Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #16 of Revelation, chapter 8, and we are going to be reading Revelation 8:11:

And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.

We have been looking at “wormwood” and the word “bitter.”  We saw in our last study that it said in Isaiah 5:20: “Woe unto them…that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!”  We saw how this is referring to those that change the Law of God; of course, you cannot really change the Law of God – it is His eternal Word and it is unchangeable and unalterable – but men try to change it all the time. 

Within the churches and congregations, they change their doctrines according to their ideas of what the Bible says.  Maybe for quite some time they had a doctrine that was faithful to the Bible, and then after some time they say, “Oh, we just realized that homosexuals are to be included, in the sense that we should not say that it is sin and we are not to say that a homosexual cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.”  Of course, that goes contrary to what the Bible says; the Bible very definitely speaks of that sin, and other sins, and says that any that are actively involved in those sins will not inherit the kingdom of God.  And, yet, the churches bend and yield to modern societal pressures and they adjust their teachings and begin to teach things that are palatable to the masses – to what people desire. 

That, unfortunately, has been the great sin of the churches down through the ages: bending to the will of the people.  That extends all the way back to King Saul, when God had given him instruction as to what to do to the Amalekites and, yet, Saul spared their king and spared their sheep, and so on.  Finally, when Samuel questioned him about it, he admitted it was because of the people; the people suggested these things.  Saul knew that the suggestions of the people were contrary to the command of God, but the pressure and the will of the people were too much for Saul to bear.  That is normally the case in churches and congregations where there are not true believers.  They will bend to the will of the people.

And now, today in the churches, there are no true believers.  They are all out.  They were commanded to depart and never to return.  You will not find any of God’s elect within any of the churches today, so, of course, the churches are going to do the will of the world and the will of the society around them, more and more, because now there is no difference between what the world wants and what the people in the churches want due to the fact that they have never been “changed” and they have never come out of the world (as a result of salvation).

Let us just look at one more passage where God speaks of “bitter.”  There is an interesting passage in Numbers 5, where God established a Law, a rather strange and unusual Law, we would have to say, as we read it and consider it. It is a Law of “jealously,” concerning a husband that would doubt the fidelity of his wife; he is thinking that, possibly, his wife has committed adultery.  So God has devised a Law that would test the wife to discover whether it is true, or not.  This would have been factual; God gave this Law and Israel was to carry it out; and it almost sounds like “magic” when we read it, but God would have worked it out so that the test would have been accurate, concerning whether the woman was guilty of adultery, or not.  So God would have had to miraculously involve Himself in the working out of this test in the literal sense.  Of course, no one should ever try this in this time after the Bible has been completed, especially in the New Testament age, but, nonetheless, God did write this Law and Israel was to follow it and there is a very important spiritual meaning to it.  Let us read Numbers 5:11-14:

And JEHOVAH spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, If any man's wife go aside, and commit a trespass against him, And a man lie with her carnally, and it be hid from the eyes of her husband, and be kept close, and she be defiled, and there be no witness against her, neither she be taken with the manner; And the spirit of jealousy come upon him, and he be jealous of his wife, and she be defiled: or if the spirit of jealousy come upon him, and he be jealous of his wife, and she be not defiled:

God is recognizing in the giving of this Law the possibility that the husband is wrong – the jealous husband is incorrect in his suspicion.  So the Lord developed this Law (which we will read more about later) and the woman is to drink this “mixture” and depending on her reaction to the “mixture,” it would prove whether she was guilty of adultery, or not guilty of adultery.  The husband would know for certain which one was the case.  So God gave this Law and as we read this, you will see that if anyone tried this without the help of God, it would prove nothing.  It takes God’s working in this “drink” that the woman is to drink, in order for this to actually be a proof, one way or the other.

So, here we read of a man who is suspicious of his wife and the spirit of jealousy comes upon him and he wants to know if she is guilty, or not, so he will go to the priest with the matter.  Now what is this saying?  We know that God wrote the Bible in order to teach spiritual truth.  What could be in view through this unusual Law regarding a husband’s jealously. 

Well, let us start there.  Who could a jealous husband represent?  If we go to Exodus, chapter 20, we read of the Ten Commandments, where it is speaking of graven images and “other gods” that are no God, and it says in Exodus 20:5:

Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I JEHOVAH thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;

God says He is “a jealous God,” and, therefore, to be jealous is not a sin when it comes to God.  God reserves the right to jealousy.  Actually, we read this a little further on in Exodus 34:14:

For thou shalt worship no other god: for JEHOVAH, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God:

Not only is God a jealous God, but His name is “Jealous.”  The Law of God everywhere demands faithful obedience.  The Law of God demands strict adherence to every Law in the entire Bible (and the Bible is a Law Book from beginning to end) and it must be perfectly obeyed.  There is not to be any transgression of any kind.  If you transgress the Law of God just once (a single time), then you are guilty of all: “The wages of sin is death.”  You will die.  And why will you die?  It is because God is a jealous God.  Sin is the bowing down of a sinner to another god – no matter what the sin is.  It is serving another god.  It is serving sin and Satan.  It is bowing down to the transgression rather than to God.  When we submit to the Law of God found in the Bible, we are serving God and we are doing His will.

Of course, this means that all of mankind have transgressed God’s Law and, therefore, we are guilty of spiritual fornication; we are guilty of spiritual adultery, because all men are married to the Law of God and God recognizes this in the Epistle of James, where He says, “Ye, adulterers and adulteresses,” in speaking to the human race. 

Yet, for God’s elect, the Lord Jesus Christ is the solution.  He came and took their transgressions upon Himself and paid the penalty that the Law (the husband) required, due to the adulterous acts and the spiritual fornication of the sinners.  The Law demands that the penalty for adultery is to be stoned to death, and Jesus was (figuratively) stoned to death for us, in our stead, and, therefore, the Law is satisfied only for the elect.  For all others, the Law is a “jealous husband.”  The Law of God and God Himself is jealous – His name is jealous.

When we read about this, we find that God’s jealousy is often associated with His anger.  It says in Deuteronomy 4:23-24:

Take heed unto yourselves, lest ye forget the covenant of JEHOVAH your God, which he made with you, and make you a graven image, or the likeness of any thing which JEHOVAH thy God hath forbidden thee. For JEHOVAH thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God.

Do you see how God links together His nature (that He is a consuming fire) with the fact that He is a jealous God?  That is because, as a result of His jealousy, He must punish the sinner with His fiery wrath.  We read in Deuteronomy 6:15:

(For JEHOVAH thy God is a jealous God among you) lest the anger of JEHOVAH thy God be kindled against thee, and destroy thee from off the face of the earth.

We see God’s jealousy is joined together with His wrath and His anger.  In the Book of Nahum, which we really do not read too often, it says in Nahum 1:2:

God is jealous, and JEHOVAH revengeth; JEHOVAH revengeth, and is furious; JEHOVAH will take vengeance on his adversaries, and he reserveth wrath for his enemies.

That is quite an emphasis upon the wrath and the anger of God and the reason for the vengeance of God upon the sinner – it all extends back to God’s jealously.  Regarding His jealousy, it tells us in Proverbs 6:34:

For jealousy is the rage of a man: therefore he will not spare in the day of vengeance.

The “man” here is God – it is the Law of God.  Jealousy is an expression of the rage of a man; God is very jealous for His Law.  He is very particular that man (who is created in His image) obeys His commandments and God takes note of every failure and every transgression of the Law of God that man commits in word, deed and thought.  God knows it all.  In His jealousy, wrath is being stored up until the “day of wrath.”  The day of wrath is now.

The day of wrath began at the house of God for the very same reason, because the churches and congregations had additional Laws that the world did not have.  They had Laws that required them to be faithful in bringing the Gospel, faithful in doctrine and faithful in teaching.  So, not only do they have the problem of keeping the Ten Commandments, like all men, but they have the additional sin of failing to maintain faithfulness to the Law that says there is not to be divorce; they have the additional sin of failure to make sure that only men do the teaching and that women do not usurp authority over the men; they have the additional sin of failure to limit the Gospel to only the Bible, and nothing else.  So when they add or subtract from the Word of God, they have transgressed Laws that were designed for them to obey.  This provokes the jealousy of God to wrath and He was provoked to anger for centuries, as the churches and congregations failed in these ways and many other ways.  Doctrinally, they transgressed the Law of God and God waiting patiently and long-sufferingly, until the time came; and then, as a jealous husband, He provided a test for the congregations.  The test that He gave them was based on this strange and unusual Law that we read about in Numbers 5:15.  Let us just define some terms first, in this verse: 1) the “man” is God or the Law of God; 2) the wife, in this case, would point to those within the congregations that are married to God (not like Israel, that was married to the Law), but they also have the additional obligation to maintain the Laws given to the New Testament churches.  3) So God “suspects” the New Testament churches and congregations of the world of spiritual harlotry and of spiritual adultery, so He brings them to the priest.  It says in Numbers 5:15-18:

Then shall the man bring his wife unto the priest, and he shall bring her offering for her, the tenth part of an ephah of barley meal; he shall pour no oil upon it, nor put frankincense thereon; for it is an offering of jealousy, an offering of memorial, bringing iniquity to remembrance. And the priest shall bring her near, and set her before JEHOVAH: And the priest shall take holy water in an earthen vessel; and of the dust that is in the floor of the tabernacle the priest shall take, and put it into the water: And the priest shall set the woman before JEHOVAH, and uncover the woman's head, and put the offering of memorial in her hands, which is the jealousy offering: and the priest shall have in his hand the bitter water that causeth the curse:

Here, God developed this test.  It was, historically, a way for a man to “try” his wife and he would take his wife to a priest; and the priest would get some dust from the floor of the tabernacle and put it into the holy water (after uncovering her head) and it would be “bitter” water.  And what would this point to?  Obviously, the “holy water” is the Gospel, as God uses water to typify the Word of God.  The Word of God is the holy Bible, so the water that flows forth from the holy Bible is “holy water.” 

Yet, there was something added to the “holy water.”  It was the dust from the floor of the tabernacle and what would the “dust” point to?  Right away we think of Genesis 2:7:

And the JEHOVAH God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

Dust is the element that man was made from.  The Gospel, the “holy water,” comes down from above.  The Word of God is spiritual and is heavenly by nature and when you take that which is spiritual (perfect, clean, pure and holy) and you “add to it” the element of the natural man, who is made of the dust of the ground, what will you get?  If that man is not saved, he is a “natural-minded” man, and he is not spiritual at all, so you are going to turn the holy Gospel water into“bitter” water – into something that is good for nothing. 

This is the test which God has devised to find out if the woman is guilty of adultery.  Now if any would drink this water and they are God’s people, would they be harmed?  No – just like a woman that is not guilty of adultery would not be harmed.  And the only way that someone would not be guilty is if their sins were covered by the Lord Jesus Christ, so God made provision for the “guilty” and for the “not guilty.” 

It goes on to say in Numbers 5:19-23:

And the priest shall charge her by an oath, and say unto the woman, If no man have lain with thee, and if thou hast not gone aside to uncleanness with another instead of thy husband, be thou free from this bitter water that causeth the curse: But if thou hast gone aside to another instead of thy husband, and if thou be defiled, and some man have lain with thee beside thine husband: Then the priest shall charge the woman with an oath of cursing, and the priest shall say unto the woman, JEHOVAH make thee a curse and an oath among thy people, when JEHOVAH doth make thy thigh to rot, and thy belly to swell; And this water that causeth the curse shall go into thy bowels, to make thy belly to swell, and thy thigh to rot: And the woman shall say, Amen, amen. And the priest shall write these curses in a book, and he shall blot them out with the bitter water:

Well, I find that I am rushing a little bit to try to complete this study, but I would rather not do that.  We will just wait until our next Bible study and we will return to Numbers 5, Lord willing, and we will see how this perfectly designed test by God to discover an adulteress was applied to the churches and the consequences of this test: what would happen to someone who was “guilty” and someone who was “not guilty.”