Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation. Tonight is study #6 of Revelation, chapter 7, and we are going to be reading Revelation 7:3:
Saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads.
As we have been following along in these verses, we have seen that this is speaking of God’s end time judgment – His program of judgment: first, He will save all His elect people and that was the “sealing” of “the servants of our God in their foreheads,” and then following that, it was always God plan to bring judgment on the unsaved people of the earth.
In our last study, we looked at the word “earth,” as it said: “Hurt not the earth,” and we saw that this is a way of addressing the unsaved people of the earth, as we saw in Isaiah 34, where the Lord was speaking to the nations and He said, “Come near, ye nations,” and then He said, in the same verse, “Let the earth hear.” It was a synonymous statement with “nations.” So, when God is saying, here: “Hurt not the earth,” He is not (in the first instance) talking about the physical creation of this earth, but He is speaking of the unsaved inhabitants of the earth – mankind that has rebelled against Him; they are the ones that are under His wrath, even though it will finally work out that the physical earth itself will be destroyed, due to corruption, when mankind fell into sin in the Garden of Eden and God cursed the earth. Finally, the consequence will be its destruction, but that is not the spiritual emphasis in Revelation 7:3: “Hurt not the earth, neither the sea.”
We are going to look up the word “sea” and see how it is used in other places in the Bible and we will see that the word “sea” takes on the same spiritual meaning here as the word “earth.” For instance, it says in Habakkuk 1:14:
And makest men as the fishes of the sea, as the creeping things, that have no ruler over them?
Here, God is talking about the fish of the sea, but if you hurt the sea, then you would also hurt the fish within. More specifically addressed to the “sea,” we read in Psalm 114:1-9:
When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language; Judah was his sanctuary, and Israel his dominion. The sea saw it, and fled: Jordan was driven back. The mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs. What ailed thee, O thou sea, that thou fleddest? thou Jordan, that thou wast driven back? Ye mountains, that ye skipped like rams; and ye little hills, like lambs? Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob; Which turned the rock into a standing water, the flint into a fountain of waters.
Of course, we can see that God is using the “sea” and “mountains” and the “little hills” in a spiritual way. He is not literally saying “the mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs,” and He is not saying that the “sea” had some literal “fear” and that is why it was “driven back.” He is assigning “personality” to the sea and he is using the sea in a figurative way.
And all of these verses, even though they are somewhat different when we consider how this particular word “sea” is used in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, we will slowly be able to develop an understanding for this word. We also find in Isaiah 5:25-30:
Therefore is the anger of JEHOVAH kindled against his people, and he hath stretched forth his hand against them, and hath smitten them: and the hills did tremble, and their carcases were torn in the midst of the streets. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still. And he will lift up an ensign to the nations from far, and will hiss unto them from the end of the earth: and, behold, they shall come with speed swiftly: None shall be weary nor stumble among them; none shall slumber nor sleep; neither shall the girdle of their loins be loosed, nor the latchet of their shoes be broken: Whose arrows are sharp, and all their bows bent, their horses' hoofs shall be counted like flint, and their wheels like a whirlwind: Their roaring shall be like a lion, they shall roar like young lions: yea, they shall roar, and lay hold of the prey, and shall carry it away safe, and none shall deliver it. And in that day they shall roar against them like the roaring of the sea: and if one look unto the land, behold darkness and sorrow, and the light is darkened in the heavens thereof.
Now, here, God is giving very descriptive language of His judgment and He is referring to this spiritual battle and He speaks of them “roaring like the sea.” He is referring, ultimately, to people – people are likened to the “sea.” And that is what we find later, in Isaiah 57:20-21:
But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.
This picture is very clear. The wicked (unsaved) people are like a “troubled sea,” not a calm, smooth sea. Remember that beautiful Psalm, where it says in Psalm 23:1-2:
JEHOVAH is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
Here is a wonderful picture of the Gospel of God. It is very peaceful; it is still and calm. When Christ was asleep and a storm arose at sea, He arose and He “calmed” the waves: “Peace, be still,” He said to the waves of the sea. And that actually can be a picture of salvation, because “the wicked are like the troubled sea...whose waters cast up mire and dirt.” They are like a storm at sea. There is no rest. There is no peace because Christ, the Bible says, “is our peace.” The wicked have not Christ and they do not have the peace of God; they have no peace between themselves and the one they have offended, their Creator, Eternal God. So they are typified by a “troubled sea.”
God uses that picture to speak of false prophets in the Book of Jude (the little Epistle that comes before Revelation), where it says in Jude, verse 12:
These are spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear: clouds they are without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots; Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.
This is all language describing unsaved individuals that take the Word of God into their mouths, like the examples given there of Baalam and Korah that represent all those that come with “another gospel” and that take the Word of God in their mouths, but they are not true children of God. They are like “raging waves of the sea” because they are still “troubled.” There is no peace to them, so they are the wicked that are “like the troubled sea.”
Let us look at one more verse in Isaiah. Once we understand that God can use the “sea” to represent unsaved people, this verse in Isaiah, chapter 60, then begins to make much more sense to us. Here, God is speaking of the Gentiles coming to they light and He says in Isaiah 60:4-5:
Lift up thine eyes round about, and see: all they gather themselves together, they come to thee: thy sons shall come from far, and thy daughters shall be nursed at thy side. Then thou shalt see, and flow together, and thine heart shall fear, and be enlarged; because the abundance of the sea shall be converted unto thee, the forces of the Gentiles shall come unto thee.
The Lord goes on to speak of the flocks of Kedar and the rams of Nebaioth (who were sons of Ishmael) and God is indicating He will fulfill a promise given back in the Book of Genesis to bring salvation to the descendents of Ishmael, which He did do when He sent forth the warning message of Judgment Day in the days leading up to May 21, 2011; we can expect that out of the “great multitude” that God saved from all tongues and peoples and nations, that many were “sons of Ishmael.”
And in this context God says, “The abundance of the sea shall be converted unto thee,” which would have to be “unto the Lord Jesus Christ.” The “abundance of the sea” represents a great number of wicked, which are like the troubled sea, and their “sea” was calmed by Christ, as there became peace between themselves and an angry God. Now God was content and He was no longer wrathful toward them, as His wrath was satisfied in Christ as the Lord Jesus applied the redemption He had purchased for them from the foundation of the world when He paid for their sins; now they have “peace with God,” through the intercession of the Lord Jesus Christ. So we can see how the “sea” is used as a figure for those that are converted – for sinners that have become saved.
Once we realize that the “sea” (like the “earth”) can represent people, then we can understand the statement in our verse in Revelation 7:3: “Hurt not the earth, neither the sea.” In both instances, people are in view – the unsaved people – and they are not be “hurt” (that is, Judgment is not to come upon them) until God has accomplished His salvation program and has saved the last of His elect.
Then what about the trees? “Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees.” Once again, we will find that this word “trees” also has to do with “people.” In Mark, chapter 8, there is an interesting healing which the Lord performs upon a blind man. It says in Mark 8:22-26:
And he cometh to Bethsaida; and they bring a blind man unto him, and besought him to touch him. And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town; and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw ought. And he looked up, and said, I see men as trees, walking. After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up: and he was restored, and saw every man clearly. And he sent him away to his house, saying, Neither go into the town, nor tell it to any in the town.
This is a wonderful picture of God’s salvation program as He heals this blind man in “two steps.” Of course, Christ could have spoken the Word; He did not need to spit on the man’s eyes. And, certainly, He could have healed him and given him sight on the first try, as He had done with others. Someone reading this might think, “This is a particularly bad case. What is wrong with this man that he could not be healed by the Lord the first time?” But it helps us to understand other Scriptures, like Isaiah 11:11, where God says He will “set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of His people,” as the healing of the blind typifies salvation. So God did it once; then He did it a second time. He sent forth the Holy Spirit the first time during the church age when there was an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Then He did it a second time when He sent forth the latter rain in the period of the Great Tribulation. (That is one of the spiritual meanings we see here.)
But when this man has his sight restored partially, he was asked if he saw anything, and he looked up and he said, “I see men as trees, walking.” Yes, that meant his sight was not completely restored yet, but it also gave God an opportunity to assign a spiritual meaning to “trees,” to demonstrate “men as trees.” He used this opportunity to help us get the spiritual definition of “trees.” We find, as we search the Bible, that this is actually very common in the Word of God. It says in Deuteronomy 20:19-20:
When thou shalt besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an axe against them: for thou mayest eat of them, and thou shalt not cut them down (for the tree of the field is man's life) to employ *them* in the siege: Only the trees which thou knowest that they be not trees for meat, thou shalt destroy and cut them down; and thou shalt build bulwarks against the city that maketh war with thee, until it be subdued.
Is it not amazing how God has written the Bible? It is just a couple of verses where God is giving, seemingly, basic instruction concerning warfare and we would have to say God is giving some stipulations similar to the Geneva Convention: there are certain “do’s and don’ts” when you do battle. So one thing we could say is that God is showing great compassion when he says not to destroy the trees that bear fruit (“for thou mayest eat of them”), and then He says, “for the tree of the field is man’s life.” Then He says to destroy, “Only the trees which thou knowest that they be not trees for meat;” that is, trees that bear no fruit.
Do you see how God has hidden the Gospel message in this way? Who would even think to look in the Book of the Law and here are a couple of commandments that would, seemingly, have very rare application – only in times of ancient warfare, or even modern warfare – but there is so much more to it than that! For instance, let us compare what the Lord said here with what we read in Matthew 7:15-20:
Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.
And the implication is that if you bear good fruit, you will not be cut down and cast into the fire. That is what Deuteronomy 20 was telling us: a tree that bears fruit is not to be cut down (and, in that case, used for warfare), but a tree that produces no meat is to be cut down. But God also gave us the curious statement (if you heard it earlier), in Deuteronomy 20:19: “and thou shalt not cut them down (for the tree of the field is man's life).” We are likened to a “tree of the field,” a tree that either will bear fruit or that will be fruitless – one or the other. If we are fruitless, we will be cut down, or as Matthew 7 says, if we bear “evil fruit,” we will be cut down, but if we bear “good fruit,” we will not be cut down. And, because His people will bear “good fruit,” God says, in Isaiah 65:22:
They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another eat: for as the days of a tree are the days of my people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
You see, God is using earthly language to describe eternity and what could you pick out of this temporal world which could aptly be used to describe that which is eternal (since everything in the world passes away)? Well, I suppose you could pick a “tree,” because a tree can live for quite a long time – sometimes, for hundreds of years – and that is about as good as you can get to describe the eternal life that God has in store for His people.
God also says, in Isaiah 61:3:
To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of JEHOVAH, that he might be glorified.
So, God has planted “trees” and they are “trees of righteousness,” and they will bring forth fruit and they will produce good fruit and they will live long lives (they will live for evermore) because God’s “trees of righteousness” are planted where? Well, it tells us in Psalm 1:3-6:
And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For JEHOVAH knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish.
So we see, oftentimes, that God likens His people to “trees,” but they are trees that bring forth fruit. For instance, when the Lord Jesus went to find fruit on the fig tree and there was no fruit (it did not matter that it was not the time for figs, but all that matters is that God went looking for fruit and there was no fruit), He cursed the fig tree that it withered away immediately; and that was the judgment of God. And, there, the fig tree represented national Israel and they, in turn, represented the New Testament churches and congregations. The cursing of the fig tree points to the fact that Israel bore no fruit, so God cursed it so that it would produce no fruit “henceforth for ever,” since God divorced national Israel back in the first century A.D.
Likewise, God has cursed the churches and congregations, once the church age ended, and never again would they bear fruit. So we read language in Matthew 24 regarding the “fig tree” being in leaf (it is not bearing fruit) and we will know that Christ is at the very doors; all is “at hand” for the judgment of God. That is exactly what we do know, since Israel became a nation again among the nations in 1948 and, since that time, has produced “no fruit.” They continue to turn from God. And forty years later, in 1988 (in the 13,000th year of the world’s history), the church age ended and God cursed the churches and congregations, and they also would never again bear fruit.
So we see language, as we do in Luke 21, where God speaks of the fig tree, in Luke 21:29:
And he spake to them a parable; Behold the fig tree, and all the trees; When they now shoot forth, ye see and know of your own selves that summer is now nigh at hand.
So, you see, it is not just the fig tree, but all the trees, which God is referring to here and that is a reference that takes us back to the Book of Joel. We will have to wait until the next Bible study and we will continue to look at this word “trees.” It is a very interesting word, as it is used in the Bible, and it leads us a to wonderful, deeper meaning, as God instructs us by His Word as we follow a word through the Scriptures.