THE UNVEILING

Transcript

0:00

Hello everyone. This is Pastor Dean Thompson with a word of hope. The unveiling. The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants. The first word of the last book is not a warning, but a gift. The Greek is apocalypse, an unveiling, a drawing back of the curtain. Long before revelation became a quarry for charts and timelines, it was simply this the risen Christ pulling aside the drapery that hangs between heaven and a frightened church. To a handful of believers scattered along the coast of Asia Minor, harassed and unsure whether their small faith was a delusion, Jesus says in effect, let me show you what is really going on. This is what hope is. Hope is not optimism, which is a guess about tomorrow. Hope is the conviction that reality is larger and kinder than the room you are standing in. The first century reader felt hemmed in by the immense machinery of Rome, its taxes, its armies, its emperor cult, its casual cruelty. Revelation does not deny any of that. It simply insists there is a throne above the throne, and a lamp at the centre of it, and a story moving forward, moving toward a wedding rather than a wreck. We need that unveiling too. Our days can shrink to the size of a screen. The headlines tell us the world is governed by markets and missiles and the loud, and it's easy to believe that the visible is all there is. But Revelation begins by announcing that the deepest truth about your weak is not the news, it is on the throne. The same Jesus who walked on dusty roads in the past now holds the future, and he has chosen to disclose its shape so that you do not have to live afraid. Notice the chain of giving in this opening verse. God gave it to Christ, who shows it to his servants. Revelation is not a secret poured by the elite. It is meant to travel down to ordinary servants, to you, to me. The unveiling is for the person doing dishes, riding the bus, sitting in a hospital corridor. Heaven is not coy. The God of this book wants to be known, wants to be known, and he aims his self disclosure disclosure at the lowest wrong, not the highest. So begin this journey by lowering your guard. You are not about to decode a puzzle, you are about to be shown a person. Every vision in this book, the lampstands, the seals, the trumpets, the bride, is finally a way of seeing Jesus more clearly. And to see him clearly is to discover that the last word over your life is not threat but love, not chaos, but a lamb who reigns. Hope then is a posture you can take this morning. It is turning your face, however briefly away from the small lit room of your worries toward the unveiled Christ, who says this is what is really going on. The curtain is already drawn back. You have only to look. Lord Jesus, please draw back the curtain over our small anxious world, and let us see you on the throne. And let that seeing make us unafraid about what is happening around us. Please help us to abide in you. Amen. God bless you, brothers and sisters.