SPEAKER_00: So, welcome to our brand new Bible book study.
SPEAKER_00: This time the book of Revelation, and we're going to call it the Hope of Glory as we go through this series of chapters from this amazing book.
SPEAKER_00: On October 1st, 1939, about a month after the outbreak of World War II, Winston Churchill was on the BBC.
SPEAKER_00: He had been asked a question about whether or not one of the other countries was going to enter into the war or not.
SPEAKER_00: And his answer has become a phrase a lot of people use.
SPEAKER_00: He said his answer was, I don't know, it's a riddle wrapped inside a mystery, inside an enigma.
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's the way some people feel about the book of Revelation as well.
SPEAKER_00: There are two opposite but equal errors I think we fall into with a book like this.
SPEAKER_00: Either avoidance altogether or the opposite extreme, which would be obsession with it.
SPEAKER_00: Some avoid reading or studying the book of Revelation because it seems too complex for them.
SPEAKER_00: They don't want to do the hard work.
SPEAKER_00: It seems like some kind of cosmic riddle to be solved, wrapped in a mystery and inside of an enigma.
SPEAKER_00: They find it hard to understand, and so they simply avoid or lay it aside altogether.
SPEAKER_00: I have to admit that sometimes has been me as well, because I know there's a lot here to be unpacked.
SPEAKER_00: Others avoid revelation, though, because they just don't like the very idea of revelation.
SPEAKER_00: It seems an affront to their pride.
SPEAKER_00: It implies that there are things that we don't know that somebody else has to tell us, or that there's some authority higher than us that we would have to submit to to learn something from.
SPEAKER_00: And that authority would then reveal something that we are incapable of discovering on our own.
SPEAKER_00: Then on the other hand, there are those who I think are fascinated with books like Revelation.
SPEAKER_00: They find the evocative images, the epic plot lines, the complexities and the mysteries of apocalyptic literature just enchanting.
SPEAKER_00: And so their response to Revelation is not avoidance, but it's obsession.
SPEAKER_00: These folks might go so far as to interpret every detail in Revelation as if the book had been written with their own context in mind.
SPEAKER_00: So they'll read into it political figures, personalities, an emperor or a pope or a political or military figure like Adolf Hitler, Karl Marx, or Margaret Thatcher, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, or even Donald Trump.
SPEAKER_00: They might also see certain current events within Revelation as well, like the rise of a particular nation or the inversion of some cultural norm, and in some way connect the invention of syncopated music or tattoos or the credit card or the internet or online church services and see that all in some image that they find in the book of Revelation.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to be spending a lot of time pointing out those kinds of things and connecting it to very temporal things that are happening in our own day and time.
SPEAKER_00: I hope that doesn't disappoint you.
SPEAKER_00: But whatever the case has been in the past, I believe the way we can really benefit from a book like this is to acknowledge that it is certainly a book unlike any other book.
SPEAKER_00: Our study of it, I think, will most assuredly be uh anything but dull, a great adventure.
SPEAKER_00: I'm really looking forward to it.
SPEAKER_00: My conviction is that the most vivid parts of the book of Revelation are designed to lead us away from fear and deeper into faith, especially if we'll approach it with a childlike wonder, eyes wide open, seeking to hear from God, seeking for God to reveal himself to us, trusting his word, ready to learn about the wonders and beauty of who he is and of Jesus our Savior, in which God has most clearly expressed his love for us and his desire to save us.
SPEAKER_00: So over the next few months, it's my prayer that our study of revelation will lead us not to worry, but to wonder and worship.
SPEAKER_00: Not to worry about the future or what might happen, but to bow our knee to uh to to in awe and in wonder begin to worship the one who holds the future in his hands.
SPEAKER_00: Uh when TVC's ministry leadership team decided on uh Revelation as the book we would study following Easter, this was way before the tornadoes uh that hit Nashville.
SPEAKER_00: Um it was before the the very public pandemic that we're now wrestling with uh worldwide and the financial you know crush that that has caused around the world as well.
SPEAKER_00: Um but we we sensed back then that come after Easter, what would be great is if we could find a book to study that would uh strengthen and maintain an eternal perspective.
SPEAKER_00: And I could think of none uh that we hadn't already studied.
SPEAKER_00: I couldn't think of one uh that that might be new, except for one day I happened to be reading through it, and it just all of a sudden spoke to me.
SPEAKER_00: And I took it to the the rest of the MLT Ministries leadership team, and they all just got so excited about it.
SPEAKER_00: So we're looking forward to this.
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be a great study together.
SPEAKER_00: Now, a lot of ink has been spilled over the contents of Revelation, much of it is fanciful speculation.
SPEAKER_00: Um, this is because Revelation does evoke some certainty, but or some curiosity rather and some conjecture both.
SPEAKER_00: And uh it's verities and mysteries align to form that beautiful kind of a tapestry that draws us in.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but I think as we read through it, you'll learn that it's not a code to crack.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's not a prophecy puzzle, that we can only, uh, you know, if only we could fit it together, then we might fully understand everything revelation holds for us.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and and as well, you know, uh be sort of drawn into it, as we've heard from uh lots of people uh before who have taught on this.
SPEAKER_00: Uh they've used it sort of in some way to draw people to uh increase their audience or increase the giving or whatever it might be.
SPEAKER_00: And we won't be doing that.
SPEAKER_00: Um and getting to teach through this book, I want you to know, I feel like a 16-year-old kid that got handed the keys to a uh Rolls-Royce swept tail with its eight-speed transmission, its$13 million price tag.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I know it's out of my price range.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I I know I could never have uh uh come up with this at all and and certainly won't be able to, you know, navigate using all of it or exploring all of it.
SPEAKER_00: Uh but I'm excited to actually sit down in this.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, even if it even if it's just this, you know, for me, the second time going through it as a as a lesson or teach as a teacher, Bible teacher.
SPEAKER_00: But just to rev the engine a little bit, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: And uh and to drive maybe around the block once or two.
SPEAKER_00: But pray for me as we get uh as as we open up here our book of re uh our study, the book of Revelation.
SPEAKER_00: The great news, it's not about me, it is about Jesus, only Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And uh just pray for all of us as we study that we'll keep our eyes on Christ, the author and perfecter of our faith.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I do want to start with one uh really major theological point that I think is really important for us to get straight right from the beginning, uh, because I've heard this, uh I've heard people sort of miss this before.
SPEAKER_00: Um, the title of the book does not have an S in it, okay?
SPEAKER_00: It is the revelation of Jesus Christ, or it is revelation, but it's not revelations.
SPEAKER_00: So if you've made that mistake before, just want to just from the get-go, you won't hear me put an S on it uh unless I'm uh uh growing weary and tired and just uh forgot that it's uh it's singular, not plural.
SPEAKER_00: Um, what about the author, the date, the genre, the recipients, and the purpose?
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I want to give a little bit of that today uh before we get into the little bit of the text that we're gonna take.
SPEAKER_00: So our our ambitions or our goals for today are the first eight verses of chapter one, if you want to open up your Bible and get ready there.
SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, I'd like to put up a couple slides on this on the screen for you, be able to talk a little bit about uh author, date, genre, recipients, and purpose.
SPEAKER_00: Author as as uh is pretty clear in the first few verses, anyway, that's John the brother of James, last of the disciples to die.
SPEAKER_00: Um, as Eugene Peterson points out in his his his uh sort of uh uh commentary on the book of Revelation, John writes as uh sort of in three different roles a theologian, a poet, and a pastor.
SPEAKER_00: And I love that combination.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I don't have much of a poet in me, I gotta be honest with you.
SPEAKER_00: I I I have I have some appreciation for that kind of stuff, but there's a lot of poetry that I don't quite get.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I think more analytically and theoretically and philosophically.
SPEAKER_00: Uh so I like that theologian aspect of the way John writes and that part of who he is.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and I like to certainly like the pastoral part of it.
SPEAKER_00: But what I just fascinated with as I've been reading through and trying to think of John writing as a theologian and a poet and a pastor, is the combination of the three.
SPEAKER_00: That he he's able to do that is just fascinating.
SPEAKER_00: That God inspired him and gifted him to be able to do that makes the study of the book of Revelation really meaningful to me.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and add to that, he's writing in the role of theologian and poet and pastor, but he's actually writing from prison.
SPEAKER_00: So his conditions, his circumstances are really difficult.
SPEAKER_00: Talk about isolation, talk about uh loss of creature comforts, uh, all of that, and yet he still comes up with this kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00: God inspiring him, uh, God opening his eyes to see the wonders uh and beauty of his majesty and of his kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: So, how about date?
SPEAKER_00: All right, well, some have suggested uh a lot of different options there.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna throw some some folks' names up on the screen for you right now.
SPEAKER_00: These are the New Testament era Roman emperors.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, Augustus Caesar is, and they're all called Caesars, but uh Augustus Caesar is the one that was alive when Jesus was born.
SPEAKER_00: Tiberius uh reigned during part of Jesus' uh earthly ministry.
SPEAKER_00: And then you have this kind of run, Caligula, Claudius.
SPEAKER_00: We read about Claudius in the book of Acts.
SPEAKER_00: And then Nero, who's the emperor from 54 to 68 A.D., um, some folks believe that uh uh John wrote the book of Revelation during the reign of Nero.
SPEAKER_00: I tend to lean more, as you see on the list there, down to Domitian.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and I think that's probably the majority of you when you take a lot of the commentaries and read them.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, 81 to 96 A.D., John was one of the younger disciples, the last to die, uh, certainly could have been alive around that time, and certainly could have been uh established and also arrested.
SPEAKER_00: And during the time of Domitian, um, the persecution of Christians, which is very much evident in the book of Revelation, during the time of Nero, is mostly localized in Rome.
SPEAKER_00: But during the time when uh Domitian was the emperor, um, the persecution of Christians was around the Roman Empire, around throughout the Mediterranean.
SPEAKER_00: And so it would have been a really big problem uh as John writing, especially to the churches in Asia Minor that are that are going to be addressed in the first three chapters.
SPEAKER_00: Um, it certainly seems like that might make a little bit more sense.
SPEAKER_00: Um, so since the Christians uh believed that Jesus was Lord, and the Emperor Domitian especially demanded emperor worship, that em that the emperor was Lord, uh this became problematic for Christians, and um and it uh it created a great deal of tension for them and fear.
SPEAKER_00: And so John, as a pastor, uh and his writing his great love is evident in his other writings as well, but certainly here.
SPEAKER_00: And he wants to give hope and encouragement to the Christians that are suffering during that time.
SPEAKER_00: How about the genre of literature?
SPEAKER_00: Let me put these three options, and actually, not three options, I think these are the three different kinds of literature we find here.
SPEAKER_00: Um, it is at one and the same time, apocalyptic, prophetic, and also a letter.
SPEAKER_00: And all of this is going to become very clear to you as we read through the text itself.
SPEAKER_00: Um, yes, it is uh apocalypsis, is the is the actual word from which we get our English word revelation.
SPEAKER_00: And um, and so when we say something's apocalyptic, what we generally are saying is that it's been revealed, it has some kind of divine revelation behind it.
SPEAKER_00: And um, that's what the book revelation is all about.
SPEAKER_00: It's God revealing Jesus Christ, God the Father revealing Jesus Christ to us.
SPEAKER_00: And then it's also prophetic, and then it's talking about things that are yet to come.
SPEAKER_00: I think you'll see that.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, of course, it's a letter as well.
SPEAKER_00: So I will seek to uh uh walk us through in what we might call thematic exposition this time, uh, because of these different kinds of uh literature that are present and uh because of the many and varied images that we find there.
SPEAKER_00: I think we're gonna, I think we're really gonna enjoy this, but it'll be a little bit different approach to our study.
SPEAKER_00: Um I will not be trying to uh answer all your questions about the precise sequence of the eschaton or the eschatological period, especially.
SPEAKER_00: I won't be determining uh the exact date and time of the return of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to know that in advance.
SPEAKER_00: Uh countless numbers of other Bible teachers, uh far more uh educated and informed than I am and experienced than I am, uh have tried to, but none with universal success.
SPEAKER_00: And so uh that uh I think will help us at least.
SPEAKER_00: We're looking to see what God is revealing about Jesus in this book, and it's gonna lead us, I think, uh, away from worry and toward wonder and worship.
SPEAKER_00: Now, how about the recipients and the purpose of the book of Revelation before we read these uh uh eight verses that we'll read today?
SPEAKER_00: Uh just a few more comments about these kinds of things.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, for its contents, I think we can gain some insight into who its recipients were.
SPEAKER_00: And uh we see that John writes to the seven churches that are real historical churches in Asia Minor.
SPEAKER_00: Uh these are um uh well, this is what we would call Turkey or Western Turkey in our own day and time, but uh the names of the three cities are also the names of the churches.
SPEAKER_00: So it's the church at Ephesus, the church at Smyrna, the church at Pergamum, the church at Thyatira, uh, the church at Sardis, Philadelphia, and uh the church at Laodicea.
SPEAKER_00: These seven churches, I would say, uh are typical or representative, if you will, of uh really churches around the world even today.
SPEAKER_00: These happen to sit all within this one region on a Roman postal route and uh and also a trade route.
SPEAKER_00: And so it made great sense that if he was going to write a letter that was gonna be an encyclical, that is, it would be read publicly uh and passed around and read publicly, uh it made a great deal of sense uh that uh he would pick those seven churches.
SPEAKER_00: They certainly weren't the only seven churches in existence back then, but I do believe they were probably representative.
SPEAKER_00: And when we read the different characteristics of each church uh as we find them in these letters to each of the churches, uh, we can find there uh something that we can identify ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: Now, um it seems as you read the content that there are three difficulties facing the church, both then and now, and I'll put these up on the screen for you as well.
SPEAKER_00: They are persecution, error, and sin.
SPEAKER_00: These were very real difficulties for the believers of John's time.
SPEAKER_00: And uh yet also I think we can identify with those same difficulties.
SPEAKER_00: Um there probably hasn't been a time when there was more persecution, uh, religious persecution, and specifically persecution of Christians than we have in our own day and time as well.
SPEAKER_00: Whenever we're facing such things, then it is, I think, uh, that we need to be reminded to refocus our attention on Jesus, the Lamb of God, to look to Him, not casually, but intentionally, to take another look and another look.
SPEAKER_00: And today in these eight verses, we're gonna see seven different things about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It's amazing how condensed and compact it all is just in these eight verses.
SPEAKER_00: But in so doing, I think we'll become greatly encouraged, blessed, as verse three uh says it, uh blessed are those who read and hear and heed.
SPEAKER_00: And so we'll we'll see all of that as we go along.
SPEAKER_00: And we'll then uh be emboldened to hold fast to the one who holds us fast, right?
SPEAKER_00: And to the truths that are timeless uh in scripture, to stand firm, to resist, to stand firm during persecution, to stand firm during temptation, to resist sin and error, and to find ourselves uh uh more and more in love with the one who has set his love on us while we were yet sinners, Christ, the Lamb who was slain, yet who lives.
SPEAKER_00: Um we've uh we've been talking uh at the staff level anyway, uh, with all of what's been going on in the world around us, that we are praying God would lead us beyond survival to revival.
SPEAKER_00: And uh I want to quote uh from uh Lennon Rav Leonard Ravenhill, who was uh uh an old English evangelist and author who focused most of his ministry on prayer and revival.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, he was talking in in about the two advents of Jesus, the first coming of Jesus, and then the second coming of Jesus, which revelation we'll talk about, both of those actually.
SPEAKER_00: Um, first he comes as a lamb, next as a lion, first to redeem, next time to reign, first time to die, next time to raise the dead, first time um with a crown of thorns, next time a crown of glory, first time in poverty, Jesus came, next time with power, first time in meekness, next time in majesty.
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
SPEAKER_00: So just a great way of saying that and helping us to see uh uh just the the the wide range of uh uh the beauty of God's redemption, that he could that he could take the cross and turn it into life for us.
SPEAKER_00: And that he would choose to come and go to the cross and die for a sinner such as me.
SPEAKER_00: This is mind-blowing, it's humbling.
SPEAKER_00: Um and uh uh the Lord God delights as we turn to him, uh, humbled by his grace, humbled by his his mercy and kindness to us while we were yet sinners, and he just delights when we turn to him and uh and see him in all of his beauty.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, what about the contents or the subject matter here?
SPEAKER_00: Well, there's 404 verses uh in the book of Revelation, and uh there are about 518, I believe it is, if I got my numbers right.
SPEAKER_00: 518 references or allusions to previous scripture.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, the Bible is a library, 66 books, a variety of different genres of literature.
SPEAKER_00: This one has three different kinds in it, as we've said, but the other 65 books um are different kinds of literature as well.
SPEAKER_00: There's historical narrative, there are commandments, there's poetry, uh, there's wisdom literature, lots of different things.
SPEAKER_00: And um, John in the book of Revelation is gonna draw from some Bible scholars will say there's some allusion to all 65 of the other books in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: And I think his intention is to show us that Jesus Christ is the focal point of every book of the Bible, that there is a thread, a merit, a meta-narrative, if you will, an overarching story that runs from Genesis all the way through to Revelation.
SPEAKER_00: That God has been in pursuit of a people he can call his own.
SPEAKER_00: And that in the person and work of Jesus, that the one that this revelation is about.
SPEAKER_00: Uh God has made it possible for us to be reconciled with himself, though we are sinners.
SPEAKER_00: Now, there are some favorites, it seems like, some books that uh folks have drawn parallels to Daniel, Ezekiel, Zephaniah, Zechariah, Isaiah, some even with Exodus as well.
SPEAKER_00: But Revelation sends us back to virtually every single one of the books of the Bible, the other 65, so that we might learn more about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Um, so much has been made of in the content, anyway, about some numbers that show up in the book of Revelation as well.
SPEAKER_00: And while I'm not a real big fan of the whole numerology thing, um, there's one number that appears and reappears over and over and over again, and I don't think you can miss it.
SPEAKER_00: And it was important to ancient Jews as well.
SPEAKER_00: It was the number of completion.
SPEAKER_00: Um, it's the number seven, and some of you are familiar with that.
SPEAKER_00: Let me put this up on the screen for you.
SPEAKER_00: As an overall outline for the book, we'll see seven visions.
SPEAKER_00: And here I'm borrowing from uh pastor and theologian Derek Thomas, vision one, chapters one through three, seven churches, vision two, chapters four through eight, verse one, seven seals, chapter three, eight, chapter uh vision three, rather, chapter eight, verses two to eleven, seven trumpets, vision four, chapters twelve through fourteen is the great battle with Satan.
SPEAKER_00: Uh vision number five is chapters fifteen and sixteen, the seven bowls that we'll read about.
SPEAKER_00: Uh vision number six is chapters 17 through 19, the downfall of Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: And then vision seven, the final vision, uh, that great vision in those three chapters 20, 21, and 22, of the new heavens and the new earth.
SPEAKER_00: So this is just a basic outline that we'll go back to over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: And uh this will all be posted up on the website for you if you want to uh get that and maybe print that out as you read through Revelation yourself, and just kind of uh as you're reading through chapter by chapter, you might be able to see the demarcation of these seven different visions.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's a great way to outline the book, and I'm grateful to Derek Thomas for that.
SPEAKER_00: So uh, if I could just offer up perhaps my own uh uh uh way to summarize what I think revelation.
SPEAKER_00: The the concept of revelation is about.
SPEAKER_00: Up on the screen, revelation is God taking the initiative to reveal something we could never know on our own.
SPEAKER_00: Revelation is about that which is beyond the reach of human knowledge, reason, or discovery.
SPEAKER_00: But what does all of this mean for us?
SPEAKER_00: And I guess uh I have to say a word about interpretation as well.
SPEAKER_00: I think that'd be important before we begin to dive into these different visions.
SPEAKER_00: How do you interpret these?
SPEAKER_00: Um, and there are four popular approaches to them.
SPEAKER_00: I'll put those up on the screen for you, and then I'll have a slide for each one of them to help us understand them.
SPEAKER_00: But I'll go through this fairly fast.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to bog down in technicalities, but the preterist view, the futurist view, the historicist view, and the idealist view.
SPEAKER_00: These are different approaches to interpreting revelation.
SPEAKER_00: First, the preterist view.
SPEAKER_00: This suggests that the text describes events which correspond to the time of the writing itself or in its recent past, uh, so that we would see the persecution of Christians in the book of Revelation throughout the Roman Empire, presumably under Emperor Domitian.
SPEAKER_00: So the idea there is that everything that we read about in Revelation has already taken place in the past.
SPEAKER_00: Opposite of that is the second view, futurist.
SPEAKER_00: This would suggest that the text describes events yet to happen in the end times.
SPEAKER_00: And so most everything here would be seen as in the far-reaching future and closer whenever that is to the time of the return of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, the hard part is knowing when that is.
SPEAKER_00: Thirdly, the historicist view uh sees the text as describing events during the ongoing history of the church between the first and second comings of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So everything would fit into now or the recent past going back to the 2,000 years that we've had this thing called church.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but how far it goes into the future, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know how long it will be before Christ returns.
SPEAKER_00: And so you can see where people work really hard to try and find a way to um parallel some of the events that they read in Revelation so that they can hopefully try to predict when it is Christ will return, and all predictions have failed.
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, uh we we talk about the the book 88 Reasons Why the Lord's Coming Back in 1988, and of course, then the sequel 89 Reasons Why He's Coming Back in 1989, and on and on it goes, because people don't know, and I stand with Jesus on that one.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Jesus said, No man knows the day or the hour, uh, only the Father knows that.
SPEAKER_00: The idealist view is suggests that a text describes events fulfilled in all of the time periods and uh that are identified with the other three views.
SPEAKER_00: So, which of these is the correct view?
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I'll leave the answer to this question open for now in hopes that you will engage with the text yourself and uh seek the Holy Spirit to lead you and guide you and uh before you get into sort of setting in place or in concrete one particular method of interpretation.
SPEAKER_00: As we read through it, though, you may recognize the wonder and awe of John's struggle to describe the things that he sees.
SPEAKER_00: He resorts uh to the comparison words like or as.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I saw something like or I heard a voice as.
SPEAKER_00: Um, he does that like a hundred times.
SPEAKER_00: Look, I just said the word like.
SPEAKER_00: He does that a hundred times over a hundred times.
SPEAKER_00: So John struggling to uh uh compare and to convey what the meaning of what it is he's seeing uh over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: It's only through this symbolism and imagery that John can convey what he saw in these seven visions to trigger what he hopes will be associations, existential involvement or identification on our part, um, some way that these mystical experiences might speak to us uh and and and point us to Jesus, uh who is the focus, of course, of this book and this revelation.
SPEAKER_00: So, depending on which um English translation you uh would do a search through in your computer, the number of completion, uh the number seven appears 55 times.
SPEAKER_00: The word great appears 61 times.
SPEAKER_00: Uh 50 times John tells us that he saw something.
SPEAKER_00: 49 times we read of heaven, 70 times we read about angels.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, there are 87 references to the title God.
SPEAKER_00: Um, there are beasts, dragons, sea monsters, stars, wind, fire, uh, lampstands, incense bowls.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and the point I'm trying to make here is don't let the landslide of images and metaphors take your eyes off of the central focus of revelation.
SPEAKER_00: As verse one tells us, it is the revelation of Jesus Christ and only Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Now, because of the fact that so many people have spent so much ink commenting on it, uh, speculating on it, and all that sort of thing, it led uh G.K.
SPEAKER_00: Chesterton, I mean, this has been like a century ago, uh, to make to quip a little bit about the commentators.
SPEAKER_00: He said, I'll put it up on the screen for you, though.
SPEAKER_00: St.
SPEAKER_00: John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision.
SPEAKER_00: He saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, I think that's right.
SPEAKER_00: I just I just don't want to be numbered among the monsters, okay?
SPEAKER_00: But I'm so delighted and excited to be studying this book together as a church.
SPEAKER_00: As we study, we will find some of it difficult and bewildering, that's true, but still very worthwhile and rich uh for its promised blessing that we find in verse 3.
SPEAKER_00: We'll read that in a second.
SPEAKER_00: So get ready to have your intellect stretched, your imagination uh uh catalyzed or stimulated as we press into the first eight verses of the revelation.
SPEAKER_00: It begins like this the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him, God the Father gave to Jesus Christ, to show to his bondservants the things which must shortly take place.
SPEAKER_00: And he sent and communicated it by his angel to his bondservant John, who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy, and heed the things which are written in it, for the time is near, and each day it is one day nearer, and I'm excited about that.
SPEAKER_00: John to the seven churches that are in Asia, grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, the ruler of the kings of the earth, to him who loves us and released us from our sins by his blood.
SPEAKER_00: And he has made us to be a kingdom, priest to his God and Father, to him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And then the last two verses I want to read today.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over him.
SPEAKER_00: Even so, Amen.
SPEAKER_00: I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, who is and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.
SPEAKER_00: And we'll stop right there with our reading.
SPEAKER_00: So the opening verse, I want to put that back up on the screen for you.
SPEAKER_00: Just pick that apart a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, the revelation of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And here what we see in this first verse alone is the book's subject matter, its origin.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: So subject matter, it's a revelation of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Uh its origin, God gave it to him, Jesus, to show to his bondservers.
SPEAKER_00: There's a purpose, right?
SPEAKER_00: The means of conveyance is God to Jesus, and then he's going to give it to his angel, who's going to give it to John, who's mentioned last in this verse, much the way John was sort of a humble kind of a guy and uh puts himself last.
SPEAKER_00: But the purpose is that John would then show it to uh the bondservants or this those who consider themselves slaves or belong lockstock and borough to Jesus Christ, that he has purchased their freedom.
SPEAKER_00: And so there's much to say here about Jesus, much that we learn here.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, I want to highlight on this slide for you the seven characteristics of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: If that's what this book, Revelation, is really all about, we'll continue to press back to who Jesus is in our studies and make sure that we're looking at the entire book, including all seven visions, with an eye towards seeing Jesus more clearly.
SPEAKER_00: Um, seeing him in all of his glory and all of his majesty uh and all of his beauty and grace.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so here are what we see uh up on the screen: eternal.
SPEAKER_00: So he was, he is, and he is to come.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that great?
SPEAKER_00: Uh the sequence would normally be who was, who is, and will be forevermore.
SPEAKER_00: But instead, John, the poet, the theologian, the pastor, says, who was and is and is to come, reminding us to look for his appearing, to look for his return.
SPEAKER_00: Um, so important that he is eternal, um, that he existed before the space-time continuum existed, and he operates above and outside of it as well.
SPEAKER_00: He has entered it because it's his creation, he can do that and move some of his stuff around if he wants to, because everything belongs to him that's created.
SPEAKER_00: And so he is the only eternal one, and yet he's planted eternity in our hearts, and that's why we are uh longing for him all the time.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, he's faithful, number two.
SPEAKER_00: When all others have failed us, and some of you see some of you watching this today, um, as we study this, that word faithful, what a beautiful word that is.
SPEAKER_00: How many times have people failed us?
SPEAKER_00: How many times have leaders failed us?
SPEAKER_00: Uh and I'm not just talking about in politics, what about in church?
SPEAKER_00: What about family members failing us?
SPEAKER_00: What about those we thought we could trust?
SPEAKER_00: What about those so close to us that we thought surely they would they would love us, surely they would forgive us, and yet they're withholding forgiveness, or perhaps that really is us that's doing that.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know, but Jesus is eternal, and Jesus is the faithful one.
SPEAKER_00: Um, he's the one that said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
SPEAKER_00: And so we remember these bold claims of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And John, as he writes what will become the last word, the last book of the Bible, wants us to remember that Jesus is the eternal and eternally faithful one.
SPEAKER_00: Thirdly, first begotten from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: All right, so we just saying, who has the power to raise the dead?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Only Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Makes me think of Lazarus, of course, and uh the other two that Jesus raised from the dead in the gospel records, uh, the widow of Nain's son, they were literally carrying him out in the funeral procession.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus was so moved he interrupted the funeral and and and raised that resuscitated that young boy back to life, and just an amazing thing.
SPEAKER_00: He did the same thing for Jarius' daughter, the synagogue official's daughter who had died.
SPEAKER_00: And then uh, of course, with Lazarus, you know, um, Jesus waits on purpose while he hears that that Lazarus is sick.
SPEAKER_00: Um, Lazarus dies, and then Jesus shows up, and the two sisters are literally saying to Jesus, if you had only, if you had, your timing is off.
SPEAKER_00: And how many times have I said that to God or thought that about God's timing?
SPEAKER_00: And yet he knew what he was gonna do.
SPEAKER_00: Uh at the tomb of Lazarus, Jesus wept because this is not the way it was supposed to be.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, he knew what he was gonna do, and yet he just as human as we are, and uh he he he laments the brokenness in the world around him and the lack of faith as well.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, Lazarus, Lazarus, come forth.
SPEAKER_00: And and from wherever his soul had gone to, uh, he hears those words and he's compelled and he has to come back.
SPEAKER_00: Me, I'm not I'm not sure that I would have found myself wanting to come back, but he can't he comes back.
SPEAKER_00: And Lazarus, the widow of Nain's son, um, Jarius's daughter, these would all die again.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus is the first begotten from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and he died, but he rose again, never to die again.
SPEAKER_00: And we're told in the book of Acts he ascended on high and sits at the right hand of the Father.
SPEAKER_00: And from there, as the apostles' creed uh creed reminds us, he will come to judge the living and the dead.
SPEAKER_00: So he is alive, he is alive, and that's what we just came through our celebration on Easter.
SPEAKER_00: Fourthly, he's the sovereign ruler of and of the kings of the earth, and we see that, don't we, right there?
SPEAKER_00: Excuse me, in uh in verses five, six, uh, and seven.
SPEAKER_00: This is really powerful.
SPEAKER_00: Um his name is the name above all names, and even though others may have failed us or disappointed us in some way, Jesus never will.
SPEAKER_00: He is sovereign.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's by his sovereign grace that he's invaded space-time history to come and bring salvation to us.
SPEAKER_00: And he's the one who can do that, he's got the power to do that, and he came and died in my place on the cross and your place on the cross, so that he might take the wrath of God in our place, pay the full price for our sins, that we might be reconciled to a holy and righteous God.
SPEAKER_00: He's the sovereign ruler of all the kings of the entire earth.
SPEAKER_00: And then it says here as well that he loves us, verse 5, to him who loves us.
SPEAKER_00: Do you understand what that means?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, get get your just open your heart and your mind a little bit to this.
SPEAKER_00: The one, the only one who is eternal, the only one who's faithful, the only one who's the first begotten from the dead, who's the sovereign ruler of all the kings of the earth, he loves you.
SPEAKER_00: That is the person that loves you.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, he knows you fully, and yet he loves you completely.
SPEAKER_00: This is mind-blowing.
SPEAKER_00: And he has loved us uh from before the foundations of the earth, because he knew us before the foundations of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Before I was born, he knew me.
SPEAKER_00: Before you were born, he knew you.
SPEAKER_00: And we're told in the New Testament that before the foundations, he chose us and set his love upon us and set in motion this whole plan of salvation through Jesus, which is one of the reasons this book is written to one more time draw our attention to and our affections to the one who already loves us before we loved him.
SPEAKER_00: Sixthly, Jesus sets us free from sin, and this is so powerful.
SPEAKER_00: He loves us enough to do that, to release us from our sins at the end of verse 5.
SPEAKER_00: By his blood, he died in our place that he might pay the penalty for our sins.
SPEAKER_00: He rose again from the grave, that we might know the power over sin, that we might know that even our last and greatest enemy, death itself, we will have the victory over death because of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We trust in him and in Christ alone.
SPEAKER_00: Now, though we die, we will rise again.
SPEAKER_00: And we we have already done that in newness of life as we've followed him and been translated from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light by the Holy Spirit, um, brought into the body of Christ and have this new life in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus has come to set us free from the penalty of sin, from the power of sin, and one day when he returns, and we'll read about that in in the toward the end of the book of Revelation, that wonderful last three chapters, that he'll set us free from the presence of sin as well.
SPEAKER_00: So he has come as a deliverer, he comes to set us free.
SPEAKER_00: Hallelujah.
SPEAKER_00: And this is free in its truest sense, not in the sort of fake sense of all the false freedoms that we've been enchanted by in our day and time, but this is freedom in the way that we really were meant to be set free, to be all to belong to God in the fullness of life and life flourishing the way that God intends for us to experience it.
SPEAKER_00: Then uh lastly, he's made us to be a kingdom of priests to God, so that we might join with the saints and angels, to bow before him and praise Jesus, only Jesus, holy King, almighty, Lord, as we sing.
SPEAKER_00: May the book of Revelation lead us to wonder and to worship Jesus, the Lamb who was slain, but who now reigns.
SPEAKER_00: Eugene Peterson, borrowing from Ellen Goodman, said this people who do not take these opening words at their full value will very likely end up using the Revelation as a Rorschach test rather than a religious text.
SPEAKER_00: Reading more into the ink than they read out of it.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't want to do that.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to do eisegesis, I want to do exegesis.
SPEAKER_00: We want to see what it has to say.
SPEAKER_00: It just presented us with these seven um um descriptions of who Jesus is in our life.
SPEAKER_00: And so I don't want to miss that.
SPEAKER_00: I hope you don't want to miss it either.
SPEAKER_00: And as we go through the rest of this book, it's just gonna be awesome and amazing what we what we learn about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Read ahead.
SPEAKER_00: I think that's gonna be helpful for all of us.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, just as C.S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis says, there are far, far better things ahead than any that we leave behind.
SPEAKER_00: And when we turn to Christ, when we see him as our Redeemer, when we see him as the eternal, faithful one who loves us, who sets us free from the penalty and the power of sin, and on the way to setting us free from the presence of sin, we see, yes, indeed, far, far better things are indeed uh ahead for us.
SPEAKER_00: So that's why we're gonna call this study, the book of Revelation.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna call this study uh the hope of glory, because that's where this is all leading to the place where we sing glory to the Lord, where we sing hallelujah, where we sing his praises for all eternity.
SPEAKER_00: Our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Um, let's join our hearts in prayer first, and then we're gonna sing that old hymn.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, thank you so much for these eight verses, I pray, uh, as we dig deeper and deeper that you'll give us a clearer vision of your truth, a greater faith in your power, and a more confident assurance of your love toward us in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: We pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen and amen.