Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #17 of Revelation, chapter 22 and we are going to read Revelation 22:14-15:

Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.

The gates are the Lord Jesus Christ and they are the entry portals that the Bible opens as God uses His Word, the Scriptures, to minister entry into the kingdom of heaven.  It is all Christ.  He is the door, the way and the life.  God could open a gate way in the Book of Genesis or in the Book of Revelation or anywhere in the Bible and that is how God’s people enter through the gates: “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”  It is the “way” to New Jerusalem, the city of God, which is built up of all those God has saved. 

Then it says in Revelation 22:15:

For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.

This is outside the kingdom of heaven or outside the city that is built up of the elect.  That is where these “people” are, even though God refers to them as “dogs.”  They are not actual dogs.  Dogs are like any other creatures and all creatures have seen corruption because of the curse, but dogs are not sinners.  It is mankind that is sinners and God gave His Law to man to follow and it is man that rebelled and gone contrary to His Law.  But a dog is referred to in the Bible as an “unclean” animal and God identifies sinners with “unclean” animals.  Psalm 22, a Messianic Psalm, gives us a lot of information about the Messiah and His atoning work and we read in Psalm 22:13:

They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion.

This is referring to wicked and unsaved people.  Then it says in Psalm 22:16:

For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet.

The “dogs” are the same as the “assembly of the wicked” and they are the ones “without the city” in our verse.  The unsaved people of the world are likened to “dogs.” As Christ said to the Syrophenician woman, “For it is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it unto the dogs.”  She recognized that He was saying she was a sinner and she replied, “Yes, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs.” Christ responded that great was her faith and He healed her daughter.  That Greek woman was a child of God and all true believers recognize that we are sinners deserving of nothing.  We are like “dogs” and we are “unclean” in God’s sight, but God is no longer casting bread to the “dogs,” because the day of salvation is past.  All those that were to become saved have entered into the city through the gates and now the rest of mankind (the unsaved) are “without the city.”  God says they are “dogs” or they are “sorcerers.”  We saw that latter word back in Revelation 21:8:

But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.

Many of the same descriptions of unsaved people are in view in this verse.  God is not speaking of a lake burning with fire and brimstone in our verse, but it is the same judgment of God.  They are “without” and they are “dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.”  They are physically alive and involved in these sins, like sorcery and being “whoremongers.”  The word “whoremongers” is translated as “fornicator,” as God says in Hebrews 12, verse 13, where God refers to Esau as a “fornicator.” 

The sin of being a “murderer” is also mentioned.  Men commit this sin physically as they kill their fellow man.  The number of murderers today in the world is huge and almost every major city has thousands of murderers and the world is full of large cities.  There are tremendous numbers of people that have committed murder, physically, and when you take into consideration “abortion,” there are really great numbers of people that are murdered.  Our prisons are full of murderers and there are people walking the streets that have committed murder, in one way or another.  God adds to that when He identifies “hatred” of our fellow man as a form of murder, so the sin of murder is rampant.  It is all over the earth, physically and morally.  It is also spiritual, as the churches have been given over to “other gospels” and, therefore, they have “killed” their congregations and driven out the true believers, which is also a form of murder.  So murder is just all over the earth. 

It also mentions “idolaters” or those that worship idols.  Idolatry is also everywhere.  There are people that worship statues of Buddha or they worship statues of Mary or someone they think is “Christ.”  There is idolatry in that sense, but God also relates “covetousness” to idolatry in the Bible and, of course, people are coveting as never before – there is great lust, envy and wicked desire for the things people see.  As the world produces more and more goods, people are coveting and desiring these things. 

There is also idolatry in sports as people “worship” their teams each week.  They go to the stadium and they scream until they are hoarse, worshipping their teams and often on the Lord’s Day.  They have no problem going to that game for three or four hours, even though they do not have five or ten minutes to read the Bible and to pray, but they have great amounts of time to devote to their “god,” whether it is football, baseball or whatever sport it is.  Actually, we are hearing more and more that they speak of “baseball gods” or “football gods,” as they speak of the “bounce of the ball” in which it goes in favor of one team or another under the control of the “baseball gods.”  It is revealing that this is idolatry.  People go contrary to the Law of God, even though God commands us to remove our foot from doing our own pleasure on His holy day and, yet, people are all about their own pleasure on God’s holy day each Sunday.  It is tremendous idolatry and this is also true of the entertainment business, as they lift up certain people because they are attractive or beautiful or rich.  The world is full of idols.  Man thinks he has made tremendous advancement since the days when man bowed down to statues of stone and carved images that they worshipped as gods, but there has been no improvement whatsoever; man has gotten even more idolatrous.  It is just that man has deceived himself as to who or what he is worshipping, but he is worshipping things that are covetous and it is “idolatrous,” according to the Bible.

Then it goes on to identify the sin of “loving and making a lie.” Wow!  If the sins of sorcery, fornication or being a murder or idolater did not get you, this one certainly would because this particular sin of “loving and making a lie” is the glue that binds the world together.  It is that which brings (unsaved) man together as they take after their spiritual father, the devil, who was a liar from the beginning and the father of it, as we read in the Gospel of John.  Man loves to “make a lie” and to “live a lie.”  Everything is this world revolves around “the lie.”  Right from the beginning, we start reading our children fairy tales, like tales of wolves that want to devour little children or other far-fetched stories like a goose that lays golden eggs.  These things are not true.  Why are we feeding our children lies?  How can we think we are doing a wonderful things for them?  How many fathers have opened the fairy tale that starts out, “Once upon a time,” and then it goes right into the tall tales and a story that has no bearing on the truth.  We think we are doing something good for the child, but what we are doing is conditioning the little boy or little girl to live in this world and to “love and make a lie.”  So when we close our “Golden Book” and kiss them goodnight, we have trained them to love a lie.  Believe me, in this world that will come in very handy for them.  The atmosphere of the entire world is falsehood, deceit and lies.  Every Christmas, what do we hear about?  We hear about Santa Claus and elves and things that have no relationship to truth, but the world prefers and chooses “the lie.”  It loves Santa Claus and the tale of a man that does not exist coming down your chimney and giving gifts to men, rather than the truth of Christ that emptied Himself of His glory and entered into the world to give the wonderful gift of salvation to His people.  The truth is so superior and so much better than the lie, but the nature of man (who has a desperately wicked of heart, deceitful above all things) is inclined to love the lie.  He pushes away the truth of Christ and replaces it with a lie.  Then we can speak of Easter and, again, do we hear of the Lord of glory being resurrected from the dead from the foundation of the world and rising triumphantly?  You may hear a reference or two to this, but you are more likely to hear of Peter Cottontail or some other rabbit story or coloring eggs.  It has nothing to do with Easter – nothing at all. 

But man does not want to focus on the truth.  He does not want “light,” but “darkness.”  He does not want the actual true story from God, but he wants to make a lie that he will love and prefer and opt for every time.  Throughout the life of the sinner, he chooses and makes a lie and he loves the lie.  That is why there are movies and television.  What do people watch?  They are made-up stories.  Some man with a corrupt mind and heart starts fabricating things: “What could be shocking?  What could be funny?  What can I make up?”  Or, there may be a team of individuals with sin-tainted minds that bring things out of their own minds and write it down and then they hire actors that are paid to lie.  What a wonderful occupation that is in this world!  They are paid to be good liars and look at how highly esteemed actors are in this world.  Why is that?  What have they actually done that is so great that people respect, honor and lift them up to exalted positions?  Well, they are excellent liars!  They can “cry” on demand, as if they were feeling sorrow or they can “laugh,” as if they were really happy and they convince you of a character they are not.  This is the nature of man – he loves the lie.  He makes the lie and then he loves the lie.  It is done in religions, as they make a statue and build a religion around it.  Or, it is done by perverting the true Gospel and turning it into “another gospel” and people flock to that religion or that other gospel.  Man loves to make the lie and he gets some sort of perverse satisfaction and enjoyment out of it and then he loves what he makes.  He loves his falsehood and that which is not true.

And, then there is God, who is completely opposite: “Let God be true, but every man a liar.”  The Bible says, “Thy word is truth.”  The Lord Jesus Christ is “the way, the truth and the life.”  He is Light.  The world had the truth.  It had the life, but it closed that Book and built libraries full of books that are full of lies and the world chooses those over the Bible.  It is the nature of this world, is it not?  Does the world believe what the Bible says about God creating the heaven and the earth?  It is the truth.  It was absolutely necessary that God spoke to create because there is no other rational and reasonable explanation for how such a complex universe could come into being.  There are so many life forms that show intelligent design that came forth from a brilliant mind.  There is no other way – let us be honest.  There is no other way that man, the creatures and the entire creation just happened randomly and by chance.  It is not possible.  It is impossible and everyone knows it.  Even those that proclaim these lies know it, God says.  They are without excuse, but they prefer the lie.  They want the lie to be true and they love the lie over the truth, so man goes into contortions to twist and turn truth.  He speaks of “the big bang” and how things came into being billions of years ago and if someone starts questioning that, he will push it to even longer periods of time in order to make a lie.  This is the nature of man and God’s Word is not honored.  It is not revered or respected, because it is the truth.

I have been going to this verse more and more because it stands out and it explains a great deal about why people turn from the Bible and go to the world or to other religions or to other gospels, as it says in John 8:43-44:

Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.

By the way, if loving the truth would be a form of loving Christ (and it would be, because He is Truth), then loving a lie is a form of loving Satan, the father of lies.  In a very real way, it is worshipping the devil rather than God.  But that is not the verse I wanted to get to, but it goes on to say in John 8:45:

And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not.

It is because Christ tells the truth that they believe Him not.  It is not because Christ is not telling the truth or that He is “spinning yarns.”  Actually, Christ is implying that if He did lie, then they would have believed Him. 

The reason the Israelites did not believe Jesus was because He was telling them the truth and it is the same today.  When the Bible tells them the truth, they do not believe it.  When the Bible says that God spoke and created this world, people do not believe it.  The Bible says that all men are sinners and there is none righteous, but people do not believe it.  The Bible says that the church age is over, but those in the churches do not believe it.  The Bible says that Judgment Day began on May 21, 2011, but people do not believe it.  And we could go on, and on, and on.  It is the truth that is disbelieved.  It is the truth that is viewed as a lie: “Oh, I am not going to believe that!”  That is why God’s people are being called false prophets and heretics.  The unsaved view the truth as a lie and it is due to the inability to perceive that which is true, due to man’s deceitful nature.  Man has a filter built upon his heart to filter out the truth.  He does not receive it or accept it.  He cannot believe it.  It is the lie that flows forth.  Of course, man is very particular about which “lie” he wants to believe.  He is not going to believe just any lie, but, eventually, he will settle on some lie because that is all he can do because of the nature of his own heart: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” 

Man does not even know his own heart and, yet, God changed the hearts of His people and He gave them the ability to perceive truth, as we read in John, chapter 10, where it says Christ’s sheep hear His voice.  They believe the truth.  The love the truth.  All the things that the world “feels” as they respond to the lie, God’s elect “feel” when they hear the truth, due to their changed nature.  The heart of God’s people is not deceitful above all things, but it is a heart of truth because it is a heart after Christ’s own heart.