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10A. Jesus Is Seeking Overcomers (Revelation 14:1-5)

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  speaker icon   1. In Lovingkindness Jesus Came; Praise; The Love of God   (6:20)
  speaker icon   2. Jesus Is Seeking Overcomers   (23:34)
  speaker icon   3. I Have Decided to Follow Jesus, excerpt   (1:09)

Selected Verses:

Revelation 14:1.  And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father’s name written in their foreheads.

James 1:26.  If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain.

James 3:6.  And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.

I John 3:3.  And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.

John 14:23.  Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

Opening:

Let’s read something about it.  “And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Zion…”  Oh, dear Lamb of God!  We had just read about the beast in the preceding chapter.  And we found out how that the whole world worships the beast, takes his mark in their forehead, or in their hands, and falls down before him.  But there’s a group that refuses at the cost of their lives to take the mark of the beast.  They follow the Lamb of God.  They’ve heard that sweet voice that calls them and cries from the cross of Christ: “Come now, let us reason together: though your sins be as scarlet…”  After all, that is the mark of the beast: it’s the sin, it’s enmity against God.  And that beast that rises out of the sea has a great mouth, and that mouth is filled with curses, and with unbelief, and with blasphemy against God and against them that dwell in heaven.  And he makes war with the saints.  And he overcomes many of them.  But here—thank God!—is the Lamb of God on Mount Zion.  And He has a following too—praise the Lord!—a wonderful following.  Oh, this (…) 

Do you know that Somebody’s after you tonight?  Do you know that Somebody loves you so deeply that He will not give up until you give up?  He will pursue you.  They say, “love makes the world go ‘round,” and “faint heart never won fair lady.”  Well, that may be the truth.  Here we see the Lamb of God, and He stood on the Mount Zion, “and with Him an hundred forty and four thousand.”  Oh, poor Lamb of God!  Is that all You’ve got, out of the great multitude of followers of the beast—worshippers of the beast?

How many do you think the Lamb of God finds today in the churches...?  Not many.

Selected Quotes:

speaker icon But, thank God, there are some, some.  And He’s going to win them, and “love found a way.”  And it took the almighty love of God to find a way, because He’s not satisfied just to have them on Mount Zion.  He’s after their hearts.  He’s after their lives.  He’s after their whole being: “your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless,” and be sanctified—that means, be made His everlasting possession.  And, thank God, here the Lamb of God won the fight, and with Him 144,000.  And instead of the mark of the beast on their foreheads, they have their “Father’s name written in their foreheads.”

speaker icon He gives us here a description of the mark of the beast.  He shows us what it consists of.  First of all, an unholy tongue.  “If any among you seemeth to be religious and bridleth not his mouth, his tongue—.”  Well, did you ever find anybody that bridles his tongue?  Now, honest to goodness, did you?  …“If any among you seemeth to be religious—.”  We all seem to be religious, and we all like to be religious.  But oh, that mouth of ours that defiles the whole man, the whole body, and “is set on fire of hell”!  What does it mean?  It means that the devil uses it.  If God Almighty doesn’t control my tongue, then the beast controls it.  That’s what it is…  I know that all kinds of books are written about the mark of the beast.  Listen, you don’t need to be afraid of any of them if you guard your tongue, and if you bridle your tongue, and if you learn this one thing: to give your tongue to Jesus Christ, and let your tongue, and your mouth be a fountain of living water.

speaker icon Why don’t we guard our mouth?  Why don’t we “guard our heart with all diligence”?  Why is it that idle words proceed out of our mouth?  Why is it that we raise our voice, and we complain, and we murmur, and we forget that in the desert, in the wilderness, they that murmured were perishing—23,000 in one day—because they murmured, they found fault with God?  Why do we do that?  I’ll tell you why: We don’t love the Lamb sufficiently.  We don’t love His ways sufficiently.  We’re careless about our garment.

speaker icon Today, we talk about religion, and we think that a man that has a pretty clear view of religion and has a pretty fundamental grasp of the gospel, he’s a good preacher.  We put them in the pulpit.  We let them preach.  Oh, they can preach eloquent sermons.  Nothing’s wrong with their sermons.  And people are taught in the Bible classes all the fundamentals of Christianity and of salvation: if they believe they’re saved, and so on, and so on.  And they can argue with unbelievers, and of course, they feel very superior to other churches and other denominations.  But, beloved, God is after Christlikeness—thank God!—purity of heart.

speaker icon Do you know how close we are to heaven tonight?  Because heaven is here, Somebody’s after you.  Somebody loves you.  Somebody has seen you down the corridors of eternity, and has seen you running into the pit of hell, and He’s after you: not just to save you from hell, but to make you pure “as He is pure.”  …And beloved, that’s only the first step.  And some people get stuck there; they never go beyond that first step.  But what does He say?  “We are members of His body,” “the fullness of Him that filleth all in all.”

speaker icon You’ll never get rid of [the mark of the beast] until you follow the Lamb—until the Lamb of God on Mount Zion…  That’s what that means: “I have set My King upon My holy hill of Zion.”  Your heart is that “holy hill of Zion.”  There’s no other hill; it’s your heart.  It’s the heart of the redeemed.  That’s where Jesus Christ takes His great power; that’s where He reigns sumpreme, thank God!  And “they that receive abundance of grace”—do you want it?—“and of the gift of righteousness, they shall reign in life.”  It means they’re not overcome by the world and the flesh and the devil.

speaker icon It took the love of God to find a way to my sinful heart.  But He found a way right into the depths of my being, right into the very depths of my soul, thank God!  And He is seeking that place tonight.  And if you open your heart to Him, it’ll mean that you’ll let Him come in—not something about Him, not some doctrine about Jesus that’ll satisfy you and make you think you’re rich and increased with goods.  But, oh Christ, that Lamb in the midst of the throne will be in the midst of your life.  And the mark upon your forehead will be His Father’s name, because He says, “he that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father,” and “We will come unto him and make Our abode with him.”

Illustrations:

The sins of the tongue: a woman who complained “about the preacher, and the preacher’s wife, and everybody in church.” “And beloved, today there are thousands of people that call themselves saints, and they speak in tongues, and their tongues are ‘a tinkling cymbal’ and ‘as sounding brass.’  They do not ‘follow the Lamb withersoever he goeth’ because in His mouth was found no guile, and when He was reproved, He answered not.  He didn’t sin with His tongue.”    (from 5:34)

The story of a woman who could not walk, but could dance in the Holy Spirit.    (from 15:15)

Audio Quality: Fair

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