Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #6 of Revelation, chapter 14, and we are going to be reading Revelation14:5-6:

And in their mouth was found no guile: for they are without fault before the throne of God. And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people,

Last time we were looking at the beginning of verse 5: “And in their mouth was found no guile.”  We saw how this word “guile” is translated as “deceit” in Mark 7, verse 22, as God describes the sins that come forth out of the heart of man.  One of the many sins listed are “deceit” or “guile.”  This is part of the nature of mankind since the fall into sin and that is why it is such a wonderful and incredible thing when the Lord talks about the 144,000 people He saved during the period of the church age and He says, “And in their mouth was found no guile.”  They spoke the Word of truth.  They spoke information from the Bible and as far as they were able, they were being faithful to the Word of God.  The condition of their heart was that the deceitfulness had been removed; the heart of stone had been taken away and the heart of flesh had been given to them.  They became like Nathanael, of whom Jesus said, in John 1:47:

Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and saith of him, Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!

This is a very important statement: “Behold an Israelite indeed.”  Christ made that statement about Nathanael in a place where there were many Israelites and they all were descendents of Abraham, but Nathanael was “an Israelite indeed” or “in truth,” because he was a true child of God, someone whom the Lord had already saved and given a new heart and new spirit.  He was a part of the new Israel.  The Bible tells us that all Israel are not of Israel.  Yes, there was a physical nation of Israel and all the Jews were part of that nation, but there is a spiritual Israel and only those that become saved are able to be counted among that number.  Nathanael was one of those, “an Israelite indeed.”

It is just like today.  We have a world of professed Christians numbering about two billion and, yet, the vast majority of them are not true Christians; they are not born again; they are not truly of the house of the Lord Jesus Christ.  That is why we often try to make that distinction when we are studying the Bible and when someone that is identified with God through their profession or identified with His kingdom through an outward identification like the corporate churches and how that differs from an individual the Lord has saved and who is a “true man.”  There is no “guile” in that person and that is a big distinction that the Bible makes.  The Lord Jesus made that distinction when He addressed Nathanael in that way: “Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!” The 144,000 mentioned in Revelation 14 are in the same spiritual condition as Nathanael – they had no “guile” within them.

Then it goes on to say at the end of Revelation 14:5:

… for they are without fault before the throne of God.

This is a beautiful truth that God describes here.  Again, He is speaking of someone who has become saved and, in this case, it is an entire group; it is everyone saved during the church age.  It is all of those saved through the ministry of the churches and congregations of the world at the proper time and season when the Lord was still using the churches to accomplish His purposes.  One of the purposes was to bring in these “firstfruits.”  They all became saved through the atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ from the foundation of the world; that is the point of His sacrifice and it was the one sacrifice for sin that He made for ever and there was never the need for another; that is the point at which the sins of all of God’s elect throughout the history of the world were laden upon Christ and He bore them upon His body on the tree; He was bearing the sins of His people and He was cursed by God, dying for them in order to satisfy the Law’s demand for justice.  Christ performed the atoning work completely at that point.  The only thing left was the application of that atonement and that is where the Gospel came into the picture.  God created the world and history unfolded as He knew it would when man committed sin; and there was Abel, one of His elect, and right away it was as though the Lord had a bowl full of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Word of God was like the hyssop dipped in that blood and applied to Abel.  Then it was applied to the next elect one and to the next elect one, until we come to Noah and because Christ died for Noah, Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord and at some point in Noah’s life God applied the blood through the Word of God and saved Noah. 

And so it was down through history; the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ was available because He was the first to die, the first to rise from the dead, the firstborn from the dead and the first of the firstfruits.  The Gospel was just a matter of applying the finished work (from the foundation of the world) to each one chosen by God, according to His good pleasure.  At some point in that person’s life – when they were a baby in the womb, like John the Baptist or at the end of their life, like the thief on the cross – the blood would be applied to them before they could die. 

The Lord was 100% successful in working these things out over the course of history, century after century, in each generation of man.  It did not matter where those elect individuals were, but God would work it out.  In some generations, God may have had no elect, for example, in China or in Asia, so the Holy Ghost would forbid the Gospel in that area because there were no elect there.  In other ages and other years there were large numbers of people that might be in a certain area and the Gospel would “rush in” and go forth and God would save many.  Of course, He did that in the little season of the Great Tribulation which He had reserved for the time of the end, the last 6,100 days of the day of salvation.  This was the Latter Rain and a great multitude became saved at that time.

What all elect have in common after they have had the blood of Christ applied to them through the Word of God was this: “they are without fault before the throne of God.”  That is a big statement because God does not overlook sin.  He does not ignore sin and He cannot just wave His hand and allow individuals that have sin to enter into His kingdom.  It took that enormous price of the Lord Jesus’ payment for sin in order for God to be able to make this statement and it involved the removal of the guilt of sin, with all its ugliness, from all these people, in order for God to say they were without fault.  We read in James 2, verse 10, that even one sin makes us guilty of all.  We are lawbreakers subject to the wrath of God and, as a result, we would die, but in the case of God’s elect, they are forgiven.

We read this same word translated as “without fault,” in Ephesians 1:3-4:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:

This is the same translation in the English of the Greek word that was translated as “without fault” in our verse.  Here, it says, “we should be holy and without blame before him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will.”  There is no blame, no guilt and no spot of sin.  We are clean.  We are washed.  The sin is purged from us.   We are “white as snow” and our sins are put as far from us as the “east is from the west.”  We are free and we have no blame in the sight of God.  This is about as great a thing as anything could be because this means we are in perfect harmony with God, once again.  We have our relationship to Him restored and we are now a creature that is in submission to our Creator.  He has granted us eternal life and we will live for evermore in this blessed spiritual condition of being “without blame.”

It says in Colossians 1:21-22:

And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled In the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight:

Of course, you probably recognized our word – it is the word “unblameable.”  We go from the guiltiest of sinners to a man or woman whose every sinful thought, word and deed has been charged against Christ.  We had been “dripping” with iniquity, guilt and shame before God and now we are “unblameable.”  The Bible says: “Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect?”  Concerning men, who can say to us, “You are guilty.  You are a sinner.”  Who can point the finger and try to charge one of God’s people with sin?  Well, yes, on a human level, men can find fault with us and it is really interesting how things tend to work in the world when someone is part of the world; the world loves its own and, therefore, they can get away with any thing and things are overlooked and no one is too critical of them.  But, if someone has been translated out of the darkness of this world, spiritually, and into the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, then the eyes of the world begin to seek them out and people are watching them.  They are looking to find fault.  It seems especially true of those that are involved with other gospels and they think they have a relationship with Christ, but they are full of guile and deceit and there is no real relationship there.  They feel judged and it makes them feel uncomfortable when they see true believers that are without guile and without fault before the throne of God.  They start being troubled by their own relationship with God, but rather than look at that, they focus on the child of God intently, with an eye to criticize, find fault and lay some blame: “Let me see their sin.”  They will keep looking until they find some sin and something wherein they can accuse the true believer.  It is amazing that they are the ones trying to find fault with the true believers and, yet, God finds no fault with them.  It does not mean that they (the true believers) cannot sin.   The truth is that children of God were horrible sinners and God opens up their eyes to the fact that they are the chief of sinners.  This only leads them to greater praise of God and greater thanksgiving to Him that so much sin, a multitude of iniquity, has been pardoned and taken away.  The soul has been cleansed and the guilt is gone and this leads to a desire to do the will of God even more and to love the Lord Jesus Christ. 

But I guess this is how it is in the world.  If the world loves us, they will not find fault with us, but God will, but if God loves us (in the sense of salvation), then the Lord will not find fault with us, but the world will do so.  That is why it comes down to the question: “Whose judgment do we fear more?”  The Apostle Paul had the right idea when the Lord moved him to write in 1Corinthians 4:3:

But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man's judgment: yea, I judge not mine own self.

He realized this would be the case.  Men would judge him because God no longer condemns him and no longer judges him, in that sense, even though the true believer was judged in the Lord Jesus Christ.  Yet, the verdict from the just Judge, the Judge of all the earth is: “I find no fault in this person because his sins, which are many, were paid for from the foundation of the world by the Lord Jesus Christ.”  Since they are paid for, what fault can God find with him?  It would be double jeopardy, like judging someone twice for the same crime and God is a just Judge and He cannot do that.  When the Lord says they are without fault before His throne, that is an honest assessment; it is an honest judgment coming from the just Judge.  There is none more just than the one that sits upon this throne and He is issuing the decree: “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1)