry about your failures? Why would you ponder what. What isn't when you can know what is? Am I right? But all of you do. I do, too. I was heading into work today and a song came on the radio. I should have been a cowboy. And it convinced me. I should have been. You know what I'm talking about. I should have learned to rope and ride. That's what I'm. Baby, when I retire, I'm going to be a cowboy. I'm just letting you know. Kathleen says, no, you're not. And, you know, I thought about it. I should have been a cowboy. And then I told. I told my secretary, I should have been a cowboy. And she said, so when you retire, you're going to be a cowboy? I said, yeah. And then I thought about it. I said, you know, my daughters, they are real bossy now. They're not going to let me ride a horse when I'm 70 years old. You know what I'm talking about? They're not. So I'm never going to be a cowboy. Just letting y' all know, all right? But I am going to ride a horse one day. Okay? I am going to ride a horse one day, baby, I need to practice. Look, I need to practice. Yeah, I have, but, you know, it ain't easy. Horses don't like me. They look at me and go, no, he ain't getting on me. I mean, horses look at me and say, they have a fit. Horses ain't stupid. I've been places where you start getting horses and they start handing a horse to me. And that horse is going, no, no, he ain't getting on. Huh? Clydesdale. Mine's gonna be a Clydesdale, probably. All right. Just letting you know, I am riding horseback. Just letting you know. I may be translated up, but we're riding horses back, and I need to learn how to do it, baby. All right. You know, you say, what are you doing tonight with your Bible study? It's gonna be that way in heaven. Everything's gonna be hilarious and make you cry and. And make you fall out all at the same time. Everything. Everything. Can you imagine to go into each other's house? It's a mansion. And, I mean, how big is it going to be if you got a 1500 square miles. No, it's not 1500. It's 150, 275. It's 275,000 square miles on one floor and then it's 1500 miles. Did I do that right? I think it's 275,000. All right. It may be 2.75 million. All right. It's going to be that big. Can you imagine? You're just gonna go into somebody's house, is going to be a two week adventure. I mean, how great's it going to be, huh? Some of y' all who live, you know, live in small little houses. Can you imagine how what your house gonna be like up there? You might actually have a replica of your house here in there. Just to look at it and laugh at it. You know what I'm talking about? Just look at it and say, look, that guy brought me from. Where'd you used to live? Well, just look out there in the valley. There it is right there. That's what I used to live in. Do you ever go there? No, I hated it. You know, that's what, that's the way it's going to be. Can you imagine what it's going to be? That's what he says it's going to be like. Wonderful. Lake Martin ain't got nothing on heaven. Nothing. And I like it. Nothing. Nothing. River of life, crystal water. You know, it's going to be just slightly cold. You know that, right? It's got to be, huh? Maybe not. I don't know. I think of it that way. I think of those rivers out west. When I, you know, every time I see a river out west, I got to take my shoes off and go get in it. Even when it's wet. I mean, when it's cold, it's always wet. Now, I, John, saw and heard these things and I word it. I fell down and worshiped before the feet of the angel who showed me. And then he said to me, see that you do not do that. I think we're going to hear that a lot. He says, for I'm your fellow servant and your brethren, the prophets and those who keep the word of this book, worship God. What he's saying is you're, you're. And by the way, notice he's calling them prophets here, okay? He's called them that twice, okay? Now, in the Revelation, we have been presented as priests and kings, okay? Priests mean those are the three offices of the Old Testament. Prior to this chapter, we are presented as priests, meaning we have access to the Very throne room of God. And we're kings, which mean we're a royal priesthood, we're royal nation, which means we are the family of God. In this chapter, when you get to heaven or get to. I keep calling it heaven, but it's really the city of God. When you get to the City of God, which Hebrews describes as they looked for that city, when you get to the City of God, you become a prophet. And what do I mean by that? Remember, prophecy has a lot of specific ways that manifest itself. But prophecy, if you just said, give me a general definition of it, it's relating spiritual truth using words to other people. Well, when you get to heaven and the nations are there, you are going to speak spiritual truth in its purity to those who are a part of the nations of the earth. And you're going to be a prophet to them because you are going to know God as he fully is. So we move from being just not just priests, not just kings, but prophets also. In its purest and most powerful form, the ability to speak God's word with all its power and all its truth. He said, and he said to me, do not seal the words of this prophecy of this book, for the time is at hand. Now, I'm going to end with that because there is a system of thought which I've really not gotten into as far as this Bible study. It's called dispensationalism, okay? And it's a belief that, you know, there's different times in human history and each time has its own dispensation from God. Okay? Now I want you to listen to me. I'm not a Calvinist, I'm not an Arminianist, okay? And even, but that doesn't mean that I don't believe in most of the tenets of Calvinism because they come from the Bible. And that doesn't mean I don't believe in most of the tenets of Arminianism because they come from the Bible, okay? Now how they fit together is why they get in arguments, okay? But I don't believe there's anything to argue, all right? And I'm, I want you to hear me. I believe in dispensationalism, but I ain't a dispensationalist, okay? I just not. And, and, and you go, well, why aren't you? Well, I don't even really know if the Bible teaches it, but it kind of does and it kind of don't, okay? And the way you think dispensationalism is meaning that God has different dispensations during different time periods. Is true. There is the Old Testament. There is the New Testament. There is the dispensation prior to God's word even being known, and then after God's word begins to be propagated and known, okay? Romans talks about that. That if you don't even know God's word, that you have. You have a. You have a. Even if before it was ever propagated, it was clearly. It was clearly understandable. His nature. God's nature was clearly understandable in his creation. So do I believe that God has different times in different ways? His Holy Spirit deals with things? Yeah, because the Bible teaches that. Do I believe that you can just kind of cut them off and define them? No. It's hard. Do you know what I'm talking about? Because if you could do dispensationalism, then what is the primary dispensational time change? Well, it would be the birth of Christ. That's why we got BC and AD Are you following me? All right, but even in that story, there's a problem, because who is the greatest prophet of the Old Testament? No. John the Baptist. John the Baptist is the greatest prophet of the Old Testament. You go, he's not in the Old Testament. I know he's not, but he. He was the last great prophet who prepared the way of the Lord. You can't say anybody's greater than him because he prepared the way for Jesus himself, okay? He prophesied Jesus himself, okay? And he died before the resurrection, but he was clearly born again in his mother's womb because he knew Jesus was in the room when he was in the womb. Okay? So he's a New Testament saint and an Old Testament prophet. That kind of bothers me with dispensationalism because if you're going to make a bright line, John the Baptist gets messed up in it. And I like him. I'm thinking I'm going to be for him. You're going to say, you got to have a bright line. This is when this happens, and this is when that happens. And then you go, but John the Baptist. And I go, that's a big but. That's a big one. Huge. And how do I know he's the greatest, huh? Because Jesus said so. He said, no mind. No one is greater born of woman than John the Baptist. So does he not have to be the greatest Old Testament prophet? Yeah, but he's in the New Testament, so I don't get caught up in dispensationalism. That's why I didn't teach the Bible. I didn't teach the Revelation using those ideas, you could. I'm going to tell you, in my logical way of thinking about things, dispensationalism is very attractive, just like Calvinism is very attractive in my. In my orderly way of thinking about things. All right, But I want you to hear me. I am a Biblicist. I believe in the Bible, and I believe that there's no system or thought process, no orderly human method to fully know God. God has to reveal himself by his spirit, and there's not a system that's going to work. Does that make sense to you? It's not going to work. It might work for you a little bit. How many of y' all have read a book and then man made perfect sense and kind of explain things? Open the Bible up to you? Well, that worked for you. That was an understanding that you. That worked for you. But that doesn't mean it's the Bible. But it did help you get the Bible. Okay, Do I think that dispensationalism helps sometimes? Probably, yeah. You know, but we're not going to do that. We're going to love Jesus. We're going to seek the Father, and we're going to search with the leadership of the Holy Spirit, God's revelation in His Word. And that's what this is all about. That's how we do it. Okay? There's certain just ways you ought to do things, you know, and the Bible spells those things out. And we, as a church, I try to, with. Along with the help of a lot of people, I try to lead us to be pure about what God says, be diligent about what God leads us to do, and be open to allowing people to seek God the way God is leading them. Okay? And that means I'm both a shepherd and a sheep. And all the pastors are shepherds and sheep, and all the ministers are shepherds and sheep. You go, what do you mean, minister? If you lead a ministry or if you're heavily active in a ministry of the church, you're a minister, okay? You're a servant who's meeting a physical need and relating a spiritual purpose, okay? You're a decana, okay? And that's why you go, pastor. I don't know about that. Well, you're going to have to go to my first Timothy Bible study, okay? And listen to me, listen to me. Phoebe was a deacon pastor, but they wasn't. But just one of them. And this is the last statement I'm going to make about the Bible. Don't you listen to me. When my daddy said go take the trash out, Sometimes he said it twice. Most of the time he said it once. And then if you didn't do it, there was going to be recompense to be paid. You know what I'm talking about? Brett got a rod of recompense. If you want to talk to him about my dad and recompense, he's got testimony, he can testify. You know what I'm talking about? He can. All right, I want you listen to me. So I learned in that that my daddy didn't need to say it but what once? So I want you to hear me a lot of times in the Bible God says things over and over and over again. You know why? Cause he knows we're hard headed and we don't listen. But if he says it once, then don't discount it cause he didn't say it twice. He is your father. Okay? So we don't go to the Bible and say, well God only said that once. Okay? My daddy only said it once. And then he tore me up with that Auburn belt with that big old Auburn belt buckle three inches wide. Huh? Is that why? What? That's why I'm an Alabama fan. I couldn't stand that olden belt bucker God delivered me from Auburn that way. Can't, can I never thought about that. But it probably is exactly why it's that way. I wish I could find that belt. All right, so understanding that the word of God is so wonderful and you ought to explore it is really the culmination of what the revelation teaches us, that God kind of knows everything's going to work out, he knows how it's going to work out and he kind of give you an idea of how it's going to happen in your limited understanding. And then you got to trust him with it. And if we do that and we do it well, we get to see God do big stuff. And if we don't do it well, well then we don't believe. And if we don't believe, we can't see God do big stuff. Now I said that I want to make sure you got that if we will believe upon him and live it out and trust it, he has promised to show us big stuff. And let me tell you something, he has shown us big, big stuff. Yeah. From the very, very start. Y' all know that, right? The miraculous happens here so much that sometimes we treat it as mundane. Okay? Truly miraculous things, truly amazing things. But that's because we trust him and we trust what he says. That's why that happens. I'm telling you, that's why that happens. And the reason you feel the love of God when you walk in the room is people take it for what it is. People truly love people because God first loved us. Amen. 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.