This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome to Daily Drive Time Devotions and Revelation chapter 14. Hi, I'm Pastor
Tom. Day one, beginning our look at this awesome chapter.

To me the most awesome thing about this chapter is how it begins. You remember
Revelation 13 we looked at last week with all those beasts and all those
terrible pictures and then you open up Revelation 14. The first thing you see is
there's a lamb.

There is a refreshing lamb that gave his life for the sins of the world. And
we're going to get to what that lamb means in just a few moments. But before we
get there, as we begin our look at Revelation 14, I feel like it's important
that we continue to get our bearings as we go through Revelation because it is
easy to get lost in the detail of the pictures and to miss the powerful truths.

So as we're going through, I just keep reminding you of what it takes to
understand Revelation and where we are in the book of Revelation. Remember what
it takes to understand Revelation. I mean as we read through books and pictures
as we're seeing in this book, it's difficult to get lost in the crowns and the
thorns and the horns growing out of heads and seven heads and it gets a little
confusing sometimes.

So let me just remind you of why we get confused. When we read the book of
Revelation today, why it feels confusing to us. Because it did not.

I believe with all my heart, it did not to those who first read the book of
Revelation. There are three reasons that when you and I read this book, it's a
little bit of a struggle. It's a little bit harder work for us to understand it.

We have a difficult time understanding Revelation when three things. Number one,
when we don't know the Old Testament background. They knew the Old Testament
background in the day that this was written.

We don't. Most of us have never spent a lot of time studying the Old Testament.
So the pictures that come like ten heads, they don't hit us immediately like,
"Oh, that's the same thing as in Daniel.

I remember that. I've read about that all my life. I understand that.

" I guess the picture I'd give is sort of like when I took Greek in college for
the first time. I'd had some English classes in high school, but I sort of
skated through them and I hadn't really focused on them. So I didn't know things
like participles and prepositions like I should.

And so when I took Greek, it was very confusing to me. Because while I was
taking Greek, I also had to learn English. You may have experienced that with a
foreign language learning it.

It's hard enough to learn a foreign language, but you have to learn your own
language as well at the same time. That makes it even more confusing. You try to
learn Spanish at the same time as you're trying to learn the basics of English.

It's ten times more confusing because you're trying to learn two things at once.
And that's what happens when we look through the book of Revelation. We don't
know the Old Testament as they knew it.

They knew it like the back of their hand. They knew it like some of you know
Star Wars. They knew the Old Testament and so they knew the book of Revelation
better.

They knew everything about it. When they saw these pictures, they would
immediately go back to the Old Testament and understand what does the Old
Testament say? How does this help me to understand this picture?

That's one of the reasons why it's worth studying the Old Testament as we study
the book of Revelation. We don't understand the book of Revelation sometimes
because we don't understand the Old Testament. The second reason we don't
understand sometimes is because we don't understand New Testament times.

Because we don't understand New Testament times, we don't understand for
instance that the number seven and the number ten meant completion or meant
full. That's what it meant in all of the writings of that day. We have to have
somebody tell us what it meant.

They knew immediately what it meant because it just always meant that in that
day. So we have to walk through that. And then there's a third reason that we
sometimes miss and are confused by the truth of the book of Revelation.

We miss it when we don't remember that the primary message is always hope. If
you start reading the book of Revelation just looking for dates and times and
reasons where you just get worried about what's going to happen or not going to
happen to you and you don't worship God, you don't focus on the fact that he's
in control, that he wants to give us an awesome hope in the midst of whatever
circumstances hit us, you're going to miss the message and it's going to feel
confusing to you. So as we walk through Revelation we just want to hold on to
those things and realize okay we've got to keep going back to the Old Testament,
keep going back to New Testament times, keep going back to hope.

And also as we walk through this book I want to just keep reminding you of where
we are in the study of this book. Revelation is a book of awesome drama and
suspense and in fact in many ways wherever you are in the book everything else
is built toward that point dramatically. That's one of the powerful things about
the book of Revelation.

Everything has built to where we are right now. The worship that was in chapters
four and five has built to what we're going to look at in chapter 14. The seven
seals that have been opened, the seven trumpets that have been blown, they have
built toward what we're going to look at in chapter 14.

And then this long interlude that we've looked at the last couple of chapters,
this interlude in which we've focused on the plans of Satan. We've focused on a
battle with two witnesses and the dragon battling the woman, a lot of battles,
the rise of a horrible beast from the earth and a beast from the sea. Seemingly
in these last few chapters Satan is gaining more and more control.

He seems to be having his way more and more. And just personally as we begin
into chapter 14 it may seem that way in your life at times. Revelation is not
just a book about the end or just a book about the first century.

It's a book about you. It's a book about hope for anyone at any time. If God can
give hope in the circumstances that we're looking at in this book, He can give
hope for your life and my life.

He can give hope when things are at their darkest. And there are times in your
life when it feels like, it seems like Satan is having his way more and more. It
is not true, but it feels that way to us because of where we happen to be in the
story at that moment.

And God keeps reminding us to have hope. In fact, Revelation chapter 14 to me,
really chapter 14 through chapter 16 are chapters about where do you find hope
when your world is falling apart. They're chapters about what do you do when
life isn't fair?

What do you do about the fact that life is not fair? And I mean truly and deeply
not fair. I don't mean my little sister got a little more soda in her glass than
I did unfair, like your kids cry unfair unfair.

I mean deeply unfair. I mean a child that's abused by her parents or his parents
and has to live with that, deal with that the rest of his or her life. I mean a
rape that happens and a woman who has to deal with that abuse the rest of her
life.

I mean a child who, although that son, that daughter is given everything, they
become a prodigal and they wander away from their parents. They live just for
themselves. I mean what we're seeing here in Revelation, believers who are being
persecuted by a beast.

What do you do when life is unfair? These chapters talk about that. They give us
truths to hold on to when life is unfair.

Since chapter 11, we have been focused on the political, the power of the beast,
the control of people. In chapter 14, we turn from the political to the
spiritual and we see things that clearly give us hope, clearly give you hope
when everything's falling apart. We're going to look this week and next few
weeks at four unforgettable pictures, four real pictures, four places that this
future that we have before us is inevitably going ahead and four places that you
and I can find hope when the world is falling apart.

Now let me just say as we walk through these chapters, don't get too caught up
in the timeline of this. There are those people who try to make everything in
these chapters, chapters 12, 13, 14, fit exactly into the time of the
tribulation. It's a little bit more difficult because the further we get towards
the end, the more chaotic things get.

In fact, the further we get towards the end of time, the more heaven starts to
break in on earth and the more difficult it becomes, I believe, to figure out
exact timelines in the book of Revelation. And that's not the point in these
chapters. You'll see the events that are going to happen.

God unfolds those for us. And the exact order of those events is not so
important as the fact that these events are going to happen. The point is these
four events that are going to happen, they're going to change everything.

And in that change, we see truth that we desperately need. Life is often unfair.
Where do you look?

Where do you look when that happens? Here are four pictures. The first picture
just beginning today is a picture of a lamb leading worship.

In Revelation 14, the first part of verse 1 says, "Then I looked, and there
before me was a lamb standing on Mount Zion. " And as I said at the beginning,
what a relief, a lamb. This is Jesus.

This is the lamb of God. He walks on the scene, this scene from last chapter
where we have the beasts and we have the torture and we have all that's
happening with him trying to control. This lamb walks on the scene and guess
what?

It changes everything. Just like your life. As soon as he walks on the scene of
your life, it changes everything.

As soon as he walks on the scene of the end times, as soon as he walks into this
circumstance, we again see hope clearly. Right now in your life, you may not see
hope clearly because of the circumstances that are surrounding your life. How do
you see it more clearly?

First of all, you see the lamb. You see it more clearly when you see Jesus more
clearly. We're going to walk through that this week.

As we prepare to do that, let's talk to him. Jesus, we want to see you in our
circumstances. We want to see you in the good times and give you praise.

We want to see you when we're going through difficult circumstances and realize
you're not going to leave us alone, realize you have a plan, realize, realize
Jesus that you're using even this that Satan is throwing at us to develop in us
your heart, your character and a promise and a hope for eternity. So Lord, I
pray like never before we'd see you even in the difficult circumstances and
you'd use these verses in Revelation to open up that new perspective, that new
way of looking. I pray this for me.

I pray this for all of us. In Jesus name, we pray, amen. Join us tomorrow.

We're going to see together how 144,000 believers respond to this lamb. Amen.