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Revelation 6-9

Revelation

6:1-7:17  -  Christ invites us to ‘come’ (6:1,3,5,7) - and look at things through His eyes. With Him, we look at earth. With Him, we look at heaven. Troubled world, tremendous worship - These are the things we see when we look through the eyes of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our world is deeply troubled. Heaven’s worship is absolutely tremendous. Of all our many ‘troubles’, the greatest is this: We are sinners, and none of us ‘can stand’ before ‘the face of Him who sits on the throne’. Our earthly ‘troubles’ are nothing compared with this! There is hope. There is a way of ‘salvation’. We can be saved through ‘the blood of the Lamb’. If, however, we turn from Him - ‘the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’ - there will be no hope. We will face ‘the wrath of the Lamb’ (4:16-17; 5:10,14; John 1:29). Will you be saved - or lost?
8:1-9:21  -  Real gold and fool’s gold - What a difference there is between the two! In 8:3, we read about real gold. In 9:7, we read about something which ‘looked like crowns of gold’. There is a difference between the real thing and the counterfeit. There is a challenge for us here - in connection with both salvation and service. In Matthew 7:21, Jesus warns us, ‘Not everyone who says to Me, “Lord, Lord”, will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven’. In 1 Corinthians 3:10-15, Paul invites us to think seriously about the ‘quality’ of the ‘work’ we’re doing for Christ. Is it work which will prove to be of real, lasting value? - ‘gold, silver, costly stones’. Is our work superficial? Does it lack any real depth? - ‘wood, hay, straw’? Build on Christ: ‘Be careful how you build on Him’.

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