Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation. Tonight is study #7 of Revelation, chapter 14, and we are going to be reading Revelation14:5-7:
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, Saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.
I will stop reading there. We are in the second part of verse 5 at this point: “for they are without fault before the throne of God.” This is a statement that is a difficult to move on from, because it is so glorious and wonderful and we could just spend a great deal of time thinking about being freed from the tremendous burden of the wrath of God. His furious anger had been upon our heads because of our sins, until that time came in the lives of each of God’s elect when God determined: “Now I will apply the atoning work of Christ to the soul of this chosen individual.” So God did that. Then we are under the hearing of the Word of God. Maybe we heard it on the radio or maybe we just picked up our Bible that day and read it. There are a thousand different ways God could have applied His salvation to us.
Again, to use an illustration, it is like someone taking hyssop, dipping it in the blood and applying it to the doorpost; now the “house” is covered and the angel of death will pass it by. God did that to our souls; He applied the atoning work that Jesus Christ had performed for our sins when He was slain before the world began. He washed our sins away with the stroke of the “hyssop,” with the beautiful blood of the Lord Jesus, leaving us “without fault.”
We saw last time that God had predestinated us from the foundation of the world and let us look at this again. It says in Ephesians 1:4-5:
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: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,
We were chosen to become holy and to become holy means to become “without sin.” We were chosen to be “without blame” before Him and before the throne of God. Again, God decided: “Jacob I have loved” and “Esau I have hated.” By God’s grace and His mercy, we are privileged and blessed to have been selected, based on nothing we have done or ever could do. It is not a choice that is according to merit. It is not because we deserve it or that we have earned it, but it is all because of God’s good pleasure. He wanted a people for Himself, but all were equally sinful. There were none that were good; Jacob was as dirty and rotten a sinner as Esau. How could God choose? In that case, “I will select Jacob, but I will not select Esau.” Then He went on to the next and the next and the next and the whole company of elect was determined before any were born. This is the point God makes in Romans, chapter 9, when He speaks of making the choice of Jacob over Esau before they were born and before either had done any good or evil. Therefore, it was done before any idea could be formed that this was done because someone had obeyed God or kept the Law of God or done some good work. These things have nothing to do with it, but it is based on God choosing one over the other and the criteria for the choice are only “God’s good pleasure.”
We are not going to move on quite yet because it is always good for us to think about this. It says in Hebrews 9:11-14:
But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
The two words “without spot” are a translation of the same Greek word found in our verse in Revelation 14:5 as “without fault.” It helps us to see that His people are “without fault” before Him, He means exactly that. He uses the same Word to speak of the Holy One of Israel or to describe the sinless One and to refer to Eternal God Himself in all of His holiness and purity and goodness. The Lord Jesus Christ was without spot and without blemish before God; He had no sin of any kind and the Bible makes a big point to emphasize that fact. Christ was sinless. He had no sin. He never once transgressed the Law of God on any point, from His conception to His going to the cross, nor in eternity past, nor in eternity future. Christ is without sin and this is one of the most important teachings of the Bible and this is what qualified Him to be the spotless Lamb to be offered up for the sins of those He would redeem.
For God to use the same word “without spot” that He uses to describe the Lord Jesus to describe the people He has saved is just amazing. We could substitute that same term “without spot” in our verse in Revelation 14:5, as “for they are without spot before the throne of God.” There is no sin detected. There is no sin of any kind. We become pure and holy as God Himself. There is no sin. It is that perfect purity that God has accomplished in the lives of His people. This is an incredible thing that He has taken the filthy, the dirty, the vile and the most contemptuous sinners, dripping in sin in both body and soul, and He has cleansed them and washed them and purified them and made them clean in His sight. What a tremendous thing this is.
Let us just look at one more verse that uses this same word, before we move on. When we follow this word in the Bible, this is one of those words where every place it is used (it seems), it just enriches the meaning and makes the reality of what God has done for His people just sparkle all the more! It says in Jude 1:22-25:
And of some have compassion, making a difference: And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh. Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, To the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.
I am sure you have seen the word we were looking for in verse 24: “Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy.” We are faultless, without spot and without blame – unblameable. All of these words are teaching us the same truth: the sins of the people of God are gone. They are gone.
At this time we are living in, which is the Day of Judgment, in these days after the Tribulation, the Lord has fixed the spiritual condition of every human being on the face of the earth. God had applied the blood of Christ to us before He shut the door to heaven because that was the end of the time table for the application of redemption. That was the end of the day of salvation in which God had been applying the finished work of Christ from the foundation of the earth. Obviously, the work of Christ in dying for His people from the foundation of the world and the application of His work to the souls chosen to receive it, the elect, is also completed and finished. It was all accomplished by May 21, 2011. This means that you and I and everyone else in all the world have either received the “hyssop” with the blood applied to our souls which removed all sin from us, or we have not received it. If we have received it, it has washed us and cleansed us and removed all of our sins. They are gone. They are cast into the depths of the sea. The Lord will remember them no more. They are as far as the east is from the west, and we know the twain can never meet. The sin is gone. There is no more condemnation because the child of God is “without fault” before Him.
If we are not one of His elect, the application of the redemptive work of Christ was not applied to our souls (before May 21, 2011) and it never would be, even if the door had stayed open throughout the rest of our lives; we would never had had the “hyssop” with the blood applied to us because God had determined to save certain individuals and no others.
But now the salvation of God has been applied (or not applied) to each person in the world: either we were made righteous by the righteousness of One, the Lord Jesus, or we are still in our sins and we are still filthy before God, as it is explained in Revelation 22:10-11:
And he saith unto me, Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book: for the time is at hand. He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still.
This is the condition of every person in the world. Whatever our condition is today or yesterday (and every day since May 21, 2011), it is the same – no one’s condition will change. Of course, someone who is saved could never lose their salvation. But none that are still spiritually filthy can have their sins washed away and be transformed into a new creature and be made righteous. That will never happen.
This means that if we are a professed believer and, especially, if we are struggling with sin, but there is evidence in our lives that we are elect and we are continuing to follow the path that the Bible has set and we are continuing to endure sound doctrine and we have much affliction in our lives for the Word’s sake and, yet, we are troubled and struggling with a sin, it is a good thing to ponder and consider. The next time you fall into sin, think of this because right now this is the spiritual situation for someone who sins:
I think it would be good for us to start thinking that way; either the sins are gone or they all remain.