And we are jumping into the book of Revelation.
We're going to study the book.
We're going to go through it.
We're going to study it.
We're going to break for Lent and Easter.
And then we're going to study it again.
It's going to take us into the summer.
So Revelation is the strange book at the end of the Bible.
Over the years, Revelation has been treated for some as like the secret code to break.
You know, this is the preacher on TV late at night.
He has charts and graphs, and somehow he has it, he has it all figured out.
Nobody else does, but he does.
He has it all figured out.
In that way, we can over-read Revelation.
Now, there's a flip side to that, and I'm on the flip side.
And that is, I'm so turned off by that that I under-read Revelation.
Right?
So we can do that.
We overread it, or we can underread it.
We just want to read it, okay?
We want to read it.
We want to study it.
We don't want to try to pretend like it's some secret code that suddenly we're going to be able to break, and the rest of humanity and all of history hasn't been able to figure this out.
We're just going to read it, see what we get out of it, see what it speaks to us.
Over the Christmas break, uh we went and we watched Scene Two.
Have you seen Scene?
Is it people seen Scene Two?
So good, right?
So good.
And I'm not going to ruin it because everybody needs to see it.
Just everybody needs to see Scene 2.
And Bono is the voice of the old rock star, Clay Callaway, who's, and I'm not going to ruin it.
I've got to tell some details, set it up.
But his wife has died.
Okay, that doesn't ruin it.
His wife's died.
He's living alone.
He hasn't sung for years.
This group of people that they want to have him come sing, but he's he's he's lost faith in himself.
He's lost faith in his music.
He's afraid.
He's alone and he's afraid.
But this young rock star Ash, she shows up into his life and she just won't leave him alone.
Like she just stays with him.
She pursues him.
She loves him.
And finally, then finally, there's a breakthrough.
Now I won't tell you what the breakthrough is, but the point is, and I was getting kind of emotional watching the movie, right?
Because I mean, we're all kind of like Clay Callaway.
Like we can just want to go find an island, you know, in our fear and our woundedness, and we all need an ash.
We all need somebody to show up.
Ash's pursuit, Ash's love, Ash's commitment.
This is what helps Clay out of his fear.
And for us, we all need that same very thing because we can feel beat down, beat up, worn out, broken, and we need love to come toward us.
Now I want us to grab hold of that image, not that necessarily image of like a rock star mouse or whatever that is with the lion, whatever that is.
It's the image of the fact that we need somebody to love us.
We need love to come toward us in our fear because that's actually the picture and what's going on in Revelation 1.
We can get lost in all the words and the stars and the candles and the lampstands and all this crazy stuff and forget these were real people.
This was a guy writing a letter to a group of people.
And so that's how we start is with this image, the fact that we can be a very fearful people, and we need, we need love to come toward us.
That's the picture of the gospel of Jesus to us, and that's what we see going on in Revelation 1.
Ultimately, is a red or a letter written by John.
This guy, John, he'd been persecuted, he's talking about Jesus, which meant his ultimate authority wasn't to the Roman Empire.
And you know what?
If you want to get in trouble, then don't give ultimate authority to power.
That's true in seventh grade, it's true in high school, college, it's true with world governments.
You want to threaten power, then don't give them your loyalty.
And all of a sudden, power comes down on you.
That happened to John.
He's talking about Jesus being his ultimate loyalty.
And so he gets put on this island, Patmos, out in the Aegean Sea, and so he has been separated from his people and his family and his life.
And yet he's thinking about these seven particular churches.
That he knows these people.
He's thinking about, he's thinking, oh, they've got to be facing kind of the same amount of persecution and fear.
And so John's on an island having fear and alone, and he's writing back to a group of people, these seven churches, that would have circulated this letter around, would have been read out loud to their church.
These people would have fear because who knows the day that the soldier shows up and asks them where their loyalty lies.
And what will they say?
So, how does John help them in their fear?
Well, let's read through the chapter.
Revelation 1, 1 through 3, the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place.
He made it known by sending his angels to his servant John, who bore the witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw.
Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of his prophecy, and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near.
So it's kind of a long intro into letters, what it is.
The word revelation is the word apocalypsis.
Now, this would have been a word that heued the reader or the listener into, all right, this is a work of art.
A letter, but a piece of literature that is unveiling something.
That's what the word means, apocalypsis, to be revealed or unveiling.
So the letter is artistry, it's symbolic, it's theology, but it's literature.
It's taking C.
S.
Lewis's Narnia and taking his mere Christianity, taking a symbolic fictional work, and taking a nonfiction, very theological work, and putting them into one work.
That's what we have here.
And so it makes this beautiful, but also makes it complex.
There's numbers, there's candles, there's stars, there's a dragon, and all of it is a revelation.
It's to unveil something to us, for us to see something.
So what is it that we should see?
Verses 4 through 6.
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, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth, to him who loves us, and has freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.
Amen.
So point number one is this fear is transformed by God's grace, helping us grow in peace as we rest in Jesus' love and power.
Let's leave that up there a little bit.
That's a long point.
But it's all of that in these verses.
Verse 4 grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come.
That's beautiful poetry.
That's good writing, right?
But that's huge.
That's huge for us.
It's God's grace to us.
It means there is a one-way love toward us as we are, not as we should be.
Grace to you and peace from him.
Well, how?
Verse 5 to him who loves us and freed us.
How?
From our sins by his blood.
See, this is the theological out where we have poetry, we have theology, it's all working together.
John calls on Jesus' work for him to deal with his fear.
Now that's that's a good lesson for us.
He's trying to get his churches to do this.
They oh, you you got you are you trapped in fear?
You have fear going on?
You want to move in peace?
Well, a way to do that is to call on Jesus' work, to deepen into the work he did for you, the love he has for you.
A few years ago, I woke up in the middle of the night, like boom, like woke up, sat straight up.
I heard somebody in my house.
I heard it, like an intruder.
I know the footsteps of the little girls down the hallway.
This was not that.
I heard something.
And I was sitting straight up in the bed, and it's you know, dead black, it's dark, it's quiet.
I'm trying to listen for this like the second sound, right?
You heard the first one because it woke you up.
And then as I'm sitting up, I realize maybe that was a dream.
Like maybe the first sound, right?
Have you had this happen where you're like, now I don't know like which it is?
Like, was is it was that a dream and the sound was in the dream, or was I sleeping and I heard the sound and it woke me up?
And so now you know what I have to do.
I gotta search the house.
I'm not the kind of guy to go back to sleep at this point.
That's not me.
So I'm up, got my bear spray in one hand.
That's my weapon of choice.
I know some people prefer the bat.
I don't prefer the bat, like good wall bear spray, that's what I'm looking for.
Okay?
So I got my bear spray, and I go in the middle of the night, room by room, in the dark, room by room, behind every chair, behind every couch, behind every door, behind the shower curtain.
You done that before in the middle of the night?
Don't do that in the middle of the night.
That's a moment.
That's a moment you don't want.
And man, I mean, I knew my house was, I mean, who's interested in my little house?
Right?
And they're gonna be real let down if they get inside.
I mean, there's just not, I mean, there's just not a lot there.
So, I mean, I know we're fine.
I know we're fine.
I'm like, you know, that was just a sound, that was, you know, nothing's going on.
But still, man, our minds and our hearts do crazy stuff when we're afraid.
And I was afraid searching that house in the middle of the night by myself in the dark with my bearish parents.
I was afraid.
And my mind's doing some crazy stuff.
We create all types of scenarios.
In our fear, we act out, we overwork, we underwork, we overdrink.
We fall apart, shut down.
And John, right, back to the text.
The more we think about who wrote it and who it's going to, suddenly the letter comes alive to us.
John, on an island.
Right?
Just somebody coming up to you and pulling you out of your life and putting you on the island in the middle of nowhere.
Like, maybe that sounds great for like four days.
Like you're like, yes, that's actually what I want.
I want those four days on an island in the G and Z.
But after a while.
Right?
And then he's thinking about these churches and the persecution they feel.
So he writes to his friends.
That's what we have here.
He writes to his friends.
As I was engaging with this text this week, the question for my heart that I was trying to pull some application for me is what fear keeps paralyzing my heart?
Sending me into anxiety, coping, or denial?
You know, how how how would I be like John?
How would I feel?
Or these these churches.
And it's like, well, that feels so that's so ancient.
You know, but how what is it for me?
What's the fear?
What's the fear in my life?
And maybe it's one you hadn't even voiced out yet.
You haven't told anybody yet.
But it's there, it's driving you, it's governing you, or it's really binding you and holding you.
And then what would trusting Jesus look like in regard to that to that fear?
What would that look like if you begin to let go of that a little bit?
Verses 7 and 8.
Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him.
Even so, amen.
I'm the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come the Almighty.
Point number two is this as we grow more enamored with Christ, we move through our fear and into greater courage.
Right?
John's calling us back to Jesus, who he is, what he did.
And in that, he's moving us through our fear and into greater courage.
When I was a freshman in college for fall break, my friends and I we decided to drive out to West Virginia and raft down the Gali River.
The Gali River is a big river, especially in the fall, big river.
Has class some class five rapids.
Here's a picture of one, so it's big water, really big water.
But we were invincible 19-year-olds.
You know what I'm saying?
Like nothing.
Like I, you know, I thought I could swim that.
Like, yeah, I'll swim it.
I don't even know a life jacket.
I mean, if I think back on my 19-year-old self, like, I can even tap into that.
And pretty pretty sure I can do that.
Like as a 19-year-old, I could've.
So we're brave, no fear.
Here's the picture of the group of us.
So that's us.
That's me on the far right.
A lot of lustrious hair.
Shocking I didn't have a girlfriend, right?
Really shocking when you see that hair.
So we load up in the raft.
Our guide's name is Turtle.
Still remember that.
Our guide's name is Turtle.
And we're starting having fun.
We're going down the river, we're having fun.
Class three, class four, it's fun.
Big water, it's fun.
Before every rapid turtle would say, Hey, if you fall out, swim right.
Hey, if you fall out, swim left.
I'll get you to the end.
Right?
This is like just over and over again.
And then he pulls over the raft.
He's like, this is we're coming up on one of the big ones.
He's like, this is coming up on a five.
This is one of the big ones.
He's and he lays it out.
Hey, we're gonna come in on the right side, we're gonna work our way over, we're gonna go down the tongue, we're gonna blah, blah, blah, you know, all that.
And then he doesn't say like which way to swim.
And so my friend David, he says, Hey, turtle, if we fall out, which way do we swim?
Turtle, very serious for the first time of the day, says, Don't fall out.
And David's like, hey, I know, but like, but if I do, which way do I swim?
And Turtle says, Don't fall out.
We don't fall out on this raptor.
And yeah, okay, I get it, I get it.
But if I do, he's like, you don't understand, don't fall out.
Like, that's not a thing we do here on this one.
And at the same time, then he just said, he said, just listen to me, and you'll be fine.
If you just listen to me, you'll be fine.
And so, you know, we head down that rapid and we head down that line and we're listening to him.
Our eyes are ahead.
We're participants, right?
Like we are participants in the raft, but we are not the authority of that raft.
Right?
I mean, we are we are beholding turtle, okay?
I don't think I should point at the cross as I say turtle.
We're beholding turtle.
Okay?
That's what we're doing.
We're beholding turtle.
Our ears are tuned to turtle.
We're participants, but we're not final authority.
And when it came to peace, right?
A sense of peace, it was not in our ability.
It was in turtle.
The fact that he does this twice a day, every day, he's been doing it for years.
It's all about turtle.
We're beholding him.
Point number three is this we move through fear by beholding the one who's holding us.
We've talked about that word behold before.
It's a call for us to pause and cherish.
It's not moving on to do more.
That's not what we're called to.
It's for us to be more enamored with Christ.
The whole first chapter of Revelation is this unveiling of how good he is.
Verses 7-8, call us.
Verses 7 and 8, call us and to behold.
It says the whole world will behold one day, as Jesus is actually the center of it all.
And then we have that verse 8, and Jesus calls, John calls Jesus the Almighty.
Almighty means the ruler of all, the one who holds sway over all things.
It's a promise of relationship with the sovereign Father who's loving to us no matter what we're going through.
Now, it doesn't mean there won't be suffering.
We will walk through suffering, but we don't have to walk in that in fear.
Those are two different things.
And there's something a lot worse than walking through suffering, and that is walking through suffering in fear.
We don't have to walk in fear.
Verses 12 through 16.
Remember, this is John writing what he experienced.
Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me.
And on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands, one like a son of man, clothed.
So he's talking about Jesus Christ here, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest.
The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow.
His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters.
His right hand held he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength.
I mean, John kind of got on a roll there with words, right?
But all that means something.
Here's what it means.
We're gonna break it down a little bit.
Verse 13, Son of Man, is talking about Jesus as our deliverer, which means I don't have to deliver myself.
Jesus does that.
Verse 13, clothed with a long robe with a golden sash, is this talking about Jesus as our king and our priest, which means I am not my own final authority in life, and I am not my own final authority when it comes to my relationship with God.
Jesus is that for me.
Verse 14, hairs of his head were white.
This is talking about Jesus as our source of wisdom, which means I don't have to create what is right and wrong.
I can look at Jesus and his words and his teaching.
Verse 14, eyes were like a flame of fire.
Jesus as capable to see all of us.
Jesus sees all of us, which means he knows me.
Verse 15, feet were like burnished bronze.
Jesus as our stability and strength, which means he is strong enough for my weakness.
Verse 15, voice was like the roar of many waters.
So Jesus' voice, this is about Jesus' voice, is powerful in our lives.
Which means he desires to speak into my fear and into my weakness and into my need.
Verse 16, he held seven stars.
It means Jesus cares for us.
And he's talking about this seven, he's talking about these churches, these seven churches.
He holds these churches, he loves these people.
These are people.
So he not only knows us, but he cares for us.
Verse 16, sharp two-edged sword.
So Jesus' words are grace and truth, which means that his words they pierce into our hearts.
They come into the core of who we are.
Verse 16, the face was like the sun shining.
This is Jesus' glorious, his glorious brilliance, which means he is brilliant above all others.
So all that glory, right?
All that glory about who Jesus is and his character, Christ for us, God Himself who came incarnate.
And then we have John's experience with this Jesus showing up in verse 17.
When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead.
But he laid his right hand on me, saying, Fear not.
I am the first and the last and the living one.
I died, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death in Hades.
Write therefore the things that you have seen.
Those that are, and those that are to take place after this.
As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw on my right hand and the seven golden lampstands, the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.
So point number four is this Jesus finds and loves you in your weakness and in your fear.
If we think about John and all these fears that he would be having, and then he writes of this glorious Jesus.
And he sees him, he falls to his knees.
And this is a moment where you go, I don't know how this is gonna play out.
I don't know how this plays out.
An afraid, sinful man falling at the knees of a glorious God.
I don't know how this plays out here.
And the fact that one sentence.
But he laid his right hand on me.
There we have the gospel.
Right?
This is John's condition.
He's afraid.
He's not perfect.
He's overwhelmed by God in a really good way.
But John doesn't know how this will work out.
And this moment, this experience.
But he laid his right hand on me.
Jesus moves toward John, resting his hand on him.
And he tells him, I fear not, if you're not, because of who Jesus is, if you're not, because of who Jesus is.
The ultimate victory.
Over brokenness, the ultimate victory we have in eternity, the ultimate victory we have for all of our sins to be absolved perfectly, all finished, is in Jesus.
Full righteousness to us as children of God because of Jesus.
Security with our relationship with God.
No matter how we're feeling emotionally on a given day, secure in Jesus.
We may walk through suffering, but we don't have to walk through it in fear because of Jesus.
This morning you may have a nagging fear.
I don't know what it is, but you know.
Like it's the thing that governs you, it's the thing that drives you, or it's the thing that binds you up and shuts you down.
Fear's weird.
It can be really big fear that is all-encompassing and sort of sort of like thematically in your life, drives a lot.
And then also it can be weird how fear messes with our heads and just all of a sudden we start creating scenarios that just they're not even possible, they're not gonna happen.
But fear has this lie to it, right?
Of what it creates in us.
And we don't have to live like that.
We're gonna live in a variety of circumstances, but we don't have to live in fear.
Why?
Well, we call on Jesus' word, we remember the glory that he is, and as we are overwhelmed, he puts his hand on you and he says, Fear not.
Let's pray together.
God, thank you that you call us out of a life of fear.
And it's not us getting our acts together to be brave enough, it's us being overwhelmed enough to be on our knees in front of you because you are more than enough.
And God, this morning, so many of us have a fear in our hearts about someone or about something, about something that might happen or will happen or is happening.
And we need to bow to you.
But we need the experience of your hand on us.
And we need to hear in our hearts if you're not.
That you are with us and you care for us, and that you will walk with us, and we are participants, but help us to attune our ears to you.
We thank you that you love us in our weakness, and that you approach us and pursue us, and you are our Redeemer.
In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.