Listen to this week's 8:30 a.m. service message titled "Revelation - Sweet And Bitter" from Rev. Joe Sanders.
OR You can listen to this week's 11:00 a.m. service message titled "Revelation - Sweet And Bitter" from Rev. Joe Sanders.
Sweet and Bitter
Revelation 10:9-11
Sunday, February 19, 2012
First Baptist Church of DeKalb, IL
Rev. Joe Sanders
What I am going to say today I don’t think mother is going like. To accept the sweet salvation of Jesus will bring bitter challenges. Let me try to explain it in these ways. My relationship with my dad was a love - hate relationship. Now those are strong words, and I know that some people have worse love - hate relationships with their dad then I did with my dad.
I knew that my dad loved me. He worked thirty seven years at a job that he hated. He would come home and have nothing good to say about his job. His comment was, “it puts food on the table, a roof over your head, and clothes on your back.”
I loved my dad. I remember the first time we went camping. All we had was a canopy with four poles held in place by ropes. He only put it up because he didn’t want to sleep in the rain. In the morning he made bacon and then he would drop the eggs in the bacon grease. I can smell it now.
I loved my dad. He showed me how to build things with a hammer and a saw. He had the ability to visual the end product, figure out the measurements, and then build it.
I loved my dad. We had two sailboats so we could spend time together doing some fun that we both enjoyed. We had a love-hate relationship.
But, my dad had a temper. He could fly into a rage in the bat of an eye. He got so made one time that he picked up a refrigerator. When my dad would get angry you never knew what order the swear words were going to explode from his mouth. There was only one swear word that he never used, all the others were terrifying enough. His anger was like the eruption of a volcano. I hated it.
You need to ask yourself, what are the love-hate, sweet-bitter experiences of my life? Chocolate is sweet, isn’t? For me it and all that sugary stuff, it’s bitter. It just makes my belly-button more and more like a canyon. Every addiction is the same. It doesn’t matter if its chocolate, sugar, cigarettes, marijuana, alcohol, porno, drugs, shopping, thrills, or whatever: it feels good at first. It’s sweet, you love it - and then it becomes bitter and you hate it.
I love my mother. I love my wife. But, I am addicted to their approval. It makes Lonie crazy because I can’t stand for her to be upset or disappointed with me. When you’re married, when you’re in a relationship people are going to be upset with you, people are going to be disappointed with you. It’s sweet and it’s bitter, isn’t it? How many times have you been in a relationship and it turned out to be totally different than you wanted or needed? You love the fun, you love the excitement, you love the time spent together. Then you hear a word, or find out a secret, or you see a side of the person that just makes you want to slap them. Love-hate / sweet-bitter.
Sweet and bitter happen when you begin telling a lie or withholding the truth to avoid hurting a friend. At first it feels like the loving thing to do, but then you begin to hate the lies and the person. It’s a bitter, painful thing in your gut.
We live in America so we want life to always be sweet, to always be comfortable, to have every want and need met. We don’t want hardship, we don’t want pain, we don’t want trouble and tribulations. I live it every day, how about you? It’s love-hate / sweet-bitter all over again. We want to feel good right now and all the time. But, that isn’t biblical. That isn’t faith in Jesus Christ. Let’s go to the book that just fascinates me, Revelation 10:8, where we see God is working in our lives to empower us to live in obedience to Him, to proclaim His message, His truth.
John sees in his vision a mighty angel who has come from the presence of God. This mighty angel has an urgent and important message for John and a powerful lesson for all of us. From the mouth of the mighty angel comes the announcement the Lord God Almighty is about to reveal His mystery and complete all of His plans of judgment and salvation. The triumph of God is about to take place. But first, the one seated on the throne has sent this mighty angel with a sweet and bitter message.
Revelation 10:8. Then the voice that I had heard from heaven spoke to me once more.
This voice is unidentified. It is not the voice of the mighty angel. There has been a voice heard before that is most likely the voice; the only voice which matters; the voice of the one who is seated on the throne, or the Lamb.
"Go, take the scroll that lies open in the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land." These are strong instructive words given to John. To go means action. It is not a passive word. John is being told to get moving. It also implies immediacy and urgency. This is something that can’t wait. He needs to act now. Note also that this is the first of two times John is told to take the scroll.
This scroll is an open scroll. It is not like the scroll that was sealed with seven seals. It is not the scroll that was opened by the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ. God’s truth is open to all of humanity. God’s power and majesty are seen in all of His creation. The choice is up to us as to whether are not we will look at the open scroll. God is making His truth available to everyone.
Verse 9. So I went to the angel and asked him to give me the little scroll. John is taking action. How often do you debate with God? How many times have you been aware of what to do and you hesitated? John is moving, he is being faithful, he is being obedient.
By recording that this is the little scroll, we see that this message is not all inclusive. What the mighty angel is holding open in his hand is not the full vision, but only part of a vision. It is a portion of God’s actions which are most likely seen in the next chapter before the seventh trumpet is sounded. God is showing John and us the next step.
He said to me, "Take it and eat it. It will turn your stomach sour, but in your mouth it will be as sweet as honey." This the second time John is told to take the little scroll. First by the voice in heaven and now second by the mighty angel. This scroll though open isn’t lying in the hand of the mighty angel to be observed. John could walk up to it, visually checking it out and never take it. He could say, “I’ve seen enough, there’s no need to take it.” John could be non-committal about this scroll and this prophecy saying, “I don’t want to have anything to do with this.”
God and His mighty angel aren’t forcing the scroll on John, it’s his choice to take it. The angel is providing one last opportunity for John to make a choice about his relationship with God. He could walk away, he could run away, he could argue about what’s written on this scroll, he could debate with God about the Lord’s motivation and actions. John can choose. We can all choose. We can choose to follow, to obey. It may be a sweet and bitter experience for us.
Verse 10. I took the little scroll from the angel's hand and ate it. It tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach turned sour. He ate it, he took it fully into himself. There was no nibbling on it, John ate it fully and completely. Now, we know that this is symbolic language. For the Jew to eat, or should I say that eating is a Hebrew idiom for knowledge. John having ate the scroll had the knowledge of the future actions of God’s judgment. John made this scroll part of himself. He didn’t sample it and spit it out, but allowed it to be absorbed into his nature and his character.
Verse 11. Then I was told, "You must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, languages and kings." John had a message given to Him by God for all of the world to hear. This was not merely a private message for John. John had God’s truth - the truth that God’s plan was about to be revealed and completed. This truth needed to be shared with the world.
It’s just as valid today for us, as was for John then - God’s truth needs to be heard. People from various ethnic backgrounds, men and women who speak different languages, those in positions of power and those who serve in the kingdoms of the world need to know that salvation from the judgment about to come is found only through faith in Jesus Christ.
To accept the sweet salvation of Jesus will bring bitter challenges. John had experienced this before in his life. He didn’t want Jesus to die on the cross, but to establish His eternal kingdom. John had faced persecution at the hands of the religious leaders in the days following Jesus’ resurrection and ascension into heaven. Even after faithfully proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ, bringing people to salvation, helping them grow in their relationship with Jesus, John was persecuted, exiled to the island of Patmos.
For John to receive the message is sweet, but to live it and proclaim it is bitter. What John ate, what John took fully into his life upset him, it caused him great distress. What God gave John to do, to say, what John understood was to happen was nauseating. The destruction, the terror that would follow, the evil that was about to happen, the tribulation that Christians would suffer, the rejection of Christ by so many people was bitter in John’s stomach.
You have to ask yourself the question. What message has God been asking me to eat? What is God saying to you about your life? What sin are you allowing, are you harboring in your life? In what ways are you disobeying God, being unfaithful to God? What relationship in our life do you need to be working on even though it’s bitter? To whom do you need to stop telling lies and speak the truth?
What has God asked you to do that you have rejected? God has a mission for you and me. God has placed a message on our hearts, but we refuse to accept it, or we go about God’s work half-hearted. That’s bitterness in your stomach. You can’t ignore God for very long. Every time you try to push Jesus away, or run away from Him, He comes right back to you.
To accept the sweet salvation of Jesus will bring bitter challenges. How is God’s truth filling your life? If you are praying and reading the Bible, are you fully eating God’s truth, or just chewing? Is it transforming your life?
Have you accepted the salvation of Jesus Christ? Forgiveness is sweet, isn’t it? The comfort of the Holy Spirit is sweet, isn’t it? The promise of eternal life in heaven tastes sweet, doesn’t it?
But are you fully eating of the power of God? Are you fully eating the wisdom of God? Are you fully eating and obeying God? When you do there will be a bitterness in your stomach. God will call out your sins that you hold onto. God will challenge you to change your attitudes, to give up your addictions, to let go of your anger, to stop your lying, to stop undermining your relationships. You need to surrender your desires, your ambitions, your comfort to be obedient to God.
There are going to be challenges as we follow Jesus. The first is to give up what we want - selfishness -for what God has promised - His power at work in our lives for all of eternity. The second is to be willing to follow, to be faithful to the leading of the Holy Spirit, to obey the commands of Jesus Christ.
Ask yourself the question when the bitterness arrives, What part of my life do I need to surrender?
We love the Lord, we love Jesus, we’ve committed our lives to Him, but it’s like we hate to follow Him, to obey. We refuse to surrender to Him completely and He has to keep asking us to give up our sins, to confess our mistakes, to commit our lives to Him.
Jesus has given us a message. We have eaten the scroll. We know the truth. We have begun to experience the sweet joy of forgiveness, hope, and the promise of eternal life in heaven. But there is a bitterness in our gut. We love the Lord, but hate to do His work. There is a bitterness in our gut. It’s people we love who are going to die without knowing Jesus as their Savior and Lord.
The truth of God’s salvation needs to be proclaimed to those who are sinners especially when it’s hard. We don’t want to speak the truth. We are afraid to proclaim God’s salvation. We’ve been rejected in the past. We’ve been persecuted already. We’ve tried and people have walked away.
But there is a bitterness in our gut. It’s God’s voice, it’s Jesus calling, it’s the Holy Spirit prodding us to action. We need to obey, to speak, to act. To accept the sweet salvation of Jesus will bring bitter challenges. Are you ready to obey, to follow Jesus, to love the Lord?
